Global News and Analysis

Source: Al Jazeera English

Originally published on Sunday, October 12th.

Evo Morales will most likely be re-elected today because he is a better alternative than his neoliberal predecessors and their contemporary counterparts.

Morales’ presidency is historic for a number of reasons. Consider the fact that before the 1952 National Revolution, indigenous people weren’t even allowed to enter the Plaza Murillo in front of the presidential palace because they were believed to be too dirty and unsanitary. Now an indigenous president and poor farmer without a college education sits in the presidential palace itself, and is likely to be re-elected to a third term in office today with a huge wave of support. read more

Source: The Nation

The president knows US policy has been a failure. Here’s how he can make a breakthrough, in the little time he has left.

“We’ve been engaged in a failed policy with Cuba for the last fifty years, and we need to change it,” Barack Obama declared as a presidential candidate in 2007. Just last November, Obama reiterated to his Cuban-American supporters in Miami: “The notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective…in the age of the Internet and Google and world travel doesn’t make sense.” For six years, President Obama has been saying that US policy toward Cuba needs to change, but for six years he’s been unwilling to take the political risk of sitting down at the negotiating table with the Cuban government to make it happen. read more

Source: The Nation

The movement to stop climate change needs both mass mobilizations and direct action.

Last Sunday, we joined 400,000 people in the People’s Climate March (PCM) to demand action on climate change. The next day, we joined with 3,000 others to participate in Flood Wall Street (FWS), disrupting business as usual and naming capital as the chief culprit of climate change.

In the days leading up to these mobilizations, a few critics on the left framed a stark dichotomy between these two kinds of actions. The PCM was cast as a depoliticized, corporate-friendly sellout, in contrast to more militant direct action, which Flood Wall Street soon emerged to organize. Chris Hedges, for example, called the PCM “the last gasp of climate change liberals,” and argued that the real resistance would come afterward “from those willing to breach police barricades.” Resistance, according to Hedges, can only be effective “when we turn from a liberal agenda of reform to embrace a radical agenda of revolt.” Likewise, Arun Gupta accused PCM of spending too much money on subway advertisements and wondered how much political value a march can have when mainstream politicians and other elites felt comfortable enough to march in it. read more

Source: Al Jazeera

In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a review of Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order,” to lay out her vision for “sustaining America’s leadership in the world.” In the midst of numerous global crises, she called for return to a foreign policy with purpose, strategy and pragmatism. She also highlighted some of these policy choices in her memoir “Hard Choices” and how they contributed to the challenges that Barack Obama’s administration now faces.   read more

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

I started organizing domestic workers 16 years ago. I signed up nannies, housekeepers and home health aides at parks and train stations as they quietly took care of our children, our households and our elders. Many of them had no clue about labor laws or their rights as workers – they struggled to make ends meet with extremely low pay and no benefits – but they performed their jobs with dedication and took care of our loved ones with pride, dignity and grace.

I found all those years ago that building a bright future for these workers depended on how America valued the care they provided us. In my work, care has emerged as the connective tissue to encompass all identities and enable us to transcend to the level of values and ethics. We must become a nation that values care, a caring America. Because each one of us is connected to care. Because we still largely ignore the needs of those nannies, housekeepers and aides who care for us. read more