Archive | Commentary

Using ropes, some young people descended halfway from railroad bridges to force the train to stop.  Others hastily grabbed stones out from under the tracks and in this way prevent their use.  Far more, young and old from all over Germany, simply sat down on the tracks until police carried them away.  Banners and witty, […]

This one should not be all that hard but the papers have numbers all over the place.  Let’s turn to our old friend, arithmetic, to shed some light on the topic.  The Congressional Budget Office tells us that the labor force is growing at the rate of 0.7 percent a year.  The current size of […]

In the shadow cast by mass media coverage of elections in which under 40% of eligible citizens voted, the Federal Reserve recognized what the candidates could or would not.  The capitalist crisis is still upon us, shows few signs of fading soon, and provides strong hints that it might get worse.  So despite record cash […]

  The European Union to the United States: “Yes, my love, I know you like my position, but everyone is saying that you are the only one who has it in common with me.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 7 November 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi […]

Somalia in particular and the Horn of Africa in general are at such a volatile stage that any misstep — domestic or foreign — could only further exacerbate their perilous condition.  One such potential misstep is the recently proposed US foreign policy toward Somalia known as the Dual-Track approach. First, a brief background: In 2006 […]

I ran as an independent candidate for Congress in Massachusetts against a visibly tired and increasingly unpopular but entrenched liberal Democratic incumbent, and a Tea Party Republican.  My message was, “The old system is broken — let’s start building a new one!”  I stated that I wanted to fight what I described as the trend […]

Nominal wages have risen at a 2.2 percent annual rate over the last quarter. The establishment survey showed the economy adding 151,000 jobs in October, the biggest rise since May.  The 159,000 increase in private sector employment was the second-largest monthly rise of the recovery.  Although the rate of job growth is about 50,000 more […]

In the early years of the past decade, two hard-line Cold Warriors, closely associated with radical right-wing Cuban exile groups in Florida, occupied strategic positions in the U.S. foreign policy machine.  Otto Reich, former head of the Reagan administration’s “black propaganda” operations in Central America, and Roger Noriega, co-author of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, took […]

Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1966), an internationally recognized Spanish artist, has just rejected the “Spanish National Prize for Visual Arts,” writing a letter to Culture Minister Ángeles González-Sinde, who, in the Rodríguez Zapatero administration, represents the interests of media magnates.  See below Sierra’s original letter to the minister, dated “Madrid, Brumaire 2010” (the month straddling October […]

Last night I attended a fundraiser for the US to Gaza mission that intends to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.  It was an incredible success.  About 350 mostly young people had crowded the hall, most of whom stayed on past 10 pm to listen to the invited speakers. The presence of so […]

It is now abundantly clear that each and every response by the eurozone (EZ) to the galloping sovereign debt crisis has been consistently underwhelming.  This includes the joint EZ-IMF operation, back in May, to “rescue” Greece and, in short order, the quite remarkable overnight formation of a so-called “special vehicle” (officially the European Financial Stability […]

The Tea Party: The Atavistic Wing of the Republican Party Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 5 November 2010. | Print

I gave this talk at a very good conference, New Deal/No Deal, at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, on October 29.  The panel chair was Michael Reich, who was the main organizer of the conference along with Richard Walker of the geography department.  The dual themes were reflecting on the New Deal […]

Directed by João Fazenda; Script by Spam Cartoon; Animation by Ana Nunes; Sound Design by José Condeixa; Produced by João Paulo Cotrim and André Carrilho. | Print

The San Jose Mine incident in Chile has brought back old questions about labor and capital.  About those questions, raised by the 33 miners’ struggle to survive, I interviewed Michael D. Yates, Associate Editor of Monthly Review.  Yates was for many years professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, USA.  He is […]

  Wages and Depressions Sooner or later any bubble bursts, leading to falling asset prices as investors flee to safe liquidity.  Distress selling and debt liquidation by the market participants follow.  For Irving Fisher (1933), it is of key importance that an asset price deflation leads — via falling asset prices and a distorted financial […]

Alain Badiou.  The Communist Hypothesis.  Verso, 2010. Alain Badiou: Key Concepts.  Eds. A.J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens.  Acumen Publishing, 2010. Christopher Norris.  Badiou’s Being and Event.  Continuum, 2009. Alain Badiou could be the most important philosopher alive today — time will tell — and his work is gradually reaching English-speaking readers.  His magnum opus, Being […]

The Republican and Tea Party counter-revolution is on the march.  Faced with a major voter rebellion against his hard socialist agenda yesterday, the Marxist-Leninist United States president Barack Obama has met with Tea Party icons Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, and Glenn Beck and “FreedomWorks” chief Dick Armey.  Obama has agreed to significantly roll back the […]

In a notable turn-around, the U.S. Department of State today designated Jundallah as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).  In early 2009, shortly after President Obama came into office, the United States considered designating Jundallah as an FTO, as a conciliatory message to the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In March 2009, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali […]

That is what the New York Times reported today, although it used somewhat different language.  It told readers that: The group, which has a Dec. 1 deadline for recommending how to reduce the annual deficits swelling the federal debt, purposely has done little to date beyond five public hearings, and it has decided nothing lest […]