(PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner. Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
Barack Obama’s Myopic Iran Policy
By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]
On Political Economy and Political Theory
Jean Paul Sartre in the fifties made the somber remark that things were so bad at the Sorbonne in the 1920s that the University did not even have a Chair in Marxism. In asserting the fact at that time, he was of course assuming that things at mid-century had changed dramatically and that Marxism […]
An Open Letter from Economists in Support of Financial Transaction Taxes
December 3, 2009 To Whom It May Concern: A modest set of financial transaction taxes could raise a substantial amount of needed revenue while having little impact on trades that have a positive economic impact. The cost of trading financial assets has plummeted over the last three decades as a result of computerization. This has […]
Of Islands and Their Sons
(For MAAS BOB, father of the Trade Union. And for Sam White who singlehandedly impregnated half of the women of Montserrat and so made beautiful cousins for me. Bless you and may you find peace.) My time is sunrise, dawns and mornings clean before the wickedness comes in. When I see the Montserrat sunrise I […]
The Swiss and the Muslims
The Swiss, known for cheese, Alps, watches, chocolate, and secret bank accounts, at least two of which are full of holes, have now added a sixth important product: intolerance. 57.5 percent of its 8 million population, or of those who went to the polls, voted to forbid minarets next to Muslim mosques. As nearly everyone […]
On Iran’s Plan for New Nuclear Enrichment Facilities
Daljit Dhaliwal: What do you make of Iran’s announcement to build ten new nuclear enrichment facilities? Ervand Abrahamian: It sounds impressive, but it should be taken as grandstanding for internal public opinion. Iran is trying to look tough: it’s going to stand up tall against the United States. The question is what Iran actually […]
Reviving Keynesianism: A Critique
The global crisis has undermined the neo-liberalist phase of capitalism that dominated the last 30 years of the world economy. It has likewise challenged the hegemony of neo-classical economics as the theoretical rationale of neo-liberalism’s celebration of private enterprise and markets. The form this challenge takes is a revival of Keynesian economics. As the crisis […]
We Cannot Shop Our Way Out of the Problems
John Bellamy Foster is the editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review and teaches sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written on numerous subjects, from political economy to Marxist theory. This year Foster published The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace With the Planet. Max van Lingen is a student of political philosophy and […]
The Arrest and Torture of Syed Hashmi: An Interview with Jeanne Theoharis
Jeanne Theoharis is the author of an April 2009 article in The Nation, entitled “Guantanamo at Home,” which focuses on the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of US citizen Syed Hashmi in a New York City prison with Guantanamo-like conditions. Theoharis holds the endowed chair in women’s studies and is an associate professor of political science […]
IMF: Back from the Dead
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has definitely had a very good crisis. Just over a year ago, it was an institution on life support: ignored by most developing countries; derided for its failure to predict most crises in emerging markets and its often counterproductive responses to such crises; even called to book by its auditors […]
Chavez’s Historic Call for a Fifth Socialist International
Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stated: “the time has come for us to convoke the Fifth International.” Face with the capitalist crisis and the threat of war that is putting at risk the future of humanity, “the people are clamoring for” […]
Brazil-Iran: New Boost to South-South Diplomacy
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s controversial visit to Brazil further underscored the independence of this country’s diplomacy, and gave Tehran a chance to defend its points of view on the construction of a lasting peace in the Middle East. Ahmadinejad’s one-day trip to Brasilia Monday was the third visit to Brazil by a Middle Eastern […]
SPD — Buridan’s Ass?
It recalled ancient Greek tragedies. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), founded in the 19th Century, is the country’s oldest party, and now its saddest one. On September 27th it suffered its worst election defeat since 1897, losing six million former voters and ending up with only 23 percent of the vote. It had […]
Luladinejad
Lula from Brazil and Ahmadinejad from Iran. What is this — the new axis of evil? No — Luladinejad is a new axis of business. In the latest round of the increasingly warm embrace between Latin America and the Middle East, Lula and Ahmadinejad, meeting in Brazil, signed agreements on energy, trade and agricultural […]
Lynne Stewart: An American Story
Just what good is freedom if no one is free, And folks go to jail if they dare disagree? And lawyers get punished for doing their jobs? And folks are afraid of the White House lynch mob? Lynne Stewart was doing what she had to do Protecting her client and civil rights, too. She […]
The Politics of Freedom: Geopolitics, Minority Rights, and Gender
The Sixth Annual Helen Pond McIntyre ’48 Lecture, Barnard College, 5 November 2009 The right to religious freedom is widely regarded as a crowning achievement of secular liberal democracies, one that guarantees the peaceful coexistence of religiously diverse populations. Enshrined in national constitutions and international laws and treaties, the right to religious liberty promises […]
Open Letter to Amnesty International’s London and Belfast Offices, on the Occasion of Noam Chomsky’s Belfast Festival Lecture, October 30, 20091
In his wild and slanderous “Open Letter to Amnesty International” (signed, fittingly, “Yours, in disgust and despair”),2 The Guardian-Observer‘s veteran reporter Ed Vulliamy explains that two “main concerns” motivated him to draft his repudiation of AI’s choice of Noam Chomsky to deliver this 2009 Stand Up for Justice lecture: One is that the “pain” individuals […]
The Demise of the Death Penalty in the USA: The Politics of Capital Punishment and the Question of Innocence
The Killing Continues Since the suspension of the death penalty in Japan in September of 2009, the US is the only developed nation in the world that continues to execute its citizens — but, perhaps, not for long. The unmasking of the political agenda behind state-sanctioned killing during the past 25 years and the growing […]
The Invention of the Jewish People
Introduction to Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People by Bertell Ollman The Invention of the Jewish People is divided into two parts. The first is a long section on the theory of nationalism, whose main characteristic, according to Sand, is the tendency to invent a past that suits the current needs and […]
