Nov. 4, 2006

On Oct. 29, the rightist lame duck president of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quezada, sent in 4,000 Federal Protective Police armed with tanks, helicopters, water cannons and high powered rifles to clear the southern city of Oaxaca (population about 275,000) of the protesters who have held it since May.

The Israeli Cabinet voted overwhelmingly Oct. 30 to bring the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party into the government. Only Labor Party minister Ophir Pines-Paz opposed Yisrael Beiteinu’s inclusion. The decision gives Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition a commanding parliamentary majority of 78 out of 120 seats

SÃO PAOLO, Brazil — The Brazilian people have rejected a right-wing onslaught and handed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a decisive re-election as president. In one of the most contentious presidential elections in Brazilian history, the right wing and its media system furiously pushed its candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, hoping to regain the power it lost in 2002.

Congo: Millions cast ballots in landmark vote
Israel: Gov’t uses new, terrible weapons
Venezuela: Chavez ahead in pre-election polls
Nepal: Preparations continue for new constitution
Norway: Gov’t cancels Third World debts

DuPont workers unite worldwide
Goodyear workers hold the line
Labor peace demo
Use ’em up and spit ’em out

Recently, there has been growing recognition of the enormous increase in U.S. income inequality that has occurred over the last 25 years, bringing back inequality levels not seen since 1929.

HOUSTON — Texas is known for hot weather, but the heat of struggles is exceptional this fall. We progressives in Houston find ourselves literally running from one event to another without time to catch our breath.

The Stem Cell Initiative on the ballot in Missouri would amend the state’s constitution to protect stem cell research and therapies allowed by federal law. Missouri would be the first state to do so. The campaign on the proposed Amendment 2 has generated more money than any campaign in Missouri history for any ballot measure or for any federal or state elective office — probably more than $40 million by Nov. 7

One week ago I changed my status from a lifelong Chicago suburbanite to the newest resident of the small town of Zebulon, N.C.

Returning this fall to the campus where he became a professor, Walter R. Allen led a mainly student audience at the University of Michigan’s School of Education through the history of the African American struggle against segregation and racism. He said that he hoped this approach would help many of them better understand the historical context in which this November’s ballot drive by the right wing to overturn affirmative action in Michigan is taking place.