Archive | Commentary

  The merchant-minister caravan of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has moved to Hong Kong for its ministerial conference. What really is another round of multilateral negotiations to advance the cause of “free trade” had been designated a “development” round. Not surprisingly, development has been conceived as a mere corollary of free trade, never mind […]

An awesome thing So personal, yet universally A peace it brings To all, the seen and unseen A mighty thing So much a part of humanity Divinity in our being That, at all times, must be seen A powerful thing So simple, yet connected to deity The soul that sings One man’s spirit can change […]

Who would have ever thought I would still be working as an Administrative Assistant here at the Head Start program in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, 28 years later?  When I started here on February 16, 1977, I was 28 years old, married with two young daughters in elementary school.  My husband was employed, and I thought that […]

I arrived in Caracas in July 2005 with a few contacts at different cooperatives, anxious about how I would sort through the more than 70,000 cooperatives that the Superintendencia Nacional de Cooperativas (National Superintendence of Cooperatives — SUNACOOP) had referred to in its recent press statements. Indeed, I found cooperatives everywhere. Between one night and […]

From a working person’s point of view, the recent (and to most of us) completely unexpected split in the AFL-CIO leaves a lot of unanswered questions in its wake. Not that anybody has ever asked me, but I’m a member of  the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, so I have my own questions, too. To […]

Paralyzed from the chest down, Iraq war vet Tomas Young speaks out against the war and occupation.   Tomas Young Pfc. Tomas Young, 25 years old, was sent to Iraq last year with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. He joined the military for college money to further his education and, in his own words, “to […]

It wasn’t the best of times nor the worst of times.  It was 1963. History in the United States was moving from the tragedy of legalized segregation to the farce of de facto segregation, and, in the world at large, the colonialist past was being transformed into the neo-colonialist present. The challenge of the Cuban […]

Recently, news reports in US and European newspapers have suggested that Washington and London are considering a major reduction in their forces in Iraq.  These reports usually fail to mention that those same forces were increased only last summer and that the rumored reduction is really not as large as advertised if you look at […]

  Sean Strub On World AIDS Day, Sean Strub, the respected AIDS activist and founder of POZ magazine, delivered a speech in San Francisco at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. With no punches pulled, Sean sharply critiques the AIDS establishment and the gay establishment and challenges both to return to the […]

I half-suspected NPR to exhume Henry Kissinger (he is dead, isn’t he?) the other day when they did a promo about a story on “Iraqization,” but no, they spared us the sonorous tones of Doctor Strangelove, only to give us his pin-headed sidekick, former Nixon Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird. Since it’s clearly too much to […]

Michael Hoover, “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent,” 28 November 2005 Part 2: Politics: The Electoral Connection and Beyond The U.S. government’s role in disaster relief began expanding in the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized Depression-era federal agencies to repair flood-damaged roads and bridges in […]

  Michael D. Yates, “Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 The reason why work is so unsatisfying is simple.  Work cannot be fulfilling; it cannot allow us to fully use our uniquely human capacities; it cannot be anything but […]

By a vote of 171 to 133, the united parliamentary forces of the Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois and New Democratic Party felled the federal Liberal Government of Paul Martin at 7:09 pm of November 28 on a motion which simply read “This House has lost confidence in the government.”  Thus the 38th Parliament of Canada ended. […]

Click on the image for a larger view of the flyer.

  Ni para amar, ni para rebelarse. . . Nadie se asuste. No digo que tengamos los vuelos de cigüeña de la revolución en Europa. Tan sólo quiero decir que para comenzar no es demasiado tarde y si el ronroneo empieza por la bella Francia entonces no es utópico soñar. No digo que los jóvenes […]

After years of creeping concessions, United Auto Workers (UAW) rank and filers received an offer they had to refuse. When Delphi proposed to cut workers’ wages by two-thirds on October 8, the anger and anxiety wasn’t limited to those working in the struggling auto parts company’s plants — it spread to concerned workers across the […]

As a rule, corporate advertising expenditure in the United States at least keeps pace with the growth rate of the U.S. economy.  This explains why ads are constantly grabbing more space and appearing in new places, such as the fronts of grocery-store shopping-carts, above men’s urinals, at the bottoms of golf holes, and inside movie […]

  “You will never solve the problem until you let in the women.” “Women win all strikes!” — Mother Jones Mary Harris (Mother) Jones predicted over 100 years ago that, if organized labor didn’t embrace gender equality within the unions and in society in general, the problems faced by labor would not be resolved. But […]

Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles over 30 years ago, is facing execution on December 13. Over the past 12 years, Williams has publicly apologized for his past, written a series of award-winning children’s books to keep kids out of gangs, initiated a Peace Protocol that has led to […]

Will the full story of Abu Ghraib come to light this year? Government documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request have turned up a mountain of evidence proving that what happened really was torture, that it was widespread, and that it was authorized from above.1 Torture is once again serious business. But with […]