Abstract The paper analyzes the possible distributional consequences of the global crisis based on the lessons of the past crises experiences. The decline in the labor share across the globe has been a major factor that led to the current global crisis. What we are going through is a crisis of distribution, and similarly the […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
Is President Obama a Socialist?
It started in an interview with Chris Wallace during the presidential campaign. According to John McCain, Barack Obama was planning “redistribution of the wealth . . . [and] that’s one of the tenets of socialism.” Although McCain backed off his accusation shortly afterwards, Republicans have since revived it. Rep. John Boehner, Republican leader in the […]
Who Profits from the Occupation?
Last February saw the launch of the Web site “Who Profits?” (URL: ). The Web site presents an extensive list of Israeli and multinational corporations that are financially involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, whether by the funding of businesses in illegal settlements or by the supply of services, as well as military […]
Iran’s Revolution 30 Years On: the Quest for Authenticity
“Religious despotism is most intransigent because a religious despot views his rule as not only his right but his duty.” — Abdolkarim Soroush The French philosopher Michel Foucault, at the request of one of Italy’s biggest dailies Corriere della Sera, went to Iran to cover the growing unrest and protests against the increasingly despotic regime […]
Mess O’Potamia — The Iraq War Is Over
Barack Obama announces that everyone is coming home except for several dozen thousands of soldiers. President Barack Obama: Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end. Jon Stewart: War — is — over . . . . (swaying to the song “Happy Xmas […]
The Crisis Will Be Profound and Prolonged. . .
It’s been several months since the crisis of capitalism was unleashed on the international level, with its epicenter in financial capital and the US economy. Now we have more evidence that this crisis will be profound and prolonged, affecting all the peripheral economies — including Brazil. Many analyses of the crisis have been published in […]
Arabic Thought in the Illiberal Age
Peter Wien. Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941. SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East Series. London: Routledge, 2006. x + 162 pp. $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-36858-2; $39.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-46182-5. Sometimes — when read against the backdrop of a particular time and place — a book resonates beyond the immediate […]
Interview with Deputy Nidia Díaz: FMLN Gets Ready to Combat the Salvadoran Right’s Electoral Fraud
On the 15th of March, the Salvadoran people will go to the polling stations to choose their next president. If the opinion surveys prove right, El Salvador will join the winds of change blowing across Latin America. In an interview aired by the Dimensión 550 program of YVKE Mundial, Deputy Nidia Díaz said that the […]
Why Labor Doesn’t Need a “House of Lords”
“Also being debated [at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting] is whether to create a mechanism to nudge past-their-prime union presidents to retire so unions are not stuck with tired, uninspired leaders. One negotiator [of AFL-CIO/ Change-to-Win/NEA unity] talked of creating an advisory ‘Labor House of Lords’ to encourage older union presidents to step aside.” — […]
The World Bank’s Reforms: Different Image, Same Tune?
The World Bank’s Board of Governors has approved the first of a series of reforms aimed at amplifying the voice and influence of developing countries inside the World Bank Group. The centrepiece of these much-awaited reforms, announced in mid-February, is an additional seat for Sub-Saharan Africa on the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, a change […]
The Soils of War: The Real Agenda behind Agricultural Reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq
In this Briefing, we look at how the US’s agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and […]
Do Communists Have Better Sex?
André Meier, dir. Do Communists Have Better Sex? (Sex im geteilten Deutschland). First Run/Icarus Films, 2006. 52 mins., color, subtitles in English. This film, a mixture of scholarly research and light-hearted presentations of stereotypes about the role of sex in divided Germany (from the end of the Second World War to the fall of […]
Tipping Points to Future Drowning
Crack in sea ice recorded along the Antarctic Peninsula on 2 January, 2009 by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s MODIS Rapid Response. Photo: NASA. JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) — The UN Environment Programme’s 2009 Year Book lists disturbing evidence from studies in 2008, which show that the earth is losing its ice at a […]
Getting to the Bottom of Sea-level Rise
Sea level rise will displace millions across the world. Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN. JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) — In the past few months, newspapers across the globe have been flooded with a debate over new studies projecting a higher and faster sea-level rise by the next century, which would sound the death-knell for low-lying countries […]
An Imperial Transatlantic Market
The process of establishing a transatlantic free trade area is the inverse of the process that led to the construction of the European Union. While the European common market is an economic structure based first on the liberalization of trade and then on the creation of a common currency, the transatlantic free trade area is […]
The Zionist Masquerade
James Renton. The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xi + 231 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6; $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6. The word “masquerade” is not one to be used lightly by historians. Obviously, James Renton is aware of this, and he strives to justify his choice of […]
The Struggle to Build a Coalition in Cleveland against Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shut-offs: A Personal View
On November 18, 2008, activists in Cleveland, Ohio came together to form an organization called Ohio Moratorium Now on Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shut-offs. A Cleveland winter lay ahead of us in one of the most poverty-stricken, foreclosure-ridden cities in the United States. All around the US on a daily basis came stories of working […]
Israelis Are Beginning to See the Power of BDS
In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, calling for putting economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip […]
Culture Is the New Barbarism
This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the past century. A superb biography — Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale — has just been published by Dai Smith. He charts Williams’s passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, […]
Eighth of March: A United March in Caracas to Commemorate Fighting Women’s Day
This Sunday, the Eighth of March, Assemble at Plaza O’Leary at 9 AM in Silence, to March toward Plaza Los Museos, the Location of the Cultural Festival We Are Marching to Open New Paths. Big Marches Work Their Magic Because We Make the Path by Marching, Which Is the Legacy of the Collective Memory of […]
