I love the prospect of secular stagnation (raised by Bob Reich) primarily because the answers are so easy: Let’s keep our eyes on the ball. The problem in this picture is that we are capable of producing more goods and services than we want to consume. It’s a problem of too little money chasing too […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart
“At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.” — Karl Marx Lynne Stewart is a friend. She used to practice law in New York City. I still do. I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July 19th for her re-sentencing. Judge John […]
The Urgent Need for Job Creation
Excerpt: Between December 2007 — the official first month of the recession — and December 2009, the U.S. economy lost more than eight million jobs. Even if the economy creates jobs from now on at a pace equal to the fastest four years of the early 2000s expansion, we will not return to the […]
Rebuilding a Demolished Palestinian Home
Day One of the ICAHD Work Camp, July 19, 2010 Rubble covers the tile floor at the site of the demolished home we are beginning to rebuild in the East Jerusalem section of Anata, a Palestinian town divided between occupied “East” Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Activists from the United States, Britain, Germany, […]
Srebrenica 15 Years After: The Politicization of “Genocide”
It has become an annual ritual each July to commemorate the “Srebrenica massacre,” which dates back to July 11-16, 1995. The now institutionalized characterization is that “8,000 [Bosnian Muslim] men and boys” were executed by the Serbs at that time, in “the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.” This memorial is […]
Treasure Islands: Mapping the Geography of Corruption
When is a tax haven not a tax haven? When Mauritius’ Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so. “We are a not a tax haven,” stated Sithanen, who is also the country’s Minister of Finance. Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) — the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating […]
Military Action against Iran: Impact and Effects
Executive Summary: This report concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions. The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran […]
Another Spill in Another Gulf
“In contrast to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, no one is predicting that it will possible to contain the blood spill that is being prepared for the Persian Gulf.” Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 19 July 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi […]
Reading The Politics of Veil
Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Vii + 208 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $24.94 U.S. (cl), ISBN 978-0-691-1243-5. On March 15, 2004, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of « conspicuous signs » of religious affiliation within public schools. The decision […]
A Defining Moment of the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon
Paul Jay: One of the moments of the war that we hear, as we’ve been in Beirut, people talking about is one point during the war where Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, is making a speech and tells people to look out to the sea. Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, Hezbollah: Now . . . […]
Latin America and Caribbean: CELAC Steams Ahead
A high-level meeting in Venezuela earlier this month, in which senior Latin American and Caribbean diplomats from 32 countries discussed the creation of a new forum for regional concertation, slipped under the radar of the entire U.S. media. Indeed, the only English-language report on the event that appeared in the mainstream media was filed by […]
Productivity Is Up, So Why Cut Social Programs?
Paul Jay: So, first of all, your take on what the G-20 decided, this idea of cuts in Europe and North America and maybe some expansion in China. And is there some alternative to this? Robert Pollin: Well, the notion of imposing austerity at a moment when we may — may — be slowly […]
Thoughts in a Hijab
“This is the story of Sahar, an Iranian girl, and her personal choice to continue wearing the hijab after moving to the United States.” Produced by Reel Grrls, an organization supporting young women who are beginning filmmakers. 2008. | Print
Jordan Crossings
Joseph A. Massad. Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia UP, 2001. Paperback, 396 pages, ISBN: 0-231-12323-x. In Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, a book that is painstakingly researched (there are almost 75 pages of end notes alone), Joseph A. Massad explores and analyzes the roles […]
A New Order in “Greater West Asia”: AfPak to Palestine
When the Soviet Union was in terminal crisis in 1990 and the prospect emerged of the United States establishing long-term domination of the international political system, the influential Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sought to capture the character of the unfolding geopolitical era. The term he used became a buzzword in then-emerging neo-conservative circles, and […]
Socialism or Reformism?
I We live at a time when resistance to the inequities that exist in this world and the struggle for a better world are almost totally detached from any striving for socialism. Climate change, imperialist aggression, forcible dispossession of peasants in the name of “development”, oppression of the tribal population, gender discrimination, and ecological degradation […]
Desperately Seeking “Defectors” to Make a Case for an Iran War
Coverage of Shahram Amiri’s departure from the United States and his return to Iran has focused, rather superficially, on the question of whether he was kidnapped or defected and then changed his mind. Frankly, we are more interested in what reports that the CIA tried to pay Amiri $5 million say about the current political […]
There Is No Economic Justification for Deficit Reduction
Statement to the Commission on Deficit Reduction by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice President, Americans for Democratic Action, June 30, 2010 Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. I […]
The Magic Kingdom
Pacho Maturana, Colombian, a man of vast experience in these matters, says that football is a magic kingdom, where anything can happen. The recent World Cup confirmed his words: it was a strange World Cup. Strange were the ten stadiums where the matches were held, beautiful, immense, which cost a fortune. No one knows what […]
ICAHD Denounces Israeli Demolitions (and American Enabling)
July 14, 2010 After an unofficial nine-month “moratorium,” the Israeli government has returned with a vengeance to its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. Yesterday, July 13, six homes were demolished in East Jerusalem. In Jabal Mukaber, the homes of the Tawil family (15 people) and the Masrawi family (six people) were demolished. In Beit Hanina, […]
