People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them. Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming. Help for the banks and […]
Geography Archives: United States
Reading, Writing, and Union-Building
“It’s a well-established fact,” reports the New York Times Book Review, “that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to.”1 According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 50% of those surveyed haven’t cracked a book in the previous year. In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be even smaller. […]
BC Students Forced to Take Prof. Bill Ayers Off-Campus
Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus. Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]
Open Letter from López Obrador to Hillary Clinton upon Her Visit to Mexico
Letter from the legitimate president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to Secrectary of State of the Government of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton on the occasion of her visit to Mexico in March 2009. Translation by Dan La Botz. Spanish language original follows. Federal District, Mexico March 25, 2009 Mrs. Hillary Clinton […]
The State of Iraq: An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]
In Graphics: The Minimum Wage in Venezuela Will Double That in the Rest of South America
The Venezuelan minimum wage, including the value of food vouchers, will reach $636 in September this year, when the process of raising it by 20% gets completed; the second highest minimum wage in South America is Argentina’s $310 per month. The anti-crisis measures announced by the Bolivarian government last Saturday, although affecting Venezuelans negatively […]
Turkey’s Falling-out with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers: Ottoman Archives Show Land Deeds Forged
A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to […]
Why More of the Same Will Not Work
A visit to Western Europe in early March provided some slightly different — if unsettling — insights into global economic arrangements and their socio-cultural co-ordinates. As the crisis unfolds, people everywhere are questioning current economic institutions and processes, and naturally enough their fears, insecurities and concerns also affect their visions for the future. The fundamental […]
Did Iran Reject Obama’s Overture?
Iran’s response to a supposedly conciliatory address March 20 by U.S. President Barack Obama has been met with a torrent of “we-told-you-sos” by the U.S. media. The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had simply “dismissed President Obama’s extraordinary Persian New Year greeting. . . .” The Christian Science Monitor […]
Osvaldo Martínez: “The Crisis Is Not an Abnormality in Capitalism”
2009 started off badly. The international economic crisis is the top priority of governments, companies, international organizations, and individuals preoccupied with having a roof to sleep under and food on the table. The situation has surprised almost everybody, albeit Cuba to a lesser degree. Almost a decade ago, Comandante Fidel Castro warned that the […]
Venezuela: Anti-Crisis Measures without Devaluation or Higher Gas Prices: VAT Rises 3%, But Minimum Wage Rises 20%
No neoliberal package, to the disappointment of the Right! President Chávez announced a series of “anti-crisis measures” to protect the country from the capitalist crisis, which are devoid of the typical neoliberal ingredients that the Right predicted. The 2009 budget is revised based on $40 a barrel (previously it was based on $60). Sumptuary expenses […]
Bring In the Dead: Martyr Burials and Election Politics in Iran
اعتراض دانشجویان پلیتکنیک به پروژه دفن شهید Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23. The mourners — drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes — were carrying the […]
There Is No Zombie Free Lunch
It is a story that could make The Return of the Living Dead 6. A group of good people huddle on a roof, with a limited supply of raw meat. A crowd of zombies surrounds the house: hungry, mad, aggressive. Fear spreads and bodies collapse; the odour is terrible. The zombies smell blood and […]
Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis
The essence of Keynes’s contribution was the demolition of Say’s law of markets. Say’s Law argued that supply created its own demand, so that there could never be an actual glut of production. Marx had rejected Say’s Law from the beginning, calling it “the childish babbling of a Say, but unworthy of Ricardo.” But neoclassical […]
Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived
Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born. In the hectic months of 1979 — before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared — many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as revolutionaries, confidently predicted its imminent demise. […]
Decolonization’s Rocky Road: Corruption, Expropriation, and Justice in Bolivia
Over 3,000 Bolivian and Peruvian indigenous activists recently marched in El Alto in commemoration of the March 13th, 1781 siege of La Paz, Bolivia launched from El Alto by indigenous rebels Tupac Katari and Bartolina Sisa. The siege was against Spanish rule and for indigenous liberation in the Andes. At a gathering the night before […]
What Difference Does Inequality Make?
Although many people believe inequality is socially divisive and adds to the problems associated with relative deprivation, what inequality does or does not do to us has remained largely a matter of personal opinion. But now that we have comparable measures of the scale of income inequality in different societies we can actually see […]
Anti-communism with a Liberal Face
Murali Balaji, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, New York: Nation Books, 2007. W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson have been poorly served by their biographers. David Levering Lewis and Martin Duberman found these two US communist revolutionaries about as congenial […]
The World Bank’s Reforms: Different Image, Same Tune?
The World Bank’s Board of Governors has approved the first of a series of reforms aimed at amplifying the voice and influence of developing countries inside the World Bank Group. The centrepiece of these much-awaited reforms, announced in mid-February, is an additional seat for Sub-Saharan Africa on the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, a change […]
The Soils of War: The Real Agenda behind Agricultural Reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq
In this Briefing, we look at how the US’s agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and […]
