AP is reporting: “The 200 workers demanding severance and vacation pay have become a national symbol for thousands of employees laid off nationwide as the economy continues to sour. They occupied the plant of their former employer, Republic Windows and Doors, after the company abruptly fired them last week.” BILL FLETCHER Fletcher is co-founder of…

For the first time, the recent documentary film “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” — based on the book of the same name by Norman Solomon — will be the subject of a C-SPAN focus this Sunday, December 7. Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, is…

MARK BRENNER JANE SLAUGHTER Brenner and Slaughter are with Labor Notes, an independent periodical on labor based in Detroit. They just wrote the piece “Cutting Wages Won’t Solve Detroit 3’s Crisis” for the Detroit News in which they state: “No matter how you cut the numbers, demolishing auto workers’ living standards will not transform the…

ANAND GOPAL Afghanistan correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. More Information SONALI KOLHATKAR Co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. More Information NORMAN SOLOMON Solomon, the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He said…

ROGER HU An Obama volunteer and Obama delegate, Hu is a spokesperson for WenHoLee.org, a grassroots effort that has sent a letter to the Obama transition team. The letter begins: “As concerned citizens, we write to express our opposition to the appointment of Bill Richardson as the Secretary of Commerce. Our objection relates to Richardson’s…

WENDY THOMPSON Thompson, a retired worker at American Axle in Detroit and former president of UAW Local 235, is helping organize a caravan of auto workers to D.C. There will be a rally seeing the caravan off on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Metropolitan Center for High Technology in Detroit, and it will arrive…

ABC News is reporting: “A biological or nuclear attack is likely to occur somewhere around the globe during the Obama administration or shortly thereafter, a new congressionally mandated report has warned. “The report, titled ‘The World at Risk,’ starkly states, ‘The commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it…

ROBERT DREYFUSS Editor of The Dreyfuss Report and author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Dreyfuss just wrote the piece “Still Preparing to Attack Iran: The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era,” which states: “A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama’s proposed talks with Iran to fail…

VIJAY PRASHAD Prashad just wrote the piece “The Fires in South Asia.” He said today: “Disoriented, the [Indian] state seeks easy solutions: more draconian legislation, more fiery rhetoric, and more warmongering. The Congress [Party]-led government is pushed from the right by the [Hindu nationalist] BJP, which seems to want an instant attack on Pakistan, a…

TIMOTHY CANOVA Canova is professor of international economic law at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. He said today: “The selections of Larry Summers as chair of the National Economic Council and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary are disappointing. Although President-elect Obama has referred to their ‘sound judgment and fresh thinking,’ when…