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Why You Should Read AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers
Dear Brother, Sister, Friend, As you daily confront the challenges of leading or representing union members or other workers, in whatever capacity, awareness of the current situation of the labor movement is unavoidable: we are in trouble, and we need to audaciously address our weaknesses and limitations if we are to have a chance […]
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The Atlantic’s Iran Debate . . . or Echo Chamber?
As we anticipated, Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic, “The Point of No Return,” laying out the neoconservative case for attacking Iran, is attracting a lot of attention and comment. We are pleased that, as of this afternoon, our response to Goldberg is the top-ranked “Most Commented” piece on the Foreign Policy website and the […]
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United States Fourth Fleet
Eyeing the United States Fourth Fleet from Costa Rica: “They say they came here to consume, I mean, combat, drugs.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 12 August 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
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Mexico: Felipe Calderón’s War on Drugs
Studying the American recipes for the war on drugs, Felipe Calderón pours more military police into the cauldron of Ciudad Juárez. Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi. | Print
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Left Think Tank Mystifies Iran-Saudi Tensions
No one should be surprised when The Economist or another controlled opinion source misrepresents tensions in the Persian Gulf as religious rivalry while overlooking decades of U.S. and Israeli success in stoking them for imperial gain. The so-called mainstream press typically repeats unsubstantiated charges to pretend that Arab client states of Washington buy tens of […]
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What’s So Great about the Great Recession?
David Leonhardt tells readers that the Great Recession has had some silver linings for many workers. High on his list is continued wage growth. This is misleading. All the real wage growth in this downturn occurred in the months of November and December of 2008. This was due to a plunge in the price of […]
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Politics and Poetics: Palestinian Art and Culture as a Form of Resistance
The best thing is to ignore the parameters of discussion that are being presented to you, and to shift those parameters. . . . That is the heart of the struggle for us in the United States where the story is already framed, and they are just trying to discuss things within the parameters. […]
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Agent Orange Day 2010
“Artists struggling with the legacy of Agent Orange were invited to exhibit their work at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Nguyen Dinh Trung and Le Thi Be Nga are two of 140 artists who have learned to overcome their own disabilities and are taking their lives into their own hands […]
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Flocks of Prophets
Flocks of prophets fly through the air all across the country twice a year, signaling that the coming change is already here — not flying as far south as they once did, returning north earlier than before. How many noticed these signs amidst all the hot air being spewed by the various media? And, […]
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Silliness about the Risks of Deflation
Reporters continually discuss deflation as though something magical will happen if the rate of price growth crosses zero and turns negative. This is silly. The point is that a lower rate of inflation raises real interest rates at a time when we want lower real interest rates. We can’t lower nominal rates below zero, so […]
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The Campaign to Turn Iran into an “Existential Threat”
There is an old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Many of the same writers, thinkers, political actors, and organizations that persuaded the American people and others to support invading Iraq in 2003 are now working to build public support for the United States to initiate a war […]
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Coping with Global Crises: A Tale of Two Countries
Even before the turmoil caused by the global financial crisis has been adequately dealt with in terms of the adverse effects on employment and living conditions, governments across the world are being told that fiscal consolidation is the most important macroeconomic policy to be addressed. The calamities resulting from sovereign debt crises are widely advertised […]
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Building La Casa Rosa
Construyendo La Casa Rosa “Why don’t you ask about agricultural subsidies? These are the people you know.” “But you have to get in the real world. The life of our mother and her traditions is over. They are not realistic.” “Why do the corn farmers in the US receive $12,000 a year when here they […]
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The State under Neo-liberalism
Much has been written on the subject of the capitalist State in the era of neo-liberalism. Two features of the “neo-liberal State” in particular have been highlighted.1 One relates to the change in the nature of the State, from being an entity apparently standing above society and intervening in its economic functioning in the interests […]
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Can You Recruit Your Republican Friend to Oppose the Permanent War?
Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, as President, Barack […]
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Hungary’s Defiance of IMF and European Authorities Scares the Guardians of Austerity in Europe
The government of Hungary has taken on a lot of powerful interests in the last couple of months, and so far appears to be winning — despite provoking outrage from “everybody who’s anybody.” “The IMF should hold the line,” shouted the Financial Times in an editorial the day after Hungary sent the IMF packing in […]
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Who Says Iran Is Becoming Isolated in the Middle East?
We have argued for some time that the policy debate about Iran here in the United States is distorted by a number of “myths” — myths about the Islamic Republic, its foreign policy, and its domestic politics. One of the more dangerous myths currently affecting America’s Iran debate is the proposition that, through concerted diplomatic […]
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Robert Samuelson Is Worried That the United States is Becoming Less Crowded
Yes, in the strange but true category, we have a columnist with a major national newspaper worrying that population growth in the United States could slow or even reverse. Yes, I have the same fear every time I push my way into the metro at the rush hour or get caught in a huge traffic […]
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Sartre and Beauvoir
Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, directed by Max Cacopardo, 1967. Director First Run/ Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, 1967. Video and DVD, 60 mins., b/w. A “time capsule” was how Simone de Beauvoir described Max Cacopardo’s documentary about her and Sartre, made for Canadian television in 1967 and re-issued in 2005. She was certainly […]
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The New York Times Goes on the War Path to Cut the Pensions of the Upper Class (like Teachers, Custodians, and Garbage Collectors)
Columnists are given considerably more leeway than reporters, but serious newspapers still expect their pieces to bear some relationship to reality. This is why the Ron Lieber’s column warning of a class war (“The Coming Class War over Public Pensions”), with government workers as the new “haves,” may leave many readers wondering about the New […]