“One of the strongest arguments in the book, and one that has a great deal of relevance to trade unionists outside the US, is the case for ‘just cause’ campaigning, and to which chapter eight is dedicated. In US labour contracts, unionised workers have usually benefited from a ‘just cause’ clause that offers protections. Non-unionised workers are deemed to be working ‘at will’. So a unionised worker may not be dismissed without just cause; may not be required to perform non-contracted work without just cause; and so on. ‘At will’ workers are not protected because they have made themselves fully flexible, and can therefore be treated ‘at will’. Richman argues against the usual approach of organisers to ignore the fortunes of ‘at will’ workers because their suffering presents workers with an incentive to join the union and pay their subs…” | more…
“Prashad’s guidebook to US imperialism acts as a springboard for readers for their own journey in understanding imperialism and the role of the US in global politics. Reference is made to economic sabotage in Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia; to trampled revolutions in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Grenada; to hybrid wars, outright killings, and other forms of subversion from Burkina Faso to Greece; Iran to Iraq; from Indonesia to Japan…..” | more…
“…It’s no accident, as historians like to say, that the Founding Father George Washington was a grand real estate speculator, just like the 45th U.S. President…” | more…
In this moment of what a philologist or scholar of poetry might call correctio, Michael performs the self-reflexive, intertextual move of being in conversation with his own text as a form of revision…. | more…
Angus recounts the history of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). First developed in the late 1920s, by 1970 more than 750,000 tons of CFCs had been pumped into the earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1970s, scientists began to discover the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and the chemical industry went into full denial mode, arguing that scientists’ arguments were ‘just theories’….As it turns out, the British Antarctic Survey had been measuring ozone levels since 1957…. | more…
“This is a complex array of themes to pursue, particularly given that the scientific and social dimensions of sexual politics in the lives of many of these figures is highly relevant as well. Bellamy Foster rightly emphasises the importance of such issues within the overall picture, as a genuinely dialectical understanding of society and nature could hardly avoid confronting the alienated character of gender relations in class societies….” | more…
“…this is the problem that has actually plagued the entire attitude to vaccine development and production in this pandemic. A few companies have got the rights, and they are holding onto those rights, and they are only producing themselves. They must share this knowledge, and they must allow other producers, because that’s the only way we’re going to confront the crisis…” | more…
Recall “The Hanoi Hilton,” where captured U.S. soldiers were held during the war in Vietnam? If you do recall, no doubt, you’re recalling the Official Story. So what really happened? Watch! | more…
Among the cast of characters making cameo appearances are scores of attorneys, judges, and justices (including Justice Brennan, who eventually became Tigar’s friend and admirer), Bill Kunstler, cowboy Roy Rogers (a family acquaintance), Simone Signoret, James Baldwin, Jeremy Corbyn, Peggy Seeger, the great Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, Donald Sutherland, and Otto Preminger…. | more…
What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers-versus-enlisted-men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their pre-captive experience that drew the lines…. | more…
