Archive | Commentary

For some time, business and government leaders in the United States have aggressively promoted policies designed to expand opportunities for private profit making.  The result has been growing instabilities and inequalities.  Many opposed to this development have called for the imposition of controls on private production, investment, and price decisions.  However, those in power routinely […]

On October 6, 2005, Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), gave a talk before an audience at Goldman Sachs in London that throws light on the role of the ICTY as well as the character of Ms. Del Ponte and qualities of her efforts.1 Speaking before this […]

She sat her husband down made the confession she stole food from the refrigerator You mean our refrigerator? You didn’t steal nothin’. Lou, I ate a sweet pickle and two slices of bread.The end pieces. That food’s yours, Flo! I bought that for you to eat. I didn’t ask first. You don’t have to for […]

FDR’s New Deal changed the tone and shape of US politics into a kind of moderate social democracy. Desperate to end the Great Depression nightmare, US voters secured FDR and the Democrats in power. The right wing, in and out of the Republican Party, dove into decline, agonized for years, slowly regrouped, and then revived. […]

Scott Campbell lives in Oakland, California, and is an organizer with the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen.  He and 600 others protested on October 29 at the state Capitol in Sacramento against the Minuteman Project, which turned out 200 supporters. Mario Galván lives in Sacramento, California.  He has been working with […]

  Listen to Michael D. Yates’ keynote speech (mp3) at the conference “How Unions Matter in the New Economy” in Toronto, 28-29 October 2005. Excerpt First, working people want and need good jobs and benefits, but the vision worthy of a struggle to achieve, they need that, too.  People are likely to do great things, […]

The impasse of the authoritarian command economic systems in the communist zones of the 1970s brought a great deal of rethinking about economic planning and co-ordination in non-market societies within the East Bloc and outside.  As well, the acceptance of capitalism by the social democratic parties in the Western countries, and their accommodation to neoliberalism, […]

Continuing turmoil in Germany since the elections on 18 September 2005 suggests a turning point in European politics, with implications for global politics: the European Left may have finally ceased its steady retreat. It all began with stunning election results, so stunning that even normally glib liberal commentators seem to be taken aback. The German […]

Industrial salmon farming corporations have learned an important lesson from their corporate cousins about what to do with their tarnished images of ecological and social injustice: simply pour money into a public relations campaign and overwhelm dissent.  After years of bad publicity, the salmon farming industry is adopting a damage control PR campaign. A recent […]

Not only Washington but Berlin, too, has a new crisis, and no one can predict how it will end! The dramatic factor, almost totally ignored by the media, has been the crucial importance of Germany’s new Left Party. When neither Gerhard Schroeder’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens nor the right-wing Christian Democrats and […]

It’s time for the antiwar movement to take the US threats against Iran and Syria very, very seriously. Not only are stories of such threats appearing at an increasing rate in antiwar journals and websites, they are now a topic of concern on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, […]

In Purple Hearts, the documentary photographer Nina Berman (2004) presents forty photographs — two each of twenty US veterans of the American war in Iraq — plus a couple of accompanying paragraphs of commentary from each vet in his or her own words.  Their comments cohere around their service, their sacrifice, their suffering.  Purple Hearts […]

Without much examination of the concept, Americans are quick to declare that they live in a civilized society.  Indeed, many Americans believe that their country is the most “civilized” country in the world.  Without much digression on the arrogance of such a belief, it is sufficient to say that at least the rest of the […]

Whoopee! The Change to Win Coalition has established itself in the labor movement! Happy Days are here again! Andy Stern’s going to lead us to the promised land! And the overwhelming response by American workers: yawn. At the time when American workers — indeed, US society as a whole — so much need a new […]

That “Sex Machine” ever got approved for air play is testimony to the stupidity of radio censors. It’s little more than James Brown, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business (one of several), encouraging his penis to labor just as hard: Stay on the scene Like a sex machine. In case you miss the point, the […]

As American casualties in Iraq surpassed 2,000, activists nationwide mourned their deaths and organized vigils against the Iraq War. Here is a photograph of a vigil in Colonie, New York, by Jon Flanders. Jon Flanders is a member and former president of IAM LL 1145 and a member of the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

  [Nikolaj Nielsen spent two months in Africa this year. He stayed in the slums of Nairobi for two weeks, interviewing men and women about their thoughts on poverty. He was accompanied by a local NGO, about which he has reservations. — Ed.] The main road in the Korogocho slum in northern Nairobi is littered […]

Legal pad in hand, I strode into the classroom trying to look confident. Forty mostly young faces watched me, probably wondering how heavy the workload would be and how easy the grading. I lit a cigarette and passed out a stack of note cards. In those days you could smoke in class, and I burned […]

Growing old in the U.S. is becoming increasingly scary.  Beginning in January, U.S. baby boomers will be turning 60 at a rate of more than 4 million per year, and for most of them the American dream of a comfortable, worry-free retirement after a life of hard work is not going to materialize. With the […]

One law for the rulers and another for the ruled. So decided English Chief Justice Bingham in his 1998 ruling granting the mass murderer (and former dictator of Chile) Augusto Pinochet immunity. His exact words were: “The applicant is entitled as a former head of state to immunity from civil and criminal proceedings of the […]