Chronicling the Crisis of the Working Class http://mrzine.org Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:03:01 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 http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/honduras011109.html We celebrate the upcoming restoration of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales as a popular victory over the petty interests of the coup-making oligarchy. This victory was won through more than four months of struggle and sacrifice by the people who, despite the savage repression unleashed by the repressive forces of the state in the hands of the dominant class, have been able to resist and grow in their levels of consciousness and organization and turn themselves into an irrepressible social force. . . . We reiterate that a National Constituent Assembly is an inalienable aspiration of the Honduran people and a non-negotiable right for which we will continue to struggle in the streets, until we achieve the re-founding of our society to convert it into one that is just, egalitarian, and truly democratic. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:49:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff011109.html At a time of crisis, while the federal government injects unprecedented stimulus (tax cuts and expenditure increases) into the US economy, the fifty states are doing the opposite. State tax hikes and expenditure reductions will continue to undermine or slow any recovery. Moreover, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama's stimulus program) has offset only modest portions of the states' fiscal budget shortfalls for 2009 and 2010. The CBPP estimates that the worst of the budget crisis will hit states in 2011 and 2012. The carnage will total a huge net $260 billion even after allowing for the federal stimulus funds still available then to flow to states. . . . At the present time, the vast majority of US states and municipalities exempt intangible property from property taxes. That is, stocks and bonds are kinds of property not subject to the taxes on other kinds of property (land, houses, etc.). If we imposed a very low rate of property tax on intangible property, it would cover the present and anticipated fiscal shortfalls of US cities, towns, and states. Moreover, an intangible property tax would fall on those most able to pay, those who fared best since the 1970s as the gap between rich and poor widened sharply. If coordinated across all states and cities (perhaps levied and collected by Washington and then returned to states and municipalities), intangible property owners would have no incentive to move it from one place to another. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:22:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afghanistan011109.html Ligachev: Of course, we should leave in such a way so as not to allow a destruction of the progressive forces. We have to make all efforts to help them create an army. The thought of a hired army is acceptable. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:17:00 EST http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?lab=CellBlock Salam responded coldly, "We all proceed harshly. Weren't you brought to prison from a café without ever committing a crime? The matter's not about personal opinions. The last thing that interests them is the answer and its meaning. They simply want to humiliate anyone the fates lead to their courts. We must confront their harshness with even greater harshness." The night was beautiful but not for Yusuf: a decision had been reached to send him to the swamp, a dilapidated cell that had been left deserted until inmates transformed it into a prison within a prison. The door was opened only three times a day and food was provided to the captives through a small hole in the door. No one was allowed to converse with them. To this room by the latrines were sent people whom other inmates normally called traitors and scum. Yusuf did not protest when they moved him there. Carrying his bedding on his shoulders he took his possessions as silently as a calm sea. I was standing near the swamp room when Yusuf passed by me. I really wanted to smile at him from a distance and encourage him, but he totally ignored me and joined his other colleagues who had been condemned to the swamp. The swamp cell was a secret to no one. It was an accepted fact of life, even by the prison's administrators, who preferred not to intervene in the inmates' private affairs, provided that order and calm prevailed. They actually preferred to keep a safe distance from anything that would rile the inmates, who constituted a society apart with its own systems, tribunals, and administration. Here ended the external world, which was no longer anything more than a dream comparable to the dreams of those contemplating a trip to Paris, London, or any other distant city. That evening Isam, the tea server, came to me once he finished his work and told me: "They're angry at you." Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:17:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/white311009.html Back in America, Langston would fight with publishers who had little interest in either Cuba, Spain, or Haiti other than as travelogues and were extremely reluctant even to allow translation by a black writer of a Spanish or French writer. Langston soon learned that there was apartheid even in translation. He then wrote one of my favorite poems. White Shadows I'm looking for a house somewhere in this world Where white shadows Will not fall. There is no such house Dark brother No such house At all. But if Langston thought he had trouble with his Caribbean translations, it was nothing compared to his Russian translations of Pushkin, Yesenin, and Mayakovsky. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:51:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/whitney311009.html To say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth (stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new system. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afghanistan311009.html Gorbachev: People are asking themselves: what, are we going to be stuck there indefinitely? Or maybe we should just end this war? Otherwise we're going to be ashamed of ourselves in all respects. Our strategic goal is to complete this war and pull our forces out in one or, at most, two years. . . . To sum up, the realization of the conception is proceeding poorly. We need to get out of there and leave behind a friendly, neutral nation. Najib has to have a social base for this, there has to be some extensive diplomacy, not to mention a strengthening of the Afghan army. How we handle this is a matter of life and death for Nadjib and his allies after the leave. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/stewart301009.html News of a deal that would effectively end the coup d'etat in Honduras and restore democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya to office would be a "victory for democracy in the hemisphere" resulting from the continued resistance of the Honduran people and pressure from Latin American governments, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today. The deal reportedly includes a plan for a "unity government," a "verification commission" to be made up of two respected international figures and two respected national figures to enforce the terms of the agreement, recognition of the planned November 29 elections, and a truth commission to investigate the coup d'etat and subsequent events. According to negotiations agreed by both sides, the Honduran congress must approve Zelaya's reinstatement. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/stewart301009.html "Palestinian equal rights was placed directly next to health care and the economy on The Daily Show’s progressive agenda and the audience was totally along for the ride. I could hardly believe my eyes, and yet it made perfect sense at the same time. Who can argue that it is necessary to deny people water? Who can argue against equal rights? The answer is increasingly no one, and if The Daily Show’s audience is any indication, the next generation will be leading this fight in a much different direction." -- Adam Horowitz Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:02:00 EST http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/iranian_family/ I was at a conference in Tehran, Iran, being interviewed by a group of journalists, half of them women. An American in Tehran is news, and one who speaks bad Persian is apparently particularly newsworthy. As the interview ended, one of the women asked if I was married. In case my wife is reading this, I want everyone to know that I instantly answered, in broken Persian, "Yes! Thanks be to God!" and showed her my wedding ring. I then asked if she was married, and she answered, "No! Thanks be to God!" . . . Table 1. Results of Survey of 100 Iranian Women, Ages 18-30, Summer 2001 . . . . % feminist: Women with more than high school education: 66; Women with no more than high school education: 24 | % Islamic feminist: Women with more than high school education: 12; Women with no more than high school education: 30 | Why do marriages fail? (% agreeing) No equality: Women with more than high school education: 84; Women with no more than high school education: 68 | Wives pursuing career: Women with more than high school education: 68; Women with no more than high school education: 72 | Not enough independence: Women with more than high school education: 68; Women with no more than high school education: 70 | Mistreatment by husbands: Women with more than high school education: 64; Women with no more than high school education: 36 | Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:02:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bea301009.html Private wage and salary disbursements decreased $11.2 billion in September, in contrast to an increase of $10.1 billion in August. Goods-producing industries' payrolls decreased $7.8 billion, compared with a decrease of $6.3 billion; manufacturing payrolls decreased $1.5 billion, compared with a decrease of $4.1 billion. Services-producing industries' payrolls decreased $3.4 billion, in contrast to an increase of $16.4 billion. Government wage and salary disbursements increased $0.2 billion compared with an increase of $2.4 billion. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/si301009.html The bill has been criticized from both the Right and the Left, which leads me to think it must be a move in the right direction. . . . The subsidy reform has the potential to reduce poverty because about half of the revenue it raises is to be distributed back to the poorer half of the population. An average family of five can expect roughly $1,000-$2,000 per year, which is a significant sum given that families below the median spends on average about $4,000 per year ($3,800 in 2007). The cash-back part of the bill explains the striking fact that a measure to remove subsidies, a policy that is more often associated with the so-called neo-liberal thinking, has received strong support from the Ahmadinejad government, which is not known for its pro-market stance, but has been opposed by more liberal politicians. . . . I remember that about 18 years ago when I gave a talk on energy subsidies at Iran's Institute for International Energy Studies, people were amused to hear that someone was worrying about energy subsidies in oil rich Iran. I estimated energy subsidies at about $5 billion for 1993, when food and medicine subsidies were $3.2 billion. (That study was published by the Oxford Energy Institute and a version appeared in an edited book.) The latter has not changed much while energy subsidies have grown to $50 billion! Add to that the realization that energy subsidies go mostly to those above the median income and cause pollution, and you get a consensus to do something about them, which is why both Khatami and Ahmadinejad governments agreed on this one issue. . . . But paying back cash to deserving individuals is much easier said than done. There are two distinct questions: which families should get cash back and who inside those families should actually receive it. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:44:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/baker301009.html Defense spending now accounts for 5.6% of GDP. State and local government spending contracted at a 1.1% annual rate. A 22.4% jump in car sales accounted for 42.0% of the growth in the 3rd quarter. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:56:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mana291009.html It is with deep sadness and concern that we announce the shooting death of Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, of Masjid Al-Haqq (Detroit, MI). Imam Luqman was a representative of the Detroit Muslim community to the "National Ummah" and the general assembly (Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). . . . The National Community or "Ummah" was established by Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown). It is an association of mosques in several cities in the U.S. that coordinates religious and social services primarily in the Black American community. Reference to the "Ummah" as a "nation-wide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African-Americans" is an offensive mis-characterization. To those who have worked with Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, allegations of illegal activity, resisting arrest, and "offensive jihad against the American government" are shocking and inconsistent. In his ministry he consistently advocated for the downtrodden and always spoke about the importance of connecting with the needs of the poor. It is our hope and prayer that a thorough investigation will be carried out with the greatest integrity. We urge the Muslim community and all Americans committed to justice to actively monitor both the investigation and trial of the accused. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/baker291009.html The August Case-Shiller index and other recent reports suggest that the housing price supports put in place have at least temporarily stopped the drop in house prices. This should not be surprising given the dramatic nature of the measures taken. The $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit amounts to nearly 5 percent of the median purchase price of an existing home. The Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities has pushed mortgage rates down by 0.5 to 1.0 percentage points lower than they would otherwise be. And the FHA is backing an enormous amount of loans, many of which are of questionable quality. Of course, these price supports are all likely to be temporary, implying that house prices will resume their decline once the supports end. The Fed is planning to phase out its purchases of mortgage-backed securities in the first quarter of next year. The first-time buyer credit may be extended, but it is unlikely to run past the middle of 2010. Furthermore, with many potential first-time buyer having already bought a house in the initial period, it is likely to have less impact on market prices as a smaller share of purchasers qualify for the credit. And the FHA may see its lending reined in as its losses push its reserves below mandated levels. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:21:00 EST http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/267.php On October 27, the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) held a conference titled "Democracy in Action: The Protests in Iran" in Ottawa. The purpose, according to the CIC website, was to "mobilize political action against the human rights abuses of the Iranian regime and its nuclear agenda." To meet this goal the conference showcased a lineup of Israeli and Zionist politicians, legal figures, advocates, and military and diplomatic experts, including: Ambassador Miriam Ziv (former Israeli Vice-Consul in Toronto), Irwin Cotler (MP and lawyer), Kenneth Timmerman (published a thriller on Iran, radical Islam, and the bomb, called Honor Killing), Mark Dubowitz (leads the Iran Energy Project, an initiative focused on researching Iran's energy vulnerabilities and formulating policies to prohibit sales of refined petroleum to Iran), Noam Katz (Israeli Minister for Public Diplomacy in Washington, D.C.), and the CEO of the Canada-Israel Committee, Shimon Fogel. To balance the heavy dose of Canadian and Israeli political, diplomatic, and military experts, the CIC lineup has two Iranians: so-called Iranian-Canadian "insider" Nazanin Afshin-Jam, singer, actor, former Miss World Canada, and President and co-founder of Stop Child Executions, and lawyer Sayeh Hassan. While the author of this article disagrees with the pro-monarchist, pro-Israeli, and deeply nationalist reading of the situation in Iran by Afshin-Jam and Hassan, it should be recognized that such sentiments do exist within the Iranian diaspora community. However, claiming that the political stances of these two individuals somehow represents Iranians in the diaspora is a stretch, and that they reflect the organized Iranian voices within Iran is simply untrue. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/trumka291009.html "And tonight, let me tell you that, so long as I'm president, you will never have a stronger ally than the AFL-CIO. That's why we're proud to stand with the JLC to oppose boycotting Israel." -- Remarks by Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, Jewish Labor Committee 2009 Annual Human Rights Dinner, October 27, 2009 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:58:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/weisbrot291009.html Guess which country is expected to have the fastest economic growth in the Americas this year? Bolivia. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cuba281009.html Only the United States, Israel and Palau voted against the non-binding resolution, while Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained. Over 17 consecutive years since 1992, a majority in the United Nations General Assembly have supported lifting the unilateral US embargo. Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bouteldja281009.html "We are the children of an illusion that consisted in believing that the independences of our countries signified the end of colonization." -- Interview with Houria Bouteldja, spokesperson of the decolonial movement in France known as the "Mouvement des Indigènes de la République" (MIR -- Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic). Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:28:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/smith271009.html We are up against pro-war forces in the U.S. and Pakistan that trot out this "feminist" justification of the war. They see the main threat not in the military, which has misruled Pakistan for decades, but this monstrous misogynist figure of the Pushtun Taliban. This argument has a lot of credence in Pakistan, just as it does here. Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:47:00 EST http://www.ft.com/cms/4fe40d1a-07b4-11dd-a922-0000779fd2ac.html?_i_referralObject=10664514 "This is what led to what a lot of people think should be put a stop to, which is the so-called casino banking." "There's been a lot of loose talk about casino banking. Personally, I think there should be more of it, not less." "Why?" "Well, because, as I understand it, in a casino, the bank always wins. I mean, I don't know, I'm not a gambler, at least not with my own money." Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/kuntsman261009.html In the Orientalized fantasies about the Palestinian gay man (the cute boy with the almond ass) and the Arab woman (always behind the burka) the two images are present at the same time. Oriental sexuality is both repressed (making queer desires impossible) and inherently passionate. But importantly, the depiction of 'Arab sexuality' is always structured within Orientalist knowledge, positioning the speakers -- the Russian-speaking queer immigrants -- as those who both know and have the power over the Oriental other. The discussions on Palestinians were always framed within the regime of suspicion (the asylum seeker lies about being gay; 'Daughter of Palestine' is a provocation), which contrasted with the unquestioned right of Jews to be in Israel, and with the self-positioning of the Russian immigrants as what Ghassan Hage calls 'worrying nationalists' who passionately guard the nation's boundaries and always worry about unwelcome intruders. The stories presented here should be read within the context of the queer immigrants' own struggle to belong. In these stories, the queer immigrants' spaces of belonging (the community's club, the imagined national space and the space of the on-line forum) were constituted as 'our places' through Islamophobic and Orientalist images of demonized Mizrachim and Palestinians. There were significant differences, of course, in the way Mizrachim and Palestinians were presented. The anti-Mizrachi racism was strongly opposed by many participants on the website (some of the people protested against expressions of hatred towards the Mizrachim by saying 'but they are Jews, too!'). The anti-Palestinian hatred, on the other hand, was rarely challenged. What is more, those few who did try to do so were themselves attacked by other participants. The legitimacy of racist speech, in other words, resembled the national boundaries that divide between the internal colonized Other and the external enemy. But despite the differences, the two forms of Orientalism have a lot in common. Both divide between what Ella Shohat calls the first world (the European Ashkenazi elite) and the third world, the Mizrachi Jews and Palestinians. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:43:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sokolower261009.html This is an exciting time. For the first time in decades, there are bright spots in the international stage, and here in the United States there's a rekindling of energy and hope. There's a new generation of activists and a million new ideas. But the kind of changes that the world needs, and that the world needs the United States to make, can't be made by a network of nonprofits or a series of projects, no matter how brilliant. We need organizations with the depth and resilience to withstand the carrot and the stick, resilience that's based on a deep-seated commitment to what we're leaving for our children and their children. We need a movement with a vision of the society we want and a creative, critical, ongoing discussion of strategy and tactics. That discussion needs to include an analysis of where we've been. What was right about the goals and strategies of the revolutionary movements of the past half century? What were the problems and contradictions? For those of us who participated in the struggles of the past decades, we have a responsibility to shed clear light on that history, to speak honestly and deeply about the successes and the problems we encountered, so our youth can truly stand on our shoulders. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aburawa261009.html Morcos insists that change needs to come from within the Arab world rather than from the West. "I don't believe that emulating the West will work -- it will only bring temporary change." "I don't have to remind you that women, until very recently in the Western world, were denied the vote so I don't think that we should talk about the Western world as the kingdom of freedom. And it is not as if we don't have our own way of defining our freedom," she said. Morcos says that real social change in the Arab world must come first by involving local communities in the process. Finding ways that work, she says, "Is the best way forward for people who are involved. They need to get together locally, then regionally to talk about how to change the Arab and Muslim world, to write about it and openly tackle the media and TV." Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:12:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bond251009.html After the weekend in which 350.org and thousands of allies valiantly tried to raise global consciousness about impending catastrophe, we can ask some tough questions about what to do after people depart and the props are packed up. No matter the laudable big-tent activism, let's face it: global climate governance is gridlocked and it seems clear that no meaningful deal can be sealed in Copenhagen on December 18. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:43:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/neshat251009.html "The movement which we saw this summer is a sign of a new group who were not fighting for a certain ideology but believed in freedom." -- Shirin Neshat Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:59:00 EST http://labornotes.org/node/2466 Even before the financial crisis, traditional pensions were a vanishing breed. Thirty years ago more than a third of the private sector workforce had traditional pensions. Last year that number was down to 16 percent. . . . Even before the crash, studies showed that 401(k)s leave workers with 10 to 33 percent of what traditional pensions provide. Given the 30-year squeeze on wages, most people haven’t saved much either, which explains why more than half of all 401(k) participants have less than $75,000 when they retire. . . . At the start of this year the nation’s defined-benefit pension plans had only about 75 percent of what they owed participants. Companies may need to contribute as much as $100 billion to cover these gaps. Although Congress waived compliance with new pension rules this year, the law will eventually take effect, and will force employers to cover these pension gaps. Rather than clean up their act, more and more employers are looking for the exit. By April of this year nearly a third of America’s largest companies had frozen their pension plans. Many others are invoking the nuclear option, declaring bankruptcy as a way to unload their pension plans on the taxpayers. . . . The situation for public sector workers isn’t much better. Although 80 percent of public employees have traditional pensions, those benefits are now in the cross-hairs of conservative and liberal politicians. Two-thirds of public sector pension plans are underfunded -- to the tune of $430 billion -- and state and local budget crises are pitting taxpayers against public employees from California to Maine. . . . The PBGC -- which has been swimming in red ink since 2002 -- is currently set up to pay less than half of what people were promised. If the funding gaps widen, it could fall to pennies on the dollar. There will be calls to bail the PBGC out -- which needs to happen -- 1.2 million people now depend on it. A sensible demand is to make it function more like the FDIC, by guaranteeing 100 percent of pension benefits up to a reasonable threshold. But reform can’t stop there. If it does, workers are on the same path as before the economic collapse, with a temporary reprieve. Employers will still seek to drive union workers down to non-union standards and dump more risk onto individuals. We need to return to the original vision of Social Security: a program that (like in Western European nations) can actually pay for most of your old-age living expenses. Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:48:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/do241009.html The government of President Leonel Fernández, with the support of the powerful Catholic Church and the far right (known as the Nazionalistas), will soon adopt a new constitution that will set the country back decades. The new constitution is part of a ruling class attack on working people in a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo in the midst of the biggest world economic crisis since the Great Depression. Thus, the government seeks to legitimize racism, sexism and homophobia by banning abortion under any circumstance including rape, incest and if the health of the mother is at risk; stripping the children of undocumented Haitian immigrants of their Dominican citizenship; and finally, defining the institution of marriage as "the union between a man and a woman", excluding same-sex relationships in the process. Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:16:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff241009.html From the official beginning of the current economic crisis in December 2007 to the present, the number of unemployed workers has risen roughly from 7 to 15 million members of the US labor force. But there is no government program directly to hire these millions of the unemployed. The Bush and Obama administrations quickly and boldly addressed the crisis by socializing a major part of the credit system, replacing or guaranteeing private debts with a ballooning US government debt. While aggressively becoming the lender or guarantor of last resort in many credit markets, the federal government has been inactive about unemployment in the labor market. The private sector provides ever fewer jobs, yet the government refuses to become the employer of last resort. Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:17:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ek241009.html Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality (Raw Nerve Books) came out in July 2008. The book presents an unprecedented compilation of critical articles by scholars and activists, which address the manifold ways in which questions regarding 'race' and racism are silenced in queer politics and theory. Out of Place was very well received. It found a wide readership and the first edition sold out in a bit over a year. Now for the bad news: The book is no longer available. Raw Nerve Books, a small independent feminist publisher, decided not to produce a second edition. . . . The chapter in question is an essay entitled 'Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the 'war on terror'' by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem. . . . The reaction to the article shows that the authors certainly touched on a raw nerve with their critique here. Yet what we as authors of a chapter in the collection envisage in the case of controversy is critical and open debate rather than foreclosing such debate by treating opposed views as libellous. When authors are confronted with the threat of a law suit, this forecloses open debate. If such debate cannot include disagreements and conflicts of opinion, it takes self censorship for granted. Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:25:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ew241009.html As health policy expert Len Rodberg noted in a recent article, "Is There Any Way Out for Obama?", quoted on the PNHP website, funding "healthcare reform" in this fashion simply penalizes employers like Verizon who have, under duress, continued to provide "good insurance." At the same time, the Finance Committee bill approved on October 13 does little to compel better coverage by employers who currently underinsure their employees. In the case of big self-insured firms in the telecom industry, this is not a "tax on insurance companies" -- as often reported misleadingly in the media. It's an additional bottom-line cost that, as Rodberg observes, provides "a strong incentive to cut back on benefits." Workers who lack collective bargaining rights will have their coverage reduced unilaterally. At unionized firms . . . an excise tax on existing benefits will trigger more 1989-style labor-management conflict at a time when union strike capacity is far weaker than twenty years ago. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:37:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aizura231009.html This incident proves something about how difficult it is to do anti-racist work. Pointing out racism, no matter how carefully we might phrase it and no matter which arguments we have about the use of the word 'racism', is often perceived as a personal and individual affront. Those so accused often appear to find it wounding or traumatic -- psychically wounding, but more importantly, wounding to their public image. "How dare you accuse me of racism? I am not racist; I have lots of friends who are people of color!" goes the cliched defensive response we are all familiar with. This way, the person or organisation critiqued can escape engaging with the content of the critique and put the burden of proof back on the person who raised the issue. It is not coincidental that the person making a critique of racism is often non-white, deploying old colonial stereotypes that people of colour are untrustworthy ingrates who don't know what's good for them. This problem of white, "well-intentioned" activists ignoring or actively silencing the desires of the people they profess to help in order to maintain the myth of their own generous self-sacrifice is endemic to many struggles: feminist anti-"trafficking" activism; indigenous land and rights struggles; migration activism; the backlash against the wearing of hijab by Muslim women in France and elsewhere, and on and on. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:12:00 EST http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/gould/pubs/Aidnography.pdf This volume brings together a set of critical analyses of development aid and aid relationships. An 'aid relationship' in this context refers to the matrices of rhetoric, ritual, power and material transactions euphemistically termed 'development cooperation' between rich and poor countries. . . . To borrow David Mosse's (2003) distinction, these studies grapple with the issue of how development works -- what social relations and subjectivities do the interventions of development aid conjure into existence? -- in order to problematize taken-for-granted accounts of whether development works -- i.e., are projects 'successful'? Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:38:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/townsend231009.html Veteran Monthly Review authors Fred Magdoff and Mike Yates have taken great care with their current release: The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know. Right off the bat they keep the volume handy in size and length. A worker with a busy life can actually absorb the content as I did, while riding the subway and going outside for a last few rays of autumn sunshine at lunchtime. The average chapter is about ten pages. The book throughout is fast-paced yet detailed, understandable, and at times entertaining. A chuckle is needed I suppose when pondering the sheer magnitude of the jam we all find ourselves in today. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:14:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ska-p231009.html Amidst misery, hunger, and desolation Somebody planted a flower in the mud A certain Bolívar, they call him the Liberator The Liberator Shouts for justice, land, and freedom Again resonate in South America A new revolution has begun And this time it's advancing with conviction Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:48:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/abedin231009.html Whether the Americans direct Jundallah to conduct terrorist operations in Iran is irrelevant at this point. What is significant is that they have created a strategic environment in which such attacks are both practically and ideologically possible, and no doubt -- and notwithstanding perfunctory condemnation of terrorist acts -- the Americans rub their hands with glee every time there is a major terrorist incident in Iran. To emerge victorious in the long term, the Iranian government would be well advised to articulate and implement an alternative strategic vision for the region. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack the previous Iranian government led by the liberal reformist Mohammad Khatami hastily condemned the attack and through its words created the impression that the Islamic Republic acquiesced to an American-led intervention in Afghanistan. This has led many regional actors -- including those who are potentially Iran's allies -- to claim that the Iranians "collaborated" with the United States. While any real collaboration was likely minimal, the impression has endured and inflicted significant damage on the prestige of the Islamic Republic. While Iran has little in common with the Taliban in Afghanistan and an assortment of extremist outfits in Pakistan, the crucial point is that these actors do not pose a strategic threat to the Islamic Republic. In any case, articulating opposition to American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led operations in the region does not amount to condoning the actions of their immediate opponents. The long and arduous route to defeating organized criminals, armed secessionists and political and religious extremists in Sistan and Balochistan lies in actively lobbying for the exit of foreign forces from the region. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:51:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cullen221009.html The "Democratic" Philippines is a myth and the enduring "death squads" and cover-up is proof of that. The death squads existing in many cities are to create a culture of fear and control and suppress the people's protest of injustice and unendurable poverty. Davao City and the surrounding province are rife with inequality and land exploitation, injustice and widespread poverty, and a few vastly wealthy families control the land and the banana industry. The military and police protect their interests against impoverished peasants or militant social and human rights activists demanding land reform, just wages, and health care. Davao is the most prominent example of murdering death squads that kill even street children, although there is a similar situation in all other Philippine provinces. Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates221009.html But any movement of the poor is a fragile thing; it will be beset by demons from without and within. The external enemies are well-known, constant irritants and often overwhelmingly powerful. Those inside the union are more subtle, yet nearly as destructive: leaders have big and conflicting egos, gender and racial tensions are hard to overcome, people have honest differences about goals and strategies, and it is enormously difficult to create the selfless bureaucracy that alone will ensure the movement's continuity. Cesar learned how to get power and to use it effectively to combat the union's external foes, but such power was also used inside to solidify his personal hold on the movement. As he did this, he came to see the movement as his movement, to shape as he pleased. Anyone inside opposed to him was branded as an outside enemy and excised from the union. His movement was not strong enough to contain him, and the results were like those I have described above. In the years since then, things have gotten worse. Nearly every officer, organizer, and lawyer has been purged or has quit. Most of the membership drifted away, because the union could not keep them under contract with the growers and would not tolerate rank-and-file criticism of Cesar. In 1993, Cesar died at the age of sixty-six. His son-in-law was made union president, and his children now preside over a host of business enterprises funded by government grants and money raised through mass mailings. Cesar's union has become a racket, paying high salaries to its officers while the mass of farm workers still starve. In the end, it seems that a proletarian dictator is no better than any other. Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:50:00 EST https://nacla.org/node/6171 On Friday, October 9 a United Nations human rights panel issued a warning concerning the presence of contracted foreign paramilitary forces operating inside the troubled country. According to the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries, an estimated 40 members of the infamous United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) have been hired by wealthy Honduran landowners to defend themselves "from further violence between supporters of the de facto government and those of the deposed President Manuel Zelaya." As Zelaya's Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas notes, it is widely believed that these mercenaries are being used to "do the dirty jobs that the armed forces refuse to do." In addition, the panel established direct links between President Roberto Micheletti's coup-installed government and foreign paramilitaries, stating that an additional group of 120 hired soldiers from several countries throughout the region had been created to provide support for the coup regime. This report confirms allegations made by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo back in September. Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:55:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tamadon221009.html This film is an attempt to bring together individuals who are totally different (the most radical elements of the Islamic Republic and myself, an Iranian of the diaspora, an intellectual, atheist, and living in France) but are part of the same society so that they can meet and exchange their ideas. This film is both a social and political project and at the same time an individual quest, which I hope to share with the audience. Despite my fears, I always forced myself to ask real questions, to give an honest point of view while responding to the questions asked. Despite a fundamental opposition and total disagreement, I truly tried to initiate a discussion that people who are part of the same society should have if they are to consider one another as human beings and if they care about the survival of their society, their culture and their world. Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:39:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/chandrasekhar221009.html If time lags matter, news of the dollar's demise as the world's principal reserve currency is grossly exaggerated. That prediction has been periodically heard at least since the early 1970s when the United States brought the Bretton Woods arrangement to an end by breaking the link between dollar and gold. As is obvious, whatever else may be said of the role of the US in the world system, this expectation of the dollar's displacement as the currency that is as good as gold has not materialised. This, however, is not to say that the dollar fulfils its role adequately or even satisfactorily. Not surprisingly, with the strength of the US economy once again in question, the dollar has begun to slide. Between the low of 1.2932 to the dollar it touched on 21 April 2009 and its value at the end of September 2009, the euro had appreciated by 13 per cent vis-a-vis the dollar. This (and other similar tendencies) has triggered predictions of the demise of the dollar as lead currency. Should and will a new currency replace the dollar as the paper that is treated as good as gold? Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:53:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labor211009.html Whereas: The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan, military aid to Colombia, Israel and many of the countries that use US aid for repression of indigenous and popular movements, are making the people of the US and the world less safe. And Whereas: These wars and military aid are bankrupting the people of the US, who are already suffering from staggering job losses, foreclosures and a broken healthcare system. Therefore: The Troy Area Labor Council AFL-CIO calls upon the AFL-CIO to organize a national march on Washington for Peace, Jobs and Healthcare Justice, to stop the wars and to use the resources freed up to end the jobs and healthcare crisis here at home. Passed unanimously at the October 21, 2009 Meeting Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:24:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/honduras211009.html Ambassador Lima Casaes described an elaborate series of measures taken by the Honduran security forces surrounding the Embassy to cause sleep deprivation among those inside. These included ultra-high-intensity lights, high-decibel sound, and other measures. He also mentioned other attacks including tear gas and attacks with unidentified gases, and other forms of harassment and violations of international law including restricting food deliveries. All of these are serious violations of international law, and have already been condemned on September 25 by the Security Council of the United Nations. Today OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza also condemned the ongoing "harassment" of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:11:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/elich211009.html Elich: A very full and rich schedule. It's probably too soon to answer such a question, as I am sure your team has much information to analyze and process. But what are some of the concepts that you witnessed in Venezuela that you think could be applied by the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project on its home turf? Your trip came at an interesting time, given the healthcare debate here in the U.S. The Cuban healthcare model your organization seeks to implement presents a real alternative to healthcare reform as it is shaping up, where the one essential ingredient is that corporate health insurance profits must be maintained or increased. All other aspects of healthcare are potentially dispensable. Freeeman: A big difference that makes it hard to translate the lessons from Venezuela into things that can be applied in the U.S. in general and Washington, DC in particular is that Cuba's and Venezuela's healthcare systems have the support of the state. This of course allows them so much flexibility with what they're able to do and affords them resources. And as you pointed out, here it's the opposite. It is in fact the U.S. government, serving primarily as agents of corporate health insurance and pharmaceuticals, that is actually working against the people's interests. But a concept that can certainly be applied without state support and is in fact indispensable for what we're trying is ideological buy-in from the community. When the community as a whole internalizes the ideas that, first, healthcare is their human right and, second, only they themselves are capable of solving this issue, then we can see some change. We also have to begin realizing that the issue of healthcare is inextricably related to all other aspects of injustice that the people face and act accordingly. That is to say that the root causes for lack of healthcare, affordable housing, quality, empowering education, job security, and even issues like the prevalence of police brutality and the industrial prison complex's "school-to-prison pipeline," etc. fundamentally all have the same root causes, so our actions must begin to reflect this understanding. In Venezuela we noticed that part of what is being done on the community level, at least in some areas, is to find the civic leaders in each community and work with them. And just like in Venezuela or any other place we have such leaders within our neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. They might not always be easy to find or identify but such leaders are always there and we have identified some within the neighborhood where we're working. And once their commitment is secured it is easier to get the community as a whole to work together. Another thing we can certainly take away from the trip and apply is an unshakable faith in the people to understand their conditions and their ability to come up with the means to solve their own problems. This is something liberal advocates generally lack. They instead tend to see change as only coming through appealing to the powers that be and not from a profound and prerequisite transformation on the ground. I suppose that's the main difference between reformists and revolutionaries. Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:30:00 EST http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/PESM/QueerAntiCap.pdf Lesbians and gays are on the verge of winning full citizenship in Canada and a number of Western European countries. This represents a remarkable change in the 35 years since the contemporary lesbian and gay liberation movement was launched out of the Stonewall riots. These gains are the product of a social movement with a strong history of militant mobilization. At the same time, the process of capitalist restructuring has opened some of the space for lesbian and gay existence. The penetration of the market deeper into everyday life has created spaces for commodified forms of lesbian and gay existence, oriented around bars, restaurants, commercial publications, fashions and hairstyles. Capitalism has accommodated elements of lesbian and gay existence in the face of ongoing mobilizations, opening certain spaces for lesbian and gay life while at the same time shutting down others. The era of lesbian/gay citizenship and commodification opens new possibilities for anti-capitalist queer marxist-feminist politics. Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:24:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bishara211009.html The Palestinian party that declared, in Geneva, that it would withdraw its support from the Goldstone Report behaved not as though the Palestinians needed as much support as they could get, but as though it were part of the international order. Grassroots solidarity embarrasses such officials. It doesn't mesh with their self-image. They are up there with those in the White House, and who needs popular solidarity once you're a guest of the US president? Also, that solidarity movement can be more of an enemy than a friend at times. That movement supports the people in Gaza, for example, whereas the Palestinian officials in question stand on the other side of the blockade, working to obstruct any efforts that might give an advantage to their Palestinian political adversaries. These officials bade farewell to the liberation movement some time ago. "So long, liberation movement," they said well before liberation was even a glimmer on the horizon. That was painfully obvious to those who had eyes and ears. However, their behaviour in Geneva came as the definitive and impossible-to-miss adieu to the spirit and logic of liberation and solidarity movements. Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:31:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/goldstone201009.html The primary author of the recently released UN Report on Gaza, the internationally respected jurist Richard Goldstone, has been attacked by establishment voices within the Jewish community. When those within a community try to "excommunicate" and dishonor truth-tellers, it is our obligation and responsibility to speak out vehemently on their behalf and on behalf of the truth they bring. Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:55:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hp201009.html Even now the United States is helping rebuild Georgia's armed forces, and the U.S. and NATO stage regular war games and exercises with the Baltic, Scandinavian, Caspian basin, and Balkans states, all serving to provoke and threaten Russia and Iran, and to manufacture an environment of conflict and fear conducive to militarization and war. To cover over their own power projection and systems of permanent warfare and ethnic cleansing (in the case of Israel), the United States and Israel need villains and "threats." Both Iran and Russia have been demonized and mobilized to serve this purpose. And this program designed for permanent tension and war has been working well. Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mcclennen201009.html What doesn't seem to create much tension, though, is the way that a former economic news reporter has morphed into an anti-immigration pundit. Here is where I think that the story of Dobbs becomes most interesting since it offers us an opportunity to connect the economy of racism to the racism of the economy. Before I talk about this more, I need to reveal two further details about Dobbs that may be less known. First, his wife Debi Lee Segura de Dobbs is Mexican American, a fact he uses to dispute his so-called Hispanophobia. This detail necessarily leads us to rethink certain features of his racism which seem to be tempered at least a little in the case of privileged people of color but do not detract in any way from its virulence or violence. And second, despite the fact that on his show he critiques multinational corporations that hire workers outside of the US, in a newsletter that he sells to private investors, he typically supports those very same companies that he disparages on his show. As James K. Glassman, a reporter for Capitalism Magazine, explains, "Dobbs is telling investors to buy shares of companies like Boeing and Washington Mutual -- both on his most-wanted list of firms guilty of 'exporting America.'" Of course Glassman and I are coming at this critique from different angles, since he is pro-free trade neoliberalism and I am opposed to it, but the point here is the same. Dobbs has used his show to present an image of himself as an economic protectionist, but in fact he is a neoliberal. When we begin to recognize the hypocrisy of his mass media-produced economic policy of protectionism and we combine it with his racism, we can see how he has effectively targeted a post-9/11 audience fearful of outsiders and has exacerbated their beliefs that all of their problems are created by immigrants, foreigners, and outsiders. Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:10:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/honduras191009.html A Time Magazine article on Friday cited the comments of anonymous U.S. diplomats and an email that signal that officials in the State Department are undermining the official position toward the elections. . . . On September 28, State Department officials representing the United States blocked the Organization of American States (OAS) from adopting a resolution on Honduras that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship. Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:18:00 EST http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/we-shall-certainly-defeat-the-government Q: The Centre has declared an all-out war against Maoists by branding the CPI (Maoist) a terrorist organisation and imposing an all-India ban on the party. How has it affected your party? A: Our party has already been banned in several states of India. By imposing the ban throughout the country, the Government now wants to curb all our open activities in West Bengal and a few other states where legal opportunities exist to some extent. The Government wants to use this draconian UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] to harass whoever dares to raise a voice against fake encounters, rapes and other police atrocities on the people residing in Maoist-dominated regions. Anyone questioning the State's brutalities will now be branded a terrorist. The real terrorists and biggest threats to the country's security are none other than Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Buddhadeb, other ruling class leaders and feudal forces who terrorise the people on a daily basis. The UPA Government had declared, as soon as it assumed power for the second time, that it would crush the Maoist 'menace' and began pouring in huge funds to the states for this purpose. The immediate reason behind this move is the pressure exerted by the comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the imperialists, particularly US imperialists, who want to plunder the resources of our country without any hindrance. These sharks aspire to swallow the rich abundant mineral and forest wealth in the vast contiguous region stretching from Jangalmahal to north Andhra. This region is the wealthiest as well as the most underdeveloped part of our country. These sharks want to loot the wealth and drive the Adivasi people of the region to further impoverishment. Another major reason for the current offensive by the ruling classes is the fear of the rapid growth of the Maoist movement and its increasing influence over a significant proportion of the Indian population. The Janatana Sarkars in Dandakaranya and the revolutionary people's committees in Jharkhand, Orissa and parts of some other states have become new models of genuine people's democracy and development. The rulers want to crush these new models of development and genuine democracy, as these are emerging as the real alternative before the people of the country at large. Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:54:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz191009.html Calderón's move to destroy this union represents an important turning point in modern Mexican labor history, a decisive step to break the back of the unions once and for all. Following up on his three-year war on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMM), Calderón has now decided to take on the leading union in Mexico City. But, even more important, it is, as one Mexican political leader noted, it is an act intended "to change the balance of forces," so that they favor the government. After its electoral defeat and out of fear of social protest which the [economic] crisis is provoking, the government wants to give a demonstration of its power which everybody will understand: the left, the social movements, the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party], the unions, the Congress, the businessmen and the media. The logic is the same that was used in the [Salinas government's] attack on La Quina [head of the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union] in 1989: if you can do it the strongest, then you can do it to the weakest. If the most combative union can be defeated, then so can any other force.1 Mexico City, where this blow has been delivered, is heart of the political opposition to Calderón and the base of support for left-wing leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador who claims to have won the last election. Mexico City is also the base of Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of the metropolis, who some see as another possible presidential contender in 2012. So this attack on the union is also an attack on the left at its strongest point. And, at least at this moment -- and while we still hope to see the Mexican workers take the strong measures needed -- it seems as if the government can and has defeated the strongest, and can now turn its attention to the weaker. Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:13:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/india191009.html Year after year, for One Hundred Years, young intellectuals from middle-class families arise, distinguish themselves academically, abandon their civil pursuits, embrace revolution. Year after year, they make bombs, stockpile weapons, derail trains, organize resistance. Year after year, their clothes change, the hair shortens, the glasses become square, their methods remain the same. Year after year, their enemies change, the British, the Zamindar, the Nizam, the Capitalist, even the Communists (albeit the CPI(M))! Year after year, for One Hundred Years, they rise, the face of Aurobindo morphing into that of Kobad Gandhy. . . . What is going on here? They were doing it before communism even existed in India! Who are these people? Will the real slim shady please stand up? . . . . The events at Naxalbari marked a new phase in what had already been a century-old phenomenon. The conditions that made this possible are more than a hundred years old. By drawing a line at 1967 and Naxalbari, we are deftly cutting a vital chord to the past and reducing the scope of debate and reflection. These Maoists are as much 'Telenganites' as they are Naxalites, and that is a very important distinction. In order to reflect, we need perspective. Know your Naxal, before you hang him. Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:55:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dewaal191009.html The republication of Jean-François Bayart's classic book-length essay, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, is an opportunity to reflect on the hypotheses he raises and their application to Sudan and especially Darfur. . . . Among the strongest elements of Bayart's account is the way in which formal political systems and processes are intermingled with kinship, which he describes as an historic process of the fusion or "reciprocal assimilation" of "traditional" and "modern" elites. . . . It is hard to separate the "customary" and the "modern," despite the efforts of a prior generation of Sudanese political scientists and activists: the "native administration" and the "modern administration" are mutually assimilated. It is common to find that in a single prominent provincial family, one son is the chief of the tribe, and his brothers or first cousins will include an army general, a commissioner, a senior party member, a businessman, and a professor -- and also today a senior NGO or UN official. If the family is placed at a particularly strategic political intersection, brothers may hold high ranks in different competing parties, and perhaps one will also be an influential member of an armed opposition movement. . . . Another major element of Bayart's analysis is "extraversion" of African states, defined as "mobilizing resources derived from their (possibly unequal) relationship with the external environment" (pp. 21-22). According to this, external orientation, especially in the ruling elites' access to resources, is merely the contemporary manifestation of a long history of extraversion, which dates to pre-colonial times. It arises less because of the weakness of African states vis-à-vis the external, and more because of the failure of internal consolidation in the face of factional strife -- and in turn means that states do not need to exploit domestic production in order to obtain sufficient resources to rule. . . . Bayart has little time for the pious hopes that democratic elections heralded a new beginning for Africa. Rather, he prefers to see "democratization" as the resurgence of old forces temporarily suppressed by one party states and writes: "this venting of popular feeling was rapidly countered by the strategies of power-holders intent on restoring their authoritarian regimes with an artful combination of dexterity and brutality" (p. xx). . . . Bayart is equally unsentimental about what "democracy" means for the extraverted African state. "One might summarize by saying that democracy, or more precisely the discourse of democracy, is no more than yet another source of economic rents, comparable to earlier discourses such as the denunciation of communism or of imperialism in the time of the Cold War, but better adapted to the spirit of the age. It is, as it were, a form of pidgin language that various native princes use in their communication with Western sovereigns and financiers" (p xxiv). . . . Bayart is scornful of international efforts to promote western-style institutions and political practices: "By head-hunting many of the brightest African intellectuals with the high salaries awarded to international civil servants, by celebrating the virtues of 'civil society' and 'good governance' and distributing largesse in the service of this cause, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have in effect co-opted and confined those potential counter-elites within a 'legitimate' problematique of development, i.e. the so-called Washington Consensus. In so doing they have done their part to promote a multilateralization of the passive revolution whose principal institutional and political vector is the state" (p xxiv). This provocative passage hides two interesting potential elaborations. One is the way that, within a national territory, the international aid sector (foreign NGOs, UN agencies etc.) can become a kind of internal refuge for dissenters, who are thereby able to maintain their livelihoods and their (modernist) principles, but are also politically demobilized. . . . Another elaboration is to observe that the national elites are themselves co-opting the international organizations, whether they be the NGOs operating in Sudan or multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. It is not only the counter-elites who seek employment in these agencies. . . . . Even when this strategy is not pursued consciously, the outcome of the penetration of multilateral agencies by African elites is that African governance and multilateral governance have come to overlap, if not fuse. The revolving door between the Bretton Woods institutions and senior governmental posts -- including head of state -- in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire provides a rich set of cases. Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lacoste181009.html Enrique Lacoste Prince is a Cuban cartoonist based in Havana. Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:40:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/joya181009.html "Now, my people are squashed between two powerful enemies. From the sky, the occupation forces are dropping bombs, even using cluster bombs and white phosphorus and killing innocent civilians in the name of combating the Taliban. On the ground, the Taliban and also Northern Alliance fundamentalists continue their fascism against men and women of my country. So we are fighting right now against two powerful enemies: external enemy and internal enemy. With the withdrawal of the external enemy, the occupation forces, it would be much easier to fight against one enemy instead of two. But there's no question that, for this difficult and prolonged struggle, we need the helping hands of democratic-minded people of Italy, democratic-minded and peace-loving people of the US, justice-loving anti-war movements around the world. They must not leave us alone. Support the democratic-minded men and women of my country." -- Malalai Joya Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:05:00 EST http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8306.pdf In the aftermath of September 11, political rhetorics of Islam, nationalism, fundamentalism, culture, and civilization have reframed even domestic discourses of tolerance -- the enemy of tolerance is now the weaponized radical Islamicist state or terror cell rather than the neighborhood bigot -- and have certainly changed the cultural pitch of tolerance in the international sphere. While some of these changes have simply brought to the surface long-present subterranean norms in liberal tolerance discourse, others have articulated tolerance for genuinely new purposes. These include the legitimation of a new form of imperial state action in the twenty-first century, a legitimation tethered to a constructed opposition between a cosmopolitan West and its putatively fundamentalist Other. Tolerance thus emerges as part of a civilizational discourse that identifies both tolerance and the tolerable with the West, marking nonliberal societies and practices as candidates for an intolerable barbarism that is itself signaled by the putative intolerance ruling these societies. In the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, the West imagined itself as standing for civilization against primitivism, and in the cold war years for freedom against tyranny; now these two recent histories are merged in the warring figures of the free, the tolerant, and the civilized on one side, and the fundamentalist, the intolerant, and the barbaric on the other. . . . Part of the project of this book, then, is to analyze tolerance, especially in its recently resurgent form, as a strand of depoliticization in liberal democracies. Depoliticization involves construing inequality, subordination, marginalization, and social conflict, which all require political analysis and political solutions, as personal and individual, on the one hand, or as natural, religious, or cultural on the other. Tolerance works along both vectors of depoliticization -- it personalizes and it naturalizes or culturalizes -- and sometimes it intertwines them. . . . By no means is tolerance the only or even the most significant discourse of depoliticization in contemporary liberal democracies. In fact, the widespread embrace of tolerance today, especially in the United States, is facilitated by its convergence with other sources of discursive depoliticalization. These sources include long-standing tendencies in liberalism itself and in the peculiarly American ethos of individualism. They include the diffusion of market rationality across the political and social spheres precipitated by the ascendency of neoliberalism. And they include the more recent phenomenon that Mahmood Mamdani has named the "culturalization of politics." Each of these will be considered below. Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/kalvellido171009.html A reputable company, a leader in the global market, seeks a docile unemployed individual without a source of income, to work for nothing without rights. Job Description: Combat Crisis Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:43:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sv171009.html The organizers of the event estimated that 150,000-200,000 people participated in the massive demonstration that started from different points in the heart of the metropolitan area of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, particularly from the financial district, and converged in the immediate surrounding of Plaza Las Américas, the largest mall of the Caribbean whose owners contributed to governor Luis Fortuño's campaign. There have been no official estimates, although government officials minimized the number. The Governor and his Chief of Staff, Marcos Rodríguez Ema, immediately stated that the law (Law 7 of Fiscal Emergency) that made the lay-offs viable would not be repealed. There were no incidents, although at the end of the demonstration there were moments of tension between students and the police. Methodist bishop Juan Vera, one of the keynote speakers of the demonstration and a member of the coalition of civil society organizations Todo Puerto Rico por Puerto Rico, declared that the country would be in a "state of pacific insurrection" until the government changed its policies and that there would be more acts of civil disobedience and resistance. Other organizers of the event are already talking about future strategies and another strike that would paralyze the entire Island. Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/nilc171009.html The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delegated its federal immigration enforcement authority to 55 local law enforcement jurisdictions, including localities that have a history of targeting Latinos and other immigrant groups. Maricopa County gets to keep its "jail model" agreement, even though Sheriff Arpaio proudly and publicly declares that he determines "illegality" based on speech and clothes. Even the ongoing investigation of his department by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice hasn't dampened DHS's enthusiasm for him. Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:20:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/richmond171009.html The Defenders will be co-sponsoring an event this evening with the Richmond Peace Education Center. It's a Teach-In, Richmond's contribution to the Oct. 17 national day of actions against wars and sanctions. . . . We were recently contacted by NHK-TV/JapanTV to let us know they were coming to Richmond to cover this event LIVE. Needless to say this is a unique opportunity to have our local efforts to end and prevent wars and sanctions aired to millions of viewers in Japan and all over the world. Coming from within the "empire" our anti-war voices matter. Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:45:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mm171009.html "Around Jerusalem the average ambulance journey time for a Palestinian is now almost 2 hours, compared to 10 minutes in 2001. In the West Bank alone there are more than 600 internal military checkpoints and road blocks. At these checkpoints, Palestinians in need of immediate medical attention are routinely refused passage, denied medical help, forced to give birth, injured and even shot dead. This film is dedicated to them." Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ17Df02.html Russia and China have been developing an intense strategic partnership; India's traditional ties with Moscow have significantly weakened under the current pro-US leadership in Delhi; and, now, India's normalization process with China has suffered a severe setback. . . . Indian policies are predicated on the assumption that a Sino-US clash of interests is inevitable as China's surge as a world power has become unstoppable, and Washington will have use of Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing sooner than most people would think. Surely, there is disquiet in Delhi about the Barack Obama administration's regional policies, which no longer accord India the status of a pre-eminent power and which place primacy on the US's alliance with India's arch rival, Pakistan. But Delhi hopes that Obama will ultimately have to pay heed to US business interests and therefore India holds a trump card in the burgeoning market that it offers to the American corporate sector - unlike Pakistan, which is a basket case at best, a can of worms at worst. Simply put, India is estimated to be the biggest arms buyer in the world and a market estimated to be worth US$100 billion is presenting itself to exploitation by American arms manufacturers - provided Obama has his wits about him and realizes on which side his South Asian bread is buttered. Delhi hopes to incrementally pose an existential choice to Obama through an idiom that the US political establishment understands perfectly well: the business interests of its military-industrial complex. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:39:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/white161009.html A garden is a source not only of nutrition but of identity. The quality of your produce also defines you. One segment of society especially in need of both nutrition and identity are the incarcerated. Prisoners are woefully neglected when it comes to diet. Prisons are a haven for junk food and of course the junk food industry. You would not believe the amount of money made from coin-operated vending machines in these facilities. The prison diet at best is massive carbohydrates augmented with sweets and powdered substitutes. The most difficult thing for those incarcerated is to obtain any fresh vegetables. These cannot be gotten from the canteen at any price. A family member may send a candy bar in a package but not an onion or a carrot. I find it interesting that they may send the latest sneakers but absolutely nothing of any nutritional value to an inmate. Why don't the powers that be allow gardens? A garden in any prison facility allows much needed healthy and rewarding exercise as well as a remedy for the malnutrition which results so often in dental agony. (This is usually the first visible sign of incarceration). A green garden would supply a much needed sense of responsibility as well. Many prisoners take up food collections (that is to say that they contribute to food pantries by way of churches). I have seen this at Sing-Sing Prison as well as Green Haven in Connecticut at the time of the Hurricane Katrina outreach. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:49:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolf161009.html The first mass protest of the Obama era -- the tea-bagging gatherings of bigots aside -- was a colossal success. In defiance of the corporate-run LGBT establishment, Gay Inc., and with no major organizations, media, or financing behind it, the National Equality March nevertheless drew more than 200,000 people to Washington, D.C., to demand full equality in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. . . . The march punctuated not just a turning point in the LGBT struggle, but kicked the door open for an unapologetically straight- and labor-allied civil rights movement that organizers hope to collect into a national network called Equality Across America (EAA). EAA has already called for a Week of Initiatives November 1-8, during which activists in every locality possible should aim to call a meeting, show a film, hold an action, or just take the first steps toward getting organized on the ground. Joe Solmonese -- effectively the CEO of Gay Inc. in his capacity as president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) -- expressed a particularly brash opportunism. HRC, which is the largest LGBT lobbying group in the country and pays Solmonese $338,400 annually, first denounced the march, and then endorsed it when pressure from below made it clear they had nothing to lose by signing on and could benefit if the march was a success. Though HRC never used its Web site or 750,000-person e-mail list to help promote the march, it leapt at the opportunity to parlay the march’s success into raising $200,000 for themselves less than 48 hours after the protest. Those fired up and raring to mobilize after the march would do better to focus their energies and funds on those who have both the vision and desire to organize EAA into a genuine grassroots effort to demand full equality now. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:05:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hamalawy161009.html This photograph is one of the shortlisted photographs for "Labour Photo of the Year – 2009." You can vote for the photo at www.labourstart.org/lpoty/. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:15:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pr161009.html Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EST http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/india161009.html The press conference-public meeting is to be addressed by Parthasarathi Ray of Sanhati, writer Arundhati Roy, senior Supreme Court lawyer and civil rights expert Prashant Bhushan and members of the PUDR. You are cordially invited to attend the meeting and participate in the discussion that will follow. Venue: Press Club of India, Raisina Road (New Delhi) Date: October 19, 2009 Time: 12.00-3.00 pm RSVP Sanhati PUDR Radical Notes Correspondence Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:33:00 EST http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/08/street-fightin-soosool.html There are two kinds of soosool boys, a friend once told me, referring to the Persian slang word for "sissy" boys. Soosool-e shomali va soosool-e junubi: Northern sissy boys and Southern sissy boys. With their spiked hair, svelte figure, and cultivated regalia with (usually fake) brand name apparel on display, the soosool is a common sight throughout Tehran, part of the domestic wildlife that attracts the eye of the foreign journalist, the pious mullah, and the teenage girl. No one spends more time looking at his own reflection while riding the Tehran metro than the soosool. So what's the difference between the Northern and Southern varieties? When the basijis take a swing at a Northern soosool, he runs away. When they try it on the Southern soosool, he swings back. Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:22:00 EST