Analysis

New York’s new Democratic governor Eliot Spitzer has pledged to reform state government, and that’s widely welcomed. But Spitzer has already shown himself to be a very mixed bag — no surprise, given his background and his relationships with some Democratic Party centrists and in the corporate world. Still, he’s an improvement over Pataki.

In his Washington Post column, Eugene Robinson writes, “If you’ve been following the … Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby perjury trial, I can understand how you might confuse Dick Cheney with Tony Soprano. Cheney’s office is beginning to sound a lot like the Bada Bing, minus the dancers.”

The fight against racism is even more urgent today. There is nothing more important on the agenda of the progressive forces worldwide than the fight to end the scourge of racism from our planet.

When the term “balkanization” is used, it has long meant to break a territory or a region up into hostile, unmanageable parts. The Balkans has long been portrayed by imperialist ideology as a region filled with colorful, violent, backward people — the “hillbillies” of Europe

More than 120,000 people protested in Mexico City, Jan. 31, against massive hikes in the price of white maize (called “corn” in the U.S.) and other basic foodstuffs — up nearly 100 percent since Christmas on top of a 700 percent increase since 1994.

The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win unions have launched a full-court press to restore workers’ rights to join a union and bargain a contract.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Feb. 1, Zbigniew Brzezinski blasted the “U.S. war of choice in Iraq” calling it a “historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

Anyone who believed there was going to be a bipartisan effort in Congress to reflect the voters’ views got doused with a bucket of cold water last week when GOP senators tried to block a bill that would increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years.

Protests and a Jan. 23 one-day general strike have rocked Lebanon. Some violent incidents resulted in three deaths and 100 injuries. The violence is one factor triggering Lebanese fears of a new civil war, but there are deeper issues involved.

The day after President Bush’s State of the Union address, the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, presented a proposal to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the administration’s troubled education law.