Cleveland, a small town with less than 1,000 residents in western North Carolina, is an unlikely home for an active autoworkers’ union. Freightliner LLC (now owned by Daimler) opened a truck-manufacturing plant in the town in 1989. The United Auto Workers won an important toehold victory in the growing, mostly non-union manufacturing sector in the […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Putting the U.S. Economic Crisis in Perspective
It is time to take stock. The centrality of the American economy to the capitalist world — which now literally does encompass the whole world — has spread the financial crisis that began in the U.S. housing market around the globe. And the economic recession which that financial crisis has triggered in the U.S. now […]
Neo-liberalism in Globalized Trouble
Wild stock market gyrations and a global financial meltdown open 2008. Around the world, old and new critics of neo-liberalism smirk and repeat “I told you so.” Neo-liberal dogma — that private enterprise is good and efficient whereas state economic interventions are bad and wasteful — suffers deepening disrepute. The private, deregulated capitalism of recent […]
Cliff-hangers in Hessian Elections
The German elections on Sunday, like so many Hollywood films, were full of suspense until the last minute. Was there also a happy ending? To use the handy German word combination for Ja and Nein — Jein. The elections were for the legislatures in two of Germany’s sixteen provinces, Hesse and Lower Saxony. In the […]
Africom Threatens the Sovereignty, Independence, and Stability of the African Continent: A Position Paper of the National Conference of Black Lawyers
The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United States.
California’s Health Care Crisis
Nearly seven million Californians lack health insurance, or about every fifth person in the state. Big papers such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Sacramento Bee are urging the state Senate Health Committee to pass the Núñez-Perata health-care reform bill, ABX1-1. Gov. Schwarzenegger backs the speaker and senate leader’s bill, which the State […]
Puerto Rican Independence Movement under Attack in New York and San Juan
“It appears to us to be a reinitiation of the harassment of independentists.”1 — U.S. Congressman José Serrano, speaking to FBI director Robert Mueller An unexpected knock on the door . . . men in trench coats handing you a grand jury subpoena . . . . If you’re involved in the movement for the […]
Our Encounter with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
It was a bright, hot July day in Yazd, an ancient, oasis city in central Iran. The five members of our 2007 People’s Peace Delegation were following our tour guide to see one of the city’s famous Wind Towers, which boast a hundreds-years-old form of natural air-conditioning. I had fallen a bit behind the rest […]
The NNIRR and Immigration Reform: Time for a Clear Alternative
HOUSTON, TX. The National Conference for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (January 18-20) organized by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) took place during a critical period in U.S. immigration history. Over five hundred NNIRR members, activists, and organizers (including numerous immigrants and their organizations) came to the conference to share their experiences, […]
The Erosion of the University as a Public Sphere
In the interest of promoting individual and economic freedom, neo-liberal states have simultaneously deregulated and reduced the role of government in various sectors, giving power to the free market to allocate goods and services. The university has historically been exempted from this process based on the widely accepted notion that higher education is a […]
The South Carolina You Won’t See on CNN
South Carolina 2000: Six hundred police in riot gear facing a few dozen angry-as-hell workers on the docks of Charleston. In the darkness, rocks, clubs and blood fly. The cops beat the crap out of the protesters. Of course, it’s the union men who are arrested for conspiracy to riot. And of course, of […]
The Policy of Force Has Failed, Prison Walls Broken, End the Blockade — Completely! Ceasefire Now — for the Sake of Sderot and of Gaza!
Saturday 26.1.08: A countrywide relief convoy and Israeli demonstration in solidarity on the Gaza border with a parallel Palestinian demonstration in the Strip. It is impossible to keep one and a half million people in a huge prison, and if you try an explosion is bound to happen, as happened today at the Gaza Strip’s […]
The Cost of War
Sign the DEFUND/REFUND Petition Defund the war in Iraq Refund human needs at home and in Iraq The estimated cost of the first four years of the Iraq War is $1 trillion. For what we have spent for just ONE DAY of the Iraq War, we could have funded: * 95,364 Head Start Places for […]
The People in Gaza Challenge Sham Peace Process
About 3:00 am on Wednesday morning Jan. 23, well-coordinated explosions demolished the iron wall built by Israel to seal the southern border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt (the Philadelphi axis). Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed across the border and entered the Egyptian side of the town of Rafah, which had been bisected by […]
Gaza Calling
Music by Checkpoint 303 <http://checkpoint303.free.fr/> Haitham Sabbah, an uprooted Palestinian, was born in Kuwait on 2 April 1969. He lives in Bahrain now, married with three children. This is a video that Sabbah created to help end the siege of Gaza. Read Sabbah’s blog at <http://sabbah.biz/>. | | Print
Silence Will Be the Best Response: Regarding a Dutch Movie-Provocation
Mr. Geert Wilders will launch very soon a short movie, about which nobody knows anything, where it is said that he is going to unveil the true negative essence of Islam, the unhealthy character of the Prophet, or maybe the Qur’an’s insanities. Whatever is the content, one understands it is a pure provocation! Silence would […]
Power to the (Palestinian) People!
The people of Palestine have done it again, taking their own fate in their hands after being let down by their own “moderate” political leadership and, indeed, the entire international community in their struggle for freedom. Early this morning they simply blew up the wall separating Gaza from Egypt, breaking a siege imposed on them […]
The Dollar and US Hegemony: Suspended in Air
Once again, speculation about a dollar crash abounds. The hegemonic roles of the US currency and economy have repeatedly been called into question since the 1970s. Skeptics saw each major economic downturn and depreciation of the dollar as the beginning of the end of US hegemony. In defiance of the often predicted decline, the US […]
Who Rules Cincinnati?: Seven Corporations Dominate Cincinnati’s Economy, Society, and Politics, Leading to Poverty and Distorted Development
A new study titled “Who Rules Cincinnati?” published on the Internet today argues that seven corporations have dominated the City of Cincinnati’s economy, society, and politics, leading to “distorted development” and “grotesque contrasts between rich and poor” with “a particularly damaging impact on the African American population.” The study, a compendium of information on Cincinnati-based […]
Freedom of Expression®
In cooperation with the Media Education Foundation and La Lutta, Free Culture @ NYU is screening Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property at 9 pm on Thursday, January 31. Narrated by Naomi Klein, the film features interviews with Stanford Law’s Lawrence Lessig, Illegal Art Show curator Carrie McLaren, Negativland‘s […]
