Archive | August, 2011

The United States is suffering the enduring effects of a collapsed housing bubble, not a financial crisis.  This is an important distinction, because it points to the necessity of relying on shorter workweeks and longer vacations to return to full employment. The financial crisis is largely irrelevant to the economy’s current weakness.  The problem is […]

Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated by telephone with the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the afternoon of the 15th of August, 2011. President Ahmadinejad said to President Chávez that, in this sacred month of Ramadan, he and millions of Iranians are praying […]

On March 9, 2011 Republicans at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin approved Governor Scott Walker’s bill ending most collective bargaining rights for union-organized state employees.  The capitol had been occupied for over a month by unionists, students, and their supporters who were opposed to the bill.  This was the first mass labor upsurge of […]

It is becoming widely acknowledged that the leading ideas of some of the most prestigious late-20th-century economists (such as Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers in the American government) are outmoded and that a new paradigm of economics is needed.  Part I of this essay will focus on two issues which we think it has to […]

  Tuesday, August 23rd, 4:30-6:30 PM Join us and make some noise at Governor Cuomo’s Office for THE CONTINENTAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY AND ACTION IN SUPPORT OF THE PELICAN BAY STRIKERS’ 5 CORE DEMANDS On August 23rd, there will be a special Legislative Hearing on Torture and the Solitary Housing Unit at Pelican Bay in […]

It started in mid-July, when Dafni Leef, a Tel Aviv filmmaker, was met with a hike in her rent that she couldn’t afford to pay.  Instead of moving to a new apartment, she moved to a tent on Rothschild Boulevard, the city’s sleekest thoroughfare, and set up a Facebook event calling for her compatriots to […]

Cincinnati’s recent selection of someone who is not white and is not from the West Side of Cincinnati as the city’s new police chief is a victory for justice and civil rights, and a vindication of the efforts of those activists who for decades have struggled against the racism, violence, and abuse that have characterized […]

In April 2010 I found myself in Montreal for an academic conference.  It was my first time there, and as I am wont to do in such a new place, I looked up used bookstores and otherwise roamed around the city.  In one such English-language bookstore in the city center I asked the owner if […]

To the attention of the Press and the Public: As it is known, last Saturday a protest took place outside Tottenham police station in order to attain answers or explanations as to how and why Mark Duggan, a father of four, was killed by the police on Thursday 4th August.  The events were unleashed as […]

The US court system has found criminal police conduct (beatings, false arrests, other violence and felonies) at anti-war/anti-G8/FTAA/WTO protests to be so flagrant that payouts to the victims of police illegality and violence have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. The payouts for unprovoked police violence and illegality, below, do not include what cities […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión among other sites.  var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

E.g., Syrian Revolution 2011 Fidaaldin Al-Sayed Issa, the Swedish administrator of the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page (11 May 2011): “We have analyzed the IP addresses of our users and about 35% are Syrian residing in Syria, 50% are from the Syrian Diaspora around the world and the remaining 15% are other Arabs in other […]

A Soviet diplomat visiting the US once expressed incredulity toward the political content of mainstream newspapers there.  In the USSR, he explained to his American interlocutors, it is necessary to threaten members of the press with torture in order to make them toe the correct political line.  In the United States, however, you effect a […]

“Poor Europe, so far from Latin America, so close to the United States.” Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  His cartoons frequently appear in Aporrea and Rebelión among other sites.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Moisis Litsis, “Latin American Lessons for the European Crisis: Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz” […]

  12th August 2011 The British Consul-General The British Consulate Riebeeck Street, CAPE TOWN Cc: All Media Houses Dear Sir, We, the leadership and members of the following organisations the SACP, ANC, COSATU, SANCO, ANCYL, YCL, ANCWL, MJC and PASOP and all democrats and peace loving peoples of the African continent, demand that you convey […]

Four months ago, we returned from a trip to the Middle East and wrote that “the main question engaging people with respect to the Arab Spring is no longer, ‘who’s next,’ but rather how far will Saudi Arabia go in pushing a ‘counter-revolutionary agenda’ across the [region].”  Since then, something of a discussion, if not […]

The New York Times decided to have a special dialogue around a letter to the editor that called on President Obama to take “decisive action” on the economy.  Remarkably, only one item on the list of decisive actions, investing in infrastructure, would have any positive impact on jobs and even this would be limited.  While […]

“. . . and they won’t stop till we all become slaves grateful to be able at least to eat, twice a day.” Juan Kalvellido is a Spanish cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Time to beat up on really, really bad news reporting.  The stock market doesn’t tell people why it does what it does.  We have commentators who bloviate on what they think caused the market to rise or fall, but they don’t really know and they could be completely wrong. That is why it was incredibly […]

  The way Egyptian scholar and researcher Samir Amin sees it, nothing will be the same as before in the Arab world: protest movements will challenge both the internal social order of Arab countries and their places in the regional and global political chessboard. Hassane Zerrouky: How do you see what’s happening in the Arab […]