Archive | Commentary

  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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

On January 1, five South Florida residents stopped eating in a protest action.  They are demanding that the Obama administration take measures now to put an end to the deportations that are separating families — at least until Congress can provide more permanent relief by fixing our harsh immigration laws. The Fast for Our Families […]

It was the Rosa Luxemburg weekend again in Berlin, like every January, this time with an unusual highlight.  Despite the transportation delays caused by big snowstorms, two conferences and the traditional memorial march kept leftists from all over Germany and guests from other countries very busy. The emotional peak occurred during the main conference on […]

What’s that deafening whirling sound?  Elementary, my dear reader: it’s author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spinning in his grave, as his character Sherlock Holmes gets the Hollywood treatment.  There’s a crude expression — “No s**t, Sherlock” — but that’s precisely what director Guy Ritchie has wrought, complete with anti-Semitism.  Of the 222-ish Holmes productions since […]

Defying freezing temperatures and bone-chilling winds, more than 100 people rallied Jan. 9 in downtown Richmond, Va., then marched a mile and a half to the State Capitol.  Winding their way through the city’s financial district, the protesters — Black, Latino, white, immigrant, and native-born — marched behind a 12-foot multi-colored banner that proclaimed “Jobs! […]

The Venezuelan government’s measures to reduce national electricity consumption amidst nationwide shortages and rolling power outages have provoked varied responses from unionists in the basic industries, especially the steel and aluminum sectors. Venezuela’s electricity consumption has increased by more than 40% over the last ten years, driven largely by five years of consecutive high economic […]

Caracas, 10 January (PL) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez insisted today on putting an end to the oil rentier model in order to ensure that the economic measures taken by the government last Friday will stimulate domestic production. The dual exchange rate with the oil dollar of 4.30 bolivars per dollar and other measures announced […]

In one of our posts surrounding our January 6, 2010 Op Ed in The New York Times, we noted that “analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran.”  In particular, buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is […]

The kind of left-wing politics that arises when men in the private sector are the majority of organized labor and the kind that may arise when women in the public sector are the majority of it cannot be the same.  In the core capitalist countries, it is likely to be a Left which has figured […]

  Listen to “Stop-Loss” “Army Specialist and Iraq war veteran Marc Hall was incarcerated by the US Army on December 11, 2009, in Liberty County Jail, Georgia, for recording a song [“Stop-Loss”] that expresses his anger over the Army’s stop-loss policy.  Stop-loss is a policy that allows the Army to keep soldiers active beyond the […]

For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media.  It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for “defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism.” […]

“The Iranians have always figured out how to beat the system. . . . Even Iranians who are opposed to this government, even Iranians who are opposed to the Islamic Republic, don’t really wanna return to being a client state of the United States.” — Hooman Majd

The economy lost another 85,000 jobs in December, driven by continued job losses in construction and manufacturing.  While the current data still show a 378,000 job gain for the decade, these numbers will be lowered by approximately 824,000 when the benchmark revision is incorporated into the data with the release of the January employment report. […]

Lowkey (born Kareem Dennis, 23 May 1986) is a British musician, poet, playwright, and political activist of English and Iraqi descent.  Check out Lowkey’s MySpace page: .  For bookings, email . | | Print

Vote Expected Next Week to Absolve Honduran Military of Crimes, Even as Murders Continue. The international community should offer no support for planned amnesty for the perpetrators of the Honduran coup, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today.  Noting that both ousted President Manuel Zelaya and coup leaders previously […]