Archive | Commentary

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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, […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

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! […]

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 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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]