DIE LINKE (the Left Party) has initiated a debate on its draft party program, which it wishes to officially adopt in Autumn 2011. Neues Deutschland is joining this debate with a series of articles. In the Neues Deutschland article published on 9 August 2010, Michael Heinrich tackles the issue of the relationship between capital and […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Nonsense from Deficit Hawks Threatens to Keep Tens of Millions Needlessly Unemployed
The New York Times told readers that the Fed’s ability to take steps to boost the economy are limited because: The dramatic expansion of the national debt — which began in the Bush administration, via hefty tax cuts and two wars — has ratcheted up fears that, one day, creditors like China and Japan might […]
Who Will Allow Brazil to Reach Its Economic Potential?
The biggest economic question facing Brazil, as for most developing countries, is when it will achieve its potential economic growth. For Brazil, there is a simple, most relevant comparison: its pre-1980 — or pre-neoliberal — past. From 1960-1980, income per person — the most basic measure that economists have of economic progress — in Brazil […]
Iran’s Proposal to Russia: Enrichment Is Still Key
August 26, 2010 Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said today that the Islamic Republic has proposed to Russia that the two countries create a joint consortium to fabricate fuel for the Bushehr reactor and other nuclear power plants that Iran plans to build in the future. Salehi reportedly […]
Israel/Palestine and the Apartheid Analogy: Critics, Apologists and Strategic Lessons (Part 2)
I. Apartheid of a Special Type In the previous section I made a distinction between historical apartheid (unique to South Africa) and apartheid in its generic form — a structured system of political exclusion and social marginalization on the basis of origins (including but not restricted to race). I concluded that Israel is different from […]
Remittances, Migration, and Other Panaceas: The End of Outward-looking Development Strategies?
In a 1965 essay, the great development economist Albert Hirschman bemoaned the tendency of those in his profession to look for the next panacea. Unfortunately, various panaceas have come in and out of fashion since Hirschman wrote. During three decades of neo-liberalism, development economists and policymakers have celebrated three inter-related strategies: (1) free markets, […]
Paltry Aid to Pakistan
Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist. This cartoon was published in his blog on 22 August 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. | Print
The Sacred Cow
The early years of the Left Front government in West Bengal in the late seventies had been marked by severe power cuts in Calcutta (as it then was) and elsewhere in the state. One evening as “load-shedding” began, a little urchin in a slum neighbouring a high-rise jumped up and down clapping his hands, shouting: […]
Israel/Palestine and the Apartheid Analogy: Critics, Apologists and Strategic lessons (Part 1)
I. Introduction In the last decade, the notion that the Israeli system of political and military control bears strong resemblance to the apartheid system in South Africa has gained ground. It is invoked regularly by movements and activists opposed to the 1967 occupation and to various other aspects of Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian-Arab people. […]
Hormel Strike a Key Event in Nation’s Labor History
From the late summer of 1985 into the early spring of 1986, the small town of Austin, Minnesota, figured prominently in the national news. The dramatic themes and issues, twists and turns, of a labor conflict there captured the national imagination. This interest was not merely passive, as more than thirty support committees formed across […]
Will Chinese Workers Challenge Global Capitalism?
Paul Jay: In China in June, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party said that it’s time for workers’ wages to go up. And there’s been a lot of discussion about whether China’s actually restructuring its economy to try to boost domestic demand. Certainly in what leaders say in other parts of the world they […]
Marx and Engels on Music
In 1857 Charles Dana invited Karl Marx to contribute to the New American Cyclopaedia. Marx was the European political correspondent for the daily New York Tribune, of which Dana was the editor; Dana and George Ripley, his former mentor at the utopian colony of Brook Farm, were co-editors of the encyclopedia. In due time Marx […]
The Myth of the “Sub-prime Crisis”
Capitalism, like the proverbial horse, kicks even when in decline. Even as the current crisis hit it, it gave an ideological kick by attributing the crisis to “sub-prime” lending; and so well-directed was its kick that the whole world ended up calling it the “sub-prime crisis”. The idea, bought even in progressive circles, was that […]
The Return of the Damascenes
Christa Salamandra. A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. x + 199 pp. $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21722-6; $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34467-0. Christa Salamandra’s A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria is a thought-provoking analysis of one segment of the Syrian elite’s […]
Bolivia: Social Tensions Erupt
Recent scenes of roadblocks, strikes, and even the dynamiting of a vice-minister’s home in the Bolivian department (administrative district) of Potosi, reminiscent of the days of previous neoliberal governments, have left many asking themselves what is really going on in the “new” Bolivia of indigenous President Evo Morales. Since July 29, the city of Potosi, […]
The Seduction of Feminism
Hester Eisenstein. Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Paradigm 2009). xv, 293pp. The 20th century is often called the American century because of the US’s advance during that time to become the single greatest power in the world — economically, industrially and militarily. The century’s story […]
Adam Jones on Rwanda and Genocide: A Reply
Like Gerald Caplan’s hostile “review” of our book, The Politics of Genocide, Adam Jones’s aggressive attack on our response to Caplan can be explained in significant part by Jones’s deep commitment to an establishment narrative on the Rwandan genocide that we believe to be false — one that misallocates the main responsibility for that still […]
Why You Should Read AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers
Dear Brother, Sister, Friend, As you daily confront the challenges of leading or representing union members or other workers, in whatever capacity, awareness of the current situation of the labor movement is unavoidable: we are in trouble, and we need to audaciously address our weaknesses and limitations if we are to have a chance […]
Agent Orange Day 2010
“Artists struggling with the legacy of Agent Orange were invited to exhibit their work at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Nguyen Dinh Trung and Le Thi Be Nga are two of 140 artists who have learned to overcome their own disabilities and are taking their lives into their own hands […]
Can You Recruit Your Republican Friend to Oppose the Permanent War?
Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, as President, Barack […]
