August 4, 2010 Yesterday’s fighting on the Israeli-Lebanese border has intensified commentators’ already quite heightened rhetoric about the risk of another armed conflict between Israel, on one side, and some combination of Hizballah, Syria, HAMAS, and Iran, on the other side. The risk of another regional war needs to be evaluated, at least in part, […]
Geography Archives: United States
Cruel But Not Unusual: The Punishment of Women in U.S. Prisons, An Interview with Marilyn Buck and Laura Whitehorn
Marilyn Buck died on 3 August 2010, less than a month after her release from federal prison. The interview below was first published in the July-August 2001 issue of Monthly Review. — Ed. After years of neglect, the issue of women in prison has begun to receive attention in this country. Media accounts of overcrowding, […]
Nationalism, Liberalism, and Capitalism
The Economist (July 15) published an editorial on Egypt and Saudi Arabia (two dictatorial countries allied with the United States in the Middle East) expressing hope that they would become democratic in the future. What is surprising, however, is that in the same issue the magazine did a favorable review of a book by Stephen […]
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 […]
The Key to Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran
It seems increasingly likely that we will see another round of nuclear diplomacy with Iran in September. This round will probably include discussions with the “Vienna Group” (the United States, Russia, and France) at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) in light of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration announced […]
Arizona: The State of Fear
Jesse Freeston: Ecuadorian journalist and filmmaker Oscar León has been following Arizona’s particularly harsh immigration law enforcement for three years. He has witnessed a growing fear in the state’s Latino community as 26,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported following arrest by the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. . . . Sheriff Joe Arpaio […]
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 […]
Has the Congressional Budget Office Joined the Push for Cutting Social Security?
Over the last three decades the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has built up a reputation for solid impartial analysis of economic and policy issues. While the party controlling Congress gets to select the head of the agency, both parties have generally turned to the CBO’s respected academics who did not attempt to use the agency […]
Sanctions, the TRR, and the Future of Nuclear Diplomacy: An Iranian Perspective
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said earlier this week that the Islamic Republic is prepared to stop enriching uranium to the nearly-20 percent level required to fabricate fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), if others agree to provide new, finished fuel for the TRR, in line with the Joint Declaration that Iran negotiated with […]
Latin America: Stop Using Colombia against Left-wing Governments
In March I wrote about the Obama Administration’s contribution to the election campaign under way in Venezuela, where voters will choose a new National Assembly in September. I predicted that certain things would happen before September, among them some new “discoveries” that Venezuela supports terrorism. Venezuela has had thirteen elections or referenda since Hugo Chávez […]
“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. […]
Capitalism as a Cultural System?
Joyce Appleby. The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. $29.95. Pp. xii, 494. Joyce Appleby, who taught U.S. history for many years at UCLA, presided over both the Organization of American Historians and American Historical Association, and served her term as professor-in-exile among the Brits at Oxford, comes to the […]
Monopoly Capital Blocks Rational Policy of Wage-led Growth
Paul Jay: So we’ve been talking about macroeconomic policy, the G-20, austerity. And there was one little line in the G-20 document I thought was interesting, and it’s sort of buried in amongst everything. It said countries could facilitate wages going up proportional to productivity, which is rather interesting, ’cause it’s the only time […]
A Dual Task
As we have pointed out on more than one occasion in this space, the government deficit is far from being a primary trouble spot. In fact it serves as an important counteracting force to the prevailing stagnation. On the other hand, the business community here and abroad sees the deficit, presumably because of its effect […]
Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement
No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film. Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation. The Soviets glorified their revolution with The Battleship Potemkin. Then there was […]
The Fear of Secular Stagnation
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
