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Climate change: The carbon trading debacle
By Carter Burke
October 28, 2009 -- The next major international summit on climate change will be held in Copenhagen in early December, 2009. The position of the United States in these talks remains ambiguous. The latest climate legislation to move through the US Congress is H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. It passed the US House of Representatives in June 2009, mostly along party lines, to the applause of President Obama and house speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Paul Le Blanc -- Why I'm joining the US International Socialist Organization: Intensifying the struggle for social change
By Paul Le Blanc
October 2009 -- I have decided to join the International Socialist Organization (ISO) because I believe socialists can and must, at this moment, intensify the struggle to bring about positive social change. I have been active in this struggle for most of my life -- as a member of the "new left" in the 1960s and early '70s (first in Students for a Democratic Society and briefly in the New American Movement), then in the Trotskyist movement (the Socialist Workers Party for ten years, briefly in Socialist Action, the Fourth Internationalist Tendency for another eight years). I have always considered "Trotskyism" as the same as revolutionary socialism, associated with some of the most useful ideas and most inspiring traditions that ever existed -- something I will come back to shortly.
Since 1992 I have been a member of Solidarity, which over the years has attracted a number of fine people who have done excellent work, although it has never proved able to sustain a membership of more than 300. I feel I have done all that I can to help build Solidarity. At this point I believe I may have more to contribute to building the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and am hopeful that the ISO can play a badly needed role in the intensification of the struggle to bring fundamental social change.
`Monthly Review' at 60: Six decades of campaigning for `social and ecological revolution'
On September 17, 2009, Monthly Review celebrated its 60th anniversary at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in New York City. Five-hundred enthusiastic supporters gathered to hear remarks by Robert McChesney, Grace Lee Boggs, John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Michael Tigar, and hear music by Toshi Reagon.
More
than six decades ago, Paul Sweezy and his good friend, the labour journalist
Leo Huberman, had long dreamed of founding a magazine offering a forum for
insightful comment and analysis of world and national events from a
specifically socialist perspective. The two already had a history of activism
in the radical cauldron spawned by the Great Depression, the rise of the labour
movement, and the World War II. By 1948, with the accelerating crises of Cold
War and domestic repression – and with seed money from Sweezy's good friend and
Harvard colleague, the literary historian and critic F.O. Matthiessen – they
pressed forward with their plan for what would become Monthly Review.
Review of `Renegade: The Making of Barack Obama'
Renegade: The Making of Barack Obama
By Richard Wolfe, Virgin Books, London 2009
Review by Jeff Richards
October 14, 2009 – Whatever your views are about Barack Obama, there is no doubt that his campaign for the US presidency was a major milestone in the history of electoral politics in the United States. How did a senatorial rookie who was black, with an alien name and a background in community organising get to the centre of the system of power? It was both a matter of circumstance (the crises and failure of neoconservative project) and the remarkable political skills of Obama and the campaign team led by David Axelrod.
United States: `Birthers', `deathers' and haters -- Right-wing populism and liberal retreat
October 11, 2009 — The heat
is on the administration of US President Barack Obama. The energised conservative
base has taken over town hall meetings on health care. There are “birthers”
(those who claim Obama is not a US citizen and ineligible to be president),
“deathers” (those who claim Obama’s health care reform is a plan to kill old
people) and just pure haters. Obama has been personally attacked
as a racist, socialist, communist, Stalinist, fascist, Nazi, Pol Potist, foreigner
and every other name the right finds in its vocabulary.
When Obama led the US
delegation to Copenhagen to get his home town of Chicago the 2016 Olympics — and
failed — he was attacked as “out of touch” by the right. When Chicago was
knocked out in the first round of voting, the right gleefully cheered! The
“country first” crowd forgot that a Chicago Olympics would be in the United States,
not “Obama Land”.
John Bellamy Foster: Financial crisis, imperialism and environment -- `Socialism is humanity's best chance'
On September 17, 2009, John Bellamy Foster appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the financial meltdown, social change and democracy. Click HERE to read the transcript.
* * *
A conversation with John Bellamy Foster, editor of the US-based socialist magazine Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and co-author (with Fred Magdoff) of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press, 2009). He was interviewed by Farooque Chowdhury for the Bangladesh daily newspaper New Age. It was published on September 8, 2009.
* * *
Paul Robeson: `The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery'
Peekskill outrage, September 4, 1949.
[See below for a four-part documentary on Paul Robeson's life.]
By Harry Targ
On September 4, 1949, an angry crowd surrounded the 20,000 friends of Paul Robeson who had come to hear him in an open-air concert at Peekskill, New York. After the event right-wing, anti-communist inspired mobs attacked supporters who were leaving the event. These attacks included smashing the windows of Pete Seeger’s automobile with several family members inside. Sixty years later we remember the great progressive Paul Robeson, his struggles for justice, and his refusal to bow to the politics of reaction.
United States: Ted Kennedy -- The myth of the `liberal lion'
Ted Kennedy during his first campaign for US Senate in 1962.
By Lance Selfa
August 28, 2009 -- Democratic Party senator Ted Kennedy's political career reflects the course of US liberalism, from its heyday in the 1960s to its sorry state today.
For decades, Ted Kennedy was the bogeyman used by conservatives in their fundraising appeals to raise millions of dollars. To them, the liberal Kennedy seemed to represent everything they hated--there was no easier way to get a right-wing crowd booing and hissing than to mention Kennedy's name.
So it was more than a little jarring to hear conservatives sing Kennedy's praises for his "bipartisanship" in the wake of Kennedy's death from brain cancer on August 25.
"There is nobody else like him", Republican Senator Judd Gregg told the Associated Press. "If he had been physically up to it and been engaged on this [the current health-care reform debate], we probably would have an agreement by now."
Yeah, right.
The free-market fallacies of Ayn Rand
By Phil Hearse
August 22, 2009 -- Marxsite -- Most people sympathetic to radical politics outside the United States have probably never heard of Ayn Rand, and a brief introduction to her ultra pro-free market views would doubtless be enough to convince them they haven’t missed anything. Yet 27 years after her death, Ayn Rand continues to be seriously debated in the US, her books sell hundreds of thousands each year, her views are propagated by right wing think tanks and foundations and – bizarrely – Charlize Theron is in discussions to turn Rand’s 1088-page magnus opus Atlas Shrugged into a TV mini-series.
The Times Educational Supplement claimed in July that the Ayn Rand revival is gathering pace on US campuses. According to the TES:
United States: Race and class -- African Americans in a sick system
By Malik Miah
August 2009 -- The critical lack of quality and affordable health care is devastating for African Americans. Twice as likely as whites to go without health insurance, African Americans suffer chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes at an escalating rate. The root of the problem is not inferior Black — or better white — health care. It is first and foremost a class issue, exacerbated for Blacks and Latinos because of the institutional racism that still permeates society.
Only the wealthy can afford “the best medical care in the world”. Everyone else’s care is rationed by the employer or private plans that each can afford to buy, or if uninsured, by the use of “free” clinics and emergency rooms. The debate over the broken US health-care system and what to do about it is one of life and death.
Stubborn facts
United States: Healthcare `town hall' meeting a charade of democracy
By Billy Wharton
August 19, 2009 -- The were two big winners at the recent “town hall” healthcare meeting held in the North Bronx, New York City, neighbourhood of Parkchester on August 17 – the lunatic right wing and the private health insurance industry. These victories came despite the fact that the vast majority of those who lined up to participate in the meeting supported either a single-payer system or a public option. Most came away disappointed. I got kicked out.
The right wing won this contest without even participating in it. Sure there was one woman with a “Freedom Isn’t Free Shirt”, but there were certainly none of the antics that have come to typify other ``town hall'' meetings. Not even one “Death Panel” sign. How then did the right wing win? Democrat Representative Joseph Crowley, the organiser of the event, guaranteed this by closing off all space for public discussion.
United States: Industry-backed opponents of healthcare reform react with racism, violence
By Don Fitz
August 14, 2009 -- St. Louis -- Did you hear about the town hall meeting in
The right-wing Tea Party group announced to the world that their supporter Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by Elston McCowan, who is an organiser for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Earlier this year I worked closely with McCowan, a black minister, when he ran for mayor of St. Louis on the Green Party ticket. Since nothing that I heard fit the McCowan I know, I interviewed him about the August 6 incident.
Vietnam: Chemical companies, US authorities knew the dangers of Agent Orange
By Jon Dillingham
Thanh Nien -- August 10, 2009, was the first Orange Day organised in Vietnam –- not only to be remembered by victims of Agent Orange but to mark Vietnam's common pain. Those responsible for exposing Vietnamese citizens and US troops to toxic defoliants kept silent about known health implications, a review of documents finds.
US chemical companies that made Agent Orange and the government and military authorities who ordered its spraying on Vietnam knew the human health toll it could take, according to official and unofficial documents detailing the history of the deadly defoliant.
A review of the documents related to the use of Agent Orange –- a dioxin-laden herbicide -– in Vietnam, including decades-old declassified papers from the companies that manufactured it and the government and military that used it, provides compelling evidence that those in charge also concealed evidence of the devastating effects it could have on people.
Lipstick on a pig: The failure of Obama’s health-care reform
By Billy Wharton
July 19, 2009 -- Consider it a symptom of a larger disease. A fervent commitment to defend the profit margins of private industry seems to be a national religion for politicians in the United States. No matter how deeply the private sector mucks up society, some senator or representative or, if things get really out of control, president will appear to rescue the day for the corporations all in the name of justice for the citizens of the US. Like any religion, this process has highly crafted rituals. First a confession, then march the sinners around at one hearing or another, then mete out acceptable penance and then all is forgiven.
United States: Solidarity sometimes (exclusive excerpt from Steve Early’s new book, Embedded With Organized Labor)
[With the permission of Monthly Review Press, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is publishing an exclusive excerpt from Steve Early’s new book, Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home. Embedded With Organized Labor describes how trade union members in the United States have organised successfully, on the job and in the community, in the face of employer opposition now and in the past. Steve Early has produced a provocative series of essays -- an unusual exercise in “participatory labor journalism” useful to any reader concerned about social and economic justice. As workers struggle to survive and the labour movements try to revive during the current economic crisis, this book provides ideas and inspiration for trade union activists and friends of labour alike.
Swine flu and the case for a single-payer healthcare system in the United States
By Billy Wharton
June 3, 2009 -- On April 13, 2009, 39-year-old Adela María Gutiérrez Cruz became the first victim of a new virus that would become known as the swine flu (H1N1). By the time Cruz arrived at a local hospital on April 9, she had already entered acute respiratory distress due to an “atypical pneumonia”. Further investigations led to a town outside of a factory farm, run by a subsidiary of the US meat conglomerate Smithfield Foods, in the neighbouring state of Vera Cruz. Causalities began to mount. Yet, nearly two weeks after the first deaths, none of the families of the dead had received anti-viral medications.(1) Mexican health officials claimed to not have the resources to visit the families.
Neoliberal economic policies in the United States: The impact of globalisation on a `Northern’ country
By Kim Scipes
Most contemporary discussions of globalization, and
especially of the impact of neoliberal economic policies, focus on the
countries of the Global South (see, for example, Bond, 2005; Ellner and
Hellinger, eds., 2003; a number of articles in Harris, ed., 2006; Klein, 2007; Monthly Review, 2007; and, among others,
see Scipes, 1999, 2006b). Recent
articles arguing that the globalization project has receded and might be taking
different approaches (Bello, 2006; Thornton, 2007) have also focused on the
Global South. What has been somewhat
discussed (see Giroux, 2004; Piven, 2004; Aronowitz, 2005) but not
systematically addressed, however, is what has been the impact of globalization
and especially related neoliberal economic policies on working people in a northern country?[i]
United States: New prescription for a healthy union movement
Scenes from the NUHW founding convention.
By Carl Finamore
May 1, 2009 -- It’s not every day that a new national union is formed in the United States. But that’s exactly what happened on April 25 in San Francisco. If the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) turns out as planned, it’s a date for the history books.
The political economy of crisis management in the heart of world capitalism
By Arindam Sen
May 2009 -- Do we see a faint glimmer of light at the -- still distant -- end of the tunnel? In March the housing market in the US stabilised somewhat and new claims for unemployment insurance stopped rising. Crisis-ridden US banks surprised everybody when they reported profits in mid-April, which was followed by a good stockmarket rally. But most other indices, including retail sales figures seem to suggest that such optimism might be premature. As late as March 31 the OECD released a very gloomy prognosis, predicting that the US economy would shrink by 4% this year and not grow at all next year.
Meanwhile, a great debate of sorts is raging over contradictory strategy options for crisis management, in the process revealing the class conflicts in US society -- both between the bourgeoisie and the working class, and among various sections of the bourgeoisie.
Two versions of the nationalisation slogan
Photo essay: Fighting back against home foreclosure
Photos by David Bacon
Oakland, California, March 12, 2009 -- On the steps of the Alameda County courthouse, community activists in the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) protest against the auction of the foreclosed home of Armando Ramos and Fernanda Cardenas. Their home mortgage, held by the mortgage company OCWEN, had an adjustable rate. When it went up, Ramos and Cardenas could no longer make the payments. OCWEN then decided to auction off the home on the courthouse steps.
