USA/Canada

US labor in trouble and transition - review of new Kim Moody book

US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso 2007

Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades has produced a coherent answer to these...

US Auto Workers strike, but concede

Last month, for the first time in 37 years the US United Auto Workers (UAW) union launched a two-day nationwide strike against General Motors. The strike involved 73,000 production workers. It was over a two-tier wage structure, plant closures, outsourcing, forced 10-hour work days, and various classification and work rule changes. The strike brought GM production to a halt. According the the US rank and file union magazine Labor Notes there was confusion over the union’s strategy for the strike. The settlement the union has obtained leaves a lot to be desired, including a wage freeze for...

Bush ally threatens war on Iran.

John Bolton, who was US ambassador to the United Nations until a few months ago, told a fringe meeting at Tory Party conference on 30 September: “I think we have to consider the use of military force [against Iran]. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.” According to the Guardian, Bolton added that: “If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.” Bolton had been renominated by George W Bush for another...

We did the only thing we could

Steve Cohen continues a series about important socialist novels, looking at Ring Lardner Jr and the background to his novel the Ecstasy of Edwin Muir. Ring Lardner Jr. was one of the Hollywood Ten — the ten screenwriters who went to prison for refusing in 1947 to testify before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Today he is best remembered, if at all, for his response to the question as to whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party — “I could answer the question exactly the way you want, but if I did I would hate myself in the morning”. Though HUAC is...

Black oppression is more than the N-word

Darren Bedford comments on the recent NAACP demonstration in Detroit, USA A recent NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) demonstration has breathed new life into a perpetual debate surrounding offensive language in hip-hop music. It’s a debate that, for socialists, touches on issues of state censorship, racism, homophobia, misogyny, the link between politics and art and of course the power of language itself. The demonstration itself was a “mock funeral” for “the N-word” – that is, “nigger”. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said that the demonstration was about...

US Iraq plan in chaos, but Islamists offer no answer

by Colin Foster Is a new nationalist political alliance emerging in Iraq, non-sectarian or at least cross-sectarian? Some reporters in the USA claim it is. The balance of evidence, I think, indicates not. The claim for the existence of a new alliance rests on a “legislative petition” submitted in the Iraqi parliament on 8 May calling for the USA to set a timetable for withdrawal. The “petition” does not have the force of a parliamentary decision, but its organisers claim the support of 144 members, a majority of the 275-member parliament. On 5 June they got a binding decision through the...

What is the role of a revolutionary organisation?

It is an axiom by now that the defeats and setbacks suffered by the working class throughout the world [in the Twentieth Century] have been due not to the vigour and stability of the exisiting social order, but to the absence or immaturity of the conscious revolutionary vanguard. A score of times since 1917, the people have either been ready to rise or have actually risen against the ruling classes. Each time they have sought to remove the decomposing barrier to social progress. In every case, there was enough will to struggle, aggressiveness, sacrifice. Defeat was due to the lack of a...

Neither Bush’s missiles, nor Putin’s!

By Stan Crooke Russia’s President Putin has threatened to target Russian nuclear missiles at European countries in response to American plans to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. According to the US authorities, the bases in Poland and the Czech Republic are not aimed at Russia. Instead, they claim, the purpose of the bases is to provide protection against ballistic missiles which might, in future years, be fired by Iran or North Korea. According to Putin, the real target of the bases is Russia. In an interview in the run-up to the G8 summit in...

Reactionary Christian fundamentalist Falwell Is dead

File this under 'Deaths That Will Cause Me No Tears'. Jerry Falwell, religious fruitcake and rampant reactionary, has departed this mortal coil, aged 73.

Here are some of his lowlights:

  • On Apartheid: a "bulwark for Christian civilization".
  • On AIDS: "the wrath of a just God".
  • On Martin Luther...

Sadrists fend off US surge

By Martin Thomas On Sunday 29 April, US troops in Baghdad fought a sizeable battle with Moqtada al-Sdar’s Shia-Islamist Mahdi Army. It was another indication that, as we reported in Solidarity 3/110, the US may be edging towards a “war on two fronts” in Iraq, against both the Sunni sectarian militias and the Mahdi Army. The sequel to the battle, however, suggests very strong pressures on the US to avoid that development. The official US military statement on the battle said that it was aimed at capturing certain individuals, presumably Sadrist commanders, and it failed. Then the next day, in...

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