Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Iran: A Good Time for Goodbye to Subsidies
See the Oil Wars blog for a similar perspective on the contradictions of populist political economy (especially the difficulty of making a sensible trade-off between consumption and investment) in Venezuela. How do you respond to the kind of perspective represented by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani (regarding Iran) and Oil Wars (regarding Venezuela)? Thoughts on this question will […]
Venezuelan Electricity Minister Resigns, Electricity Rationing in Capital Suspended
N.B. The statement in the article below simply attributed to FETRAELEC President Angel Navas is actually one first published by Marea Socialista. — Ed. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the suspension of programmed power outages in the capital city on Wednesday, and asked for the resignation of his minister for electricity, citing errors in the […]
Our Role in Haiti’s Plight
Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti’s capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it’s no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster […]
Latvia Shows the Damage That Far-Right Economic Policy Can Do — with Support from the European Union and IMF
The signs of recession are more noticeable to those who live here — restaurants and coffee shops have lost most of their customers, and construction has practically ground to a halt. Emigration has soared. Latvia has set a world-historical record by losing more than 24 percent of its economy in just two years. The International […]
Hollywood Pretends to Learn from Nelson Mandela
Since its release last December Invictus has caused quite a stir among American movie-goers, garnering relatively high reviews from critics, bagging third place among box-office openers, taking home a series of award nominations, and — perhaps most importantly — winning airtime on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. But while director Clint Eastwood’s successes with this […]
Stone Hammered to Gravel
The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963 and Marshall Square station in Johannesburg, that you would dart down the street between them, thinking the police would never fire into the crowd. Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip, that he would one […]
Sex Workers Targeted in New Orleans
More than half of the people on Louisiana’s Sex Offender Registry — which was designed for rapists and child molesters — are indigent women convicted of sex work. Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13. Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner […]
Help Haiti? Let Haitians Stay and Cancel Haiti’s Debt
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have pledged that the US will do all it can to help Haiti following the devastating earthquake. But while getting assistance into Haiti right now is extremely difficult, there are two things the Obama Administration could do immediately to help Haiti that are entirely within its control. It […]
China to Send “Lower-level” Envoy to P5+1 Talks on Iran Sanctions
In yet another demonstration of the (in)effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s quixotic quest to get China on board for what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to call “crippling sanctions,” the Chinese foreign ministry announced that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who has been representing Beijing at meetings of the P5+1 political directors regarding […]
Emir Sader: The Post-Neoliberal Challenge
With the passing of a year and the coming of another, it’s time to look at the balance sheet and define the prospects. Who can help us do so better than Brazilian sociologist and political scientist Emir Sader, one of the best-known critical thinkers in our America today? Sader is currently executive secretary of […]
Bolivia: Invitation to the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights
Considering that climate change represents a real threat to the existence of humanity, of living beings and our Mother Earth as we know it today; Noting the serious danger that exists to islands, coastal areas, glaciers in the Himalayas, the Andes and mountains of the world, the poles of the Earth, warm regions like Africa, […]
Make Bologna History!
Celebrating Bologna? We don’t think so. International Call for Participation On March 11 and 12, 2010, the education ministers of 46 European countries will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Bologna process in Vienna and Budapest. Given the current situation in many European universities and the ongoing protests for the freedom of education, this […]
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 13 — Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o’clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital. Another group was singing a block away, on the other side of the Hotel Oloffson, where […]
Year of Resistance: Interview with Eva Golinger
Listen to Sheehan’s interview with Golinger: Eva Golinger: Venezuela is a very wealthy country in oil and gas reserves. It’s actually one of the largest oil producers in the world. It has over 24% of oil reserves in the entire world. That’s a lot for a country of 27 million people. And of course […]
Check It Out: WSJ Favors Socialist Market Controls After All
So for the last 2 years the Wall Street Journal has been predicting the total fucking COLLAPSE of the Venezuelan economy because they stubbornly refused to devalue their currency. Well guess what? Over the weekend Venezuela finally bit the bullet and devalued the bolivar, so today the Wall Street Journal took their predictable victory […]
Invitation to a Home-Based Worker Organizing Forum
Dear Brother or Sister: We are writing because of our shared interest in the challenge of organizing and representing home-based workers. As labor activists, direct care providers, or academic researchers, we have all been involved in aiding or studying organizing work among publicly-funded personal care attendants and child care providers, plus other types of […]
David L. Wilson Reports from Port-au-Prince
Tuesday, January 12, 2010, at 8:41pm I’m writing from the southern part of Port-au-Prince; I have been in Haiti since last Thursday on a delegation in support of Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), the Papay Peasant Movement. The earthquake hit less than 12 hours ago, and damage here is extensive. The Olaffson Hotel, where I was […]
Momentive Workers Protest Pay Cuts
Braving freezing temperatures not far from the shore of the Hudson River, members of IUE/CWA 81359 picketed outside the Waterford, New York Momentive plant on Tuesday, January 12, protesting the anniversary of drastic unilateral pay cuts imposed by Momentive Performance Materials in late 2008. Business Week describes Momentive as follows: “Momentive Performance Materials Inc., together […]
Venezuelan Government to Invest in Production and Combat Speculation Following Devaluation
It should be noted that the words of the four trade unionists quoted in the last section of this article — Vilma Vivas, Stalin Pérez Borges, Ismael Hernández, and José Meléndez — are all part of the statement of Marea Socialista (mentioned but once in the article), so they should not be regarded simply as […]
