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An American Sahara
By John Ross, San FranciscoBayGuardian
Much of Mexico is drying up, creating an environment incapable of supporting human life. Indigenous people and subsistence farmers are abandoning their land as desertification crawls across the country. The major culprits, according to John Ross, are agribusiness giants and the timber industry, who have robbed the country of many of its natural resources. Recent studies by the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) have indicated that 38 Mexican cities, including Acapulco and Cancun, could run out of water in 10 years. -- Anna Cynar
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=3663&volume_id=254&issue_id=295&volume_num=41&issue_num=33

That Ain't White
By Matt Wray, American Sexuality Magazine
The term 'white trash' may seem like an unremarkable racial epithet, but as Matt Wray explains, the term shares a precarious and illuminating relationship with marginalization and discrimination. It is likely that the moniker was originally used by African Americans in early nineteenth-century Baltimore to disparage poor white workers and indentured servants. Since then the term has been used to describe people thought to be mentally impaired, culturally inept, and even genetically flawed. (Thanks, Arts & Letters Daily.) -- Chris Gehrke
http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/MagArticle.cfm?Article=735

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