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The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]
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Ennahdha-Qatar-United States: Dangerous Liaisons
For his first post-election trip, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahdha party, visited the Emir of Qatar. No surprise — he has to thank his sponsors and reassure them on their investments. This visit is worrisome, since Ennahdha is now the leading political force in Tunisia. It is clear that the party is […]
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Interview with Salim Lamrani: “The Economic Sanctions against Cuba Constitute the Principal Obstacle to the Development of the Country”
Salim Lamrani. État de siège; les sanctions économiques des États-Unis contre Cuba(State of Siege: The United States’ economic sanctions against Cuba). Prologue by Wayne S. Smith. Preface by Paul Estrade. Paris, Editions Estrella, 2011. 15 euros. CSF: You’ve just published a new book under the title État de siège. What exactly do you cover […]
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Occupied Japan and Occupying Wall Street
1) Not long ago I heard a writer claim that her publisher had demanded that the word “manifesto” be replaced in the title of her novel. This is an Asian American woman who is feisty and strong-willed and political, who during readings calls out “blond boys” for flaunting the privileges of their maleness and their […]
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I Woke Up One Morning and the War Was Over
America’s war in Iraq is over. The last U.S. troops will leave by year’s end, “with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.” So sayeth President Obama. A “sham of a mockery of a sham” is what Groucho would call […]
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Occupy Wall St, Occupy Uruguay, Occupy Manila International Airport
In my last posting on #OWS, I related a series of conversations I’d had with global trade union activists on their perceptions of #OccupyWallSt. After the article appeared, several global labor activists contacted me with follow-up and feedback. Steve Faulkner, an International Officer at the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), wrote to say that […]
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In 2012, Social Security Beneficiaries to Receive First Cost-of-Living Adjustment Since 2009
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent in September, and at a 4.8 percent annualized rate over the last three months. Core consumer prices slowed to 0.1 percent compared with 0.2 percent the previous two months. Rounding hid much of the measured fall in core inflation as prices rose at a 0.7 percent annualized rate […]
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#OWS, Times Square, and the Global Labor Movement
“I’m just a soccer mom. Well, a swimming mom, if you want to be exact.” This is how the middle-aged women holding up the “Worked 1973-2003” sign at Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street rally at Times Square described herself to me. She stood next to a young boy leaning against his dad, the son holding up […]
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Understanding the Capitalist Economic Crisis
John Bellamy Foster: Economic crises are functional to the system in that a crisis helps capital readjust its imbalances, disproportions, as Marxian theories often say, and it sets the basis for a renewed period of expansion. So, regular business-cycle crises . . . help the system. . . . But, in addition to cycles . […]
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Syria: BRICS Have Good Reasons to Oppose U.S. and Europe at UN Security Council
There has been a lot of hand-wringing and moralizing about the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) blocking a resolution in the UN against the government of Syria last week. China and Russia used a rare double veto as permanent members of the Security Council, and the other three abstained. “During this […]
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The Dragon’s Shadow: China’s Banking System
On October 10, the Chinese government announced that it will increase its stakes in the four largest commercial banks, which are already largely public-owned. The move is designed to “support the healthy operations and development of key state-owned financial institutions and stabilise the share prices of state-owned commercial banks”. But why was this move considered […]
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U.S. Charge against Iran: Who Could Make That Up?
Dear friends, As you probably know, the Obama administration has just publicly charged that Iranian government agents have been plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Washington is now using this outrageous claim to try and rally support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, isolate it in the international arena, and […]
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Protest 10 Years of War on Afghanistan
Oct. 15 is a day of nationally coordinated antiwar actions in cities across the U.S., the 10th anniversary of the massively destructive and criminal U.S. war on Afghanistan. When the U.S. government began its attack on Afghanistan 10 years ago, President Bush called it a “war on terror.” It was followed by 8 years of […]
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Before October: The Unbearable Romanticism of Western Marxism
Most Western Marxists suffer from a deep resentment: they have never experienced a successful communist revolution. For some unaccountable reason, all of those successful revolutions have happened in the ‘East’: Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Vietnam and so on. And none of the few revolutions in the ‘West’, from Finland to Germany, […]
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Libya: NATO Provides the Bombs; The French “Left” Provides the Ideology
Last April, former Le Monde diplomatique director Ignacio Ramonet published (in Mémoire des Luttes) a text entitled “Libya, the Just and the Unjust.” The war had been started a few weeks earlier, inaugurated by French aircraft which had the honor of dropping the first bombs on Tripoli. On March 19, “a wave of pride […]
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Remembering and Representing: Vietnam, East Germany, and Daphne Berdahl
Daphne Berdahl. On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Edited by Matti Bunzl. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. xx + 166 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35434-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22170-4. On the Social Life of Postsocialism; Memory, Consumption, Germany is a posthumous collection of Daphne Berdahl’s essays, written over the course of […]
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WFTU: ‘Support People, Oppose Imperialist Interference in Arab Countries’
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) organised on September 13-14 a two-day international trade union meet in the European Parliament complex in Strasbourg, France, to express solidarity with the fighting people of Arab countries and voice strong protest against the hegemonic interference of US imperialism and its European allies in the internal affairs […]
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What’s Wrong with Single Payer?
With all the advocacy efforts expended over the last 20 years, it might be reasonable to expect some results by now for the Single Payer (SP) movement. Of course, SP would be a great way to provide health insurance in America. Instead of thousands of private insurance companies (payers for healthcare services) competing with each […]
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Hugo Chávez: Let Us Raise Our Voices against War, for Peace and Life
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called on peoples of the world last Wednesday to speak out for peace and against the imperial madness of the countries attacking sovereign nations. “May the peoples of the United States, of Europe, speak out against war. Let us raise our voices, our chants, against war, for peace and life,” President […]
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Sayonara Nukes Rally in Tokyo, Ustreamed
さようなら原発5万人集会 Meiji Park, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 19 September 2011 Update: “さようなら原発 / Sayonara #Nukes Rally in #Tokyo: 60,000 in Meiji Park alone. Aerial shot: bit.ly/mTbY08 #Nuclear #Japan” — MRZine For more information about the Sayonara Nukes rally, visit <sayonara-nukes.org>. Cf. 大江健三郎さんら、新政権に脱原発迫る〜19日には5万人集会, <youtube.com/watch?v=HuYEHSl2kzk>. var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print