Archive | Commentary

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin University of California Press Every city has its cemetery.  But the greatest have mass graves.  Beneath St. Petersburg lies a virtual hecatomb — the remains of conscript laborers who died draining the Neva marshes for the palaces of Peter’s courtiers.  The Belle Epoque structures of […]

Key to a new organizing strategy is for the UAW to hire and train an “army” of member-organizers. With the recent loss of many experienced members in the Big Three, this could be a good way to put talented union members to work.  Photo: Jim West As the UAW prepares for this summer’s negotiations with the […]

  I had the great fortune of attending the 79th Academy Awards following my nomination as producer for a film in the Best Documentary Feature category.  At the Awards ceremony, most categories featured an introduction that glorified the filmmakers’ craft and the role it plays for the film audience and industry.  But when comedian Jerry […]

Stephen Fleischman, A Red in the House: The Unauthorized Memoir of S.E. Fleischman.  New York: iUniverse, 2004.  366pp, $24.95 paperback. This review is late in coming because it has taken a couple of years for me to understand who this Fleischman fellow is, with the tough, brilliant commentaries on various issues in CounterPunch and elsewhere.  […]

When I ask Canadian trade unionists and activists fighting against lower labor and social standards about their political vision, they often refer to European welfare states, notably Sweden.  The Swedish social system, their reference implies, proves that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal politics of boosting profits at the expense of working people.  It […]

All roads may have once led to Rome, but, for the Palestinian people, all roads lead to checkpoints.  The latest checkpoint to block the Palestinians is not manned by Israel but the ostensible mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Quartet (which is composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United […]

Cada poder hegemónico en cada tiempo establece los límites de lo normal y, en consecuencia, de lo natural.  Así, el poder que ordenaba la sociedad patriarcal se reservaba (se reserva) el derecho incuestionable de definir qué era un hombre y qué era una mujer.  Cada vez que algún exaltado recurre al mediocre argumento de que […]

Perhaps the fastest growing new “wealth-management” tool in the US is the reverse mortgage.  The Federal Housing Administration insured 76,351 such mortgages in 2006 compared with 43,131 in 2005.  Industry officials expect around 120,000 reverse mortgages to be signed in 2007.  In 1990, only 150 reverse mortgages were arranged.  Traditional mortgages were the crucial means […]

DREAM: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy by Stephen DuncombeBUY THIS BOOK Stephen Duncombe is a long-time activist and a professor of at the Gallatin School at New York University.  His new book Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy urges progressives to tap into popular fantasies and desires and to […]

The latest news from the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, and GM) automakers is bad.  As of Valentine’s Day — how appropriate for North American workers to receive another shot to the heart — the permanent force reduction now exceeds 100,000.  Most of the jobs eliminated are hourly workers, UAW and CAW union members in fact […]

  War is dehumanizing.  By its very nature, it forces a coarse division between us and the other.  All the lofty ideals — be they revolutionary or reactionary — cannot change this.  Clint Eastwood‘s new movie Letters from Iwo Jima is a sobering and deeply humanist perspective on the horrors of war.  Relying on a […]

  Germany is the world’s leading exporter and the third largest industrial economy, following Japan and the United States.  German multi-nationals are drowning in supreme opulence, yet the wages of German workers remain severely depressed.  The Wall Street Journal, engaging in low-intensity class struggle labor journalism, confirmed in its January article “German Unions See Leverage […]

The Global Solidarity School is the initiative of progressive Canadians involved in trade union and academic education.  The school will combine educational programs with Cuban cultural explorations that extend well beyond a typical tourist experience. As a student at the Global Solidarity School, you will meet with international counterparts who care about the wellbeing of […]

In the 1980s, the right wing began its media blitz and has kept it up since then, but the labor movement has failed to match it or even develop a minimal communications network to reach union and non-union workers with information crucial to their wellbeing.  The movement has no national newspaper or magazine and no […]

Teachers College Press and the Gottesman Libraries are pleased to invite you to aBook Signing & Discussion What does it mean to be “patriotic” in the U. S. after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001?  And how have the prevailing notions of patriotism — loudly trumpeted in the American media — affected education in […]

A film from Germany has a one-in-five chance of winning an Oscar next week: it’s called The Lives of Others.  The film was cleverly written, well directed, and well acted.  Why do I hope it does not get the valuable little statuette? It is the story about a dogmatic officer of the East German “Stasi,” […]

  An interview with Luis Jalandoni, chairperson of the National Democratic Front-Philippines Negotiating Panel, follows E. San Juan, Jr.’s analysis. The February visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, Prof. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, reconfirmed the barbarism of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s de facto martial-law regime in the Philippines.  Stavenhagen bewailed the worsening pattern of […]

There is now a strong consensus among climate scientists that human activities are the primary forces responsible for the observed warming of the earth’s atmosphere.  The recently released fourth assessment report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that warming is “unequivocal” and human […]

Over the last quarter century, Americans got used to the idea of their children going on to colleges and universities.  In the early 1970s, about 8.5 million Americans attended such institutions; by 2004 the number had doubled.  The US population across this time rose by less than 50%.  This spectacular growth in our student population […]

For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating.  Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]