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The Economic Crisis: How It Impacts African-Americans and Labor
Lecture delivered at the Economic and Black Labor Forum, the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies, 22 October 22 2009 The present Great Recession is the latest and largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the Great Depression over half of all African-American men were unemployed. The present Great […]
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About the Results of Eduard Shevardnadze and Anatoly Dobrynin’s Visit to Afghanistan
Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Shevardnadze: In the country and in the provinces they created authoritative organizations for reconciliation. They are working actively. There is a special committee for refugees. Many [rebel] bands — although they are not big — stopped armed struggle. Najib leaves a very good impression. However, not everybody supports him, […]
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Is Capitalism Really on Its Last Legs? Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff
Mike Whitney: In your new book, The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know, you allude to right-wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public opinion about capitalism? Do you think that […]
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Relevant News
Significant events have taken place in our country lately.
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Interview with Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer
“Palestinian equal rights was placed directly next to health care and the economy on The Daily Show’s progressive agenda and the audience was totally along for the ride. I could hardly believe my eyes, and yet it made perfect sense at the same time. Who can argue that it is necessary to deny people […]
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Agreement to Restore Zelaya, If Honored, Will Be a Victory for Democracy in the Hemisphere, CEPR Co-Director Says
Washington, D.C. — News of a deal that would effectively end the coup d’etat in Honduras and restore democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya to office would be a “victory for democracy in the hemisphere” resulting from the continued resistance of the Honduran people and pressure from Latin American governments, Center for Economic and Policy Research […]
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The FBI Raid and Shooting Death of Imam Luqman
It is with deep sadness and concern that we announce the shooting death of Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, of Masjid Al-Haqq (Detroit, MI). Imam Luqman was a representative of the Detroit Muslim community to the “National Ummah” and the general assembly (Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). The Federal Bureau of […]
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UN Calls for End to US Embargo on Cuba
The UN General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to call for an end to the US embargo on Cuba. The vote was cast at the 192-member General Assembly with 187 in favor, three against and two abstentions. This is the 18th year that the General Assembly voted to urge an end to the US embargo. […]
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Gathering Rage Revisited
In 1992, I was a thwarted, guilt-ridden and depressed revolutionary, living underground with my lesbian partner and two-year old daughter in St. Louis. I was part of a tiny group that had gone underground at the beginning of the 1980s, responding to the collapse of the mass movements after the end of the Vietnam […]
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Why the Health Insurance Excise Tax Is a Bad Idea
Twenty years ago, 60,000 workers from New York City to Maine rallied against healthcare cost-shifting at the telecom giant then known as NYNEX (since “rebranded” as Verizon). NYNEX was a very profitable, multinational company seeking to capitalize on a demoralizing decade of lost strikes, contract givebacks and widespread unionbusting. At a time when many […]
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Why No Government Jobs Program?
From the official beginning of the current economic crisis in December 2007 to the present, the number of unemployed workers has risen roughly from 7 to 15 million members of the US labor force. But there is no government program directly to hire these millions of the unemployed. The Bush and Obama administrations quickly and […]
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Say NO to the New Racist, Sexist and Homophobic Dominican Constitution
The government of President Leonel Fernández, with the support of the powerful Catholic Church and the far right (known as the Nazionalistas), will soon adopt a new constitution that will set the country back decades. The new constitution is part of a ruling class attack on working people in a desperate attempt to preserve the […]
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How to Defeat Jundallah and Its Ilk
Sunday’s suicide bomb attack on a conference hall in the Pishin region of Iran’s vast Sistan and Balochistan province is by all accounts a major blow against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the most important military and security institution in the country. It is now known that at least 42 people were killed […]
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Why We Need to Give This Rotten System the Heave-ho
Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates. The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know. Monthly Review Press, 2009. Books that start out with quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth make me nervous. Like many of my fellow workers, I have attended far more rock concerts — or pro wrestling matches — than […]
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On the Dollar’s Decline
If time lags matter, news of the dollar’s demise as the world’s principal reserve currency is grossly exaggerated. That prediction has been periodically heard at least since the early 1970s when the United States brought the Bretton Woods arrangement to an end by breaking the link between dollar and gold. As is obvious, whatever else […]
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Cesar
Author’s Note: This story was recently posted on CounterPunch. Here I have corrected a couple of errors pointed out by readers. The essay is taken from my book, In and Out of the Working Class. I worked for the United Farm Workers Union during a sabbatical leave in the winter of 1977. I […]
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You Need to Watch Lou Dobbs: Or the Dobbsian Economy of Racism
I can barely watch Lou Dobbs. His attacks on Latino immigrants continue to escalate, and there is increasing evidence that there is a correlation between anti-Latino media like that of Dobbs and hate crimes against the Latino population. But we need to watch him, and in this instance I am using “watch” in the sense […]
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The Iran Versus U.S.-Israeli-NATO Threats
It is spell-binding to see how the U.S. establishment can inflate the threat of a target, no matter how tiny, remote, and (most often) non-existent that threat may be, and pretend that the real threat posed by its own behavior and policies is somehow defensive and related to that wondrously elastic thing called “national security.” […]
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The ALBA and Copenhagen
The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.
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State Department Officials Signal Moves towards Recognizing November Elections in Honduras
Washington, D.C. — Although the official policy of the Obama administration is that it will not recognize next month’s elections in Honduras if democracy is not restored first, it became clear last week that some State Department officials are undermining this position and signaling that the U.S. could accept the results of the November 29 […]