When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to Lebanon last week, attracting huge crowds and what seemed like an overwhelmingly positive public response, many Western analysts dismissed the trip as a kind of cheap political trick, meant to distract attention from Ahmadinejad’s allegedly unpopular standing at home. But, after returning from Lebanon, Ahmadinejad made a trip […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
French Protesters Have It Right: No Need to Raise Retirement Age
The demonstrations that have rocked France this past week highlight some of its differences from the United States. This photo, for example, shows the difference between rioting in baseball-playing versus soccer-playing countries. In the U.S., we would pick up the tear gas canister and THROW it — rather than kick it — back at the […]
Venezuela Declares Unconditional Support for Sovereignty and Self-determination of Iran
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías said on Wednesday that Venezuela, as a country fighting for and defending the independence of all nations, again reiterates its support for the respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At a press conference held in Tehran, the capital of Iran, President […]
Playing the Currency Blame Game
The slanging match over currency and monetary policies at the annual Fund-Bank meetings, held over the second weekend of October, points to the disarray in global economic governance. While the US sought to mobilise IMF support for an effort to realign exchange rates and ensure an appreciation of the renminbi in the wake of China’s […]
The Myth of Expansionary Fiscal Austerity
Introduction Recently governments, economists, and international financial institutions have been debating the merits of further fiscal stimulus to combat the Great Recession versus fiscal austerity or “adjustment” — that is, higher taxes and/or lower government spending — to combat budget deficits. Some supporters of austerity have gone as far as arguing that fiscal adjustment could […]
James Ellroy’s USA
Blood’s a Rover is the third novel in a series by James Ellroy depicting the “secret history” of U.S. government action against the Cuban Revolution, global anti-colonial struggles, and domestic Black liberation struggles circa 1955-1974. FBI agents, government officials, and mobsters find themselves on the same programmatic page and payroll: the bi-partisan COINTELPRO program. Ellroy […]
Recycling Global Imbalances
Is the United States at long last getting serious about global imbalances, or are we risking currency wars that can end in unmitigated disaster for all? No one knows, though tension is on the rise with China. This much is certain: Any advantage from a lower currency is a zero-sum gain for the world […]
First as History, Then as Farce: The Euro Crisis Revisited
When the Crash of 2008 hit Wall Street, European capitalism was thrown into disarray. With the demise of the export-absorbing monster that was the US consumer market, what in 2003 Joseph Halevi and I called “The Global Minotaur” (see Monthly Review, Vol. 55), Europe not only lost a critical source of aggregate demand but also […]
Medvedev and Chávez Sign Agreement to Build First Nuclear Power Plant in Venezuela
After a high-level meeting of the Russian and Venezuelan delegations, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed this Friday a series of strategic agreements, including an agreement to build the first nuclear power plant in Venezuela. The agreement, which had been negotiated during Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Caracas last April, […]
Maduro: “Venezuela Has Sacred Right to Use Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes”
The Venezuelan foreign minister characterizes as insolent the statement of the US State Department spokesperson who said that the US will closely watch Russia’s agreement to build a nuclear power plant in Venezuela. The United States has no moral high ground to stand on, since the US is using nuclear energy for military purposes. […]
Media Mine the Miners in Chile
The Mine The Miners 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 15 October 2010. Cf. “In fact, the 33 miners over whom the media have swarmed paradoxically remain voiceless. Neither they […]
Brazil Should Lead on Access to Essential Medicines
By the greater use of compulsory licenses, Brazil could lower drug costs not only in Brazil, but in developing countries overall. At a time when the New York Times is reporting that “the global battle against AIDS is falling apart for lack of money,” it is absolutely essential that the price of lifesaving medicines in […]
Iran’s “Soft Power” Increasingly Checks U.S. Power
October 13, 2010 Twenty years ago, Harvard’s Joseph Nye famously coined the term “soft power” to describe what he saw as an increasingly important factor in international politics — the capacity of “getting others to want what you want,” which he contrasted with the ability to coerce others through the exercise of “hard” military and/or […]
Haiti: U.S. Providing Millions in Electoral Assistance for “Election” That Excludes Major Political Parties from Ballot
Washington, D.C. – “The Obama Administration should explain why it is contributing millions of dollars for Haiti’s November 28 presidential and legislative elections, despite the arbitrary exclusion of over a dozen political parties — including the country’s largest party — from the ballot,” Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said […]
Brazil’s Elections Will Matter for the Rest of the World
In Brazil, as in the United States, most people do not vote for a president on the basis of foreign policy issues. Yet sometimes the result matters for the rest of the world — as when President George W. Bush was declared the winner of the 2000 election, and subsequently started two destructive, costly, and […]
Immigration and Labor
John Schmitt: My view on immigration and how to deal with the labor market challenges is to focus on the labor market rather than to focus on the immigration issue itself. I think, if we have good, effective national labor standards that guarantee workers at the bottom have the basic minimum wage, they have the […]
Iran-Cuba Ties
Nargess Moballeghi: Two revolutions in two parts of the world for two different reasons. . . . The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrowing Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini overthrowing the Shah twenty years later. Though ideologically they couldn’t have been further apart, they have a […]
Interview with Sandy Pope: Labor’s Struggle for Self-Determination
Sandy Pope and Ed Ott
Sandy Pope is the president of Teamsters Local 805. Her supporters are now engaged in a nationwide petition drive to gather 40,000 signatures from dues-paying Teamster members by 3 December 2010, so she can challenge Jimmy Hoffa in the Teamster General President election to be held in October 2011. This interview was broadcast by […]
Currency Wars and Global Rebalancing
Guido Mantega, the Brazilian Finance Minister, said recently that Brazil is in the middle of a currency war. His preoccupation with exchange rate appreciation is not directed to global imbalances, in general, or China, in particular. A more depreciated currency provides protection for domestic production and makes domestic goods and services cheaper for foreigners. […]
Stuart Levey’s “Philosophy” of Iran Sanctions
On October 6, Charlie Rose broadcast an interview with Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Financial and Terrorism Intelligence (can be viewed here: www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11231). Levey is widely considered the principal architect of U.S. sanctions policy, particularly with respect to Iran, under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. It is worth recalling […]
