United States
Martin Hart-Landsberg: Globalisation, capitalism and China

Workers at the Foxconn (the Taiwanese multinational corporation owned) factory located in China in which many Apple products are assembled.
[For more discussion on China's economic and political development, click HERE.]
By Martin Hart-Landsberg
January 24, 2012 -- Reports from the Economic Front, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- A January 22, 2012 New York Times story, "The iEconomy: How US Lost Out on iPhone Work", has been getting a lot of coverage. The article makes clear that Apple and other major multinational corporations have moved production to China not only to take advantage of low wages but also to exploit a labour environment that gives maximum flexibility.
The following quote gives a flavour for what attracts Apple to China:
Mike Marqusee on Occupy in 2012: 'Mass action has returned'

Occupy the London Stock Exchange.
Martin Luther King Day: The gulf between promise and fulfillment
[For more on Martin Luther King, click HERE.]
By Billy Wharton
January 16, 2012 -- Socialist Webzine, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- More than 40 years since the death of Martin Luther King Jr., his significance remains an uneasy battleground between those wishing to sanitise his legacy and those seeking to draw inspiration from his radical deeds and words.
United States: Labor Notes Conference, Chicago, May 4-6, 2012
Labor Notes Conference 2012
Labor Notes conferences are the biggest gatherings of grassroots union activists, worker center leaders,
Anniversary of the 1937 US sit-down strike wave: Remembering another Occupy movement

Sit-in strikers at General Motors' Fisher No. 1 plant.
United States: 'With Babies & Banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
To view With Babies & Banners go to http://links.org.au/node/2681.
December 30, 2011 – Links International Journal
United States: Occupy wake-up call caps remarkable year

Trade unionists join Occupy Wall Street.
[For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.]
By Jane Slaughter
December 30, 2011 -- Labor Notes -- It’s been an exhilarating year. Crowds of people finally moved into resistance after decades of misrule.
The year began with Egypt, moved quickly to the snowy streets of Wisconsin, and re-erupted in August with Verizon workers out on strike and longshore unionists in Washington state dumping scab grain onto railroad tracks.
What no one could have predicted was that a relatively small number of young people at Occupy Wall Street would touch off a wave of imitators across the country, from Detroit to Abilene.
November’s electoral victory in Ohio, where Governor John Kasich’s anti-union bill went down to sound defeat, capped off a remarkable year for US workers.
United States: #Occupy activists and the Democratic Party -- a debate

For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.
By Dave Duhalde and Dan La Botz
December 4, 2011 -- Against the Current -- Below is a debate between David Duhalde of the Democratic Socialists of America and Dan La Botz of Solidarity that was first published on the website Talking Union.
Where is the beef? An open letter to Dan La Botz on DSA and the Democrats
Dear Dan,
Occupy and the tasks of socialists

"Out of clouds of pepper spray and phalanxes of riot cops a new generation of revolutionaries is being forged, and it would be a shame if the Peter Camejos, Max Elbaums, Angela Davises, Dave Clines and Huey Newtons of this generation end up in separate “competing” socialist groups ... Now is the time to begin seriously discussing the prospect of regroupment, of liquidating outdated boundaries we have inherited, of finding ways to work closely together for our common ends. "
For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.
By Pham Binh
United States: Occupy protesters shut down major West Coast ports; Shutdown tactic debated
Above: December 13, 2011 Democracy Now! report on the port shutdown. Click here for transcript.
For more on the #Occupy movement, click here.
December 13, 2011 -- Socialist Worker -- Ports up and down the US West Coast were shut down or disrupted December 12 in a day of demonstrations organised by the Occupy movement to protest police repression and union-busting.
The call for the December 12 West Coast port shutdown originated in Oakland, where the high point of a general strike call on November 2 -- one week after a savage police attack on the Occupy Oakland encampment -- was a 15,000-strong march to the Port of Oakland and a community picket that stopped work on the evening shift.


