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Introduction There are seven key points about the national debt, budget and trade deficits, and the dollar, that the public needs to understand in order to be well-informed and prepared to choose among various policy options: 1) The national debt is not literally a generational transfer.  This is easy to see because everyone who holds […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 17 June 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “Varoufakis Says Greece’s Papandreou ‘On His Last Legs’” (Bloomberg, 16 […]

  Most of the time, as soon as I mention that I am a feminist activist, I am immediately hit with a question: “Why?  What’s wrong with the situation of women in Lebanon?  What could a woman want?  She has all her rights and more, she is treated with respect, with dignity.  She controls her […]

The Cat and the Coup is a documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.   During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall.  As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life […]

  Much of the commentary in the Arabic media in recent days has focused on the realignments taking place across the Middle East as a result of the various Arab uprisings. Ammar Nehmeh, an occasional columnist at the Beirut-based leftist daily As-Safir, wrote that forces that traditionally resist U.S. policy in the region, and that […]

On Friday, June 17th, Railroad Workers United calls on all railroad workers in North America to observe Railroad Workers Memorial Day to honor and remember those railroaders killed on the job this past year.  All railroad workers are urged to wear black shirts to work and to “Mourn for the dead and fight like hell […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Fulya Özerkan, “Relief Group Signals U-turn on Gaza Plan” (Hürriyet Daily News, 14 June 2011). | Print

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.2 percent in May — the slowest rate since November — as energy prices fell for the first time since last June.  The core rate of inflation ticked up to 0.3 percent and is now running at a 2.5 percent annualized rate over the last three months. Energy prices had […]

Seldom it is that the Russian Foreign Ministry chooses a Sunday to issue a formal statement.  Evidently, something of extreme gravity arose for Moscow to speak out urgently.  The provocation was the appearance of a United States guided missile cruiser in the Black Sea for naval exercises with Ukraine.  The USS Monterrey cruiser equipped with […]

  We are living one of those historic moments that cry out for rallying the working class to build new capacities, new solidarities, and concrete hope.  The crucial question is not how far the attacks on the public sector will go.  The real question is how far we will let them go.  How will working-class […]

Ragia Omran, Lawyer for “No to Military Trials”: They (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) consider the country as under “martial law.”  They haven’t announced it officially, but this is the justification they use for the use of military trials for civilians. Mona Seif, Activist for “No to Military Trials”: The first demand is […]

  Are the member states of the Eurozone responsible for the Euro crisis the ones having problems servicing their debt?  The majority of people in Europe believe that this is the case.  Therefore, indebted countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland must subject themselves to a brutal austerity program of savage cuts in welfare spending, diminishing […]

Swiss women and a major Swiss union held a national day of action today for wage equality for women and for a minimum wage of $4,000 a month for all workers.  The Swiss franc and the U.S. dollar are about on par, the franc worth a little more than a U.S. dollar.  The new minimum […]

Testimony on S. 512, “The Nuclear Power 2021 Act,” and S. 1067, “The Nuclear Energy Research Initiative Improvement Act of 2011,” before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate, 7 June 2011 Good morning.  On behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists, I would like to thank Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Murkowski, and […]

  13 June 2011 BONN — Today, Ambassador Pablo Solon of the Plurinational State of Bolivia addressed reporters at the UN climate talks in Germany.  Ambassador Solon outlined a clear plan, based on submissions from other countries and civil society, on how to move the talks forward in 2011. “The key issue at these talks […]

Friday, 17 June 2011, 5:30 PM, in front of the Saudi Embassy in Beirut Women Driving in KSA If you’re not in Lebanon, organize similar events in your country. For more information, go to .  Cf. “Saudi Women: ‘I Will Drive Myself Starting June 17′” (Jadaliyya, 12 May 2011). | Print

From 2004 to 2010, Brazil’s economy grew at an average of 4.2 percent annually, or more than twice as fast as it had grown from 1999-2003; or for that matter, more than twice as fast as its annual growth from 1980-2000.  This was despite the impact of the world recession of 2009, which left Brazil […]

The recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five years and coalesced in some areas into […]

  Dani Rodrik is back, and he reignites an old debate with his recent blog post.  He asks if high food prices are good or bad for poverty, and answers, “It depends on whether the poor are selling or buying, of course.”  Citing a recent paper by Jacob Swinnen, he goes on, “High food prices […]

On Friday, the blogs which are guiding the movement of “indignant” citizens published a statement of the “indignant” citizens in Syntagma Square that called on the left forces to leave the squares.  Thus, the “anonymous” leaders of the “movement of the squares,” the “non-partisan,” “spontaneous,” “non-politicized” citizens, appear to be politicized, declaring themselves “anti-left.” Perhaps […]