Sept. 10, 2005

Argentina: Museum displays effects of foreign debt; Britain: Gate Gourmet won’t take back ‘militants’; China: 7,000 coal mines to close in safety crackdown; Iraq: Protest gov’t anti-union crackdown; Tonga: Public workers’ strike continues

Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire businessman, and as the saying goes, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree — though in this case I’m referring not to his children, but to his policies. This mayor has so much cash that in the first two months of the campaign he spent more than all of the other candidates combined. Did we ever have grounds for thinking he would be on the side of working people?

NEW YORK — Labor activists are puzzled as to why a few important unions here have given their endorsement to incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the upcoming mayoral election. His tenure has been marked by bitter disputes with virtually all of the largest public sector unions in the city.

NWA safety defects; Picketing Smokey Joe; A storm of solidarity

On Aug. 30, as news of the public health disaster in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina emerged, the socialist country of Cuba, which has extensive experience dealing with hurricane disasters, offered to send medical assistance. The Bush administration never responded to the offer.

Four and a half years after he was first sworn in as president, experts in the field of disaster assessment today called the presidency of George W. Bush the worst disaster in the history of the United States of America.

HOUSTON — As I drove to the Astrodome, Sept. 3, I got caught in a major traffic jam caused by an outpouring of working-class people who wanted to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina on this Labor Day weekend.

SAN ANTONIO — I grabbed my press badge, some dolls and Sunday newspapers to give away as I headed out to Kelly Air Force Base, Sept. 4, to interview the evacuees from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

If the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — whose fourth anniversary we commemorate this week — were a turning point for this nation, then Hurricane Katrina is another turning point.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s body was still warm when George W. Bush rushed to announce that he was nominating Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace him. This is the same Roberts that Bush named earlier to replace Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Bush has two slots to fill in his drive to pack the high court with right-wing extremists.