Global News and Analysis

Source: Immanuel Wallerstein Website

There is so much hypocrisy and so much confused analysis about what is going on in Libya that one hardly knows where to begin. The most neglected aspect of the situation is the deep division in the world left. Several left Latin American states, and most notably Venezuela, are fulsome in their support of Colonel Qaddafi. But the spokespersons of the world left in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and indeed North America, decidedly don’t agree.

Hugo Chavez’s analysis seems to focus primarily, indeed exclusively, on the fact that the United States and western Europe have been issuing threats and condemnations of the Qaddafi regime. Qaddafi, Chavez, and some others insist that the western world wishes to invade Libya and “steal” Libya’s oil. The whole analysis misses entirely what has been happening, and reflects badly on Chavez’s judgment – and indeed on his reputation with the rest of the world left. read more

Source: BBC

The immediate concern is how to contain the crisis in Japan’s nuclear plants. But thoughts are also turning to the future and, in the world’s two big industrial blocs, the politics of nuclear power has already changed.

In Germany, there’s already been a long debate about what to do with the country’s 17 nuclear power stations. Last October, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government decided, with much opposition, to extend their lives by another 12 years so that the last one is now due to be closed in 2035. read more

Source: AP

Union leaders urged Vice President Joe Biden during a White House meeting last month to go to Wisconsin and rally the faithful in their fight against Gov. Scott Walker’s move to curtail collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

Request rebuffed, they asked for Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

So far, however, the White House has stayed away from any trips to Madison, the state capital, or other states in the throes of union battles. The Obama administration is treading carefully on the contentious political issue that has led to a national debate over the power that public sector unions wield in negotiating wages and benefits. read more

Source: The New Statesman

In East Jerusalem, vigilantes prowl, hunting for Jewish girls who consort with Arab men. Slavoj Žižek argues that what Israel needs is not segregation, but unity and free contact between its peoples.

In Israel, there is a growing number of initiatives – from official bodies and rabbis to private organisations and groups of local residents – to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a psychologist. read more

Source: SocialistWorker.org

Large and energetic demonstrations by union members and their allies against the governor’s union-busting continue in Madison, Wis., with protesters attempting to swarm into the locked-down Capitol building in evening protests on March 1 and again on March 3.

Yet each day that the battle in Wisconsin drags on, a question looms ever larger: does labor have a strategy to win? Are union leaders prepared to follow up the teachers’ sick-ins that first spurred the mass protests with larger and more audacious job actions? read more

Source: The Progressive

When REPUBLICAN LEADERS chose Representative Paul Ryan to give the response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, they bestowed their blessing on this fast-rising star from Wisconsin’s First District.

His is the boyishly handsome face and cheery demeanor of free market fundamentalism—a philosophy that has devastated his own district with particularly acute suffering. And now, as the new chair of the House Budget Committee, Ryan promises more devastation for the rest of the nation. read more