NPR wants to convince listeners that the European welfare state is on its last legs. While it tells listeners this, nothing in the piece actually supports this case. For example, it implies that growth is grinding to a halt in Europe because of its generous welfare state, noting that Europe is expected to grow just […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
A Lesson in Bad Faith: The Vienna Group’s Response to the Tehran Joint Declaration
The countries comprising the “Vienna Group” (i.e. USA, France, and Russia, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA) have expressed their “Concerns about the Joint Declaration Conveyed by Iran to the IAEA.” Iran has repeatedly declared that the Tehran Brazil-Iran-Turkey Joint Declaration was never intended as a final binding document, but as a basis […]
‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’: Interview with Norman G. Finkelstein, Part 1
Norman Finkelstein is one of the world’s foremost public intellectuals writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the author of many books on the topic, most recently Beyond Chutzpah, an exhaustive account of Israel’s human rights record, and This Time We Went Too Far (reviewed in New Left Project), an analysis of the Gaza massacre […]
The Publicist: Henry Luce, Time Inc., and “The American Century”
A starlet in a strapless dress smiles on the cover of the February 17, 1941, issue of Life. Then, there are ten pages of ads: Oldsmobile, Knox Gelatine, Bendix automatic home laundry, Birds Eye Frosted Foods. Further in, between one photo essay on iceboating and another on a woman racecar driver, there is an editorial, […]
Eradicating the “Iranian Threat”
The United States and its Arab and European allies are hard at work to eradicate Iran’s small nuclear program, ignoring Israel’s big fat nukes. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist. This cartoon was published in his blog on 30 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The text above is an interpretation […]
Throwing Down the Gauntlet: A Review of Michael Lebowitz’s Socialist Alternative
Michael Lebowitz. The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010. Pp 192; $15.95 Only about ten or fifteen years ago, leftist theory was in a sorry state. It seemed as if socialism had ceased to be a viable project with the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead of an alternative […]
Some Mistaken Notions about Latin America (and the World)
“The current crisis means the end of neoliberalism and of US hegemony, and this crisis will lead to the end of capitalism.” The greatest error of this view lies in thinking that a model, a hegemony, or a social system will come to an end without being destroyed and replaced by another, without the global […]
The Theory of U.S. Foreign Policy — I
United States foreign policy has been generating defeats for well over a decade now but never at such a fast and furious pace as during the last few months. . . . What is the reaction in the American ruling class to this consistent and comprehensive failure of foreign policy? One might expect mounting criticism […]
Goodbye to Turkey or Goodbye to Good versus Evil?
The West is worried about Turkey. Its spokespeople fear that the West might have “lost” Turkey since its Prime Minister, Recep Erdoğan, associated himself with President Lula, proposed to act as intermediary between the West and Iran, and, later, reacted with determination against Israel’s violent raid on a boat sailing under the Turkish flag and […]
$tudent$ Make Banks Rich (Only If the Loans Are Repaid)
These are original poster designs by EDUdebtorsunion.org. They are all formatted for print on standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ letter paper. Please print and display anywhere you think this information would be relevant, provocative, or necessary! Some ideas of placement: Within Universities: Financial Aid Office, Bursar’s Office, Cashiers’ Windows, Student Unions Within the City: […]
Netanyahu Pushes the United States to Make War on Iran: Will Obama Say No?
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week was capped off on Sunday with the broadcast of a previously-taped interview on Fox New Sunday. The interview covered a range of important topics, including the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship and prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. But it is the Prime Minister’s remarks […]
Oil Makes Its Own Laws: Self-regulation and Flags of Convenience
The system under which offshore drilling rigs, and now oil tankers, operate was set up at the end of the second world war to ensure that the US was supplied with the cheapest possible oil without having to consider, or pay for, the consequences. The offshore drilling company Transocean celebrated the explosion on the Deepwater […]
Apartheid South Africa’s Secret Relationship with Israel
Thank you for having me, Yousef [Munayyer], and thank you all for coming out on a day when it’s over 100 degrees. I know it wasn’t easy. I’m going to talk a little about the research that went into this book [The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa] and where my interest […]
Be Like the Rich: Why Keep Paying for What Doesn’t Pay Off?
9 July 2010 Today’s most e-mailed article on the New York Times website is “Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are the Rich” — in a nutshell, homeowners with loans over $1 million are more likely to have stopped paying their mortgages than those with more modest homes. As law professor Brent White states, the wealthy […]
A Debtors Union: Main Street’s Solution to the Financial Crisis
The economic crisis is in essence a debt crisis. For all the economic complexity involved in the details it is basically easy to understand. There are way too many pieces of paper that supposedly entitle their holders to social wealth and there is not enough of that wealth to meet all those claims. Debt […]
Samandal: Picture Stories from Here and There
What is Samandal? Samandal is about comics, a trilingual publication dedicated to comics from the region and abroad that comes out quarterly in Arabic, English, and French. All the comics in Samandal are published under a Creative Commons license. And how does Creative Commons change commons? To answer that, we need to look at […]
End Times with Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek. Living in the End Times. Verso, 2010. Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a). The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in […]
Exploiting “Crisis” to Crush Labor
One thing should be made clear about the situation in the Eurozone economies that is not clear at all if we rely on most of the news reports. This is not a situation where countries face a “dilemma” because they have overspent and piled up too much public debt. They do not face “tough choices” […]
Remembering Lumumba
On 17 January 1961 Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic first and only elected prime minister of Congo, was brutally murdered. The circumstances of his death remain a mystery, the identity of his killers unknown. In 1956 Lumumba was a post office clerk; four years later he would be prime minister. In between he had been […]
Competent Economists Were Not Kept Awake Worrying about “a Collapse in the Value of the Dollar and of U.S. Government Securities”
In a discussion of trade imbalances the Washington Post told readers that: “it was that risk — of a collapse in the value of the dollar and of U.S. government securities — that kept many economists up at night.” Actually, competent economists were not terribly worried about this nearly impossible scenario. China and other countries […]
