LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SHOW– SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Manufacturing in America: 54,000 American factories have closed in the past decade. What would it take to bring some of them back from China? HAROLD MEYERSON reports on differing strategies – match Chinese wages; or beat the Chinese with productivity; or provide government support for manufacturing. Harold writes an op-ed column for the Washington Post op-ed page and works as editor-at-large of The American Prospect, which features his report, “Back from China?”
Also: Protest in China: the year in review. JEFF WASSERSTROM talks about strikes and economic actions; environmental protests about a toxic chemical plant: and widespread anger over the cover-up of a high speed rail crash–all of which make for anxious times for the CCP. Jeff is chair of the history department at UC Irvine; recently he compared the Pepper Spray Cop meme with the Chinese Tank Man. His latest book is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Plus: The United States of Fear: TOM ENGELHARDT argues that, since 9-11, our leaders in Washington have sent the US down the “Soviet path,” pouring American treasure into the military, war, and national security – and driving our country towards the cliff. Tom edits the indispensable Tom Dispatch; his new book is The United States of Fear.
David Montgomery, one of the founders of the “New Labor History” in the United States, who inspired a generation of activists and historians, died December 2. He was 84. David lived a remarkable life: blacklisted as a union organizer in the 1950s, twenty years later he was named Farnam Professor of History at Yale. Even as Farnam Professor he remained a deeply political animal, working with local labor activists, black and white, in New Haven and elsewhere.
The Berkeley Academic Senate voted 336 to 34 on Monday afternoon to “condemn” Chancellor Robert Birgeneau for his administration’s “authorization of violent responses to nonviolent protests over the past two years,” culminating in the police attack on nonviolent Occupy Cal demonstrators on November 9. . . .
On Monday, the Berkeley Academic Senate will vote on a resolution expressing “no confidence” in their chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, because of police violence against Occupy Cal campus activists there on November 9. The chancellor’s defense of police conduct was particularly outrageous: “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms,” he 
Plus: Newt Gingrich’s cruelest campaign: replace school janitors with child labor. 
Two unforgettable videos flew around the world wide web on Saturday, one horrifying, the other inspiring. Everybody knows the first: black-clad cops at UC Davis shooting pepper-spray into the faces of Occupy Wall Street student demonstrators who are sitting passively on the ground with linked arms. More than two million people have watched 
And FRANCES FOX PIVEN says Occupy Wall Street “has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.” Piven, “the professor Glenn Beck loves to hate,” wrote about it for 
Eric Hobsbawm, How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism
