First Impressions of the Election: What We Should do
Although there is both anger and despair at the election results among all anti-Bush forces, it is important that we think and act as Marxists. The first question we should ask is: what would Marxists do in analyzing this election. Elections are mobilizations in the class struggle and the Republican leadership understands that, dealing with this election both as a military campaign and as psychological warfare.
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Fallujah and the Reality of War
The assault on Fallujah has started. It is being sold as liberation of the people of Fallujah; it is being sold as a necessary step to implementing “democracy” in Iraq. These are lies.
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No Manadate for Bush Agenda
Bruised but unbowed by labor’s failure to oust George W. Bush in the Nov. 2 election, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a news conference here that the movement will 'fight like hell' to stop Bush’s ultra-right agenda in his second term. 'Yesterday’s election was breathtakingly close. There is clearly no conservative mandate for our nation,' Sweeney said.
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Black Consensus Remains Intact
The worst possible outcome of Tuesday’s election would have been that George Bush won with the help of a divided Black electorate. Instead, African Americans reaffirmed the vitality of the Black Political Consensus – our eyes firmly fixed on the prize: peace, jobs and justice.
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Rebuilding Venezuela's Labor Movement
Venezuelan workers are in the midst of a period of rapid changes. At root for the workers involved are issues of control: over their unions, and over their factories. Particularly since the mid-1990s Venezuelan workers have been hit hard by privatizations, the increased mobility of companies eternally in search of lower costs, and the myriad concessions forced on workers everywhere when they have been backed into a corner by the logic of neoliberalism.
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Bush's Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, only workers
While the economy did receive some stimulus from tax cuts it was very little for the trillions of dollars of present and future revenue sacrificed. Much more could have been achieved with a fraction of this money going to beleaguered state governments and people with less income than the rich. The real purpose of Bush's tax policy was to rewrite the tax code to create 'an ownership society': one in which owners do not pay taxes, but workers do.
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Sharon's Goal: Stamp out Palestine
The Israeli right-wing leaders believed, as they still do, that it was their historic mission to end the Oslo process and first and foremost to eliminate the Palestinian Authority and its political, social and financial institutions. Sharon believed, as he still does, that being in power gives him the opportunity, perhaps the last, to halt the historic process of establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
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Russia Ratifies; US Isolated on Kyoto Treaty
LAST week the Russian Duma, its lower house of parliament, ratified the Kyoto Protocol with an overwhelming majority. Former president Bill Clinton, also a 'liberal' Democrat, had signed the Treaty but did not submit it to Congress for ratification for three whole years of his second term in office. When Bush took office, backed (some would say actually steered) by geopolitical neo-conservatives and special interest groups, with close friends in the oil and energy sectors, it took him no time at all to walk out of the Treaty.
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Have a Glass of Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether
According to The New York Times of October 31, 2004, New York State has 'one of the worst cases of drinking water pollution in the nation.' This is because a gasoline additive called M.T.B.E. (methyl tertiary butyl ether) was in the gasoline supply starting about 12 years ago. It was supposed to cut down on air pollution. But after six years it was discovered that M.T.B.E. causes cancer.
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Bush the Commander of Fear
Well, Bush has done it all. In an ad that appeared last night and which bears the slimy fingerprints of Karl Rove, Bush was declared 'the most powerful man in the world' and 'the only one who can keep us safe.' This self-serving megalomania aside, it is clear that there are a few things this benevolent omnipotent god-like creature could not do or did not even try to do.
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