Kim Scipes, author of "AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?" (Lexington Books, 2010 hard back, 2011 paper back, will be speaking in Toronto on April 21 at a public forum.

Three overlapping issues must be combined into a single approach: an understanding of the US Empire, US capitalism and Global Climate Change

The argument is that we need to tie together our understandings of US Empire, US Capitalism and Global Climate Change; instead of only focusing on one or two factors, we need to integrate and include all three. By not doing this, much of what the...

Review of Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986

The Wisconsin Uprising in February-March 2011 was one of the most exciting events in a long time in this country’s history

Talks about the failure of business unionism in the US.

What does this mean for Chicago activists and possibly the Occupy Movement across the country?

Discusses an innovative radio show that interviews movement activists and intellectuals from around the world, while featuring veterans issues.

National Writers Union: Four journalists to examine media's coverage of NATO meetings in Chicago.

Link to list of protest activities against NATO in Chicago--get an idea of all that's going on!

Link to video interview about Kim Scipes' book, AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?

New collection of articles on the Wisconsin uprising published.

Fred Hirsch responds to scurilous attack on solidarity activist by labor pie card.

Link to a map of the US military's "reach" around the world.

It’s our “job” to make this democracy real, through building strong, unified and determined organizations that can work together with people everywhere

Joseph Stiglitz' analysis of the current economic situation is horribly insufficient.

This will lift your spirits!

Talks about relationship between AFL-CIO's labor imperialism and its lack of involvement in progressive social struggles in the US over past 30 years.

The goal is to create sustainable groups that will last over time

Union leaders will try to get you to shift your efforts to supporting the Democrats, even though the Democrats have collaborated in creating much of the death and destruction around the world

A recent book on the foreign policy program of the AFL-CIO has sold so well that it's been published in paperback, at a fairly affordable price. It covers over 100 years of labor imperialism, bringing things up to 2007. It discusses AFL-CIO involv...

The debt crisis offered opportunities to progressive forces of which we failed to take advantage

This book is a major effort to explain developments in the Middle East to a primarily Western audience

IVAW is pressuring the Army Command at Ft. Hood to allow troops to heal physically and mentally before redeploying them overseas.

An interesting and provocative film, but one that accepts the shibboleths of mainstream economics

A Review of "Lets Make Money", a film by Erwin Wagenhofer. Distributed by Bullfrog Films, 2008

As a US military veteran—USMC, 1969-73, who turned around while on active duty—I have been incredibly frustrated at the impotence of the anti-war movement in the United States to stop the wars in particularly Iraq, Afghanistan and, increasingl...

Paul Krugman is arguably the most-read economist in the world today. A Princeton University Professor of Economics and International Affairs, a Nobel Prize laureate in Economics, and a twice-weekly New York Times columnist, his reach extends far ...

Most contemporary discussions of globalization, and especially of the impact of neo-liberal economic policies, focus on the countries of the Global South (see, for example, Bond, 2005; Ellner and Hellinger, eds., 2003; a number of articles in Harr...

The Green movement around the world has presented a myriad of ideas and projects, each suggesting the way forward to a Green society. However, because there is no overarching vision, we have moved in this direction and that, stumbling from one go...

Last year, I published a couple of articles on the Greens that appeared on Z Net: “Wo sind de Gruenen?”, asking where are the Greens, and then “The Green Party: Critique, Response and the Illinois Greens October 2007 Membership Meeting”. I want ...

As the crisis of US newspapers have intensified over the last few months, I have thought a number of times about writing to the Tribune to share my two cents. Your Friday (6/13) column took to me actually sitting down to write—and although you mi...

George Monbiot's latest book is arguably the greatest threat emerging to the "know-nothings" of today who deny global warming and the threat of climate change to human existence on the planet: it is a clearly written, hard-headed analysis that re...

Hans was traveling with about 40 veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo wars (and other places around the world), plus spouses and partners, to participate in the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" hearings at the National Labor Colle...

Last June, I wrote an article, "Wo sind die Gruenen?" asking "Where are the Greens?" (http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3133). This was in response to my concern about a lack of boldness in the Greens, and what seemed to me almost...

As the Bush Administration continues its immoral and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as the Democrats pee all over themselves in finding ways not to stop the idiot-in-chief and his anti-democratic administration from destroying everyone ...

Although most discussions of the impact of neo-liberal economic policies focus on the countries of the Global South, these policies have been implemented in the Unit...

The US labour centre, the AFL-CIO has a Solidarity Center in South Africa. Few unionists know what it does or stands for. Kim Scipes, in this revealing article, exposes some of its worldwide operations and wonders why Cosatu has a relationship wit...

Traveling to both Venezuela and South Africa this past summer, through my work as an academic sociologist, I was able to observe firsthand two radically different approaches to "third world" development: a "redistributive approach" in Venezuela, a...

In April 2002, following a general strike led by oil company management and collaborating labor union leaders in Venezuela, parts of the Venezuelan military launched a coup to remove democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias from office. ...

Returning to the United States from Venezuela is a strange experience.  Spending time with poor people hopeful about their future and the future of their children is a heady experience-and not one I've shared in a long time in the US. I just spen...

On March 6th, over 50 union members from several unions and activist allies picketed the headquarters of the AFL-CIO in Washington, DC.  This was to demand that the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center immediately break off all ties with the misnamed Natio...

Standing in the middle of a blizzard in Chicago on December 8, 2005 along with about 250-300 union members and supporters, I stood at the Haym...

On December 10th, International Human Rights Day, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney pointed out that, "For all practical purposes, Americans have lost the freedom to form unions." Accordingly, the AFL-CIO and its allies engaged in a series of protest...

This past September, I wanted to write something about the juxtaposition of the extremely successful mobilization against the war in Iraq on September 24th with the failed mobilization the following day in support of the war. A phrase kept running...

Whoopee! The Change to Win Coalition has established itself in the labor movement! Happy Days are here again! Andy Stern's going to lead us to the promised land! And the overwhelming response by American workers: yawn. At the time when American ...

As one considers developments in and around the main currents of the US labor movement -- the recent split in the AFL-CIO, and the reaction of both sides of the split to the ongoing strike by AMFA against Northwest Airlines, most particularly -- i...

Tim Shorrock recently published an article titled "Labor's Foreign Policy Heads in a New Direction."  This piece seems to have gotten considerable distribution, especially as so many folks seem to desperately want to hear good news about Labor's f...

The Convention is over, delegates have returned home, and it's time to make sense of the mess. First of all, the "Change to Win" Coalition's boycott of the convention and split from the AFL-CIO was stupid. Workers are going to suffer for this stu...

As one who has written a number of articles about the struggle to transform AFL-CIO foreign policy into genuine international labor solidarity and to pass the "Build Unity and Trust Among Workers Worldwide" resolution at the recent AFL-CIO Nationa...

In the increasing "heat" of labor reform issues-which is not always the same as "light"-it has been discouraging to see how little attention has been paid to Labor's foreign policy issues.  This is, in my opinion, the 500-pound gorilla that no one...

The AFL-CIO's "Solidarity Center" (formally known as the American Center for International Labor Solidarity or ACILS) was actively involved in bringing together the leadership of the right-wing Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) and that of...

The AFL-CIO is having its quadrennial convention in Chicago next month (July 2005) in Chicago. The labor movement is hurting: only about one-eighth of eligible workers overall (12.5%) are in unions, and it drops below 8 percent when looking only a...

Throughout much of its history, the AFL-CIO has carried out a reactionary labor program around the world. It has been unequivocally established that the AFL-CIO has worked to overthrow democratically-elected governments, collaborated with dictator...

AFL-CIO foreign policy leaders are helping develop U.S. State Department policy regarding labor through an initiative called the Advisory Committee on Labor Diplomacy (ACLD). AFL-CIO leaders have participated in ACLD since its beginning in May 199...

The 25th Biennial California State AFL-CIO Convention in July handed a stunning rebuke to national-level foreign policy leaders of the AFL-CIO at their state convention in San Diego. By a unanimous decision, over 400 representatives of the state's...

We hear ad nauseum from the mainstream media, and particularly the business-focused press, that the United Sta...

Massive mobilizations, strikes, street conflict, hysterical mass media, social and economic disruption: Chile in 1972-73 Venezuela in 2002-04. The AFL-CIO is once again on the scene, this time in Venezuela, just as it was in Chile in 1973. Once ...

"Bring the troops home NOW" is not only the slogan of a growing portion of the US peace movement, but it now part of the ratified program of US Labor Against the War (USLAW). Meeting in Chicago this past weekend (October 24-25), 154 delegates repr...

AFL-CIO and Venezuela: Return of Labor Imperialism, or a Mistaken Reaction?

The government of Joseph "Erap" Estrada in the Philippines has just collapsed, with the president forced out by mass mobilization, and with Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo replacing him as President on January 21. What might this mean for t...

To many people in the United States, the AFL-CIO is a progressive organization, joining unions across the country to fight for higher wages, better working conditions and progressive social programs for workers and people in our communities. Howe...