Chronicling the Crisis of the Working Class http://mrzine.org Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:27:01 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/leys201109.html There are really two core issues. One is the need to focus on the militant campaign that is now being waged by capital -- the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and big healthcare provider companies -- to break up state-funded and provided healthcare systems in every country that has them, and turn them into fields of accumulation. In middle- and high-income countries we are talking of potential markets worth from 7 to 12% of national income or even more. . . . The second core issue is the fact that health care, important as it is, is not the most important thing: the crucial determinants of health, wherever you live -- India, Canada, South Africa, the US, it makes no difference -- are good food, good shelter, safety at work and protection against infections, so whether you and your family are healthy or not is above all a matter of equality. The poorest countries have the worst health, and so do the poorest people in all countries, including rich ones. Unless public policy is geared towards equality, even in rich countries most people's health will remain a lot worse than it should be. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:23:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ngwane201109.html The working class is the class that suffers the most from the ecological crisis. In the 21st century we have to disagree with "petro-socialism." Keep the oil in the soil! Keep the coal in the hole! Keep the tarsands on the land! Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:47:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sand201109.html Bertell Ollman: Granted that some Jews already lived throughout the Middle East and Southern Europe before the destruction of the Second Temple -- but if we add up all the mass conversions to Judaism that occurred after this event, it appears that the bulk of world Jewry from the early Middle Ages on were descended from people who never set foot in Palestine. Which raises, of course, the next key question -- what happened to the Jews who were still in Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple? Where did they go? Sand's answer is that they didn't go anywhere. They are today's Palestinians, most of whom converted to Islam in the early years of Islam's expansion into the rest of the Middle East. These are not unsupported conjectures, for the great strength of Sand's book lies in the enormous wealth of evidence and careful, scholarly argumentation he offers for each of his claims. Where does all this leave the central idea that underlies the whole Zionist project -- that Jews everywhere have not only a duty but a right to return to "their original homeland," Palestine? I can't think of a more fundamental critique of Zionism and therefore of Israel too than the one found in Sand's book. No serious reader who is interested in Zionism or Israel -- whatever their personal views -- can avoid being shaken up "big-time" by Sand's impressive redrawing of the major religious and "racial" boundaries that are usually taken for granted in most discussion of these subjects. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:44:00 EST http://pulsemedia.org/2009/11/14/a-ghazal-from-ghalib/ Where is the Artist whose art they protest? Every prop, every player, dreads his part in the play. Hard, it is hard, digging through granite nights. It takes a thousand sparks to break into day. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates201109.html Allen Ruff: What do working people need to know about this current economic crisis? Michael D. Yates: The first thing you need to know is that these kinds of crisis are built into the economic system. There's really I don't think any way to avoid them. Now, they're gonna vary in terms of the degrees of seriousness, and this is a particularly serious one, but should the economy get back on track a little bit, should we begin to experience a 3-4% growth rate and moderation of unemployment, that's not gonna last indefinitely. Sooner or later there will be another crisis. Given the way the government is responding to this one, probably sooner rather than later. The second thing that working people need to know is that the government as it is currently structured is not on their side. It does not care about their wellbeing or welfare, and its response to the economic crisis has been to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the very people who generated the crisis in the first place, setting the stage for continued inequality in wealth and income, continued inequality in political power, setting the stage for a new economic crisis. So I think those are the two main things. And the third thing of course is just as main: working people got to get organized collectively. The labor movement as it is currently structured is not about to do that. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:14:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/moore191109.html "The health insurance companies are going to make an extra 70 billion dollars as a result of Americans being forced to buy their health insurance. What company wouldn't love this bill?" -- Michael Moore, Toronto, 17 November 2009 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:24:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/zoya191109.html "I'm a representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which was established in 1977 as a women's organization struggling for women's rights. But, after the former Soviet Union's invasion, RAWA got involved in resistance against the Soviets and the puppet regime of theirs. After 1992, RAWA started to focus on anti-fundamentalist struggle, which is continuing today. . . . We are still suffering in the chains of fundamentalism – from one side, the Taliban, from the other side, the Northern Alliance and the occupiers. So we have a long way to go to achieve our goals of democracy, freedom, and secularism. I think eight years is quite enough time to prove that the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan, under the banner of bringing democracy, women's rights, and war on terror, has completely failed. . . . The Taliban have 80% of Afghanistan under their control. They are increasing, day by day, in number, and they are also getting stronger politically and militarily. So, we see that this so-called war on terrorism has just affected our innocent civilians: our women and children are being killed, attacked by US bombs, by NATO bombs. It seems that the US invaded Afghanistan not to get rid of terrorism but to punish our people who were already suffering from three decades of war. . . . RAWA strongly believes that throwing more troops in will not solve the crisis of Afghanistan. It will even make the situation worse than before." -- Zoya Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:14:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/halper191109.html For all the risks it involves, a declaration of Palestinian statehood within the 1967 borders -- which would garner recognition from the vast majority of states in the world -- would seem a win-win proposition. At least it would break the vessels of an impotent, ineffective, and less-than-honest American-led "peace process" that is going nowhere -- indeed, can't go anywhere because it requires a level of assertiveness on Israel, perhaps even the imposition of a solution, that is completely lacking in either the American or European governments. . . . A unilateral declaration, if refused by the US with no prospect of genuine negotiations aimed at a Palestinian state in all the occupied territory within a strict time-line, would signal the definitive end of the two-state solution. At that point the Palestinians could unite on a program of a one-state solution, be it a democratic state of equal citizens or, more workable, a bi-national state. Crucial to this shift would be a vigorous Palestinian campaign showing that it was Israel that created a bi-national situation through its settlement project and Israel that eliminated the two-state solution, which the PLO had accepted way back in 1988. If Israel implements the steps it has threatened in response to a Palestinian declaration of independence -- in particular the annexation of Area C, some 60% of the West Bank containing the settlements -- the apartheid situation that emerges is clear and unacceptable even to the US and Europe. Israel has thereby torn the veil from the de facto apartheid that already exists and which Israel seeks to perpetuate. Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:07:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mackler191109.html Lynne Stewart in Jail! Protest Lynne Stewart's incarceration! San Francisco Federal Courthouse, 7th and Mission, SF, Monday, November 23, 5:00 pm. Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart, I just got off the phone with Lynne Stewart a few minutes ago, that is, late Wednesday (early Thursday, November 19, New York time). She bravely told me that she has been ordered to report to U.S. Federal Marshals to be imprisoned at 5 pm, Thursday, November 19. There will be a 4 pm NY rally of her supporters, who will escort her to the courthouse for imprisonment. In San Francisco, we will rally on Monday, Nov. 23 to protest Lynne's frame-up trial and imprisonment. Be there! (See above.) Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:11:00 EST http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/11/here-comes-flood.html A BBC poll finds that the majority of Britons favour spending cuts. In particular, given a choice between tax hikes and cuts to benefits, 59% favour cuts to benefits. There is no deficit crisis. There is absolutely no reason to cut public spending, and every reason why it would be a disaster when demand likely to be weak in the coming years. Nonetheless, both major parties are committed to this underlying assumption that public spending must be cut at some point to pay for the bankers' bailouts. Fundamentally, we have to persuade the organised working class that such cuts are unnecessary and that they can and should defeat any government that attempts to impose them. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/august181109.html It seems to be quite obvious that the people of Honduras are leaving behind pre-coup Honduras by developing serious discussion on how to concretely oppose the fraudulent elections and thus head towards the next step, the Constituent Assembly. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:08:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bunsis181109.html [I]t may be surprising to learn that faculty salaries are not a major component of the total costs at most universities. For instance, at my institution, Eastern Michigan University, faculty salaries make up only 24 percent of total expenses. So where is the money going? Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/baker181109.html Delinquencies hit another record in the third quarter of 2009. The 6.25 percent 60-day delinquency rate was 58 percent above the level for the third quarter of 2008. Even with a higher percentage of delinquent homeowners now benefiting from mortgage modifications, the foreclosure rate is still running at near record levels. With unemployment virtually certain to remain high well into next year, there is little prospect for any sizable drop in foreclosures. As a result, foreclosures will be putting homes on the market at an annual rate of close to 2 million. This is guaranteed to depress prices in a market with total demand of close to 5 million. In short, house prices will almost certainly resume their decline. The only questions are how soon and how fast. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/uc181109.html At their November 17-19 meeting the UC Regents will be voting on an additional 32% student fee increase. These proposed fees have already been pledged as collateral for $1.35 billion worth of new construction bonds despite an "extreme fiscal emergency." The Regents will also vote to lay off nearly 2,000 more workers, continue with furlough plans and cut classes and critical student services. The executive administration wants to convince us that their hands are tied by Sacramento, but we know the real crisis is one of priorities. During these days The University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) will be striking, the Coalition of University Employees (CUE) will be striking and we will be converging at UCLA and at UC Berkeley to confront the Regents and fight their austerity measures. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:21:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/safdari181109.html Iran has made a logical counter-offer: it offered to ship out its enriched uranium for a SIMULTANEOUS exchange of nuclear reactor fuel for their low-enriched uranium. The proponents of the deal in the West said that the original offer was a good deal because it amounted to a de facto recognition of Iran's right to enrich uranium (is it?) whilst also removing the low-enriched uranium that "could be" used to make bombs. The Iranian counter-offer still provides the same benefits to both sides, and should therefore be accepted by the West . . . if they were negotiating in good faith to start with. Which they weren't. They never planned on returning Iran's uranium in the form of nuclear fuel, and that's why they won't even consider Iran's counter-offer. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:15:00 EST http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/1109miller.html "We've never fretted over budget deficits, at least if they finance tax cuts to promote growth or spending to win a war. . . ." -- from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, 9/26/09 Big government bashers like the Journal editors would have you believe that the entire budget deficit was brought on by reckless government spending. That is hardly the case. The collapsing economy added more to the deficit from 2007 to 2009 than any other factor. As economic activity dried up, personal and corporate income tax revenues plummeted: this year government revenues will drop to 14.9% of GDP, their lowest level since 1950. Plus, the crashing economy automatically pushed government spending on unemployment insurance and food stamps up, further widening the deficit. Even the financial-sector bailout and the Obama stimulus package taken together did less to swell the deficit than the economic collapse did. . . . The CBO projected deficits will add $9 trillion in the next decade to the national debt, the cumulative amount of money the government will have borrowed to finance its annual deficits. That is another frightening number, but it too needs to be seen in context. For instance, publicly held federal-government debt will reach 67.8% of GDP in 2019, according to CBO projections. That number would be the largest ratio of debt to national output since 1952, but still not in the same ballpark as the 120% figure at the end of World War II. But absent the stimulus, the federal government would face yet larger deficits as the economy and federal tax revenues fell further. And unlike World War II spending that sparked a 20-year economic boom, a do-nothing strategy would be followed by a depression that would impose far greater costs than escalating government debt. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sb171109.html The Tehran station sent out propaganda guidelines to U.S. stations in "Karachi, New Delhi, Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, and Beirut that the Zahedi's government was the only legal one."280 Meanwhile, rumor spread that the coup was staged by Mosaddeq's government in order to give it a pretext to move against the Shah and abolish the monarchy. CIA agents put out a broadsheet that "documented" the rumor that Mosaddeq had arranged the coup to force out the Shah. Several of the paid newspapers, including Dad and Shahed, were put to the service of the new line of propaganda. On August 17, the opposition newspapers, including Dad and Shahed, publicized the CIA propaganda that the coup was Mosaddeq's plot to remove the Shah. Figure 5 is an image of the front page of the August 17th copy of Shahed, which was the official newspaper of the Zahmatkeshan Party (The "Toilers" Party). The headlines on this page read as follows: "Mosaddeq's coup d'etat show is still to continue," "The government's faked coup d'etat for changing the regime," "The horrific specter of bullying and communism haunts Iran," "To complete Mosaddeq's coup d'etat [i.e., the referendum to dissolve the Majlis], they brought about this coup d'etat. Our party opposes any coup d'etat against the constitutional parliamentary regime," "A puppet show: How the coup d'etat plot was revealed," and "People! Don't you be fooled. The coup d'etat is the second stage of the referendum comedy."281 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:37:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/white171109.html Meanwhile, our theatre company was moving from strength to strength. Imagine our giddy state when we were invited to perform in New York. This we did, over midterm recess and all was well until we received reviews in The Village Voice. One day, I was called in Robert Brustein's office. I entered certain that we would be congratulated on our success. Surprisingly there were no handshakes, no smiles, only icy silence. I remember mostly the table. Why the table? Because seated at this table were a group of trustees. They seemed to be portraits that had somehow managed to step down from their resting places on the university walls and come alive. These elderly bodies clothed in tweeds all sat silently staring and fixed their gaze on one object: me. "How dare you. How dare you form a company and call yourselves the Yale Black Players. There is no such thing. Who gave you permission?" Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:20:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yami171109.html While UN agencies are facing tough resistance to their technical role in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the people in Nepal welcome them for their broader outlook to bring peace and stability. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/nelson171109.html This morning at 7:45 I was on the University of Illinois campus for a graduate student employee rally. After a bargaining update, we moved in groups to begin picketing key campus buildings. The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was going on strike after contract negotiations with the university administration had broken down. The one remaining issue was the university's refusal to sign a statement assuring that the current system of tuition and fee waivers would remain in place. Given that the administration had already eliminated them for research assistants in the sciences, there was good reason to fear administration interest in cherry picking humanities or social science sub-disciplines for similar treatment. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/naiman161109.html While former Illinois Senator Barack Obama mulls flushing another $40 billion a year in our tax dollars down the toilet in Afghanistan -- that's the estimated annual cost of sending 40,000 more troops for the next several years -- graduate employees at the University of Illinois, a "land grant" public institution, are going on strike at 8 AM this morning Chicago time to protect their ability to complete their education, against threats from the University administration to withdraw tuition waivers from graduate employees. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:58:00 EST http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley/Working_Papers_PDF/moneyintro.pdf In order to provide a more complete and up-to-date appraisal of Marx's theory of money, I organized a small working conference in August 2003, at Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts, USA), and invited the members of the International Symposium of Marxian Theory (which I organized in 1991, and which has met annually since then) and also some of the leading specialists around the world on Marx's theory of money to participate in this conference (please see the list of participants). As will be apparent from the papers, this group of authors is far from a monolithic group. There are significant disagreements among the authors about Marx's theory of money, both about the nature of the theory and about the validity of the theory. Some authors think that the standard interpretation of Marx's theory of money presented above is a misinterpretation. But they all agree that money is extremely important in Marx's theory, and that Marx's theory is the most promising basis (in some cases in combination with other theories), on which to develop a theory of money that will explain the important monetary phenomena in contemporary capitalism, and is certainly a more promising basis than either neoclassical theory or Sraffian theory. In my letter of invitation to the conference participants, I requested that their papers address one or more of the following important questions related to Marx's theory of money.: (1) Does money have to be commodity money in Marx's theory? (2) Is there any sense in which money is a commodity today? (3) If money is not a commodity, how is the value of money or its inverse the "monetary expression of labour time" determined? (4) Are there logical problems in Marx's derivation of money in Section 3 of Chapter 1 as the necessary form of appearance of abstract labor? (5) Is Marx's critique of the quantity theory of money valid? (6) Are there logical problems related to money in Marx's theory of prices of production in Part 2 of Volume 3? (7) What are the main tasks for the further development of Marx's theory of money? (8) What are additional critiques of and alternatives to Marx's theory of money? The papers collected in this volume were first presented at this conference and have been revised subsequently to take into account the discussions at the conference. . . . In terms of future research, I would suggest that the most urgent task is to develop further a theory of pure credit money (without commodity backing), based on Marx's theory, in a way that is consistent with Marx's labour theory of value and surplus labor theory of surplus-value. Promising beginnings of this important task have been made by several of the authors in this book and by others (e.g. Lipietz 1982, Gannsmann 1998). But much work remains to be done. Most importantly, there needs to be an explanation of the determination of the value of money or the MELT in the case of non-commodity money. This key component of Marx's theory of value and surplus-value should not be "left hanging theoretically". Relatedly, what is the relation between the quantity of money and the sum of prices in the case of pure credit money: does the quantity of money determine prices or do prices determined the quantity of money? Further, what are the different forms of credit money, and what determines the quantity of each of these different forms? These are some of the important questions that should be explored in the further development of a Marxian theory of credit money. Campbell suggests in her paper that Marx's analysis of the function of means of payment provides the beginnings of a Marxian theory of credit money. Post-Keynesian theories of money emphasize credit money as the dominant form of money in capitalism, and therefore these theories should be studied and explored for possible intersections. It is hoped that the papers in this volume will stimulate further research along these lines and will contribute to the further development of Marxian theories of money for the 21st century. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:07:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/amr161109.html Even among our friends there have been some who believed that the UCPN(M), having led a successful revolutionary war, had nonetheless settled for this fraud through a mistaken understanding of the "theory of stages" in revolutionary development. But as the last six months have shown, the UCPN(M), beyond dispute now the dominant mass force throughout Nepal, have used events for political education to deepen their presence. The next revolutionary advance -- toward a new democracy in which the majority actually rules -- requires that the class essence of the bourgeois democratic parties (and the version of "democracy" as advocated by their advisers from the United States and India) be understood by the entire leading elements of the working people of Nepal and not only party theoreticians. And this task is now successfully underway. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:19:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/jackson161109.html This battle will, of course, be fought by right wing (and perhaps not so right wing) governments in the name of 'fiscal responsibility,' and justified with reference to the imperative need for 'exit strategies' from the Great Recession deficits and debt accumulation. The International Monetary Fund staff recently (November 3, 2009) put out a report on fiscal sustainability which attracted some media attention and painted a rather grim outlook for the advanced industrial countries, calculating that the primary budget balance will have to be increased by a hefty eight percentage points of GDP from 2010 levels to bring government debt down to a tolerable 60% of GDP by 2030. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:02:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/peterson161109.html Top-down "reforms" are cycled through our district more rapidly than the superintendents themselves, and it's rare that teachers and parents are genuinely involved in the creation of such initiatives. In the last decade people who have promoted top-down school "reform" initiatives -- such as No Child Left Behind -- are some of the very people who have pushed for top-down approaches to district governance: state takeovers or imposition of mayoral control. State takeovers of the Newark, Philadelphia, Oakland, and St. Louis schools were followed by significant privatization and charter attempts, as were mayoral takeovers in Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., and Chicago. President Obama's appointment of former CEO of Chicago's schools Arne Duncan as secretary of education signaled that many people in power see the all-powerful superintendent as a central ingredient in solving the urban school problems. Duncan told the Associated Press that "he will have failed" if he hasn't significantly increased mayoral control of school districts. . . . Recently I decided to search for an antidote to this nonsense. I wanted something that didn't just highlight outstanding teaching, but offered an alternative on a districtwide level. I found it hidden in my crammed bookshelf: Education and Democracy: Paulo Freire, Social Movements and Educational Reform in São Paulo by Maria Del Pilar O'Cadiz, Pia Lindquist Wong, and Carlos Alberto Torres. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:18:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/shamir161109.html I first had the idea to make a film about anti-Semitism when my earlier work Checkpoint was released. In one of that film's many reviews, I was called "the Israeli Mel Gibson," not because of my good looks, but because the views I had expressed, critical of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, indicated that I was anti-Semitic. The author of that review was Jewish himself. At first I thought it was amusing. Being called an anti-Semite by an American Jewish reporter seemed completely farfetched. How could someone who chooses to live outside of Israel, who did not do military service like me, who did not lose a grandfather in the war like me, have the nerve to call me an anti-Semite? Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:34:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/laz151109.html Laz (Humberto Lázaro Miranda Ramírez) is a Cuban cartoonist. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:46:00 EST http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne211109i_am.asp We've made the people aware of the State's real face, told them how rich people live and what they're deprived of. In many of these areas the tendu leaf rate used to be one rupee for 1,000 leaves. We got it hiked to 50 paise per leaf in three districts of Maharashtra, five districts of AP and the entire Bastar region. Bamboo was sold to paper mills at 50 paise per bundle. Now the rate is Rs 55. But these victories came after we faced State resistance and brutality. In Gadchiroli alone, they killed 60 people on our side, we killed five. The CPI(Maoist) also sends medical help to 1,200 villages in India almost daily. In Bastar, our foot soldiers are proficient doctors, wearing aprons, working as midwives in the jungles. We don't give them arms. We have 50 such mobile health teams and 100 mobile hospitals in Bastar itself. Villagers go to designated people for specific illnesses: for fever go to Issa, for dysentery to Ramu and so on. There is so much illness in these areas that there are not enough people to pick up the dead bodies. We give free medicines to doctors for distribution among the people. The government doesn't know that the medicines come from their own hospitals. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:39:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/maanaki151109.html This urgently needed book is an investigation of Egyptian theatre through the works of the preeminent Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag (1929-2005), during the turbulent period of the sixties and seventies, when Egyptian society was undergoing great political turmoil and drastic social change. Alfred Farag is regarded among the foremost Egyptian playwrights in the post-1952 revolution period. He played a major role in disseminating and popularizing theatrical performances across urban as well as rural Egypt. In addition to writing more than thirty plays in both classical and colloquial Arabic, Farag was also a theatre practitioner who was involved in theatrical troupe formations, and, unlike his contemporary Arab playwrights, he had a strong sense of the role of the stage in shaping all aspects of his drama, especially the characters' dialogues and monologues. Dina Amin takes a historiographic turn in her examination of Farag's works by focusing on the poetics of dramatic texts, especially his use of metadrama as a literary tool to disguise his commentary and criticism of both the Nasser and Sadat eras. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:31:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/courtice151109.html I read volume 1 of Marx's Capital while working on a production line in a food factory. I don't mean I read it during my tea breaks, I read it while "working" on the line. I had an injury and was doing a 'quality control' job which entailed sitting next to a conveyor watching thousands and thousands of pies streaming past like a river -- and removing any damaged ones. This job seemed to typify 'light duties' in that it is mind-numbing and a travesty of Occupational Health and Safety principles of getting people back to work: rather than rehabilitation, the effect is to bore you until you beg to go back to the old job, or just quit. But I digress. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:55:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cair151109.html The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed concern about the government's move to seize mosques in New York, Maryland, California, and Texas. Officials accuse the foundation that owns the mosques of being tied to the Iranian government. SEE: Feds Move to Seize 4 Mosques (AP). CAIR said the unprecedented move by the government may have First Amendment implications for the American Muslim community. "Whatever the details of the government's case against the owners of the mosques, as a civil rights organization we are concerned that the seizure of American houses of worship could have a chilling effect on the religious freedom of citizens of all faiths and may send a negative message to Muslims worldwide," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:08:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/kuzmarov141109.html As U.S. troops continue to slug it out in these violent conflicts with seemingly no end in sight, Alfred W. McCoy has published an important new book, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State, which provides a historical corrective to the flawed analysis and hubris of the war hawks. He lays bare the coercive and fundamentally illiberal consequences of U.S. imperial influence in the Philippines during the first half of the 20th century, which set a precedent for more recent interventions. McCoy chronicles how the United States developed a coercive policing apparatus to ensure colonial domination, incorporating a mixture of covert penetration and violence to gradually subdue remnants of the nationalist resistance. Over time, the United States-created constabulary endured as a pivotal mechanism of state power and control and contributed to a legacy of political authoritarianism and repression which has persisted through the present. Many of the secret police methods furthermore were appropriated back to the United States and paved the way for the creation of a formidable surveillance apparatus during the era of the first red scare. In this respect, individual civil liberties and democracy were severely impeded by imperial expansion -- a fact evident today with the passage of the USA Patriot Act. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/weisbrot141109.html Is this threat of a Chinese sell-off of longer-term U.S. treasuries something that we should worry about? Not really. First, the Chinese government does not want to hurt the U.S. economy, which still absorbs about 20 percent of Chinese exports. One reason that they have accumulated long-term Treasuries was to help push down long-term rates in the U.S., to support growth and demand for their exports during the 2001-2007 expansion in the U.S. (Some economists have even tried to blame the Chinese for the housing bubble, since these purchases helped push mortgage rates down during the bubble years. But the housing bubble was, even more than the overvalued dollar, a result of deliberate U.S. policy.) Second, the Fed can counter-act unwanted increases in long-term treasury and mortgage rates, as it has already done during this recession. Deficit hawks and other fear-mongers in the U.S. have also used the Chinese accumulation of U.S. debt as another weapon to try and persuade people that we must sacrifice growth and employment during a deep recession, in order to avoid further debt accumulation. This, too, is a dangerous misconception. Unfortunately our economic problems are made in the United States, and it is here in Washington that they will need to be fixed. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:12:00 EST http://bit.ly/27MNDS In what follows, I will trace the historical and social origins of the deepening dependence of China and East Asia on the consumer markets of the global North as the source of their growth, and on us financial vehicles as the store of value for their savings. I then assess the longer-term possibilities for ending this dependence, arguing that, to create a more autonomous economic order in Asia, China would have to transform an export-oriented growth model -- which has mostly benefited, and been perpetuated by, vested interests in the coastal export sectors -- into one driven by domestic consumption, through a large-scale redistribution of income to the rural-agricultural sector. This will not be possible, however, without breaking the coastal urban elite's grip on power. . . . Even if the yuan appreciated by 20-30 per cent relative to the dollar -- as many American critics of China's currency manipulation advocate -- Chinese wages would still be significantly lower. Second, an unlimited supply of labour is not a natural phenomenon given by China's population structure, as is so often assumed. Rather, it is a consequence of the government's rural-agricultural policies which, intentionally or unintentionally, bankrupt the countryside and generate a continuous rural exodus. . . . A recent study has found that there was a sustained and increasing net transfer of resources from the rural-agricultural to the urban-industrial sector between 1978 and 2000, both through fiscal policy (via taxation and government spending) and the financial system (via savings deposits and loans). . . . As Figure 7 (below) shows, from the late 1990s onwards total wages declined as a share of GDP, in tandem with a fall in private consumption. These two downward trends contrast starkly with the mounting scale of corporate profits. Although consumption has been rising in absolute terms, it has grown far more slowly than investment (see Figure 8, below). . . . In an attempt to initiate a rebalancing of China's development -- characterized by Premier Wen Jiabao in 2007 as 'unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable' -- the central government under Hu Jintao and his 'populist' allies had tried from 2005 to fuel domestic consumption by boosting the disposable income of peasants and urban workers. The first wave of such initiatives included the abolition of agricultural taxes and a rise in government procurement prices for agricultural products. Though these measures to raise rural living standards were no more than a small step in the right direction, their effect was instantaneous. Slightly improved conditions in the rural-agricultural sector slowed the flow of migration to the cities, and a sudden labour shortage and wage hike in the coastal export-processing zones ensued, inducing many economists to declare that the Lewisian Turning Point -- at which rural surplus labour has been exhausted -- had finally arrived. . . . [N]o more than 20 per cent of the stimulus package was in fact allocated to social spending. . . hile the heavy urban bias of fixed-asset investment continued, the urban–rural gap in income growth, which narrowed after 2005, widened again under the stimulus. This has put a brake on the relative rise in rural living standards since 2005, which had helped fuel modest growth in domestic consumption. . . . The government is also very aware of the need to reduce the country's export dependence and stimulate the growth of domestic demand by increasing the working classes' disposable income. Such a redirection of priorities has to involve moving resources and policy preferences away from the coastal cities to the rural hinterland, where protracted social marginalization and underconsumption have left ample room for improvement. But the vested interests that have taken root over several decades of export-led development make this a daunting task. Officials and entrepreneurs from the coastal provinces, who have become a powerful group capable of shaping the formation and implementation of central government policies, are so far adamant in their resistance to any such reorientation. This dominant faction of China's elite, as exporters and creditors to the world economy, has established a symbiotic relation with the American ruling class, which has striven to maintain its domestic hegemony by securing the living standards of us citizens, as consumers and debtors to the world. . . . Unless there is a fundamental political realignment that shifts the balance of power from the coastal urban elite to forces that represent rural grassroots interests, China is likely to continue leading other Asian exporters in diligently serving—and being held hostage by—the us. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pollin141109.html Prabhat Patnaik begins with a critique of monetarist monetary theory, which draws on Marx and Keynes in interesting ways. But he also advances a critique of Marx and Keynes themselves, centred on an analysis of colonialism and imperialism in the operations of advanced capitalist economies. In this ladder theme, Patnaik builds from the original contributions of Rosa Luxemburg, where Luxemburg had explained how pre-capitalist economies provide new markets to purchase the excess supply of products produced within the advanced capitalist economies. The Value of Money concludes by arguing that the United States (US) needs to control the world's supplies of oil in order for the dollar to maintain its preeminence in global financial markets. By this point, Patnaik has connected abstract discussions on the theory of money with the US invasion of Iraq. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:41:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/naiman141109.html Is it just me, or is the pontification of Western leaders about corruption in Afghanistan growing rather tiresome? There is something very Captain Renault about it. . . . US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts in Afghanistan consists of protection payments to insurgents, Aram Roston reports in The Nation. In southern Afghanistan -- where General McChrystal wants to send more troops -- security firms can't physically protect convoys of American military supplies. There's no practical way to move the supplies without paying the Taliban. So, like Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22, we're supplying both sides of the war. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the nearly $30 billion in international aid to Afghanistan has been routed through foreign consultants, companies, and organizations hired by the US government and its allies, Farah Stockman reports in the Boston Globe. Afghan officials complain that American civilian advisers are often overpaid, underqualified, and unfamiliar with the culture of the country. A typical US adviser earns about $500 per day -- several times what the average Afghan earns in a month, Stockman notes. That's about $125,000 a year -- not a bad chunk of change, even by U.S. standards. It's more than the household income of about 85% of American families. The total cost of such an adviser, including security and accommodations (note that most people -- in Afghanistan, like the U.S. -- have to pay for their own accommodations out of their salaries or wages), is about $500,000 a year. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:01:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/latuff131109.html Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:29:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cockcroft131109.html Mexico City is being shaken by an angry popular response to President Calderón's sending of army troops and federal police on October 10 to seize the para-state enterprise "Luz y Fuerza del Centro" (LFC), responsible for central Mexico's complex electrical grid. The swift midnight action, aimed at destroying the independent electrical workers' union (SME), for 95 years organized labor's most consistent independent force for democracy and workers' rights, instantly laid off more than 44,000 workers in a single blow. It thereby advanced the privatization of Mexico's lucrative energy sector, as well as its extensive fiber optic network to be sold to national and foreign telecommunications monopolies. . . . In this turbulent atmosphere, marked by frequent blackouts because of scabs' inability to run the CFE grid, the International Tribunal conducted its hearings. Its short but hard hitting preliminary report said the Tribunal was "surprised and even scandalized by the gravity of [labor law] violations and violence taking place against Mexican workers." Noting violations of the ILO's conventions 87 and 98, the Mexican Constitution's Article 123, and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights' guarantees of workers' rights to a job, to organize unions, and to negotiate collective contracts, it stated: "Even more we are deeply concerned about the violation of civil and human rights accompanying the violation of trade union freedom." It concluded that in Mexico there existed a "rupture in the rule of law" and an "institutionalization of violence against autonomous workers' movements . . . including the criminalization of social protests and their leaders." Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:57:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/napoletano131109.html The U.S. Senate, perhaps waiting to see what type of fallout the House Resolution generates, has not yet issued its statement condemning the Goldstone Report. The Obama administration has also not yet commented on the Resolution, although the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations naturally voted against considering the Report in the General Assembly. Coincidentally, it is the United States' ongoing unconditional political and military backing of Israel that the Goldstone Report completely overlooks. While the House was quick to complain that the Report failed to investigate the role that the Syrian and Iranian governments purportedly played in arming Hamas and other militants, it forgot to praise the Report for overlooking the fact that it was the U.S. government who supplied Israeli forces with much of the military hardware, including the white phosphorus artillery rounds, that was used against civilians. This is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the Mission, as U.S. aid has been instrumental in perpetuating the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the slaughter of the Palestinian people. Perhaps the House can take some small comfort in the fact that the $30 billion in military aid that Israel is receiving from the U.S. over the next several years has thus far gone unmentioned. On the other hand, the General Assembly is not subject to the same unilateral vetoes that the Security Council is, and human rights organizations have already raised the issue of foreign weapons supplies to Israel and Palestine and called on the United States to suspend the delivery of further military supplies to Israel. Already isolated by their stances on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and recent U.S. military adventures, both the U.S. and Israeli government may soon find themselves facing increased pressure from the international community and their own citizens to respect the rule of international law and human rights. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:32:00 EST http://www.oneworld-publications.com/pdfs/feminism_in_islam.pdf At the outset it should be made clear – as history and empirical research attest – that the feminisms Muslim women have created are feminisms of their own. They were not "Western;" they are not derivative. Religion from the very start has been integral to the feminisms that Muslim women have constructed, both explicitly and implicitly, whether they have been called "secular feminism" or "Islamic feminism." This is in contrast to feminisms in the West, which have been largely secular enterprises in the sense of being typically articulated outside religious frameworks. Yet those Westerners who believe secularism -- in the sense of moving beyond religion, or even assuming an anti-religious stance -- to be a sine qua non of feminism forget the role religion has played in their own feminisms. To cite American experience, they ignore their forebears who produced the Woman's Bible in the mid-nineteenth century and the Jewish and Christian religious studies scholars who created women's liberation theology in the late twentieth century. In the main, however, feminism in the West has been cast within a secular framework and has neither explicitly invoked religious principles nor looked to religion for support or legitimacy. In chapter 9, I point to the basic differences between feminisms produced in Muslim societies, where religion saturates the broader culture, and those in contemporary Western societies, where religion has been experienced differently and is often more compartmentalized. I note that Islamic feminism speaks, actually or potentially, to society at large, while Christian and Jewish liberation theology is a form of feminism that for the most part speaks to the concerns of the few. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:48:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/peterson121109.html The End of Poverty? is a kind of bookend to Capitalism: A Love Story: if Michael Moore's movie examines how private enterprise operates at home, writer/director Philippe Diaz 's documentary explores what happens when that economic system is exported to the Third World. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:44:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/peterson121109.html After spending an extended period reaching out to the community across the nation, the Maoists have now launched a new mass movement to protect the revolutionary process. Within the Assembly, they have blocked the new budget, until such a time when civilian supremacy has been assured. The ministries have now already run out of funding and the state is crawling to a stop for lack of resources. Outside of the Assembly, people are pouring into the streets. Already there have been blockades and occupations of different local administration offices across the country. In some areas there are reports of alternative local administrations being established. The protests will climax with a blockade of Kathmandu and the seat of government, Singha Durbar. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mink121109.html The good parts of the bills -- eg, no exclusions for pre-existing conditions -- can be legislated separately. It makes no sense to authorize massive government income transfers to for-profit insurance companies. The structure of the current legislation, from abortion through the public option, will deepen inequalities in health coverage and provision, notwithstanding the extension of coverage to many who currently are uninsured. Enough pussyfooting in the White House and horse-trading in Congress. Back to the drawing boards -- this time Medicare for All. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/naiman121109.html Recent press speculation suggests at least even odds that, sometime in November, President Obama will give a speech announcing that he intends to send tens of thousands of more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010. . . . If people in a hundred cities and towns across America announced in advance that on the day of the President's speech, they will organize a local demonstration at their Representative's office or some other convenient location, and that they will reach out to local news media to communicate that, in order to try to get reports of their local demonstration into local media into the same news cycle as the President's speech, might that make a difference to the President's decision? . . . Unfortunately, the peace movement in the United States as it exists at this exact historical moment does not have the infrastructure and ability to call demonstrations in 100 cities. But, to paraphrase a notorious American, "you oppose war with the peace movement you have, not the peace movement you wish you had or might like to have in the future." Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wallerstein121109.html The world revolution of 1968 was an enormous political success. The world revolution of 1968 was an enormous political failure. It rose like a phoenix, burned very bright indeed across the globe, and then by the mid-1970s seemed to be extinguished almost everywhere. What had been accomplished by this wild brushfire? Actually, quite a bit. Centrist liberalism had been dethroned as the governing ideology of the world-system. It was reduced to being simply one alternative among others. And the Old Left movements were destroyed as mobilizers of any kind of fundamental change. But the immediate triumphalism of the revolutionaries of 1968, liberated from any subordination to centrist liberalism, proved shallow and unsustainable. The world right was equally liberated from any attachment to centrist liberalism. It took advantage of the world economic stagnation and the collapse of the Old Left movements (and their governments) to launch a counter-offensive, which we call neoliberal (actually quite conservative) globalization. The prime objectives were to reverse all the gains of the lower strata during the Kondratieff A-period. The world right sought to reduce all the major costs of production, to destroy the welfare state in all its versions, and to slow down the decline of U.S. power in the world- system. The onward march of the world right seemed to culminate in 1989. The ending of Soviet control over its East-Central European satellite states and the dismantling of the Soviet Union itself led to a sudden new triumphalism of the world right. One more illusion! The offensive of the world right was a great success. The offensive of the world right was a great failure. What was sustaining the accumulation of capital since the 1970s was the turning from seeking profits via productive efficiency to seeking profits via financial manipulations, more correctly called speculation. The key mechanism of speculation is encouraging consumption via indebtedness. This was of course what has happened in every Kondratieff B-period. The difference this time has been the scale of the speculation and the indebtedness. After the biggest A-period expansion in the history of the capitalist world-economy, there has followed the biggest speculative mania. The bubbles moved through the whole world-system -- from the national debts of the Third World countries and the socialist bloc in the 1970s, to the junk bonds of large corporations in the 1980s, to the consumer indebtedness of the 1990s to the U.S. government indebtedness of the Bush era. The system has gone from bubble to bubble. The world is currently trying one last bubble -- the bailouts of the banks and the printing of dollars. . . . Finally, we must run like the plague from any sense that history is on our side, that the good society is certain to come, if only x or y. History is on no one's side. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:12:00 EST http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/atkinson-piketty-saezNBER09topincomes.pdf Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the 20th century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate post war decades. However, over the last 30 years, top income shares have increased substantially in English-speaking countries and in India and China but not in continental European countries or Japan. This increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes. As a result, wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past. . . . Today there is much interest in looking back to the Great Depression. What were the distributional consequences of major recession? Was it bad for top income shares? Among the thirteen countries for which we have data, the period 1928– 31(2) saw a rise in top shares in Canada (top 1 per cent), India, Indonesia, and Ireland, and no change in Finland and Germany. The remaining seven all saw top shares reduced. The top 0.1 per cent lost a fifth or more of their income share in Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. In many countries, therefore, the depression reduced inequality at the top. . . . 1929, like 2008, combined the onset of a wide recession with a financial crisis. What can we say about the latter from other episodes of financial crisis? In the case of Norway, there are grounds for believing that the Kristiania crash in 1899 led to a fall on top income shares (Aaberge and Atkinson, 2010). Much more recently, however, the Norwegian banking crisis of 1988–92 does not appear to have led to a fall in top shares, although it may have postponed the increases associated with financial market liberalization. It is possible that today’s financial crises are different from those in the past in their distributional consequences. In the case of Singapore, top income shares rose following the financial crisis of 1996–7, even if they have fallen back to some extent subsequently. In Indonesia (Leigh and van der Eng, 2008), there are some similarities. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:03:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/shirazi121109.html With the passing of H.Res.867, two days after what would have been Edward Said's 74th birthday, Congress made perfectly clear that it not only seeks to deny and suppress the truth, but is itself, in the words of its own resolution, "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy." Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ezcurra111109.html . . . toward the Grand Prize Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:24:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilayto111109.html At first glance, it might look like the Obama administration is reinforcing its stated goal of pursuing dialogue over confrontation. On second glance, not so much. Ross already had been moved to the White House, where, as a member of the National Security Council, he serves as special assistant to President Obama on the issue of Iran. So Ross is still a major player, at least as well positioned as Limbert. And just before his new appointment, he co-authored a book that described negotiations with Iran as necessary in order to win over public opinion to supporting more sanctions and even possible military action. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:50:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/foster111109.html The real danger today is not so much a deep depression, as economic stagnation (long-term slow growth) plus financialization/financial instabilty. . . . Historically, such bubbles have normally occurred at the peak of the business cycle. But beginning in the 1980s, especially, they seemed to feed on stagnation, or the slowdown of the economy, generating a continual trend toward financialization. This therefore constituted a new reality. . . . This is a failed economy, judged from the standpoint of the rational use of resources and the meeting of human needs. . . . The kind of massive ecological revolution we need to deal with the climate problem would take us in the direction of socialism and popular mobilization, involving transformations in our whole way of life. It requires planned public investment, not anarchic private investment. It is therefore blocked from above at every turn. I should mention, of course, that, where genuine ecological problems are concerned, the main issue is not promoting economic growth. From a radical ecological perspective the issue is sustainability, which is inconsistent with the promotion of a perpetual growth machine -- alternative energy notwithstanding. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/grossman111109.html "Not everybody is happy about what happened after the Wall went down. In fact, it's often referred to in East Germany not as German reunification but as West German annexation or even colonization, because the economy in East Germany took a nosedive after the two joined, the East and the West joined -- a terrible nosedive, which is still happening." -- Victor Grossman Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/napoletano111109.html As financial concerns continue to hang over the nation's campuses like storm clouds, the ability of private interests to mobilize large numbers of alumni and donors could significantly increase their influence over the Academy. At Purdue University, the right has traditionally dominated the struggle over academic freedom. The faculty and students have won a small degree of autonomy, but economics still trumps education, what freedom does exist is under constant siege by reactionaries, and the corporate media remains at the disposal of the right. These features are evident in the ways that visits by two nationally-recognized guest speakers were handled by the University and by the press. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:20:00 EST http://mondediplo.com/2009/11/02pakistan With the inducement of aid dollars, Pakistan with its poorly equipped army is trying to achieve what the US and Nato have failed to accomplish in Afghanistan. But the longer the military operations continue the more regions are likely to slip from under its control as the numbers of the aggrieved multiply, the military stretches thin and vulnerabilities increase. Already the insurgency has spread to parts of Punjab. Yet a form of military metaphysics prevails among the Pakistani elite and western commentators, who continue to hope that militancy can be bombed out of existence. Anti-war voices are denounced as Taliban sympathisers. Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:51:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dc111109.html "When you look at conflict zones, in all conflict zones, you see that the more militarized our spaces and our places, the more violence against women increases. . . . This constant anxiety and uncertainty, living in constant uncertainty changes the entire life, especially of a woman. . . . Domestic violence increases, patriarchal, masculine violence increases, economic violence against women increases. Health conditions – this is another kind of violence that increases. The issue of education -- when you are really affecting women's choices, women's access to education, women's abilities to develop, you are affecting everything. There is a kind of necropolitics: Israel is controlling life and death. . . . The issue of housing demolitions. Have you ever looked at the way such demolitions are affecting women's lives, women's bodies, women's abilities to develop? The attack on the Palestinian home is something that did not start today, but the attack on the Palestinian home is so open today -- when you hit the home, you change the entire social fabric, you change the entire relationship of the entire family. You change the interaction, you change children's perception towards the parents, you change the relationship between the father and the mother, and definitely you change women's status. . . . When there is no legal system, there is no system of social control, women are in jeopardy. Vulnerable groups are always in jeopardy. We are not just talking about domestic violence. You look at vulnerable groups such as the elderly, kids that have special needs, all those groups, the marginalized groups, are really in jeopardy, under the conditions that are all militarized and all violated. . . . If you look at the extended family, the extended family used to be social support to a woman in case of violence against her. Today there is no access to the extended family. So, if a woman who lives for example in Bitunia cannot reach her parents in Ramallah, or cannot reach her parents in Jerusalem, how is she going to get support? How? If the state system is not functioning, and the family system is not functioning, and the informal system is not functioning, who could prevent abusers from further abusing women? Nobody. What we are doing is not only not helping women -- we are encouraging abusers because we are telling them, well, you could do whatever you want. There's no police, there's no court system, there's no family to ask for help, there's no place to go. This is the kind of trap that I'm saying definitely encourages patriarchal power holders to feel more empowered. . . . You are constantly reminded that you are persona non grata. They are controlling who should live, who should die, how should we live, and whether, at all, to exist. . . . I know my daily fight is not really helping, but fight we must." -- Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Women's Studies Project Director at Mada al-Carmel and author of Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:57:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/izadi101109.html This dissertation is an in-depth study of the structures, actors, and policy communities associated with U.S. public diplomacy toward Iran. Since 2006, the U.S. government has spent more than $200 million for its Iran-related public diplomacy via State Department "democracy promotion" programs, National Endowment for Democracy, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. These initiatives promoted regime change in Iran, ignoring a substantial majority of Iran's population opposed to U.S.-sponsored interventions. The study finds U.S. public diplomacy as it relates to Iran fits with the two-way asymmetrical model of public relations. The dissertation identifies 182 individuals who participated in the Iran policy debate between January 2008 and January 2009. Based on the policy recommendations these members of the Iran issue network propose, the study uncovers the existence of the following four policy communities: Punitive Nonengagement, Hawkish Engagement, Strategic Engagement, and Fundamental Change. While regime change is the ultimate objective of both the Punitive Nonengagement and the Hawkish Engagement policy communities, only the latter believes that negotiation is a useful tactic in gaining compliance from Iran. Both, however, view Iran as a major threat to U.S. and Israeli interests and see no role for Iran in solving regional challenges. The Strategic Engagement policy community does not share this abysmal appraisal of Iran; rather, its members see meaningful cooperation between the United States and Iran on key regional issues as viable if their relationship is based on mutual respect. The Fundamental Change policy community finds the underlying assumptions of U.S. Iran policy vitally flawed and believes that all policy options short of an overhaul of U.S. international behavior lack ethical and legal legitimacy. Both the Strategic Engagement and Fundamental Change policy communities argue America should cease its pursuit of regime change in Iran and abide by its obligations under the Algiers Accord. Public diplomacy recommendations proposed by the Punitive Nonengagement and the Hawkish Engagement communities correlate with policies adopted by the Bush administration, with those of the former doing so more readily. The Obama administration is expected to adopt policies resembling the recommendations of the Hawkish Engagement policy community. . . . As Figure 2 shows, while none of these categories command the support of the majority of the overall issue network, a large plurality of the experts give recommendations denoting Hawkish Engagement (83 individuals -- or about 46 percent) and Strategic Engagement (56 individuals – or about 31 percent) categories. Another 33 individuals in the Iran issue network (about 18 percent) believe that punitive nonengagement is the best strategy, while only 10 (about 5 percent) think that there is a need for a fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy, in general, and U.S. policy toward Iran, in particular. Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:50:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pnevmonidou101109.html As is well known, the so-called gender contract of the GDR espoused the ideal of the working mother. Official propaganda claimed that the GDR was a fully emancipated country, in which women were an active and productive force in the public sphere. Due to social support structures such as universal daycare, workers' collectives, and others, in the year of reunification, a little over 91% of East German women were employed, compared to merely 58% of West German women. Additionally, East German women were highly skilled and had made significant inroads into the traditional male sectors of the labor market, especially compared to West German women. The socioeconomic picture supported the value system that did not view the man as the principal breadwinner and did not consider marriage and the nuclear family to be the only acceptable norm for gender relations. By comparison, in the West, daycare spots were scarce, and the labor and family legislation was far from progressive. Accordingly, West German men and women considered the man to be the principal breadwinner, and women struggled to reconcile motherhood and careers, often accepting significant professional setbacks such as pay cuts, shift to part-time employment, and even job loss. The reunification, therefore, was not only a shock to East German women because they had to adapt to this system; but the shock was further amplified by the economic devastation that occurred in the process of East-West integration, from which many Eastern regions, with unemployment numbers well into double digits, still don't seem to have recovered. So, where are we, twenty years later? East German women are adapting increasingly better to the Western system. So, the disparity is diminishing between East and West German women. But this only means that East German women have joined their Western counterparts in the struggle to reconcile motherhood and careers, by either opting to delay motherhood for the sake of a career, thus making significant contributions to the low fertility rate in Germany, or by accepting professional setbacks. According to a recent study from May 2009, despite its now much more progressive labor and family legislation, Germany still lies far behind such countries as Great Britain and the US, not to mention the Scandinavian countries, in providing women with the social support structures that would enable them to harmonize the two life spheres. Thus, according to the recent figures from the Statistisches Bundesamt [Federal Statistics Office], female employment has only improved by a small margin since reunification, from 58 to 62%. There still is a significant wage disparity between men and women. And, for many women, motherhood still comes at a comparatively high professional cost. Thus a long road still lies ahead for East and West German women alike. So, they have a unified struggle at any rate. Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:08:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/grossman101109.html For freedoms won, however, there have been freedoms lost. In the GDR, according to one bon mot, you were wise not to criticize Honecker and other government or party big shots, but you could say whatever you wanted against your foreman, the manager, the factory director. Today, it was found, this was reversed. People were fired for rejecting unpaid overtime, for asking what a colleague earned, for simply being suspected of eating a company-owned roll or forgetting to turn in a 13 cent coupon. Beggars, the homeless, patrons of free food outlets, people with untreated tooth gaps -- all unknown in GDR days -- are now taken for granted. So are towns with closed factories and a population of pensioners, with most young people off somewhere far away hunting jobs. Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:17:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bunglawala101109.html Just over two years ago, I wrote an article for Cif commending the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) for publicly backing new sexual orientation regulations that had just come into effect as part of the Equality Act 2006. The Equality Act brought the goal of a fairer society closer by proscribing -- for the first time -- discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of religious belief or sexuality. . . . Would it not be another positive step if the MCB -- as a broad-based umbrella organisation -- were to include a gay Muslim support group as an affiliate? Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:07:00 EST http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2009_berlin_wall/ Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC World Service global poll finds that dissatisfaction with free market capitalism is widespread, with an average of only 11% across 27 countries saying that it works well and that greater regulation is not a good idea. In only two countries do more than one in five feel that capitalism works well as it stands -- the US (25%) and Pakistan (21%). The most common view is that free market capitalism has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform -- a view held by an average of 51% of more than 29,000 people polled by GlobeScan/PIPA. An average of 23% feel that capitalism is fatally flawed, and a new economic system is needed -- including 43% in France, 38% in Mexico, 35% in Brazil and 31% in Ukraine. Furthermore, majorities would like their government to be more active in owning or directly controlling their country's major industries in 15 of the 27 countries. This view is particularly widely held in countries of the former Soviet states of Russia (77%), and Ukraine (75%), but also Brazil (64%), Indonesia (65%), and France (57%). Majorities support governments distributing wealth more evenly in 22 of the 27 countries -- on average two out of three (67%) across all countries. In 17 of the 27 countries most want to see government doing more to regulate business -- on average 56%. The poll also asked about whether the breakup of the Soviet Union was a good thing or not. While an average of 54% say it was a good thing, this is the majority view in only 15 of the countries polled. An average of 22% say it was mainly a bad thing, while 24% do not know. Among former Warsaw Pact countries, most Russians (61%) and Ukrainians (54%) believe the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. In contrast, four in five Poles (80%) and nearly two-thirds of Czechs feel the disintegration of the USSR was a good thing (63%). The results are drawn from a survey of 29,033 adult citizens across 27 countries, conducted for BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. GlobeScan coordinated fieldwork between 19 June and 13 October 2009 GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller says: "It appears that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 may not have been the crushing victory for free-market capitalism that it seemed at the time -- particularly after the events of the last 12 months." Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:50:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tapia101109.html The recovery of 1933 and other historical examples indicate that business profit is the basic drive of the market economy. As a rule, profits start falling before recessions, drop strongly when the recession opens, and rise again when the economy reaches the bottom. The recovery of profits leads to the start of a new expansion. . . . What the present recession has proved is the key role of the government in maintaining the economy and the economic and political power of big business. . . . But by sustaining failing corporations, creating business activity by fiscal policy, and providing some relief to the needy, the government is ameliorating the social impact of the recession and avoiding the mechanism that makes recessions evolve by themselves into expansions. Unfortunately for the human beings who have to suffer them, the deeper and harder economic recessions are, the more businesses are destroyed, and the more workers are made redundant, the stronger will be the subsequent "prosperity." . . . As Lord Keynes saw it, capitalism has suicidal tendencies and the task of economists is to avoid letting those tendencies materialize. Wouldn't it be better to say that capitalism, like any other economic system or human institution, has its own historical life and then has to die to allow for human progress? Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:27:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/day091109.html You may have heard that a Pennsylvania district attorney recently dropped all charges against two anarchists who were accused of using Twitter last September at the G-20 summit protests, to keep activists informed of police arrests and surveillance. But the federal government remains on this case, in the wake of an FBI search of the home of one of the anarcho-defendants in Jackson Heights, Queens. The search lasted 16 hours, accompanied by the sputtering roar of government helicopters circling the neighborhood. According to the feds, it turned up such menacing artifacts as professional-grade gas masks, a slingshot, a pound of liquid mercury, and, of course, that perennial go-to guide for gourmet revolutionaries and terrorists alike, The Anarchist Cookbook. BUT DO WE FEEL ANY SAFER??? Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:20:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wall091109.html "On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, hundreds of demonstrators from across the West Bank convened in Qalandiya to demand the immediate dismantling of Israel’s wall. In a dramatic turn of events, protesters managed to tip over a section of the wall, opening a passage in this strategic and symbolic location at the entrance to East-Jerusalem." – International Solidarity Movement Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:35:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hp091109.html So, in Juan Cole's judgment, the only thing holding back Barack Obama from receiving straight As for his Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan policies is a kind of regrettable, Washington-based insensitivity towards the feelings of the locals. On two other foreign policy fronts, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Afghanistan, Obama rates "incompletes" for having made "little progress" on the first, and no decisive determination about how to handle the second. We strongly disagree with both the grades and the scope of Cole's report card. For some strange reason, Cole's report card ignores the Western Hemisphere, where Obama's performance has been abysmal. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ezcurra091109.html This cartoon was first published by Rebelión on 8 November 2009. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:30:00 EST http://www.ewidgetsonline.com/dxreader/Reader.aspx?token=%2bH%2bU3gkYT4dqf8WA6Fh6Xw%3d%3d Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt argues that intertwined with the narrative of colonial encroachment and anti-colonial resistance is a repressed narrative about how resident minorities came to be viewed as resident aliens; rather, how resident minorities came to be associated with the European powers. This book foregrounds the cosmopolitan, reading it against and through the colonial experience. Cosmopolitanism in Egypt developed out of imperial rule (Ottoman and British) and was shaped by the East-West encounter; however, cosmopolitanism is neither reducible nor equivalent to colonialism. Through readings of texts that thoughtfully and self-critically portray Egypt's cosmopolitan past, Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt explores the ways in which cosmopolitanism and colonialism are inherently intertwined. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/okinawa081109.html "I am Assata Shakur. I am a modern day maroon." Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/okinawa081109.html Over 21,000 people in Okinawa protested on Sunday to demand the removal of the US bases from the prefecture, criticizing the plan to only relocate the Futenma US air base from its current location of Ginowan City to the Henoko district of Nago City, also in Okinawa. US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in Japan on Friday, meeting Japan's Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio. The protest is meant to put pressure on the vacillating prime minister not to renege on his election promise to relocate the Futenma base out of Okinawa. Ginowan Mayor Iha Yoichi emphasized: "We want Prime Minister Hatoyama to convey the importance of the Japanese citizens' political choice to President Obama and tell him that the Okinawans, on whom the burden of the US bases has been imposed for 63 years, do not need another US base." Meanwhile, Henoko activists are continuing their sit-in in opposition to base building. The sit-in is now in its sixth year. Speaking to Ota Hikari and Tanaka Yuji, the hosts of an NTV show (broadcast two days before the protest), the Henoko sit-in participants say: * "Okinawans said, 'Get rid of Futenma.' We didn't say, 'Bring Futenma to Henoko.' Why do we need to find an alternative location for them? It really pisses me off." . . . Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/zibakalam081109.html Ahmadinejad knows that these students have no quarrel with the US. He knows that gone are the days when Iranian students would climb up the US embassy walls to occupy it and take American diplomats hostage with the support of the people. The students have changed and they demand new changes. If he can reach some degree of rapprochement with the US, it would be welcomed not only by the students but by many articulate Iranians as well. Of course, the hardliners would in principle oppose such a move. But here Ahmadinejad differs from both Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khatami. They were not prepared to face the hardliners, while Ahmadinejad is himself a hardliner and in the past challenged them. Moreover, he has proved to be far more courageous than both his predecessors. In 2005, during the first month of his presidency, he removed the ban on women attending football matches in stadiums. While eventually he had to back down against fierce opposition from the senior clergy in Qom, he neither apologized nor showed any remorse for this step. Several times he has visited Qom without paying a visit to the leading ulama. The appointment of a female cabinet minister is another example. He nominated a woman as minister in his newly formed cabinet. He made the appointment against strong opposition from many clerical leaders as well as some of his pious supporters. Ironically, it was not the reformist Khatami who went ahead to appoint a woman minister for the first time in the Islamic Republic's history but the hardline Ahmadinejad. In response to this bold decision, Khatami stated that he too had wanted to make that decision but feared the clerical opposition. Ahmadinejad is far from being a reformist and even farther from being a liberal. But he has the courage to make bold decisions. This doesn't mean he would be able to end completely the deep-rooted 30 year-old hostility between Iran and the US. But it does mean that if one day a president appears in Iran with enough power and courage to make such a drastic u-turn, it will be someone like Ahmadinejad who enjoys the trust and confidence of the hardliners. That being the case, it is also possible that Ahmadinejad will prove capable of ending the eight-year long nuclear dispute with the P5+1. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:20:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aam081109.html At the time of writing there are two factors that make it rather unlikely that Obama would seek a grand opening with Iran comparable to Nixon's China policy in the early 1970s. First, the Iranian right wing's amateurish and unnecessarily violent crackdown on the opposition "green movement" has made it all but impossible for any western leader to be associated too closely with the Ahmadinejad quasi-presidency. And second, Obama has been neither willing nor capable of casting away the imperial ghosts of America's past. Why, for example, is it that the administration of this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate does not feel compelled to put the "Jundallah" (God's soldiers) group on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations? In May 2009, the group claimed responsibility for the killing of civilians in a mosque in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province. Last month, a Jundallah suicide bomber blew himself up at a long overdue gathering which was meant to foster closer community relations between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the area. It seems that in this case, the Obama administration adheres to the shortsighted "my enemy's enemy is my friend" logic that has misguided US foreign policy for quite some time now. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:23:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pendergrass081109.html In Philadelphia, thousands of striking SEPTA transportation workers and members of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 are facing persistent attacks by politicians and the media. NPR's initial coverage of the strike seemed largely aimed at inciting tension between commuters and the striking workers. . . . The media are eager to do the bidding of Philadelphia's elite by portraying SEPTA employees as "greedy" for having the audacity to fight to maintain job standards won over decades of struggle. Evidence of their attempts to pit workers against each other is the incessant citation of $52,000 -- the average salary of unionized SEPTA employees. This is somehow meant to be an indictment of workers for either refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis or simply having the gall to aspire to a semblance of economic security enjoyed by Philadelphia's employers. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:46:00 EST http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/guillen/NewFolder/CBI.24.pdf We examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank. Following the world-system, world-society and neo-institutional perspectives in sociology, we assume that states are in cultural, political and economic competition with each other, thereby seeking to maintain their position and status, frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment. We predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade, investment, and multilateral lending increases. We also model the cross-national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role-equivalent trade relationships between countries. We test our hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000, using both event-history modeling and fixed-effects panel- corrected regression. Controlling for domestic variables of a macroeconomic and political nature, we find empirical support for each our predictions. We conclude that globalization pressures have the effect of strengthening certain parts of the state at the expense of others, and raise concerns about the degree of democratic oversight of technocratic institutions. . . . The importance of global pressures of a coercive, normative or mimetic kind when it comes to explaining central bank independence raises tantalizing questions about the constraints that globalization can place on the democratic choice that the citizenry is supposed to be able to exercise over such important matters as the structure and nature of economic policymaking institutions. The very act of granting a group of appointed (not elected) technocrats independence from the political power, i.e. from elected representatives or officials, reveals a fundamental tension in the way in which different kinds of issues are handled in modern societies. Some policy areas are subject to more or less continuous political scrutiny, and the officials in charge of them are subject to the democratic rules of the game. Others, especially monetary policy, have been socially and politically constructed as lying beyond the scope of democratic oversight and control. The fact that it is not domestic political conditions but rather global pressures which drive the adoption of the remarkable policymaking innovation of the independent central bank raises a great many questions about the effects of globalization on democratic standards and practices. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:02:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/irin081109.html The Egyptian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) 2008, published in March 2009, recorded a 6 percent increase in undernourishment severe enough to stunt growth in children under five, pushing the percentage of stunted Egyptian toddlers to 29 percent from 23 percent in 2000. The survey collected data in 2007/2008, when gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7.2 percent, indicating that strong economic growth had not benefited ordinary Egyptians. A slower GDP growth of 4.7 percent is forecast for 2008/2009. . . . "Between 2005 and 2008, the risk of extreme poverty increased by almost 20 percent. Poverty levels are highest in Upper [southern] Egypt where 70 percent of the country's poor live," Abu Khatwa said. Upper Egypt is home to about 17 percent of the country's 82 million people. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bhattarai081109.html If we are able to play the contradiction between the reactionary forces within the country and the imperialist and expansionist forces outside, then at an opportune moment we can organise an insurrectionary upsurge and be victorious. Therefore we have established the UNPM and put forward protest programs. In the next few months when the contradiction will sharpen among the reactionary forces while making the new constitution, during that time this new movement will arise when the people will finally come to revolt and complete the New Democratic Revolution. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/smith071109.html In our talks with people about the movement's decline, the main emphasis always pointed to the fact that the constituency for our broad peace movement was disintegrating. At issue is figuring out exactly why, and then how to help rebuild our forces. The question of "why" isn't difficult. In addition to talks with a number of movement organizers and unwavering activists., we have communicated with quite a few readers about this matter in person and mainly by email (over 85% of our 3,500 Activist Newsletter readers voted Democratic last November). The conclusion is that the Democratic voters who have stopped showing up do so for one or more of three reasons: (1) The big majority simply don't want to publicly oppose a war waged by a Democratic president -- especially when he is under strong attack by the Republicans. (2) Some think it is a "good" war. (3) Some believe that peace demonstrations "don't do any good" and that we're "just talking to ourselves." Let's examine this point by point. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ivaw071109.html Our community is distraught by the tragic shooting at Fort Hood yesterday. We extend our condolences to the families and friends of the victims. As upset as we are about this incident, this shooting does not come as a shock. Eight years of senseless wars have taken a huge toll on our troops and their families. It’s time to admit that the wars in southwest Asia are in no one’s best interests. Bring the troops home now! The Army has also repeatedly demonstrated that it is more interested in making soldiers “deployable” than it is in helping them fully recover from PTSD and other mental health issues. This often leaves soldiers with few options other than to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. The Army routinely deploys soldiers who are clearly suicidal and homicidal. Yesterday was a gruesome reminder of the possible violent consequences of this policy. We hope the Army now takes its duty to take care of soldiers more seriously. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cepr071109.html "And now the U.S. government says we can have free elections in less than three weeks," said Oliva. "That is a sick joke." . . . Oliva noted that Honduran law provides for a three-month election campaign period, but that more than two thirds of it was gone. "People cannot have an electoral campaign when they don't even have the right to freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, or freedom of the press," she said. "It's too late to have elections on November 29," said Oliva. "If the coup government goes ahead with this, these elections will have no credibility." Oliva recommended that the elections be postponed until at least three months after civil liberties and democracy -- including the elected president -- had been restored. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:48:00 EST http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/smp/Chalcraft.pdf The key hegemonic components of labour regimes in the Gulf and Egypt have been significantly eroded in the last few years. In Egypt, the Nasserist notion of social protection and national development in return for productive labour is in ruins amid extensive privatization of formerly public sector firms and the accompanying stripping away of social protections and ideas about inward- oriented national development. In the Gulf, rising costs and falling wages have struck a major blow against workers’ ability to provide for families back home. In both cases, elements of a pre-existing hegemony have been broken down and this attrition has arguably played a major role in propelling protest. The pre-existing hegemony had activated numerous energies, forged consent and modes of collective identification and even ways of life – and so it is understandable how its dismantling involves protest. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:35:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/freeston071109.html Bertha Oliva, Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH): I believe that the accord was destined to come out bad. As a general rule, you can't sit down and negotiate under imposition and repression. This was what happened before, during, and after the agreement. . . . Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:54:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/naeem071109.html RN: You have devoted a long chapter of your book on the rise and fall of the Bhutto family. Do you think that the PPP is well-equipped to steer the country away from the flight path of American power and, if not, is there any real alternative to the PPP from the Left in Pakistan today? TA: No. The PPP has become a single-family party. There is no left alternative in the country either. We suffer from the worst of every world. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:20:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/honduras061109.html The constitutional president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, said the Tegucigalpa/San José agreement failed, along with what was thought to be the attempt to end the political crisis in this Central American country. His declaration came after the unilateral formation of an alleged Government of Unity and Reconciliation by the de facto Honduran regime. . . . "A de facto president recognized by no one in the world cannot head a Government of Unity and Reconciliation," Zelaya said to Globo Radio. . . . "The whole process of reconciliation, which the government of the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya, entered in complete good faith, was a pantomime of the putschists," said Reina. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hall061109.html In October, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983, and nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000. Since the start of the recession, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/fathollah-nejad061109.html In foreign policy, FDP's Westerwelle is an improvement over many in the SPD and even the Green Party, but liberal capitalist rationality against war and sanctions may get buried by the Atlanticist camp. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:46:00 EST http://www.kevanharris.com/post/222858099/does-irans-urban-working-class-have-a-rural-subsidy Iran, like many middle-income countries, has a small formal labor force, often located within nationalized (or formerly nationalized) industry. This section of the working class benefits from its position as "formal" labor, meaning that these workers have been able to extract better pay and benefits, working conditions, and legal contracts from their employer, who is often the state. But Iran, like many middle-income countries with large-scale industrial projects, never transformed most of its population into the industrial proletariat that was expected by theories of liberal and Marxist economic development. Instead, what did occur in most of the world was the creation of pockets of formal labor, but mostly massive depeasantization and deruralization. These former peasants usually traveled to cities and became "informal" labor -- a term that exists only in contradistinction to formal labor. This is the largest group of people in the world today, and it is the fastest growing social class. Many of these individuals make their daily living through a variety of economic activities -- transient or temporary wage labor, self-employment, dependence on income from small remaining land parcels, and pooling resources within extended families. They have a very different life than formal workers. Often those countries that carried out radical land reform, such as China and most of East Asia, gave their informal labor a more flexible way of moving back and forth between town and country. Those countries that completely removed the peasantry from the land decades or centuries ago, like much of Latin America and Southern Africa, are now suffering worse conditions as it becomes apparent that the world's population will not be converted into an industrial proletariat. The irony here is that, while a country still has a rural sector that can support itself, either by producing goods for subsistence or by selling them on the market, the rural sector can provide a form of subsidy for urban-based capitalist development. This is because migrants who come from rural areas and maintain ties to those areas can depend on those ties to make up part of their own subsistence. This makes it cheaper to use their labor in urban locales, thus increasing the profitability for capitalists who employ them. During the initial formulation of this conception of rural-urban ties in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Southern Africa, it was called the "rural subsidy" thesis. When the rural sector is decimated through either "accumulation by dispossession," in David Harvey's term, or by land reform that is geared towards generating capitalist accumulation in the rural sectors, it undermines the rural subsidy to urban labor, and therefore raises the cost of labor in the urban sector. Rural individuals now begin to depend on ties to urban sectors for their subsistence, which raises the cost of urban labor even more. It is very possible (and often happens) that it is not worthwhile for domestic capitalists for employ urban labor at this cost, especially if they have to compete internationally. The end result of this is that the chances for capitalist development in poorer countries is actually lowered when they become "more" capitalist -- when their labor force resembles the wage-earning proletariat of our understanding of a "developed" country. This seems to have happened in the very country where the "rural subsidy thesis" originated. South Africa now has an official unemployment rate of around 40%. As far as I know, there is no empirical work on how Iran's labor force is structured with regards to the changes of urban/rural ties over the last 30 years. But, I wager that, as with most things, Iran is somewhere in the middle and not at the extremes of the spectrum. Its land reform in the 1960s was by no means radical, and the more conservative factions of the Islamic Republic stopped attempts at additional land reform in the 1980s. The result is that some urban-based Iranians who are in the informal labor force can fall back on rural incomes, but not all of them. Other urban-based Iranians provide an "urban subsidy" to their extended families who have remained in the rural sector. That means there are at least three structural groups in the Iranian working class that need to be considered separately: 1. Formal workers in mostly state industries and the public sector; 2. Informal workers who retain beneficial ties to the rural sector, and thus part of their livelihood can come from the rural sector; 3. Informal workers who have no ties to the rural sector, or must provide an urban subsidy due because their ties, and thus all of their livelihood must be found in urban areas. Note that, thus far, I have not brought in the state to this analysis. The state can exacerbate or ameliorate any of these existing tendencies. In Iran's case, I would also wager that basic welfare provisions for the poorest Iranians, through a variety of welfare organizations as well as subsidized consumption, have lowered the cost of labor for domestic capitalists. It also may have homogenized the working class to a degree that would not have existed if the state did not subsidize consumption. However, it would be going too far to say that, when labor unrest occurs in Iran, it is always because of the same grievance. The structural divides of formal and informal labor are very apparent here, and overlap with ethnic cleavages (including migrant labor who ends up as the super-exploited class). The lack of horizontal organizational ties and representation in the government, except for the state-provided "House of Labor," adds to the standing limitations on labor activism. Yet, even with these strictures, some related and others unrelated to the existing regime, labor unrest continues to pop up in unpredictable ways. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolf061109.html Local groups will assess the No on 1 organizing efforts in coming weeks, but suffice it to say that despite what appears to have been an energetic and collaborative campaign, equal marriage has lost in every state it has been put to a popular vote -- 31 in all. Despite the fact that the No on 1 campaign, Protect Maine Equality, raised $4 million and the anti-same-sex marriage forces raised only $2.5 million, the strategy of statewide ballot initiatives plays to activists' weaknesses, especially in non-urban areas. . . . When Attorney General Eric Holder was asked about Maine's Question 1, he said that he and President Obama "are of the view it is for states to make these decisions." Holder later said to one blogger, "I don't really know enough about the referendum over there to comment." As National Equality March organizer Cleve Jones said on MSNBC of President Obama's silence on Question 1, "This is a far cry from the fierce advocacy he promised us in his campaign." Even more outrageous, not only did the Democratic National Committee (DNC) refuse to help finance the No on 1 campaign, but it expressed crass indifference to LGBT rights when the DNC's organization "Organizing for America" (formerly known as "Obama for America") e-mailed Maine voters the day before the election about getting involved . . . in the gubernatorial contest in New Jersey (which lost)! The failure of the Democrats to hold onto huge gains made in the 2008 election in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races -- and the flaccid response from Obama's base in this off-year election -- reveals that the inability of the Democrats in power to deliver on their promises is alienating progressives. "President Obama and his team were zero help in this critical battle, and in the last week might actually have hurt us," said David Mixner, long-time Democratic Party activist and initiator of the call for the National Equality March. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/foster061109.html "We have no other word but crisis to describe it, really. It's very different than the economic crisis that we are now in, in the sense that even a very, very severe economic crisis, such as the one that has been present since late 2007 . . . still is, in many ways, a cyclical event. . . . These crises are periodic -- it's part of the nature of capitalism. . . . But what we are talking about as the world ecological crisis is another kind of crisis. We are not talking -- as some of the contrarians say, as some of the skeptics say – of something that is a cyclical event in earth history. What we are talking about is a terminal crisis. What the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is telling us, what ecologists are telling us, what scientists in general are telling us is that If we continue on present trends, if we continue to follow business as usual, that is follow the present economic path, and the present technological and social path with respect to the environment, then it will be a terminal crisis, in the sense that we will destroy most of the species on the planet, human civilization, and ourselves perhaps as well." -- John Bellamy Foster Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/smith061109.html A majority of the American people want an end to the war, including a large majority of Democratic Party voters -- and Obama says he is susceptible to public pressure. The problem is that the Democrats began leaving the antiwar struggle in droves after their party won the elections. They don't want to publicly protest Obama's actions when he is under continual Republican attack on everything but the war. How does supporting a neo-con Republican war help Obama fight the Republicans? It doesn't. It just creates public pressure to keep the war going. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:50:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/umpierrez061109.html Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:44:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/roy051109.html "It's beginning to increasingly look as if this urge to the 10% growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible . . . because this growth has been based on . . . the displacement of millions of people off their land. It's based on extracting minerals and harnessing rivers in a way that is ecologically utterly destructive. And all of this has been done, keeping to the rituals of democracy but emptying them out. So you have the courts and the press and the police pretending to do their jobs, pretending to act as checks and balances, as the institutions of democracy are meant to, but in fact all of them have stakes in this process. They are acting as a cover for the rich, which dismantles democracy right from the bottom." -- Arundhati Roy Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:26:00 EST http://www.maxajl.com/?p=2375 As perhaps four of you know, I am going to Gaza at the end of December for four months. I will try to support myself by writing and reporting for various news outlets, and intend to switch the orientation of this blog up, from obsessive focus on Gaza and I-P to obsessive focus just on Gaza -- especially issues of economic development, ecology, and agriculture, some of my main interests when I’m not writing about I-P and when I am, too. This trip will probably be expensive, and I know my readership isn't exactly the scale of any number of other bloggers, but I maintain the fanciful delusion that I have a small squad of very devoted readers. Anyway. Most of what goes on here is original, and I do it because I enjoy it and hope it’s helpful and for no other reason. But: it takes time, and especially with organizing the Gaza Freedom March, I am working unpaid many, many hours a week. So there’s a Donate button on the right. Contributions would be welcome. About Jewbonics: Jewbonics was founded during the winter massacre in Gaza of 2008-2009. The proprietor of Jewbonics is Max Ajl: socialist, poet, essayist, rabble-rouser, anti-Zionist cretin, and putative candidate for a Master's degree in political science at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences-Ecuador. I'm from Brooklyn, based in Brooklyn for the time being, am 25, and have picked up a degree from an obscure northeastern liberal arts college that’s proven a bit of a failure at keeping me in steady employment. When I'm not blogging, I'm writing about climate change, the environment, and Israel, drafting an MA thesis on peasant mobilization in Brazil and Venezuela, playing soccer, squirrel-hunting in Prospect Park, and organizing resistance to Israeli politicide. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/weisbrot051109.html The ink was barely dry on the accord when leaders of the coup regime indicated that they had no intention of honoring it. Some of them clearly saw the agreement as just another delaying tactic. They have talked of postponing congressional approval of the accord until after the 29 November elections, or even voting not to restore Zelaya. . . . Tuesday night, Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told CNN en Espanol that the US plans to recognize the November elections whether or not Zelaya is restored. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:04:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bello051109.html It was during the Aquino period that neoliberal economics started its rise to ideological ascendancy. I think it is worthwhile to examine the reasons for the ease with which it captured the heights of both academia and the technocracy during this period. First of all, it was associated with several high-powered activist intellectuals and technocrats close to the Aquino administration who had been greatly influenced by the Reagan and Thatcher free-market experiments in the United States and Britain. These included economist Bernie Villegas and Cory Aquino's secretary of finance Jesus Estanislao. Another key center of emergent neoliberalism was the University of the Philippines School of Economics, which had drafted the extremely influential anti-Marcos White Paper on the Philippine economy in 1985. Second, the analysis forwarded by these intellectuals was in synch with the popular mood. This located the economic troubles of the country in what had come to be known as "crony capitalism," or the use of state agencies to advance the private interests of a few close associates of the dictator. The direct assault on the Keynesian state as the source of inefficiency, which was the most prominent feature of Thatcherism and Reaganism, was a subsdiary element in the case made for market freedom. Third, there were simply no credible alternatives to neoliberalism. Keynesian developmentalism, which promoted the role of the state as the strategic factor in the first phase of the ascent to development, was compromised by its personification in the Marcos dictatorship. As for the left's vision of "nationalist industrialization" or the "national democratic" economy, this hardly went beyond rhetorical flourishes and had been hardly popularized in the period prior to the EDSA Uprising, perhaps owing to the priority that the Communist Party placed on the anti-fascist struggle, which demanded underplaying the view that national democracy was the antechamber to socialism in order to form as wide a front as possible with anti-dictatorial elements of the elite. . . . Corruption discourse continues to be pervasive in explaining Philippine underdevelopment. In this discourse, the state is the source of corruption, so that having a greater state role in the economy, even as a regulator, is viewed with skepticism. Neoliberal discourse ties in very neatly with corruption discourse, with its minimization of the role of the state in economic life and its assumption that making market relations more dominant in economic transactions at the expense of the state will reduce the opportunities for rent-seeking by both economic and state agents. For many Filipinos, and not only in the discourse-setting middle class, the corrupt state -- and not the relations of inequality spawned by the market and the erosion of national economic interests brought about by the liberalization of trade and capital markets -- continues to be the main block to the greater good. It is seen as the biggest obstacle to development and sustained economic growth. This is not the place to discuss this belief in detail; suffice it to say at this point that this supposed correlation between corruption and underdevelopment and poverty has little basis in fact. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/moubayed051109.html Haniya is clearly trying to market himself and his party as new interlocutors for the United States in the Occupied Territories. He believes that after the Goldstone Report scandal, which turned Palestinian public opinion against Abbas, Fatah's ability to unify its rank and consolidate its power is shrinking to comically low levels. Although still an unspoken truth, many powers in the West -- the US included -- have concluded that Abbas and his team can no longer deliver, neither on nation-building nor on peace, and have lost what remains of the credibility bequeathed to them by Yasser Arafat. If the US wants to reach any solution on the Palestine-Israeli conflict, it has to engage directly with Hamas. The scenario clear in Haniya's mind is that of Arafat's 1987 dialogue with the United States, which he hopes to repeat with Obama. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:16:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sikand051109.html The experience of the Muslims of Gujarat in the wake of the 2002 genocide taught us one valuable lesson: that Muslims have to stand up on their own for justice for themselves. Thousands of Muslim men, women and children were slaughtered in cold blood. Three hundred Muslim women were brutally raped and then burnt alive, some in front of their children. With the exception of a few, the so-called secular Indian feminists did not dare to speak out against the Gujarat carnage. It is a shame that Gujarat is home to some of the largest women's organisations and yet they chose to remain mute. Either they were too scared or else it was a case of them showing their hidden anti-Muslim prejudice. They maintained a deafening silence. They had shown their deep-rooted, often unacknowledged, pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim bias on several occasions before, as during the dastardly massacre of Muslims in Bombay in 1992. This made us realize that we could not depend on the women's movement to take up our cause, to speak for us. We needed to speak for ourselves. Also, our multiple exclusion, just like that of Dalit women, has failed to find any real representation in the discourse of the so-called 'mainstream'. To reflect this, we coined the slogan Jiski ladai, uski aguvai ('She shall lead whose struggle it is'). . . . Muslims in India are victims of discrimination, including by the state, but a major cause of our plight is also the existing Muslim elite. We cannot accept them as our leaders. . . . It was not that we want to speak for Muslim women alone. Rather, we speak for, and highlight the concerns of, Muslims as a whole, men as well as women. Till now, those who have claimed to be the leaders of the Muslims have all been men. Why can't it change? Why can't Muslim women also lead the whole community -- not just Muslim women? . . . I believe that the existing Muslim Personal Law in India needs to be reformed on gender-just lines and within the broad framework of the shariah, and then codified. But, I do not believe that they are the major issues facing the vast majority of Indian Muslim women. Their foremost concerns relate to endemic poverty and illiteracy that characterizes the Muslim community as a whole, including Muslim men, and anti-Muslim discrimination by the state and other forces. We do not see Muslim women's issues in isolation from the issues faced by the wider Muslim community. Unless these issues are simultaneously addressed, you cannot expect Muslim women's conditions to be ameliorated. The tendency to locate the sources of Muslim women's marginalization solely within the community itself -- blaming just Muslim men or the ulema and their patriarchal understandings of religion -- is patently unfair. How can you expect Muslim women to be empowered and able to resist male domination if they are not educationally and economically empowered? A major responsibility in this regard is that of the state, which continues to marginalize and neglect Muslims, including Muslim women. How can you expect divorced Muslim women to be paid a decent sum as maintenance if the vast majority of Muslim men continue to wallow in poverty? Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:50:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/halper041109.html On August 10th, a letter was send to the President initiated by Democratic Senator Evan Bayh and Republican Senator Jim Risch, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and backed by AIPAC, the Israeli lobby. Signed by seventy-one senators, it called on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel even though Israel has not frozen settlement building, has not stopped expropriating Palestinian land or demolishing Palestinian homes, and has not lifted the severe restrictions on Palestinian life that has impoverished the majority of the population. . . . On November 3rd, the House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 344-36, a resolution calling on the President and the Secretary of State "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the 'Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora" (i.e., the UN). Sponsored by four vociferously but well-placed pro-Israel members of Congress -- Howard Berman (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the Foreign Relations' Sub-Committee on the Middle East, and Dan Burton (R-IN), the Sub-Committee's ranking Republican member -- the resolution calls the Goldstone report "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy" and "supports the Administration's efforts to combat anti-Israel bias at the United Nations." Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:24:00 EST http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262519 Here's a math question: If it takes 6,00,000 soldiers to hold down the tiny valley of Kashmir, how many will it take to contain the mounting rage of hundreds of millions of people? Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:43:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afghanistan041109.html "We were going to these homes, basically destroying anything that was in our way. There were kids, there were old women. You know, they get caught in the middle of all this. They get dragged out of their houses. The men are always suspected. Any adult male was suspected to be a terrorist. Any child or woman was looked at as an accomplice. . . . There is no military solution in Afghanistan. You can't solve Afghanistan's problems with a military." -- Cpl. Rick Reyes, US Marine Corps, Afghanistan Veteran Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:19:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/kandiyoti041109.html Herein lies one of the major contradictions of the gender equality platform in Afghanistan. There are inherent tensions between the goals of state-building according to international norms, on the one hand, and pragmatic accommodations to realities on the ground, on the other. The vast majority of women in Afghanistan have little contact with state institutions, markets or civil society organizations and remain the wards of their communities and households. They are totally disenfranchised to the extent that they have little recourse to formal institutions and the justice system (which is, in any case, heavily biased against female claimants) and are disadvantaged and marginalized in customary law. Ultimately, the blueprint for "gender mainstreaming" is destined to remain hollow if it continues to inhabit a technocratic space that is almost entirely divorced from political processes in Afghanistan. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/giri041109.html Here is the formula, if you like: you can be rich and radical but not poor and radical -- the ideal combination allowed in today's rights-based capitalism is poor and needy. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/golinger031109.html Secretary of State Clinton commented that "this agreement is a tremendous achievement for the Hondurans." Wait, for whom? In the end, the celebrated "agreement" imposed by Washington only calls upon the Honduran Congress -- the same Congress that falsified Zelaya's resignation letter in order to justify the coup, and the same Congress that supported the illegal installation of Micheletti in the presidency -- to determine whether or not it wants to reinstate Zelaya as president. And only after receiving a legal opinion from the Honduran Supreme Court -- the same one that said Zelaya was a traitor for calling for a non-binding poll vote on potential future constitutional reform, and the same one that ordered his violent capture. Even if the Congress' answer is positive, Zelaya would not have any power. The "agreement" stipulates that the members of his cabinet will be imposed by those political parties involved in the coup, the armed forces will be under the control of the Supreme Court that supported the coup, and Zelaya could be tried for his alleged "crime" of "treason" because he wanted to have a non-binding poll on constitutional reform. Per the "agreement" a truth commission would supervise its implementation. Today, Ricardo Lagos, ex president of Chile and staunch Washington ally, was announced as the leader of the Honduran Truth Commission. Lagos is co-director of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Dialogue, a right-wing think tank that influences Washington's policies on Latin America. Lagos also was charged with creating a Chilean version of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), la Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo, to "promote democracy" in Latin America, US-style. Upon leaving the presidency in 2006, Lagos was named President of the Club of Madrid -- an exclusive club of ex presidents dedicated to "promoting democracy" around the world. Several key figures involved in currently destabilizing left-leaning Latin American governments are members of this "club," including Jorge Quiroga and Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (ex presidents of Bolivia), Felipe González (ex prime minister of Spain), Václav Havel (ex president of the Czech Republic), and José María Aznar (ex prime minister of Spain), amongst many others. In the end, "smart power" was sufficiently intelligent to deceive those who today celebrate an "end to the crisis" in Honduras. But, for a majority of people in Latin America, the victory of Obama's "smart power" in Honduras is a dark and dangerous shadow closing in on us. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:17:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/freedom_dance.html 30th Anniversary of Assata's Liberation: Honoring Sundiata and all political prisoners. Saturday, November 14th, from 7 to 11 PM, @ the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center for 1199 SEIU, 310 W. 43rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, Manhattan, NYC Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:42:00 EST http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/51987/2/09-02.pdf This paper examines how certain new structural factors have contributed to the latest great financial crisis and world recession of 2008-09. We focus on three of these structural factors: (i) the incorporation of highly populated countries into the growth process; (ii) The increasing scarcity of the environment and certain natural resources; (iii) the unprecedented concentration of wealth and income in the advanced economies over the last three decades. These structural changes have significantly tightened the links between world growth and commodity prices, have made the world commodity supply to become increasingly inelastic, and have made growth to become more dependent on lax monetary policies, respectively. All this may make the recovery from the current crisis much more difficult, implying a deeper and more protracted crisis than most previous crises. With this framework in mind we focus on the likely affect of the financial crisis upon the natural resources in the developing world, by drawing implications from the 1995 Mexico-originated Peso crisis and the 1998-99 Asia crises. We find that the impact of the current crisis is likely to degrade further the environmental resources and the tightening of environmental policies in response to such degradation may make the commodity supply curve of commodities even steeper in the future. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:23:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ccr031109.html Today, a federal Court of Appeals dismissed Canadian citizen Maher Arar's case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year. . . . Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: "After seven years of pain and hard struggle it was my hope that the court system would listen to my plea and act as an independent body from the executive branch. Unfortunately, this recent decision and decisions taken on other similar cases, prove that the court system in the United States has become more or less a tool that the executive branch can easily manipulate through unfounded allegations and fear mongering. If anything, this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law." Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:53:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/faulk031109.html Jasmin Hristov's book is an exploration of the history and evolution of armed paramilitary forces in Colombia, focusing primarily on the past two decades. Her stated intent is to "offer a model of a twenty-first-century state apparatus of coercion under a formally democratic regime by exploring the structure and functions of that apparatus, the conditions that make it a necessity, and its capacity to evolve into new forms" (p. xi). Paying particular attention to this period not only makes her book especially relevant to an understanding of the current situation in this beautiful and catastrophic nation, but also highlights one of her central points: the intrinsic relationship between paramilitarism and neoliberal capitalism. The combination of neoliberalism and paramilitaries, while perhaps most drastically expressed in Colombia, is similarly present elsewhere throughout the region. Emphasizing this connection, even if through its most extreme example, has far-reaching implications for understanding a fundamental aspect of neoliberal economics as applied in Latin America -- the forcible dispossession of large groups of structurally disadvantaged people from their means of subsistence. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:26:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ahmad021109.html This crisis, the worst in 90 years, has a greater impact on African-American workers because they are concentrated in the public sector. When state governments are in debt and the financial bubble bursts, the future of public-sector workers is threatened, a future they have built through the unionization process. It is essential that African-American workers, particularly in the public sector, protect their self-interests and power by transferring their labor power into an economically and politically self-reliant form, by creating a black workers' society. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:29:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dmello021109.html The Maoist movement in India is a direct consequence of the tragedy of India ruled by her big bourgeoisie and governed by parties co-opted by that class-fraction. The movement now threatens the accumulation of capital in its areas of influence, prompting the Indian state to intensify its barbaric counter-insurgency strategy to throttle it. In trying to understand what is going on, and, in turn, to re-imagine what the practice of radical democratic politics could be, it might help if, for a moment, we step aside and reflect over the questions: What is Maoism? What of its origins and development? What went before its advent? What are its flaws? Where is it going? Where should it be going, given its legacy? Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afghanistan021109.html The PDPA is objectively moving toward its political death. No actions aimed at resuscitating the PDPA would produce any practical results. Najib's efforts in this respect can only prolong the death throes, but they cannot save the PDPA from its death. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:17:00 EST http://progressivestates.org/node/23862 The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that in 2010 and 2011, states will face a combined budget deficit of $350 billion. As states grapple with the recession and search for the best methods to alleviate economic and budgetary pressures, some lawmakers continue to propose privatization as an effective policy. In the past few months, there have been proposals to privatize functions across the board: county zoos, libraries, custodial services, parking enforcement, youth shelters, group homes, ambulance services, airports, and transit networks. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:56:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/alshaer021109.html In her remarkable and thoroughly researched book, Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-1967, Ilana Feldman unravels the relational aspects that underpin the governing of Gaza through defining periods in its history, from the British Mandate over Gaza (1917-1947) to the Egyptian Administration (1948-1967), including the intermediary period when Gaza was used by Britain, France, and Israel during their 1956 war on Egypt. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:34:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/martirena011109.html Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:56:00 EST