A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as “Israelis,” a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state. Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country’s establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction […]
Geography Archives: United States
Is Iran Now a Nuclear Target for the United States?
Today — Tuesday, April 6, 2010 — the Obama Administration will proclaim, as a matter of declaratory policy, that the United States claims the prerogative to use nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic of Iran, even as Iran remains a non-nuclear-weapons state. The Administration will make this declaration as part of its much anticipated Nuclear […]
Cuba Does Not Bow to Pressures
Address by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the State Council and the Council of Ministers and Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, at the Closing Session of the 9th Congress of the Young Communist League, Havana, 4 April 2010, Year 52 of the Revolution Comrades, delegates, and guests: […]
Witness to Mediagate: Making Sense of the “Climategate Scandal”
Leading global scientists have been exonerated of blame in the “climategate” controversy, although this won’t stop right-wing and corporate-funded pundits from attacking the science of global warming. The British government recently released its first investigation on the activities of East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit, finding no evidence that its scientists manipulated data or distorted […]
Teach-in on Political Prisoners
Tuesday, April 6 at 5:00 to 7:00 pm at the Riverside Church, Room 9T 490 Riverside Drive (between 120th Street and 122nd Street) entrance at Claremont Ave. & 121st Street The James Earl Chaney Foundation, the Social Justice Ministry of the Riverside Church, and the National Coalition for Prisoners of Political Conscience, invite you to […]
Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day
Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt. Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. x + 261 pp. $33.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-56639-448-2; $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-56639-447-5. Between the Civil War and World War II the length of the American work week decreased dramatically. Since the end of World War II, the rate of decline has become positively […]
On the Nature and Implications of the Expanding Presence of India and China for Developing Asia
Prabhat Patnaik: I think there is an important difference, it seems to me, between the situation in the case of the advanced capitalist countries, or even the case of Japan, on the one hand, and in the case of countries like India and possibly even China at the moment. In the case of the advanced […]
The United States, Iran, and the Middle East’s New “Cold War”
The absence of US-Iranian rapprochement will perpetuate the new Middle Eastern Cold War, imposing costs on the United States, Iran and other regional and international players. However, in strategic terms, the heaviest costs of continued US-Iranian estrangement are likely to be borne by the United States. In particular, lack of productive relations with Tehran will […]
Israel: The Global Pacification Industry
Jeff Halper: We’re one of the leading — I would say, modestly — peace and human rights organizations in Israel. We started about thirteen years ago. I’ve been involved for forty years in the Israeli peace movement. During the Oslo peace process, during the 90s, the Israeli peace movement also, like other Israelis, invested […]
“We Must Take Public Criticism into Account. Criticism Is Good and Should Help the Process”
What is the characteristic of the Latin American Left today? 20 years ago, when the Berlin Wall fell, there was no revolution foreseeable on the horizon. However, it didn’t take long before a process began to emerge in Latin America with Hugo Chávez. We have gone on to form governments with anti-neoliberal programs, though […]
Still Struggling, Still Protesting, Fifty Years after the Sharpeville Massacre
It is amazing that I am now at last again on South African soil, since my previous trip here was in December. I am at home in my soul in a way that is unique for my travels. I am breathing in the salty air from the Indian Ocean, feeling the hot rays of the […]
Crisis Management in the Israeli-American Family
Michael Warschawski: Before speaking about the crisis, one has to understand the special relationship between the United States and Israel. Between these two states there is a strategic alliance, which is something extremely solid, very central to the US Middle East policy and very essential to Israel. This strategic alliance is not in crisis. In […]
The Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household
In 2008, an estimated 49 million Americans, or 16% of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation. In 1980, this figure was just 28 million, or 12% of the population. This 33% increase since 1980 […]
The Diffusion of Activities
One of the striking features of the recent period has been the diffusion of manufacturing and service activities from the countries of the core to the periphery. The logic of competitive striving for the export market among the many “labour reserve” economies in the periphery leads to the accumulation of ever-growing reserves and a constraint […]
Iran-US Standoff
“What is it that they have against Iran? If you look at it, it’s only that Iran is rising as a competitor of Israel. There is no other basis for this animosity.” — Aijaz Ahmad Aijaz Ahmad: The US is running out of all options. You mentioned this possible agreement. Iran has actually agreed […]
On the Greek Crisis
Jayati Ghosh: What’s happening to Greece is in an interesting way what many developing countries have gone through. It’s really an inability to have independent monetary and fiscal policies, combined with a fact that during the boom it was chosen as a favorite destination, which creates a situation where you then become uncompetitive. Suddenly […]
From Iraq to Iran: Is London Again “Helping” Washington Pursue Regime Change in the Middle East?
There are two countries in the world which are routinely described by American politicians across the political spectrum as having a “special relationship” with the United States — Israel and the United Kingdom. We have all grown more familiar than we probably like to acknowledge with Israel using its channels to Capitol Hill and in […]
PIIGS Countries, Being Led to the Slaughter, Should Rethink Euro
As the EU summit meeting convenes, Greece is dominating the agenda much more than Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel had wanted. This week she has thrown cold water on the idea that Germany and other EU countries would take responsibility for helping Greece to roll over some of its debt, handing that job off to the […]
The Most Probable Endgame for New Iran Sanctions
The all too predictable dynamics surrounding a potential new Iran sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council continue to play out just as we have anticipated. As some commentators are leaping on media stories that one of China’s diplomats took part in a P-5+1 conference call yesterday about a possible resolution, the Wall Street […]
One Massacre Too Many
“. . . a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” — The Goldstone Report “I can promise you that throughout the war, […]
