United States
United States: New workers' movement at the crossroads
By Dan La Botz
United States: The new American workers' movement and the confrontation to come
Protesters fill the Rotunda at the state capitol building on February 16, 2010, in Madison, Wisconsin.
By Dan La Botz
February 28, 2011 -- Solidarity Webzine -- The new US workers' movement—born in the last few weeks in the giant protests in Wisconsin and Ohio—faces a fateful confrontation. In Madison and Columbus, Republican legislators are pushing to abolish public employee labour unions and tens of thousands of workers are protesting and resisting. We have seen nothing like this face-off between workers and bosses in the United States since the labour upheaval of the early 1970s, though the issues in the balance are more like those of the 1930s. The very existence of the US labour movement is at stake. The question is: What will it take to win?
The ‘mubaraking’ of Gaddafi, Maliki, Mugabe and others
By Patrick Bond
February 27, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The late South African anti-apartheid poet-activist Dennis Brutus occasionally used “Seattle”, the name of a city in the northwestern United States, as a verb. We should “seattle Copenhagen”, he said in late 2009, to prevent the global North from doing a climate deal in their interests, against Africa’s.
New book reveals the history of rubber: holocausts, environmental destruction and class struggle
The Devil’s Milk: A social history of rubber
By John Tully
Monthly Review Press, 2011
[Order the The Devil’s Milk from Monthly Review Press HERE. John Tully launched the book in Melbourne on February 17, at Readings Books, Carlton (309 Lygon St). He will also launch it in New York City on February 22, 7.30pm, at The Brecht Forum, 451 West Street.]
February 18, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- This new book from Monthly Review Press – by Australian socialist John Tully -- documents the history of rubber and the role it has played in the development of capitalism.
Rubber is an essential industrial material, although underappreciated by most of us, even though we are surrounded by it. Since its industrial uses began to be fully appreciated in the 1800s, the quest for rubber has been, in Tully’s words, “a paradigm of imperialism”.
United States: Obama out of touch with the people, State of the Union shows
"What a distance from the White House to the unemployment line. From the Rose Garden to the food pantry."
By Billy Wharton
January 25, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The 2011 State of the Union speech revealed just how far out of touch US President Barack Obama is from the reality of working people in the United States. What a distance from the White House to the unemployment line. From the Rose Garden to the food pantry.
Tonight’s State of the Union sent the message one final time that the Obama presidency was and is designed to protect the privileges accrued by the richest 5% in society. Obama lived up to the characterisation of him as a “hedge-fund Democrat”, a politician assigned the task of deflecting the real demands of the people for a society and economy based on solidarity, peace and justice.
A call for more corporate globalisation
Martin Hart-Landsberg: China and the jobs issue
"Approximately 90 per cent of China’s high technology exports to the US are produced by multinational corporations and many of them are being bought an
Discovering the radical vision of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
By Billy Wharton
Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?
Claudia Lopez, an intern, with outpatients at 5 de Septiembre Polyclinic, Havana.
What if the state of the world were measured by its majority?
What real democracy looks like: a communal council in Merida votes for its electoral commission in July 2010.