Pages: << 1 ... 939 940 941 942 943 944 945 946 947 948 949 ... 1272 >>
Wisconsin's Spirit: Courage for Other States to Emulate
by Stephen Lendman
The issue is simple and straightforward - organized big money v. organized people essential to beat it. Since February 15, Wisconsin public workers, students, and supporters have sustained heroic resistance against corrupted dark forces determined to crush unionism there and across America. A previous article explained, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/02/union-busting-in-america.html
The scheme is old, dirty and ongoing - a conspiracy involving corporate bosses, federal, state and local Democrat and Republican leaders, and corrupted union heads to bust unions, effectively depriving workers of collective bargaining and other hard-won gains, returning them to 19th century harshness when they had none.
Yes We Can! (Fix Our Trade Mess)
Ian Fletcher
The fashionable despair of America fixing its trade mess is a mistake.
For example, the standard objection to taking a stick to America's trade imbalance by levying a tariff is that our trading partners would just shrug it off by increasing subsidies to their exporters. (They do something similar to this already: China, for example, is constantly adjusting its export subsidies to protect its positions in foreign markets.) This would, supposedly, force us into an endless game of matching these moves on a country-by-country, industry-by-industry, and even product-by-product basis.
Why Have Nations at All? The Case for Economic Borders
Ian Fletcher
Why have nations at all, economically speaking?
This question is provoked by the fact that every few months, without fail, somebody writes to me and asks why, if the protectionism I advocate between the U.S. and the rest of the world is rational, why isn't it rational to have tariffs between the various states of the U.S.? And since it clearly doesn't make any sense to have tariffs on trade between, say, California and Oregon, it follows that nations shouldn't practice economic protectionism either.
Sounds good. In fact, some people proffer this argument as if it, on its own, settled all questions in the complex field of trade economics.
Union Busting in America
by Stephen Lendman
It dates from America's 19th century industrial expansion when workers moved away from farms to factories, mines, and other urban environments, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and other exploitive abuses. As a result, labor movements emerged, organizing workers to lobby for better rights and safer conditions, pitting them against corporate bosses yielding nothing without a fight.
During unionism's formative years, workers were terrorized for organizing. In company-owned towns, they were thrown out of homes, beaten, shot, and hanged to leave management empowered.
The 1892 Homestead Steel Works strike culminated in a violent battle between Pinkerton agents and workers. As a result, seven were killed, dozens wounded, and, at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel, Governor Robert Pattison sent National Guard troops to evict workers from company homes, make arrests, and help CEO Henry Clay Frick's union busting strategy. It worked, preventing organizing of the Works for the next 40 years.
Egypt/Turkey-Israel: ‘A clean break’
Eric Walberg
It is not Israel backed by the distant US that inherits the Ottoman mantle of hegemony in the Middle East, but some combination of Turkey and Egypt.
While Egypt’s revolution was very much about domestic matters -- bread and butter, corruption, repression -- its most immediate effects have been international. Not for a long time has Egypt loomed so large in the region, to both friend and foe. At least 13 of the 22 Arab League countries are now affected: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.
But just as powerful has been the resonance in Israel. It has no precedent for an assertive, democratic neighbour. Except for Turkey.
Egyptian Uprising Overthrows its Zionist Master
Bob Finch
Global Strategic Factors
During the cold war period no liberation movement in any third world country was left to its own devices to fulfill the will of the people through the creation of democratic institutions and a more just society. They were continually corrupted by the superpowers seeking to enhance their global strategic interests in pursuit of global political dominion. The Soviets generally tended to support secretive revolutionary movements which invariably aimed at creating one party states that would be sympathetic to their interests whilst the Americans, aiming to take over from former colonial powers, sought to install dictators who would promote their interests. It might have been thought that, with the end of the cold war, the days when overarching global strategic factors were able to corrupt domestic struggles for a better society would be long gone but the January 15, 2011 uprising in Egypt confirmed the existence of a new strategic factor. This threatened to stymie Egyptians’ liberation struggle. Although this struggle was eventually successful, the new strategic factor could still end up deterring or delaying the completion of this struggle i.e. the creation of a new constitution and democratic institutions.
Craven US veto costs Washington its last shred of credibility
Stuart Littlewood
Hang you head in shame, O Peace Prize laureate.
The Nobel award, said Barack Obama at the time, was “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations” and must be shared with everyone who strives for "justice and dignity". Where was the justice and dignity in the sad story of America’s UN veto?
Having blocked the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Friday, which would have condemned Israeli squatter colonies as illegal, Obama has now written America completely out of the script on Middle East peace. Many will see it as a blessing that the US has so spectacularly disqualified itself from serious discussion, and that Obama has finally lifted the scales from the eyes of all those who unwisely invested high hopes in him.
Has Justice Caught A Cold?
Roland Lawrence
In a city obsessed with the fate of the Detroit Lions, it casts a disturbing tell where the sensibilities and priorities of the city’s decision makers lie. It has been several months since Wayne County Procrastinator, I mean, Prosecutor Kym Worthy bailed on her responsibility to determine if Detroit Police Officer Joe Weekly committed murder in the shooting death of 7 year old Aiyana Stanley Jones as she slept in her family’s home on Detroit’s eastside. Worthy “referred” the case to the Michigan State Police citing supposed conflict of interest issues (she’s worried about the appearance of a conflict of interest). Interesting, isn’t it? And thus the case languishes in Lansing -- no doubt in file drawer marked "who cares?" In the meantime Officer Weakley escapes justice and justice for Aiyana escapes official daylight.
Exorcism Versus America’s Naïve Movie Industry
By Thor Thader
“Man … can … surmount all his real enemies … but does he not immediately raise up to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every enjoyment of life?” - Philo in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Evil is real—irrespective of personal belief about religion. ‘Evil’, a human word to be sure, as all words are, is mundanely defined as that which is harmful. Any creature therefore, man or animal, has a natural vulnerability to various forms of harm—that is subject to evil’s influence. Our perception of evil may be subjective, relative and egocentric—but so is the skin on our hide and so is equally the state of our imagination. We can be physically harmed and we can experience fear and anxiety. Therefore “we” believe in the reality of evil.
The question has never been whether evil existed—rather it has been one of how to explain it in conjunction with an idea of an all-powerful and supposedly beneficent God. So naturally, the concept of a “devil,” as counter point to a belief in a benign God came along, and continues to work for some. And not too surprisingly such a “motivated” spiritual force has been used to explain much over the centuries.
American Manufacturing Slowly Rotting Away: How Industries Die
Ian Fletcher
I wrote in a previous article about why America's manufacturing sector, despite record output, is actually in very deep trouble: record output doesn't prove the sector healthy when we are running a huge trade deficit in manufactured goods, i.e. consuming more goods than we produce and plugging the gap with asset sales and debt.
But this analysis of the problem only touches the quantitative surface of our ongoing industrial decline. Real industries are not abstract aggregates; they are complex ecosystems of suppliers and supply chains, skills and customer relationships, long-term investments and returns. Deindustrialization is thus a more complex process than is usually realized. It is not just layoffs and crumbling buildings; industries sicken and die in complicated ways.
<< 1 ... 939 940 941 942 943 944 945 946 947 948 949 ... 1272 >>
