NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” is an excellent barometer. Each day Ms. Rehm interviews figures from the commanding heights of the Washington establishment. Elected officials, Pentagon officers, foundation grunts, academics, media personalities and reporters, and the diplomatic corps all pass through her studio. Syria was the focus of Ms. Rehm’s first hour on 17 August. […]
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Separating Fact from Fantasy in Bolivia: A Review of Jeffery R. Webber’s From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia
The election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, on the back of a mass rebellion that overthrew successive governments, has stirred great interest in this small Andean nation. Given that the Evo Morales government recently celebrated its 2000th day in power — a feat in its own right for a country that has had around 180 […]
The Key to Progress in Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran
We have long argued that there will not be a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue without explicit recognition — from the United States and other Western countries, first of all — of the Islamic Republic’s right to the full range of civil nuclear technologies and activities, including uranium enrichment. Two recent developments affirm […]
London’s Most Wanted
“Wanted for Terrorism” 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. “David Cameron Back Councils Planning to Evict Rioters” (BBC, 12 August 2011); “[F]or the press and the western governments, those demonstrating in British, Greek, […]
Regarding the Situation in Syria: “We Do Not Share the US and EU Point of View concerning President Bashar al-Assad”
Comment by Press and Information Department of Russian Foreign Ministry on a Question from Interfax News Agency Regarding the Situation in Syria Question: Please comment on the calls of US President Barack Obama and EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Answer: Our position on the […]
Workers Representing We Are Ohio Call on Governor to Repeal Senate Bill 5
Today workers representing We Are Ohio and our 1.3 million supporters continued their call on Governor Kasich, Senate President Niehaus, and Speaker Batchelder to repeal all of Senate Bill 5, the unfair and unsafe bill that hurts us all. We Are Ohio called on these leaders to first repeal all of Senate Bill 5 to […]
Syrians Tweet Back to Obama
After US President Barack Obama declared on 18 August 2011: “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” . . . Haneen Khaddour (18 August 2011): “Here we go again #american intervention. No one wants you in #syria” Sate (18 August 2011): “Ya’ aha Obama. So […]
Shorter Weeks, Longer Vacations
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 […]
Bounce in Core Energy Prices Lead to 0.5 Percent Rise in CPI
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.5 percent in July, following a 0.2 percent fall in June. Over the last three months, headline inflation has run at a 1.8 percent annualized rate, compared with 6.2 percent from January to April. Consumer prices less food and energy rose 0.2 percent last month. Since April, these core prices […]
The “Debt Crisis” Myth
The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is mistaken in a number of ways. First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident. At the same time you are ignoring the fact […]
A First Ever Default? Closing the Gold Window, Forty Years On
During the recent “Debt Ceiling” debacle, many warned that the failure to lift the debt ceiling would lead to a “first ever” US default and to numerous financial catastrophes, including the demise of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. “First Ever Default?” Think again. Forty years ago this month, on August 15, 1971, […]
Deficits, Debts, and Deepening Crisis
Standard and Poor’s downgrades US debt, stock markets gyrate around the world, Sarkozy and Merkel perform yet another empty summit, the Chinese and Japanese economies look worrisome. Serious commentators worry about global recession, another global banking collapse, eurozone dissolution, and austerity programs that only make matters worse. Nouriel Roubini, famed Professor at NYU’s Stern School […]
Labor’s Defeat in Wisconsin and the Specter of 2012
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 […]
Venezuela and Iran to Raise Levels of Coordination at OPEC in View of Financial Crisis
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 […]
Looking Back for Insights into a New Paradigm
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 […]
Social Origins of the Tent Protests in Israel
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 […]
Continental Day of Solidarity and Action, in Support of Pelican Bay Strikers’ Five Core Demands
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 […]
Cincinnati: First Outsider, First African American Police Chief, a Victory after Decades of Struggle for Racial Justice
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 […]
Riots by Design: Resisting the London Olympics
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 […]
Cities Pay Millions for First Amendment Violations and Police Violence. Will Chicago Be Next?
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 […]
