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 […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Sartre and Beauvoir
Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, directed by Max Cacopardo, 1967. Director First Run/ Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, 1967. Video and DVD, 60 mins., b/w. A “time capsule” was how Simone de Beauvoir described Max Cacopardo’s documentary about her and Sartre, made for Canadian television in 1967 and re-issued in 2005. She was certainly […]
Who Says Iran Is Becoming Isolated in the Middle East?
We have argued for some time that the policy debate about Iran here in the United States is distorted by a number of “myths” — myths about the Islamic Republic, its foreign policy, and its domestic politics. One of the more dangerous myths currently affecting America’s Iran debate is the proposition that, through concerted diplomatic […]
Obama on Iran: The Substance behind the “Signal”
August 5, 2010 Yesterday, President Obama called a small group of journalists into the White House to talk about Iran. According to the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, Obama’s agenda was to signal Iran that the United States might “accept a deal that allows Iran to maintain its civilian nuclear program, so long as Iran provides […]
Fiscal Discipline and All That
Rarely has an economic idea had such a brief revival. After several years of almost undisputed sway of monetarist ideology over economic policy makers across the world, suddenly Keynesian ideas were back in fashion, in particular the idea that active state intervention in the form of increased state expenditure is necessary to bring a market […]
The Revolutionary Road in India
The editors of Aneek have asked us to present, in brief, our stand regarding what we think is “the correct path” towards equality, cooperation, community, and human solidarity, that is, socialism in India. The struggle for socialism is going to be long, hard, and violent, and I, for one, cannot imagine a socialist India […]
The Structural Crisis of Capitalism
There is a very pervasive view that the current capitalist crisis consists exclusively of the financial crisis and, in so far as the financial crisis is now over, the crisis as a whole is over. This, I believe, is erroneous, and this is because, like Bob Brenner, I also believe that the current financial crisis […]
Debt and GDP Growth: Reinhart and Rogoff, One More Time
Our friends at the Economic Policy Institute have already done a pretty good job burying the claim from Reinhart-Rogoff that high ratios of debt to GDP will lead to lower growth, but in DC, no bad theory stays dead for long. With that in mind, let’s throw a little more dirt on the grave. The […]
Revealing Moments: Obama, WikiLeaks, the “Good War” Myth, and Silly Liberal Faith in the Emperor
War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for disclosing a classified video showing American troops murdering civilians in Baghdad from an Apache Attack Helicopter in 2007. Eleven adults were killed in the […]
Killing Azad: Silencing the Voice of Revolution
To suppress the most articulate voice of the Indian revolutionary movement, the state indulged in the brutal assassination of Cherukuri Rajkumar, popularly known as Azad, spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), along with freelance journalist Hemchandra Pandey, on July 2. Azad was supposed to meet a courier at Sitabardi in Nagpur, Maharashtra […]
Economic Recovery for the Few
Where is this elusive recovery? The banks, some say, have “recovered.” Yet they remain dependent on Washington, they do not make the loans needed for a general recovery, and many medium and small banks keep collapsing. The stock market shows no recovery. The Dow index was 14,000 in late 2007 when capitalism hit the fan, […]
Export Dependence and Sustainability of Growth in China and the East Asian Production Network
Excerpt: [T]he conventional growth accounting based on the national income identity does not provide an adequate framework for assessing the contribution of components of demand to growth. The standard exports/GDP ratio overestimates the income (value-added) generated by exports because it ignores the foreign (import) contents of exports, which tend to be particularly high in […]
Greece and the IMF: Who Exactly Is Being Saved?
Excerpt: Importantly, the initial collapse and following standstill in economic activity and nominal levels of GDP is also extremely bad news for the strategy of fiscal consolidation itself. On the one hand, to keep on servicing interest payments (see above), nominal debt will continue to go up. On the other hand, nominal GDP goes […]
“Secularism . . . a Really Interesting Problematic”: A Conversation with Joan Wallach Scott
DKK: Joan, because people know you as many things — as a theorist of gender, as a cultural historian, as an inveterate advocate for academic freedom and defender of the rights of the professoriate — I’m curious how you would describe yourself to someone who had never met Joan Scott. JWS: That’s really hard . […]
Kenneth Rogoff Is Wrong on Debt and Deficits
In much of the world, including the United States and Europe, a debate is taking place about whether the government’s first responsibility should be to reduce unemployment — which is at elevated levels — or to reduce government deficits and debt. Many of the arguments for deficit reduction are simplistic, based on ignorance, or ideologically-based. […]
Sending a Message, Setting a Precedent: Nuclear Powers vs. Iran, Brazil, Turkey, and Other Emerging Powers
In international politics, if an action seems reckless or callous and the ones taking it are not certified loonies, usually it’s because it was made to look that way, on purpose. To send a message. Take Israel’s attack in international waters on a civilian flotilla that resulted in the death of nine Turkish passengers. […]
Alternatives to Fiscal Austerity in Spain
Executive Summary: This paper looks at the planned austerity measures in Spain, the rationale for the spending cuts and tax increases, likely outcomes for future debt-to-GDP ratios, and the probable results of alternative policies. It is widely believed that Spain got into trouble because of the over-expansion of government spending. However, during the economic expansion […]
‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’: Interview with Norman G. Finkelstein, Part 2
What is the British government’s role in the conflict? It is officially committed to the international consensus two-state settlement, but what has our record been in practice? It’s been awful. Britain doesn’t have an independent role — it just does what the US tells it to do. On the other hand, the struggle is easier […]
The Fed Can Just Hold Mortgage-Backed Securities, Reducing Interest Burdens
The NYT portrayed the Fed as facing a serious dilemma in dealing with its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). It argued that it can either start selling them now and risk slowing the economy or wait until the economy has recovered more and risk losing money by selling them in a higher inflation environment. There […]
The Myth of Conflict-Free Diamonds
The issue of “blood diamonds” has once again made the news: Farai Maguwu, Director of Zimbabwe’s Mutare-based Centre for Research and Development (CRD), languishes under the long arm of Zimbabwe’s laws on alleged charges related to his research on Zimbabwe’s Marange mines. According to a confidential 44-page report produced by investigators mandated by the Kimberley […]
