Archive | December, 2010

  • Waiting for Flying Saucers?

    UAW President Bob King and his corporate partners at GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Fiat will blame the competition they’ve rigged on workers and relentlessly degrade them into believing they are worth less and less as profits rise.  That’s not a guess, it’s the drill. History lessons must be revised before the profiteers of war and labor […]

  • Can We Be Feminist and Religious?

      “We aim to show that religion does not have to be a dividing force between feminists.” A shorter version of the video may be viewed at <vimeo.com/16522936>. | Print  

  • A Transfer of National Debt to the ECB and a European New Deal

      Summary Cutting debt, deficits and wages poses a major crisis for both European governments and the European project.  The ETUC calls for a twin strategy to stabilise the current crisis by (1) transferring a major share of national debt to the ECB and for (2) net European bond issues to finance the European Economic […]

  • Anti-Democratic Behavior of US and Canadian Governments Denounced by Their Own Citizens on Global Day for Climate Justice at UN Climate Change Conference

      US and Canadian UN COP16 observers and climate justice activists will demonstrate against their governments’ position at the climate change conference by joining the Via Campesina and Espacio Mexicano marches and sit-ins throughout Cancun today, then gather at the Cancun Messe this afternoon at 4pm to deliver a specific message to US & Canadian […]

  • Ex-offenders and the Labor Market

    Executive Summary: We use Bureau of Justice Statistics data to estimate that, in 2008, the United States had between 12 and 14 million ex-offenders of working age.  Because a prison record or felony conviction greatly lowers ex-offenders’ prospects in the labor market, we estimate that this large population lowered the total male employment rate that […]

  • Letter to President Mahmoud Abbas

      To His Excellency Mahmoud Abbas President of the Palestinian National Authority Mr. President, I have carefully read the letter of 24 November, by which Your Excellency asks Brazil to recognize the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. As Your Excellency knows, Brazil has historically advocated, particularly under my government, the achievement of the legitimate […]

  • Why Should Iran Trust President Obama?

    In the run-up to a new round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Iran on Monday, Western commentators are re-hashing old arguments that the Islamic Republic is either too politically divided or too dependent on hostility toward the United States for its legitimacy to be seriously interested in a nuclear deal.  From this perspective, […]

  • Unquiet on the Western Front

    On December 5th one or two hundred people left a movie theater in Berlin, mostly silent and deeply moved though the film they had seen was first released in 1930.  This American-made epic had lost none of its extremely emotional appeal.  It was All Quiet on the Western Front and the date of its showing […]

  • Nut-bag Letter to Jon Stewart from the Mad Peace Activist

    Dear Mr. Stewart, Remember your “Rally to Restore Sanity” in DC last October?  I’m sorry, but my sanity remains unrestored.  In fact, I’ve been feeling increasingly deranged.  It’s like I’m speeding down Life’s superhighway at 666 miles per hour, headed for Nut City, where I am due to give my inaugural speech as Mayor. At […]

  • Duty and the epidemic in Haiti

    ON Friday, December 3, the UN decided to devote a session of the General Assembly to an analysis of the cholera epidemic in this neighboring country. The news of that decision was hopeful. Surely it would serve to alert international opinion to the gravity of the situation and mobilize support for the Haitian people. At […]

  • Abraham Serfaty

    On November 18, I received the sad news: my Moroccan friend and teacher, Abraham Serfaty, passed away in Marrakesh, Morocco.  Serfaty was a well-known Moroccan communist dissident and an anti-Zionist Jewish Arab.  He died at the age of 83, after a long illness. My relationship with Abraham started four decades ago with a small book […]

  • Latin American Lessons for the European Crisis: Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz

      Michael A. Lebowitz will deliver the Fourth Annual Lecture in Memory of Nicos Poulantzas (“Building Socialism of the 21st Century: The Logic of the State”) on Wednesday, 8 December 2010, 7 PM, at the auditorium of the Goethe Institute (Omirou St. 14-16) in Athens, Greece. Mr. Lebowitz, is Marxism still relevant today?  I ask […]

  • Korea: Still an Unknown War

    Bruce Cumings.  The Korean War: A History.  New York: Modern Library, 2010.  Cloth, $24.00, pp 288. Any time that a book appears by Bruce Cumings, one of our foremost scholars on Korea, it merits attention.  His latest book, The Korean War, is particularly welcome given the recent sharp increase in tensions on the Korean Peninsula. […]

  • Voter Participation in Egypt

    Participate and Vote . . . . . . if you can break through the Central Security Forces. Doaa Eladl is a cartoonist in Cairo, Egypt.  This cartoon was published by Al-Masry Al-Youm on 27 November 2010 under a Creative Commons license.  Cf. “Opposition Protest Parliamentary Vote Rigging” (Ahram Online, 4 December 2010); “Poca participación […]

  • Fire in My Belly

    wo * * * “When he died in 1992, David Wojnarowicz, artist and writer with AIDS, left a body of work about the disease that remains unrivaled for its power and beauty.  On December 1, 2010, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC celebrated World AIDS Day by capitulating to the demands of […]

  • The College Conundrum: Why the Benefits of a College Education May Not Be So Clear, Especially to Men

      Excerpt (Endnotes Omitted): At least since the early 1990s, the share of young people earning a four-year college degree has not increased as quickly as many economists would like.  A higher share of young people today have college degrees than at any point in our nation’s history, yet many economists remain concerned that the […]

  • A Letter from Tel Aviv: The Right in Israel Is Playing with Fire

      I am in Tel Aviv.  70 km away from the fires, I cannot even see the smoke cloud above the Haifa area, which is moving into the sea and may reach Cyprus before it comes to me.  The pictures on my plasma TV are, however, very saddening.  You see tens of thousands evacuated from […]

  • In Mexico, Caravans to “Change the System, Not the Climate”

    Alberto Gomez, UNORCA, Via Campesina: Cancún is already a failure, so we are saying that we won’t accept the carbon market.  We have to derail this mechanism they wish to introduce in the carbon market, which is REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), because it means a global privatization of forests.  That’s one […]

  • WikiLeaks, Iran, and the US’s Arab Allies: What the Corporate Media Are Not Saying

    The corporate media are reliable and consistent.  They consistently focus on the sensational, and they reliably take the position of the US government.  So, it should come as no surprise that the recent release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is being covered with much sound and fury, signifying little. On the sensational and gossip-mongering […]

  • Cancun Climate Conference: Some Key Issues

    A year after the chaotic Copenhagen summit, the 2010 UNFCCC climate conference begins in Cancun.  Expectations are low this time around, especially compared to the eve of Copenhagen. That’s probably both good and bad.  The conference last year had been so hyped up beforehand, with so much hopes linked to it, that the lack of […]