By Chris McManus In the movie ”American Gangster” the Harlem druglord  Frank Lucas is played by Denzel Washington.  The movie portrays the smuggling of tons of heroin into the US from Vietnam using the coffins of dead American servicemen. Lucas bragged in a magazine article that the coffins were modified with false bottoms” big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos”. In the commentary section of the ...

By Christopher McManus On January 7th, President Rene Preval of Haiti put the final touches on the privatization of Haiti’s public telephone company, TELECO. Five days later the horrific earthquake leveled Haiti, killing over 200.000 people. The selling off of assets, the International Monetary Fund’s austerity measures, were under full swing under the Preval administration in order to pay off debt owed by ...

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis and San Francisco North Bay Hispanics By Chris McManus The subprime mortgage crisis has affected every aspect of economic life in the United States. The financial meltdown in September of 2008 was triggered by defaulting subprime mortgages. There was a million foreclosures in this country in 2008, and there were 2.8 million notice of foreclosures in 2009. There is no end in sigh ...