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West Point Graduates Organize against the War
We mince no words. Time is of the essence. Iraq is a human and political catastrophe, stark testament to the deceitful behavior of the Bush administration. The dangers are clear and present, and too many human beings are dying for an ignoble cause. The preemptive war launched against Iraq on March 20, 2003 stands illegal […]
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Nepal and Venezuela:For Popular Democracy, against Ceremonial Democracy
Any serious and honest survey of the Maoist movement would convey the truth that its main agenda has been to establish essential democratic institutions that devolve political and economic power to the masses. In every negotiation with the King and the parliamentary forces, the Maoists have asked for an unconditional constituent assembly, during whose election […]
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“I Know I’m Not Dreaming, Because I Can’t Sleep Any More”: A Review of Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun
A few years back, I was talking with a young socialist organizer about books. He had just asked me why I wasted my time reading fiction when there was so much non-fiction that needed to be read. Culture, I replied, reflects and illuminates a society just as much as, if not more than, history or […]
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Resistance on the Mexican “Riviera”: The Zapatistas Visit Manzanillo, Colima
The view south-east across the bay from the hills of Las Hadas, the hotel zone in Manzanillo is especially beautiful in the evening as the sun sets and the white painted hotels and restaurants stretching for several miles sparkle in the sun, behind the curving beach. It’s a major Pacific port for Mexico and […]
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Ruin, Rubble, and Race: Lessons on the Centennial of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906
It’s as if the spotlight that Hurricane Katrina cast on the inequities of disaster relief never happened. San Francisco’s high and mighty are in full-throated self-celebration of the City’s “rising from the ashes” of the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire. Forgotten are people like my great-great grandfather Lee Bo-wen who immigrated to San Francisco […]
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AmeriLand: Land of Buy One Get One Free
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard observed: Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more […]
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This Is What a Movement Looks Like
While much of the left has been bemoaning the demise of the antiwar movement and fighting to reinvigorate the opposition to American warmongering that was so evident before the war began, millions of immigrants and their allies have poured into the streets to fight the racist stench emanating from Congress and demand real justice and […]
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To Delphi Corporation’s Robert Miller, “Bankruptcy Is A Growth Industry in America”!
An insider’s analysis of what Corporate Bankruptcy Czar Robert Miller is cooking up for workers and communities in America by Delphi worker/UAW activist Gregg Shotwell, with an introduction by former UAW Executive Board Member, Jerry Tucker Gregg Shotwell is a machine operator for Delphi (formerly GM) — the world’s largest auto parts supplier. He has […]
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As Crisis Deepens: Is a Comeback for Labor in the Cards?
As labor activists from around the country and world converge on Dearborn, Michigan in early May for the Labor Notes Conference, it’s worth reflecting back on a year that has brought back hopes for a revitalization of the labor movement. Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal described an increase in strikes in the United […]
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It’s Time to Call a Truce in America’s Longest War
I am Ron Ridenour, a 55-year-old Flathead County and Canyon resident of Montana. I stood before a federal judge on June 25th, 2004, the most critical reckoning day I had encountered in my lifetime. In order to reduce a 5 to 20 year prison term and a two million dollar fine to livable amounts, […]
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Let’s Kick the Habit
We are being short-changed. The Oakland City Council and the Oakland Police Officers Association have just agreed to spend $2.4 million from city coffers, not to hire more police officers, but to recruit them. While Oakland residents fret about their security, city leaders present them with a bill for an empty plate. Nobody has to […]
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Images of the Unemployed in New Deal Photography: “The Forgotten Man” versus the Militant Unemployed Workers Movement
The Great Depression represented a new moment for government involvement in many facets of American life including a national photography project. The government-sponsored photography project documenting the experiences of Americans during these years of economic crisis existed from 1935 through 1942. The project was housed in various government departments’ including the Resettlement Administration, the Farm […]
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Filipino American Hip-Hop and Class Consciousness: Renewing the Spirit of Carlos Bulosan
“Filipino writers in the Philippines [and the United States] have a great task ahead of them, but also a great future. The field is wide open. They should rewrite everything written about the Philippines and the Filipino people from the materialist, dialectical point of view — this being, the only [way] to understand and interpret […]
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Give It Legs
The clouds quit teasing, gave us a hard rain with long rolls of thunder and lightning sky-splitters. We hid out in the hay sheds, shifted a few bales around to make the stacks look a little neater. When the rain quit we went to work in the fields, propped bales endwise against each other so […]
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NAFTA Corridor Update
Richard D. Vogel, “NAFTA Corridors: Dividing the Nation to Multiply Profits” (MRZine, 4 February 2006) As required by law, the State of Texas has finally posted the long anticipated 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement for the Texas leg of the I-35 NAFTA corridor on the Internet. Access to the document is limited by the digital […]
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out: Neglected for Decades, Released on DVD at Last
After more than twenty years in the film industry, Joseph L. Mankiewicz was at the top of his profession in 1950. He had won two Oscars in March for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and had completed filming All About Eve (1950) which would be released in October and go on […]
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A Note on Immigration and the U.S. Workers [Una nota sobre la inmigración y los trabajadores estadounidenses]
Si el pueblo trabajador en Estados Unidos ha de alcanzar unidad, autoconfianza colectiva e independencia política en el futuro próximo (¡y cuanto nos hacen falta!), la demanda del movimiento de los trabajadores inmigrantes de derechos plenos debe ser el primer punto en su agenda. El pueblo trabajador en este país necesita darse cuenta de lo […]
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Why Leaving Iraq Now Is the Only Sensible Step to Take: A Review of Anthony Arnove’s Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal
IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal (Hardcover) by Anthony Arnove (Introduction by Howard Zinn)BUY THIS BOOK Coherent. That’s the one-word review of Anthony Arnove’s latest book, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (New Press, April 2006). Incoherent. That’s what Washington’s policy in Iraq seems to be. What makes Arnove’s book so important is that he dissects that […]
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Massachusetts Health Reform Bill: A False Promise of Universal Coverage
Listen to Steffie Woolhandler on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News radio show (6 April 2006). Read David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, “Mayhem in the Medical Marketplace” (Monthly Review 56.7, December 2004). It’s a stirring scene. The Governor, legislative leaders and leaders of Health Care for All standing in the State House Rotunda declaring […]
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Lessons of a Left Victory in France
France’s leading bureaucrats, from President Jacques Chirac on down, have been defeated. French neo-liberalism — the dismantling of its welfare state in favor of business — has suffered a serious blow. A powerful alliance of high-school and university students and of organized labor achieved the victory against the government’s law that undercut job security for […]