The capitalist world has experienced its deepest economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Paradoxically, whereas the earlier period saw the breakdown of liberal capitalism, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the Soviet alternative to liberal capitalism, today neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization still remain powerful, and apparently supreme, on the stage of […]
Geography Archives: United States
How to Fire a Central Banker: Lessons from Argentina
In the United States, the mismanagement of the financial crisis, in particular the ill designed Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), has led to a wave of populist protests, and to a narrow confirmation vote for Bernanke. In Argentina, where the recession was considerably milder than in the United States and had no financial cause, […]
Sex-Pol among Allies in the North Atlantic
Do you have an indelible memory of a theater experience? One winter in the 1970s, while I was a film student at Manhattan’s Hunter College, I heard that Mother Courage, by that red cat Bertolt Brecht, was being performed downtown at Wooster Street. So voila! next stop Greenwich Village, and I attended the Wooster Group‘s […]
Rethinking Jeffrey Sachs and the “Big Five”: New Proposals for the End of Poverty
Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade. As special advisor to the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to brag about. The publication of his runaway bestseller, The […]
The WTO as Barrier to Financial Regulation
In most parts of the world today (except perhaps in India, where optimism about the benefits of unregulated financial markets still seems to dominate over the undisputable evidence of their many fragilities) most policy makers talk about imposing regulations on the financial sector. Of course, the events of the past two years in the world […]
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Filming our documentary The People Speak in Boston, one afternoon, Howard said that the camaraderie between our cast members, the sense of collective purpose and joy, was a feeling he hadn’t experienced with such intensity since his active participation in the civil rights movement. Since Howard’s passing, I have thought often of that moment, which […]
China, Europe, and Natural Gas in Iran
Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran. Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards. The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, […]
Just Which Country Is “Playing for Time” in Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran?
Until today, the Obama Administration and much of the foreign policy punditocracy in Washington have been overflowing with observations that recent statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reiterating the Islamic Republic’s interest in a deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) were just another example of Iranian efforts to […]
Violent Student Groups in Venezuela Coordinate Actions with the “Democratic Unity” Opposition Coalition
Many of the students involved belong to the youth divisions of the different political parties from the opposition. Since 2005, US government funding has gone towards training and advising youth leaders and student movements enabling them to enter the political arena. Many question whether the recent student protests against the Chavez Administration in Venezuela […]
Iran, China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
The new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev, said at a news conference in Beijing earlier this week that the conflict in Afghanistan and expanding the SCO’s members to include Iran and Pakistan were the top issues on the SCO’s agenda in 2010. Certainly, these issues are likely to dominate […]
Zionism Laid Bare
The essential point of M. Shahid Alam‘s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece. From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity. Seek humanity, for that is the goal.” Alam, […]
How Markets Fail
If you want to be reminded of the myriad of ways in which markets fail, you will welcome the new and timely book by John Cassidy titled simply How Markets Fail. Cassidy is not only an economist but a rare one who can write. Indeed, he writes so well that he is a regular […]
The Time for Single Payer Health Care Is Now
Yesterday the Labor Campaign for Single Payer joined the growing number of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare advocates who have responded to President Obama’s State of the Union challenge to “let him know” if there is a better approach that “will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare, and […]
Analysis of Multiple Polls Finds Little Evidence Iranian Public Sees Government as Illegitimate
Indications of fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election, together with large-scale street demonstrations, have led to claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not actually win the election, and that the majority of Iranians perceive their government as illegitimate and favor regime change. An analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public from three different […]
Remembering Howard Zinn
I studied with Howard Zinn at Boston University. He was my dissertation advisor, mentor, friend, tennis partner and a pillar of support for me during the eight grueling years when I fought a civil rights battle with Harvard University. Zinn’s passage is a great loss to all who knew him directly or indirectly, including the […]
The Vultures Circle Haiti at Every Opportunity, Natural or Man-made
Haitians’ incredible plight has always been difficult to fully appreciate. Then the earthquake struck: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more hurt, a million homeless, and two million in need of food. It defies imagination. And according to a journalist just returned from Haiti, even the heart-rending footage we’ve seen here on television […]
Why Washington Cares about Countries like Haiti and Honduras
When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources […]
Republicans Sell Soul to Pat Robertson
(PU) In an oak-paneled conference room somewhere in Manhattan’s Goldman Sachs building, the Republican National Committee today signed over its soul to the Reverend Pat Robertson. “They had a soul?” asked a reporter at a press conference shortly after the signing. “Oh yes,” explained RNC chairman Michael Steele. “You see, the legal reality of corporate […]
Just Which Major Power Faces “Diplomatic Isolation”?
Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.” In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]
Helping Haiti: Our Dollars Aren’t Enough
On January 14, two days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake, I finally got a chance to look over my email, courtesy of a small Haitian NGO in a quiet, relatively undamaged neighborhood in the south of the city. After reading and answering personal messages, I noticed that a lot of my mail consisted of appeals for […]
