-
From World War II to Gaza: U.S. Labour opposition to war and fascism
To understand the growing support within union ranks for an end to unconditional U.S. military and financial support for Israel in its conduct of a brutal war, it is important to look back at the legacy to which the UAW statements refer.
-
Salvadorans reject the adoption of Bitcoin as national currency
Many fear that the volatility of the cryptocurrency will affect their income and purchasing power. They condemned that it is not suitable for small vendors and only benefits the big investors and transnational companies.
-
Attacking the Messenger: Profile of Salvadoran political cartoonist Otto Meza
Otto Meza, a calm, bespectacled 46-year-old Salvadoran political cartoonist deals with a whole spectrum of domestic issues. Many of the themes Meza uses to label his cartoons provide a stark overview of the issues facing contemporary El Salvador: “Migration,” “Inequality,” “Corruption,” “Transparency,” “Impunity,” “Historical Memory.”
-
The U.S. role in turning countries into shitholes and provoking immigration
Since Trump is a racist, he thinks that countries get to have poor economic and security situations because of the race of the people that inhabit them. That is silly (and dangerous) as history and social science.
-
Failing to Connect the Dots on Immigration: The Democratic Debate in Miami
The March 9 debate in Miami between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was the first chance the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination had to discuss immigration and its connections to trade and U.S. policy in Latin America. Unfortunately, neither candidate took advantage of the opportunity. The mainstream “immigration debate” generally avoids mentioning the […]
-
Chavism Loses a Battle — Can It Recover and Rectify?
Chavism received a serious blow in the parliamentary elections this last Sunday, December 6. The strength of the blow is such that the movement is still reeling. The Venezuelan opposition, loosely organized in an electoral bloc called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), achieved not just a majority of seats in the National Assembly but also […]
-
The Letelier-Moffitt Assassination: New Evidence
The Guardian reports that Chilean President Augusto Pinochet personally ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, in Washington, D.C. in September 1976. So, you may say, what’s new? After all, my partner Sam Buffone and I sued Chile for these murders and won a judgment. At the trial, our expert witness said that […]
-
People’s Power & People’s Protagonism: Linking Practice to Visions of Twenty-First Century Socialism
Register Now – Limited Space Available! SF BAY AREA – SEPTEMBER 13TH, 4-6PM * REGISTER HERE (Presentation Theater, University of San Francisco School of Education, 2350 Turk Boulevard, San Francisco) NEW YORK CITY – SEPTEMBER 18TH, 7-9PM * REGISTER HERE (Verso Loft, 20 Jay St [10th Floor], Brooklyn) We are honored to bring Marta […]
-
Marta Harnecker on New Paths Toward 21st Century Socialism
Introduction by Richard Fidler Among the many panels and plenaries at the Conference of the Society for Socialist Studies, which met in Ottawa June 2-5, was a Book Launch for Marta Harnecker’s latest English-language book, A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism (translated by Federico Fuentes), Monthly Review Press. The featured speaker […]
-
The Desperate Choices Behind Child Migration
As someone who just returned from living and working in El Salvador, I’m still having a hard time adjusting to our mainstream media’s never-ending wave of know-nothing commentary on the subject of immigration. A case in point is the column penned by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on Sunday, June 22nd. Douthat expresses alarm […]
-
The Fight Against ICE Holds
On March 12 this year, the Public Safety Committee of the Philadelphia City Council held a public hearing to review the practice of detaining undocumented immigrants in what are known as “ICE Holds.” An ICE Hold, or civil immigration detainer, is a request from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to local police […]
-
Rehabilitation of Liberation Theology
Christmas has just gone by, and we’ll soon be ringing in the New Year, a time when a “profound feeling of consolation and peace” overwhelms the faithful. But the buzz, created by Pope Francis’ “apostolic exhortation”, Evangelii Gaudium (EG, translated as “The Joy of the Gospel”), issued in late November, and the subsequent clarificatory […]
-
National Lawyers Guild Observers Question Validity of Honduran Elections
November 26, 2013 Police Repress Students Protesting Against Electoral Fraud, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 26.11.13 The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) delegation of 17 credentialed international observers seriously question the validity of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal‘s (TSE) preliminary results of Sunday’s national elections in Honduras. The NLG takes issue with the United States government’s characterization of the electoral […]
-
Can Worker-Owners Run a Big Factory? How Mexican Tire Workers Won Ownership of Their Plant With a Three-Year Strike and Are Now Running It Themselves
Part 1: Mexican Workers Win Ownership of Tire Plant With Three-Year Strike “If the owners don’t want it, let’s run it ourselves.” When a factory closes, the idea of turning it into a worker-owned co-operative sometimes comes up — and usually dies. The hurdles to buying a plant, even a failing plant, are huge, and […]
-
Workers of the World
Labor historians Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh have vividly described how sailors and other maritime workers were in the vanguard of the creation of an international working class. Unlike most people in the early modern period who largely stayed rooted to the soil of their birth or tied closely to their particular artisanal enterprises, Jack […]
-
Young Organizers, Unwitting Victims of the U.S.-Funded Fight Against Gangs in El Salvador
On December 12, 2012, 12 young people were arrested in the poor community of El Progreso 3, in the northeastern part of San Salvador. Dressed all in black with their faces covered, police from the much-feared Anti-Gang Unit stormed the community in the middle of night, going home to home, trampling down doors and pulling […]
-
“Environmentally Responsible?”: “Rogue NGOs” Tackle Pacific Rim in El Salvador
On October 20th, hundreds of people marched in Cabañas, El Salvador to voice their opposition to the proposed gold-mining project of Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company. The anti-mining movement in El Salvador has been growing over the past decade and in 2007, under pressure from this movement, the Salvadoran government began to put restrictions on the burgeoning, foreign-dominated mining industry.
-
“Collectivized Torture”: Drone Warfare and the Dark Side of Counterinsurgency
The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations. The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]
-
The Sargasso Manuscript: Some Observations on Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
Susan Sontag. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980. Edited by David Rieff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I. David Rieff has played the last of Susan Sontag’s jokes upon the reader: to remain austerely cool, distant, and unsympathetic toward us even in “journals and notebooks.” The barbed wire of […]
-
Attacks on Teachers, Airline Workers, and Public Pensions in Canada Highlight Need for a Fighting Labor Movement
A trend is taking hold across Canada of working class resistance to the capitalist crisis and attacks by governments and corporations on workers’ rights and the social wage. Library workers in the city of Toronto and transit and university workers in Halifax recently went on strike, as did daycare workers in Quebec. Workers at Air […]