Listen to Amy Goodman’s interview with Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: Oliver Stone: So, Chávez was sort of a natural [as a subject for his work] because he is such a demonized, polarizing figure, but when I met him, it was not at all what I thought, you know, what we made him out […]
Geography Archives: United States
Protesters Block Israeli Cargo Ship in Oakland, California
In Oakland, California, an Israeli ship was blocked by protesters for the first time in history. 700-1,000 protesters blocked three different gates at 5:30 A.M. keeping dockworkers from unloading the Israeli cargo. ILWU members refused to cross picketline — citing “health & safety” provisions of their contract. Management demanded “instant arbitration.” The arbitrator took […]
Brazil’s Presidential Election: Opposition Tries “Republican Strategy” on Foreign Policy
Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalized its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight. After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there. But President Lula Da Silva was calm. “I haven’t had a fight with George W. Bush,” he told the press. “Why […]
Interview with Giovanni Arrighi (Berlin, 2005)
The interview with Giovanni Arrighi below was conducted on 12 November 2005, at the “Kapitalismus Reloaded” international conference held in Berlin. It is published in English here today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Arrighi’s death. A. Fathollah-Nejad (AFN): Does the West have to fear China? G. Arrighi (GA): I don’t think so. I mean […]
Peter Erlinder Jailed by One of the Major Genocidaires of Our Era — Update1
The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that is routinely sanitized in establishment U.S. and Western media coverage and intellectual life. But if we use Erlinder’s arrest to call attention to some less-well-known facts, a much grimmer […]
Peter Erlinder to be Released
Peter Erlinder received “unconditional medical release” from the Rwandan court. Thursday, June 17, 2010 (Washington, DC) — Peter Erlinder, Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, MN and Lead Defense Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was arrested in Kigali, Rwanda on May 28, 2010. On […]
Managing the Euro: Mission Impossible!
1. No state, no money. Together, a state and its currency constitute, under capitalism, the means to manage the general interest of capital, transcending the particular interests of competing segments of capital. The current dogma that imagines a capitalist system managed by the “market,” i.e. without the state (reduced to its minimal functions of ensuring […]
The 4th UN Sanction Resolution against Iran: The End of “Tough Diplomacy”
Prior to the 2008 US presidential election, in an essay entitled “What the Future Has in Store for Iran,” I predicted that regardless of who is elected president, the US foreign policy toward Iran will be determined largely by Israel and its various lobby groups in the US, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee […]
Two, Three, Many 1960s
The global Sixties began in Tokyo on June 15, 1960, with the death of Michiko Kanba, an undergraduate at Tokyo University. On the night of her death she had joined a group of fellow university students at the front of a massive demonstration — 100,000 people deep — facing off against the National Diet Building. […]
No Nukes, No Empire: The Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Requires the End of the U.S. Empire
A version of this essay was delivered to the “Think outside the Bomb” event in Austin, TX, on June 14, 2010. If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics. That means working toward a world free of […]
Rail Workers Nationwide to Hold Railroad Workers Memorial Day
Despite far fewer trains moving with fewer employees, the number of rail worker on-the-job fatalities has dramatically increased since the onset of the recession. High profile fatalities — such as passenger train accident victims or soldiers killed in war — make headline news, while on-the-job deaths of working people usually go unnoticed. Railroad Workers United […]
Don’t Let Enemies of Freedom Suppress the Truth about Israel’s Attack on a Humanitarian Aid Ship!
Don’t Let Enemies of Freedom Suppress the Truth about Israel’s Attack on a Humanitarian Aid Ship! All Out to the House of the Lord Church, 415 Atlantic Ave. Thursday June 17, 7 pm MAVI MARMARA SURVIVORS HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HEARD! Two weeks ago Israeli naval commandos stormed a Turkish ship loaded with humanitarian […]
The Other Fateful Triangle: Israel, Iran, and Turkey
The thunderous events set in motion by Israel’s storming of the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the peace flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, have thrown important light on the overall situation in the Middle East. Turkey has emerged as the major protagonist among the forces that support the Palestinian cause. This is extremely […]
Fun with Money
The deficit hawks have been working themselves into a frenzy in recent weeks over the prospect that the country will come out of the recession with a huge debt. They have convinced much of the policy elite (admittedly, a very gullible crew) that the United States is on the edge of becoming Greece, unable to […]
Minnesota Nurses Association Provides Rx for Union Revival
The last thirty-five years have been disastrous for American unions. The percentage of the workforce represented by unions has declined from about 30% to barely 10%. As the unionized island in the center of the workforce has shrunk, every element of labor relations affected by unions — job security, promotions and lay-off, job descriptions, wages […]
The Deficit, the Debt, and the Real World
The latest fad in business journalism is to sound the alarm about the United States having become the biggest debtor in the world. This is intended to bring visions of our country sliding into a third world-type debt trap. But even those who don’t draw such dire inferences nevertheless assume that a ballooning U.S. debt […]
Don’t Let Deficit Demagogues Scare You into Accepting Austerity
The U.S. and European Union together make up about half of the global economy, and recovery is quite uncertain in both of these big economies. Contrary to a lot of folk wisdom and political posturing, the problem is not irresponsible government spending in either case, but a lack of commitment by the authorities in both […]
Iran’s Authorities Say Greens Feared Low Turnout and Cancelled Demonstrations
. . . Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, de facto leaders of the Green Movement, had issued a statement on June 10 asking their supporters to stay home. According to Fars, a semi-official news agency with intimate ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Moussavi and Karroubi were afraid of low turnouts and […]
Listen, Keynesians!
There is a remarkable consensus among economists of all ideological and political persuasions — conservative, liberal, and radical — that capitalist economies must grow to be healthy, and that the key to growth lies in the capital accumulation or savings-and-investment process. Accepting this view, we have long been arguing in effect that capitalism, like living […]
Debt Management in Latin America: How Safe Is the New Debt Composition?
. . . Public debt levels as a share of GDP declined substantially in the Latin American region during the five years preceding the great global crisis of 2008 and 2009. Data available for the largest seven countries in the region (LAC-7)1 show that the ratio of total public debt to GDP fell from […]
