Following are excerpts from a new introduction to the book “High Tech, Low Pay.” This ground-breaking work by Sam Marcy, written in 1986 during the early stages of capitalist restructuring, has long been out of print but will soon be reissued. Fred Goldstein, author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay,” wrote the introduction for the new book.

Before the dawn of June 28 in Honduras, some 200 heavily armed soldiers of the Honduran army stormed the residence of elected President Jose Manuel Zelaya, took him at gunpoint and drove him to an airplane that flew him to Costa Rica. A few hours later, the National Congress comprised of the country's oligarchs quickly installed erstwhile Speaker of the House Don Roberto Micheletti Bain as “interim president” who read a bogus letter of resignation allegedly signed by Zelaya himself. Later in the day, the military arrested members of Zelaya’s cabinet, detained the ambassadors of Venezuela and Cuba, began hunting down leaders of progressive mass organizations and imposed a nationwide curfew.

In the past month, two seemingly unrelated events have turned Central Asia into a potential flashpoint: an aggressively expanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a nascent strategic alliance between Russia and China.

At stake is nothing less than who holds the future high ground in the competition for the world's energy resources.

Read this material in full here: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6266

This is an update of the authors' 6 April 2009 column comparing today's global crisis to the Great Depression. World industrial production, trade, and stock markets are diving faster now than during 1929-30. Fortunately, the policy response to date is much better. The update shows that trade and stock markets have shown some improvement without reversing the overall conclusion -- today's crisis is at least as bad as the Great Depression.