Archive | Commentary

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 […]

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.

  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 […]

  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 […]

[All figures below are in current dollars.] Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent The U.S. constitution established a federal system of “dual authority” incorporating both national and state sovereignty. The product of a series of political accommodations made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, federalism was designed as an opportunistic political battlefield with ambiguous boundaries, […]

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 […]

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” — Bob Dylan The beginning of this year’s holiday season and the Major League Baseball offseason (when most of the trading and dealing of players occurs) has led me to ponder, once again, money and American popular culture.  The re-release of Bruce Springsteen‘s 1975 tour de force Born to Run […]

The Lighter Side of Mass Murder Picture a necrotic, sinister, burned-out wasteland — a vast, dull mound of rubble punctuated by moments of bleak emptiness and, occasionally, smoking. Those of you whose imaginations alighted instantly on the Late Christopher Hitchens have only yourselves to blame, for I was referring to Fallujah.  The “city of mosques” […]

While I have been critical of developments in the labor movement at the national level for quite a while, there are stirrings at the local levels in some places that are encouraging. I want to report on a recent effort by the Northwest Indiana Federation of Labor. Indiana, as many know, strongly supported President Bush […]

Chávez, Venezuela, and the New Latin America is a modest documentary directed by Che Guevara‘s daughter, Aleida Guevara. Through extensive interviews with Hugo Chávez Frías, president of Venezuela, the film chronicles the coming to consciousness of the Latin American leader, describes the U.S.-backed attempt to topple his government, and raises the question of what a […]

The premiere of Robert Greenwald‘s new film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, drew a crowd of nearly two hundred people, far exceeding the expectations of the event’s organizers, who were compelled to run simultaneous showings in two separate rooms. Screenings have taken place at thousands of similar […]

Bombay, Our City Early on, in Anand Patwardhan‘s Bombay, Our City (1985), a passionate film made with the working people who live in Bombay’s slums and are coping with and organizing against their displacement by the police, the bureaucracy, and the business community, a woman reproaches the filmmakers. “Why do you take pictures of the […]