Archive | April, 2009

  • The Case against Shell

    Dear CCR Supporter, On May 26, 2009, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), co-counsel EarthRights International (ERI), and other human rights attorneys will bring oil giant Shell to federal court in New York for the start of a landmark trial for corporate accountability.  CCR is pleased to make two exciting announcements as we draw nearer […]

  • Which Side Are You On? Hakenmura and the Working Poor as a Tipping Point in Japanese Labor Politics

      This article analyzes one of Japan’s most widely reported labor stories in recent years.  The unusual degree of national attention given to this incident is evidence that the labor question has become a central issue in Japanese politics.1  It also offers insight into critical shifts in the landscape of both labor politics and labor […]

  • Demonstration in Baghdad against US Occupation

    Thousands of supporters of Shi’i leader Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand an end to the “US occupation,” on the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. From early morning, a multitude of youths, waving Iraqi flags and upholding portraits of Muqtada al-Sadr, assembled, despite the relentless rain, in Firdos Square, where, […]

  • A “People First” Strategy: Credit Cannot Flow When There Are No Creditworthy Borrowers or Profitable Projects

    In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote: “The world has been slow to realise that we are living this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.”  Today, as then, we are in the shadow of catastrophe.  Today, as then, our thinking is slow.  We need to come to grips […]

  • Arab Students Marginalized by Israeli Universities

    Obstacles to Israel’s Arab minority participating in higher education have resulted in a record number of Arab students taking up places at universities in neighboring Jordan, a new report reveals. Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of […]

  • Deconstructing Labor: What Is “New” in Contemporary Capitalism and Economic Policies: a Marxian-Kaleckian Perspective

    Paper presented at the Congrès Marx International V, Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre, October 2007 1.  Introduction About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three-pronged tendency: ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, the ‘end of labor’ due […]

  • Contradictions in US Foreign Policy

    After the G-20 Summit that took up the world’s attention, news continued to arrive through the press agencies about the feverish activity of the man who had been the star in London, Barack Obama, the new president of the United States; he has embarked on the first 100 days of his administration, under the scrutiny of those who closely follow international politics.

  • Moldova in the Russian Media

    Boris Kagarlitsky: “Moldovan Turmoil Grew Out of Unresolved Social Problems” Moldova Blames Romania for Riots Opposition Promises Larger Protests Violence Escalates in Moldovan Capital Mikhail Chernov: “Defeat of Moldovan Democracy” Kirill Koktysh: “Those Taking Part in Moldovan Protests Are Mainly Migrant Workers Who Had to Return Home amid the Financial Crisis” Aleksandr Fomenko: “Protest in […]

  • Obama and the Banks

    If we take a look at the recent self-described progressive US presidents (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton), we will notice that their progressiveness invariably fades away, not even intentionally.  That is because the beast compels them to align themselves with its own reality.  Carter, who campaigned against the wage stagnation of the Nixon-Ford years, collapsed […]

  • Wrestling with the Past

    Sonya Huber.   Opa Nobody.   Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.  xvi + 358 pp.  Illustrations.  ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism.  The narratives revealed by these studies […]

  • The Meeting with Barbara Lee and Other Members of the Black Caucus

    The morning was stormy, damp and cold. Strong winds were blowing and the sky was dark. This was no spring day, not warm.

  • China’s Way Forward?  Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis

      2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]

  • G20 and Inter-capitalist Conflicts

    In the Financial Times of March 31st, Martin Wolf set down a straightforward criterion to evaluate the outcomes of the G20 meeting in London.  Will they decide, he asked, to put forward a plan to shift world demand from the countries with a balance of payments deficit to those with a surplus?  The underlying reasoning […]

  • The Seven Members of Congress Who Are Visiting Us

    An important US political delegation is visiting us right now. Its members belong to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) which, in practice, has worked as the most progressive wing within the Democrat Party.

  • Turkey: “NATO: 60 Years Is Enough” and “Obama, Go Home”

    Cf. Emine Özcan, “Thousands of People Say ‘Enough’ to 60 Years of Nato” (Bıa News Centre, 5 April 2009).

  • Scholars around the World Express Concerns about Current Crisis in Northeast Asia

    Despite some hopeful signs in the last two years, the Korean peninsula is again teetering toward crisis.  The Six Party Talks are stymied.  Progress toward normalizing relations between the United States and North Korea has stalled.  Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated. In this context, North Korea’s rocket launch this week and the overreaction […]

  • Israel Railways Accused of Racism over Sacked Arab Guards

    A decision by Israel’s state-owned railway company to sack 150 Arab workers because they have not served in the army has been denounced as “unlawful” and “racist” this week by Arab legal and workers’ rights groups. The new policy, which applies to guards at train crossing points, is being implemented even though the country’s Arab […]

  • Walking on Solid Ground

    On April 2nd, while the G-20 Summit Meeting was beginning and ending in London, the well-known journalist of the influential Washington Post, Karen De Young, wrote: “Senator Richard G. Lugar called on President Obama to appoint a special envoy to initiate direct talks with the island’s communist government.

  • Gringo: Reviewing a North American Anti-imperialist Student’s Experience of Latin America

      Chesa Boudin, Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America, 240 pages, Scribner (April 2009). Chesa Boudin’s South American travel memoir and coming of age story Gringo is good and useful on several levels.  It’s a poetically personal On the Road for a new generation and a vivid primer in the human cost of […]

  • Why Is Cuba Being Excluded?

    Yesterday on Thursday April 3rd, at midday, I had an almost two-hour meeting with Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.