The real heroes of what’s left of the labor movement are not people with full-time union jobs, union-furnished cars and credit cards, and union benefits that dues-paying members don’t get anymore. It’s the men and women who take time out from their regular jobs, under the baleful eye of their boss, to be shop stewards. […]
Subjects Archives: War
Remittances, Migration, and Other Panaceas: The End of Outward-looking Development Strategies?
In a 1965 essay, the great development economist Albert Hirschman bemoaned the tendency of those in his profession to look for the next panacea. Unfortunately, various panaceas have come in and out of fashion since Hirschman wrote. During three decades of neo-liberalism, development economists and policymakers have celebrated three inter-related strategies: (1) free markets, […]
Why You Should Read AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers
Dear Brother, Sister, Friend, As you daily confront the challenges of leading or representing union members or other workers, in whatever capacity, awareness of the current situation of the labor movement is unavoidable: we are in trouble, and we need to audaciously address our weaknesses and limitations if we are to have a chance […]
Mexico: Felipe Calderón’s War on Drugs
Studying the American recipes for the war on drugs, Felipe Calderón pours more military police into the cauldron of Ciudad Juárez. Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi. | Print
Can You Recruit Your Republican Friend to Oppose the Permanent War?
Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, as President, Barack […]
The New York Times Goes on the War Path to Cut the Pensions of the Upper Class (like Teachers, Custodians, and Garbage Collectors)
Columnists are given considerably more leeway than reporters, but serious newspapers still expect their pieces to bear some relationship to reality. This is why the Ron Lieber’s column warning of a class war (“The Coming Class War over Public Pensions”), with government workers as the new “haves,” may leave many readers wondering about the New […]
Job Loss Sends Employment Ratio Downward
For the second consecutive month, the economy created virtually no jobs, net of temporary Census jobs. The Labor Department reported that the economy lost 131,000 jobs in July, 12,000 less than the 143,000 drop in the number of temporary Census workers. The June numbers were revised down by 100,000 to show a gain of only […]
Israel, Hizballah, and Iran: Rumors of Another Regional War
August 4, 2010 Yesterday’s fighting on the Israeli-Lebanese border has intensified commentators’ already quite heightened rhetoric about the risk of another armed conflict between Israel, on one side, and some combination of Hizballah, Syria, HAMAS, and Iran, on the other side. The risk of another regional war needs to be evaluated, at least in part, […]
Israel: Looking to Ignite New War against Lebanon
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Revealing Moments: Obama, WikiLeaks, the “Good War” Myth, and Silly Liberal Faith in the Emperor
War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for disclosing a classified video showing American troops murdering civilians in Baghdad from an Apache Attack Helicopter in 2007. Eleven adults were killed in the […]
Post-Tax-Credit Downward Pressure on Home Prices to Come
The Case-Shiller 20-City index rose by 1.1 percent in May, its second consecutive increase. Prices rose in 19 of the 20 cities, with Las Vegas being the only city with a price decline. Minneapolis had the sharpest jump in prices, with prices rising 2.8 percent in May. This is the second consecutive monthly increase after […]
The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart
“At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.” — Karl Marx Lynne Stewart is a friend. She used to practice law in New York City. I still do. I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July 19th for her re-sentencing. Judge John […]
The Rumble of War
“And what is the vuvuzela for?” “So no one can hear the rumble of war.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was first published in Granma. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
A Defining Moment of the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon
Paul Jay: One of the moments of the war that we hear, as we’ve been in Beirut, people talking about is one point during the war where Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is making a speech and tells people to look out to the sea. Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, Hezbollah: Now . . . […]
Desperately Seeking “Defectors” to Make a Case for an Iran War
Coverage of Shahram Amiri’s departure from the United States and his return to Iran has focused, rather superficially, on the question of whether he was kidnapped or defected and then changed his mind. Frankly, we are more interested in what reports that the CIA tried to pay Amiri $5 million say about the current political […]
To War?
“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned . . . everywhere is war.” — Bob Marley, “War,” 1976 (lyrics adapted from a speech by Haile Selassie I at the UN in 1963) Every few months the specter of a new American war in the […]
India: The Poverty of the Intellectual Mind and the Enlightened Mind of the Backward Adivasi
This is a rejoinder that the slain CPI (Maoist) spokesperson had penned in response to B.G. Verghese’s article in Outlook. Reading B.G. Verghese’s article Daylight at the Thousand-Star Hotel in Outlook (May 3), one is stunned by the abysmal poverty of thought and colonial mindset of this renowned intellectual. How is it that the […]
Netanyahu Pushes the United States to Make War on Iran: Will Obama Say No?
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week was capped off on Sunday with the broadcast of a previously-taped interview on Fox New Sunday. The interview covered a range of important topics, including the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship and prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. But it is the Prime Minister’s remarks […]
Leftovers of War
“And how are you feeding the economy?” “With the leftovers of war.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published in Cambios en Cuba on 9 July 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
Sanctions against Iran and the Next War
In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta. Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished. Megara […]
