Disembedded Liberalism

Health Care is at Heart of Long-Term Debt Problem

2011-06-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

Germany--Appearance and Reality

2011-06-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

Germany's Green party (Buendnis 90/Die Gruenen) parliamentary group co-leader Renate Kuenast stands next to a poster of herself at a Environment Festival in central Berlin, June 5, 2011. Kuenast will run for mayor in the Berlin state election later this year. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

By Norman Birnbaum

The Nation

June 7, 2011

Excerpts from commentary:

Everywhere in Western Europe, the political agents of capital are reclaiming for the market the ground they lost to the state over the past half-century.

...

As in the other industrial democracies, Germany has for four decades experienced a very organized counter-offensive by the proponents of the market. But singular alliance of churches and trade unions and the acquired political instincts of much of the nation prevented an assault as brutal as those of Reagan and Thatcher.

(click here to view entire commentary)

Despite House Passage, Feingold Maintains Opposition to Financial Reform Bill as "Too Weak" in Face of Wall St. Recklessness

2010-07-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now!

July 2, 2010

Democrats may still be one vote short of approving an overhaul of financial regulation with Senator Russ Feingold vowing to vote against the measure again. The House approved the measure this week following over three weeks of conference committee negotiations. We speak to former investment banker turned journalist Nomi Prins, author of several books including "It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street."[includes rush transcript]

Frontline's "The Warning" documents how the whole political establishment is implicated in the lack of financial regulation that led to the crisis

2010-07-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

Check out The Warning on PBS' Frontline.

Obama’s Engine For Healthcare Reform: Can It Work?

2009-06-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

GRITtv

June 11, 2009

The battle over healthcare reform continues to play out on the Capitol, where Congress is preparing to review Sen. Kennedy's long-anticipated bill. President Obama recently presented the economic imperative of reforming our current system before everyone's healthcare is 'put in jeopardy'.

To sort through the political quagmire, we're joined by Leonard Rodberg, Professor of Urban and Health Policy at Queens College CUNY, Dr Laura Boylan of Physicians for a National Health Program, Karen Davenport, Director of Health Policy for the Center for American Progress and Rep. Mary Caferro, recipient of the 2008 Families USA Consumer Health Advocate award.

The Struggle for Single-Payer

2009-06-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

GRITtv

June 11, 2009

Last month, Sen Baucus declared that single-payer healthcare was "off the table". Doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates responded by disrupting the Senator's congressional hearings. A small victory was earned in the announcement that Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program was invited to testify at Sen. Kennedy's Committee hearing this Thursday.

Geri Jenkins, Co-President of the California Nurses Association just participated in Congress' first ever hearing to examine the single-payer option. She reports back on the hearing from Washington, D.C.

Time Magazine’s Convenient Omission: The Silencing of Single-Payer Continues

2009-06-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

GRITtv

June 11, 2009

The US has much to learn and less than it thinks to fear from studying the European provision of healthcare. A May 20th feature in Time Magazine started out upbeat enough.

But interestingly, in a piece intended to inform Americans wading into the healthcare debate, Time left out some key details...

(click here to view entire report)

Steve Early: Embedded with Labor

2009-06-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

GRITtv

June 19, 2009

Steve Early is a self-proclaimed participatory labor journalist. He started out in the 1970s with a union of retail clerks and has been writing about the labor movement ever since. Despite the decrease in union membership and the never-ending obstacles to workplace organizing, Steve says there is a lot to be hopeful about. He sits down with GRITtv to help us see the rays of light and talk about his new book, Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home.

Canadians talk to Americans about health care

2009-05-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

People from Toronto respond to a US advertising campaign about the Canadian health-care system

More at The Real News

The Real News

May 23, 2009

While the debate over changes to the US health-care system continues, lobby groups are investing advertising dollars to get their point across. One such group, Conservatives for Patient's Rights has released an advertisement outlining Canadian dissatisfaction with government run health care. The Real News Network invited Torontonians to respond.

Baucus’ Raucous Caucus: Doctors, Nurses and Activists Arrested Again for Protesting Exclusion of Single-Payer Advocates at Senate Healthcare Hearing

2009-05-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now!

May 13, 2009

Advocates of single-payer universal healthcare—the system favored by most Americans—continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on healthcare reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Guests:

Russell Mokhiber, founder of Single Payer Action. He was arrested last week at the first Senate Finance Committee hearing on healthcare reform. He is also editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, pediatrician in Baltimore and co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

A conversation with Naomi Klein and William Greider

2009-05-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

Charlie Rose

May 11, 2009

A conversation with Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine" and William Greider, author of "Come Home, America"

Occasionally some true American heroes emerge

2009-05-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Physicians for a National Health Program

GRITtv

May 8, 2009

When a Senate Finance Committee Hearing on health care coverage was held in Washington last week not one single payer advocate was invited to testify. But that did not stop them from attending the hearing and voicing their anger that the single payer model has been shut out of the debate. Eight single payer activists, including a number of doctors, were arrested after speaking out before the committee hearing got underway.

Evidently agitated at first, the committee chair, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont) said that single payer health care is, "a view which many have and which I respect. The point of this and other hearings is to determine the best option." Perhaps next time they'll have a seat at the table.

The video is courtesy of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Memo to NYT: Who’s Really Spending Money on EFCA?

2009-05-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

By Laura Flanders

GRITtv

May 6, 2009

Compromises, compromises, everywhere. Even in the media coverage.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is in trouble. US Senator Tom Harkin, who sponsored a bill to make it easier for workers to join unions, said May 4th that the main provision may have to be dropped. Apparently, Harkin believes there isn't enough support for the provision, which is known as card-check, to allow the law to pass. Card check would allow workers, if they wanted to, to bypass a formal election and form a union when a majority of them sign cards requesting one.

“Compromises are going to be made,” Harkin said on the 4th, as reported by the New York Times. Too many lawmakers such as Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, say they wouldn't support the law.

But that’s no reason for the Times to compromise. Describing the fight as one between an opposition led by Walmart Stores and a defense put up by Labor, the Times reports that those groups “spent about $100 million last year to elect Democrats and have made passing the card-check measure their top goal in Washington this year.”

How much have Walmart et al spent to defeat the bill? The Times doesn’t say. According to a recent report by Open Secrets, in the 2007-2008 election cycle, business PAC's spent over $365 million to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act and were backed by the US Chamber of Commerce, which spent $144.4 million or more that $400,000 for every day Congress was in session. The entire labor sector spent less than $84 million on lobbying efforts in those two years.

Autoworkers compete to keep jobs on reality show

2009-05-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

Workers at two Ford plants battle it out - one plant will close, 3,000 will get the axe

May 4, 2009

Onion News

William Greider: “Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country”

2009-05-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now!

May 5, 2009

The Nation‘s national affairs correspondent William Greider on the roots of the economic crisis, how US militarism is making the country less safe, Wall Street’s inflated power, the role of the Federal Reserve, and the future of healthcare reform. “My belief is, and I feel it strongly, is that we are just at the beginning of a really long, hard passage in which Americans, like it or not, have to adjust to these new realities,” says Greider. [includes rush transcript]

The Stockholm Syndrome!

2009-04-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Skewer: The Daily Show looks at the horrors of socialism in Sweden

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

The Stockholm Syndrome

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2

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Unions should organize unemployed

2009-04-24T00:46:00.000-07:00

Elaine Bernard: To build a movement, unions need to organize unemployed workers to demand jobs

More at The Real News

Real News

April 22, 2009

Bio

Elaine Bernard is the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Bernard's writings often focus on workers in the telecommunications industry, and the role technological change plays in altering work. In the last several years, she has publicly discussed how advancing technology will change how labor unions function (especially in regard to member-to-member and union-member communication and organizing).

Former union leader's vision for a new auto industry

2009-04-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

Frank Hammer: Put auto industry in a public trust and use it to create a green transportation system

Real News

April 23, 2009

As the government works with the management of GM and Chrysler to help them become competitive auto companies, many of the company's workers are demanding a drastically different approach. Paul Jay sits down in Detroit with Frank Hammer, who has helped organized the Auto Worker Caravan, an organization of active and retired auto workers that is lobbying Washington to change their question. Instead of asking what would make the companies competitive, Hammer believes the question the Obama administration should be asking is what would best serve the transportation and economic needs of the American people?

Bio

Frank Hammer is a retired General Motors employee and former President and Chairman of Local 909 in Warren, Michigan. He now organizes with the Auto Worker Caravan, an association of active and retired auto workers who advocate for workers demands in Washington.

Unions in America

2009-04-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

Elaine Bernard Pt.1: Private sector union membership has plummeted while the public sector has increased

More at The Real News

Elaine Bernard Pt.2: Legislation in the US a major obstacle to worker organization

More at The Real News

Elaine Bernard Pt3: The biggest barrier to unionization is the law

More at The Real News

Elaine Bernard Pt4: A successful labor movement socializes their gains - or they weaken themselves

More at The Real News

Real News

April 13 - 21, 2009

Bio

Elaine Bernard is the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Bernard's writings often focus on workers in the telecommunications industry, and the role technological change plays in altering work. In the last several years, she has publicly discussed how advancing technology will change how labor unions function (especially in regard to member-to-member and union-member communication and organizing).

Booklovers turn to Karl Marx as financial crisis bites in Germany

2008-12-15T12:34:00.000-08:00

A police officer stands in front of the Karl Marx theatre as people attend the Latin American Film Festival in Havana, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008. The festival takes place from Dec. 2 to Dec. 12. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

The Guardian

October 15, 2008

Karl Marx is back. That, at least, is the verdict of publishers and bookshops in Germany who say that his works are flying off the shelves.

The rise in his popularity has of course, been put down to the current economic crisis. "Marx is in fashion again," said Jörn Schütrumpf, manager of the Berlin publishing house Karl- Dietz which publishes the works of Marx and Engels in German. "We're seeing a very distinct increase in demand for his books, a demand which we expect to rise even more steeply before the year's end."

...

Increasing numbers of Germans appear ready to out themselves as Marx fans in a time when it is fashionable to repeat the philosopher's belief that excessive capitalism with all its greed finally ends up destroying itself. When Oskar Lafontaine, the head of Germany's rising left-wing party Die Linke, said he would include Marxist theory in the party's manifesto, in the outline of his plans to partially nationalise the nation's finance and energy sectors, he was labeled as a "mad leftie" who had "lost the plot" by the tabloid Bild. But even Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, who must have had some sleepless nights over the past few weeks, has now declared himself something of a fan. "Generally one has to admit that certain parts of Marx's theory are really not so bad," he cautiously told Der Spiegel.

"These days Marx is on a winning streak in the charm stakes," Ralf Dorschel commented in the Hamburger Abendblatt...

(click here to view entire report)

Interview with Dutch Socialist Party Leader Agnes Kant

2008-12-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

SP International

September 30, 2008

"[W]hat lessons can we draw now that the neoliberal form of capitalism has fallen on its backside? It's not good enough simply to pick up the pieces, we must also ensure that in the future the public interest is better protected. There is, therefore, every reason to pause and ask ourselves how the world got itself into this crisis.

“The last century was a century in which restraints were put on capitalism. By means of social struggle, social achievements were won. Public interests were guaranteed. In this way economic progress was recorded and our civilisation strengthened.

“But since the 1980s, we have unfortunately seen the rise of neoliberalism. The restraints must be loosened. Short term interest came to prevail and long term interests were neglected. With all of the risks that brings...

(click here to view entire interview)

Jack Welch's barge: New economics of trade

2007-11-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

By Thomas I. Palley

Asia Times

October 3, 2007

The classical theory of comparative advantage has driven US trade policy for the past 50 years. That policy, in combination with technical innovations that have lowered costs of transportation and communication, has opened the global economy. Yet paradoxically this opening has rendered classical trade theory obsolete. That in turn has left the US economically vulnerable because its trade policy remains stuck in the past and based on ideas that no longer hold.

The logic behind classical free trade is that all can benefit when countries specialize in producing those things in which they have comparative advantage. The necessary requirement is that the means of production (capital and technology) are internationally immobile and stuck in each country. That is what globalization has undone.

Several years ago Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric, captured the new reality when he talked of ideally having "every plant you own on a barge". The economic logic was that factories should float between countries to take advantage of lowest costs, be they due to under-valued exchange rates, low taxes, subsidies or a surfeit of cheap labor.

Globalization has made Welch's barge a reality. However, in doing so it has made capital mobility rather than country comparative advantage the engine of trade. And with that change, "free trade" increasingly trades jobs and promotes downward wage equalization.

The US and European response to Welch's barge has been competitiveness policy that advocates measures such as increased education spending to improve skills; lower corporate tax rates; and incentives for investment and research and development (R&D). The thinking is that increased competitiveness can make Europe and the US more attractive to businesses.

Unfortunately, competitiveness policy is not up to the task of anchoring the barge, and it can even be counterproductive. The core problem is corporations are globally mobile. Thus government can subsidize R&D spending, but the resulting innovations may simply end up in new offshore factories. Moreover, competitiveness policy easily degenerates into a race to the bottom. For instance, if the US cuts corporate taxes, other countries may match to stay competitive. The result is no gain for the US, while profit taxes are lowered and tax burdens shifted on to wages, which widens income inequality.

Worse yet, capital mobility prompts countries to adopt unfair policies to increase their relative business attractiveness. These policies include disregard of environmental damage; suppression of labor to keep wages low; direct subsidies; and undervalued exchange rates. All are visible in China, which is the poster-child for such abuses.

A critical consequence of Welch's barge is the creation of a "corporation versus country" divide. Previously, when corporations were nationally based, profit maximization by business contributed to national economic success by ensuring efficient resource use. Today, corporations still maximize profits, but they do so from the standpoint of their global operations. Consequently, what is good for corporations may not be good for country...

(click here to view entire report)

The myth of the "liberal" university

2007-09-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

By Tony Palmeri

The Valley Scene

September 2007

The myth of the “liberal” university is as widespread and false as the myth of the “liberal” media. A liberal university (like a liberal media) would be a safe space for dissent and would welcome thinking that challenges established power. Today, universities act like corporate media in treating dissent as “bad for business.” The University of Colorado’s recent termination of Ward Churchill, along with DePaul University’s decision to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee, make “liberal university” sound like the punch line to a bad joke.

Shortly after September 11, 2001 professor Churchill wrote an essay called “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” In it, he referred to World Trade Center corporate employees as “little Eichmanns,” suggesting that the people who died in the attacks were the moral equivalents of Nazi officials “just following orders” when sending Jews to the death camps. Nearly 6 years later, in July of this year, the Colorado Board of Regents voted 8-1 to approve UC Boulder president Hank Brown’s recommendation that Churchill be fired.

Hank Brown and the Colorado Board of Regents insist Churchill’s firing had nothing to do with his controversial statements, but with research misconduct uncovered by a university committee. They claim instances of plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication can be found in Churchill’s scholarly writings. Though admitting that the extensive review of Churchill’s writings (his work has been examined more thoroughly than probably any scholar in the history of academia) would not have taken place were it not for the media backlash against his 9/11 statements, Brown still claims with a straight face that he received fair treatment.

For his part, Churchill told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the Board had engaged in a “carefully managed illusion of due process.” His view is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, each of which laments the chilling effect the Churchill decision will have on the off-campus speech of professors. The Chronicle also cited Churchill supporter Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American Studies at Cornell who argues that the Committee making accusations against Churchill itself engaged in research misconduct in a variety of ways including the reliance on scholars who have had longstanding disagreements with him...

(click here to view entire report)

Professor Norman Finkelstein to Defy DePaul Suspension and Dismissal

2007-09-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

Peter N. Kirstein

CHICAGO, IL, Aug. 31, 2007 -DePaul University, in direct violation of their contractual obligations, has cancelled the classes of eminent Middle East scholar Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein last week for the upcoming 2007 fall quarter. Finkelstein, after a controversial decision last June to deny him his tenure, was given a one year’s notice by DePaul President Dennis Holtschneider, and was expected to return to teach in the 2007-08 academic year for his stipulated terminal year. Finkelstein has stated, “I will return to my office. I will teach my classes.”

Today approximately 40 students and community members joined over fifteen DePaul professors in protest during the university’s convocation. Students carried posters and banners in support of Finkelstein and his tenure. Both students and professors wore T-Shirts that said: “We are all Professor Finkelstein.” The protest was carried out in front of President Holtschneider, Provost Helmut Epp, and College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean Charles Suchar, among various university faculty members...

(click here to view entire report)

In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions

2007-07-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

By PATRICIA COHEN

New York Times

July 11, 2007

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy.

But in recent months, economists have engaged in an impassioned debate over the way their specialty is taught in universities around the country, and practiced in Washington, questioning the profession’s most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy.

“There is much too much ideology,” said Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is “often a triumph of theory over fact.” Mr. Blinder helped kindle the discussion by publicly warning in speeches and articles this year that as many as 30 million to 40 million Americans could lose their jobs to lower-paid workers abroad. Just by raising doubts about the unmitigated benefits of free trade, he made headlines and had colleagues rubbing their eyes in astonishment.

“What I’ve learned is anyone who says anything even obliquely that sounds hostile to free trade is treated as an apostate,” Mr. Blinder said.

And free trade is not the only sacred subject, Mr. Blinder and other like-minded economists say. Most efforts to intervene in the markets — like setting a minimum wage, instituting industrial policy or regulating prices — are viewed askance by mainstream economists, as are analyses that do not rely on mathematical modeling.

That attitude, the critics argue, has seriously harmed the discipline, suppressing original, creative thinking and distorting policy debates. “You lose your ticket as a certified economist if you don’t say any kind of price regulation is bad and free trade is good,” said David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has done groundbreaking research on the effect of the minimum wage...

(click here to view entire report)

Globalization, Productivity, and 'Protectionism': A Response To Foreign Affairs

2007-07-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

By Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker

Huffington Post

July 9, 2007

In "A New Deal for Globalization," (Foreign Affairs July/August 2007), Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter have made a contribution by recognizing that what they call "a protectionist drift in public policy" in the U.S. is a result of the fact that the majority of the US labor force has seen little (in recent decades) or no (in the last five years) income gains. They even acknowledge that "it is plausible that there is a connection" between the "skewed pattern of income growth" in the United States and globalization, something that most of the economics profession is still in denial about.[1]

But the public's -- and their elected representatives' -- increasing rejection of "free trade" agreements has even more solid ground than the terrain that they depict. First, there is no need to exaggerate the potential gains from further reduction of the United States' relatively small remaining barriers to trade. For example, the authors state that an agreement in the Doha Round of the WTO negotiations would generate $500 billion per year in additional income in the United States. According to the World Bank's most recent estimates of various Doha Round scenarios, the United States would add between 0.02 and 0.05 percent to our annual GDP, or between $2.7 and $6.8 billion a year, from a Doha agreement. [2]

The authors also use productivity data for the U.S. to argue that "International trade and investment have spurred productivity growth" in the United States, noting that "the rate of increase in output per worker hour in the U.S. nonfarm business sector has doubled in the past decade, from an annual average of 1.35 percent between 1973 and 1995 to an annual average of 2.7 percent since 1995." If international trade and investment had really caused this magnitude of a productivity increase, this would be a powerful argument for such liberalization. However this does not appear to be the case. First, if we take a more comprehensive, economy-wide, and appropriate measure of usable productivity[3] -- taking into account such things as increased depreciation that counts as part of output but does not contribute to living standards -- the picture is much different. By this measure, the annual rate of productivity growth increased by 0.9 percentage points in the years from 1995 to 2006 compared with the long 1973-1995 slowdown. Furthermore, productivity growth has slowed sharply over the last three years, raising the possibility that this decade-long up tick was just a one-time burst with no obvious connection to a quarter century of globalization.

Much more importantly, if we take a longer time period of accelerated international trade and investment liberalization, the picture is completely reversed. For example, we can ask the question, how much usable productivity growth would we have had since 1973[4], if we had experienced the same rate of usable productivity growth as occurred from 1946-1973? The answer is, productivity would have grown by 169.5 percent since 1973, as compared to its actual growth of 47.8 percent.[5]

In other words, even ignoring the re-distribution of income in the last few decades, the U.S. economy during a period in which it was mostly a closed economy (1946-1973) vastly outperformed the increasingly open economy that we have had over the last 33 years, in terms of raising living standards.

Thus the authors' statement that "the integration of the world economy has boosted productivity and wealth creation in the United States and much of the rest of the world" is an assertion that remains to be demonstrated, and which does not find much support in the data. In fact, the vast majority of low-and-middle-income countries have suffered a sharp slowdown in economic growth and reduced progress on social indicators such as infant and child mortality, and life expectancy, over the last quarter century.[6] This long-term economic slowdown is one of the main reasons that the Doha Round of the WTO is collapsing, and hemispheric agreements such as the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas have been buried, after more than a decade of negotiations. There are important exceptions such as China that have indeed benefited from increased economic integration, but they did not follow the rules embodied in the WTO or other proposed commercial agreements...

(click here to view entire report)

Choosing One’s Poison: Holtschneider Decides to Face the Wrath of the Progressive Left Rather than the Monied, Pro-Israel Right

2007-07-01T18:03:00.000-07:00

By Bill Williams

Dissident Voice

June 30th, 2007

So, what exactly went through Rev. Dennis Holtschneider’s mind on as he signed Norman G. Finkelstein’s and Mehrene Larudee’s tenure denial letters, which were dated June 8th, 2007? Perhaps Father Holtscheider thought he was, in some sense, picking the lesser of two poisons. By upholding the University Board’s decision to deny tenure to Finkelstein, he could successfully remove one of the most effective and outspoken critics of Israel from DePaul’s precincts, and in turn, curry favor with those who could put DePaul’s endowment in an enviable place. After all, what — beyond financial gain and other forms of political capital — could accrue from ejecting Finkelstein, one of DePaul’s most popular and accomplished teachers, scholars, and public intellectuals from campus under the specter of a witch-hunt? In brief, Holtscheider, assuming the decision to uphold the UBTP’s votes on the Larudee and Finkelstein cases was really his and not that of someone above and beyond him, chose to make a politically expedient decision instead of an academically sound one...

(click here to view entire report)

The hopelessness of U.S. presidential politics

2007-06-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

By Paul Street

ZNet

June 29, 2007

Excerpt from commentary:

It’s an endless, viciously circular Catch-22. You can’t win without a good chunk of the populace willing to vote for you, but you can’t get your message out to the populace without support from the wealthy few and the corporate elite that controls so much of the nation’s economic, cultural and political activity. And you can’t attain ruling-class sponsorship if you appear to be too close (whatever your own personal class position) to the nation’s working-class majority...

(click here to view entire report)

Finkelstein/Larudee: Chicago Tribune rejects ad, DePaul charged with violating own standards

2007-06-30T01:28:00.000-07:00

By Cecilie Surasky

MuzzleWatch

June 28, 2007

Students organizing a hunger strike in support of Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee, who both lost their bid for tenure at DePaul University, report that the Chicago Tribune rejected an ad they tried to run defending Norman Finkelstein. More as it comes in.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the university’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, echoing the students’ demands. In the two-page letter, Leo Welch, the chapter’s president, says the decision to deny tenure to the two assistant professors violated both the association’s standards and those of DePaul’s own Faculty Handbook. Mr. Finkelstein’s alleged lack of “collegiality” appears to have been the “sole basis” for denying him tenure, Mr. Welch writes. “It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research … might hurt a college’s reputation,” he says. The association has explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members, and has criticized it as “ensuring homogeneity” and undermining the leadership role of colleges and universities, according to the letter.

The CIA and the Media

2007-06-30T01:03:00.000-07:00

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

By Carl Bernstein

Originally published in Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

■ The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

■ Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune...

(click here to view entire report)

Fast Track to Trade Failure? The Political, Economic and Environmental Consequences of Executive Trade Negotiations

2007-06-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

Council on Hemispheric Affairs

June 29, 2007

In recent days, the Bush administration has begun an initiative to push several free trade agreements through their final stages before the president’s Trade Promotional Authority (also known as Fast Track) expires on June 30, 2007. As the deadline looms, trade agreements with Peru and South Korea are scheduled to be signed. Yesterday, June 28, workers at South Korea’s top automaker, Hyundai, initiated a partial strike in protest of the Fast Track formed trade agreement, crippling production for several hours. In Washington D.C., several days ago, Susan Schwab, the U.S. Trade Representative, asked members of Congress to approve an extension of Fast Track in order to salvage the dying Doha round at the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. The goal of the WTO talks is to eliminate various trade barriers between developed and developing nations throughout the world in a macro-expansion of free trade. Many experts believe, based on the history of free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that both bilateral pacts between individual countries (such as the one between the U.S. and South Korea) and collective WTO-sponsored agreements could actually have devastating negative effects on the economies of the nations involved...

(click here to view entire report)

Are the Neocons Really Going?

2007-06-29T23:37:00.000-07:00

By Ron Jacobs

ZNet

June 28, 2007

Excerpt from commentary:

The neocon policy is not a neocon policy. It is the policy of Washington. It is not George Bush or Richard Perle. It is Washington and Wall Street. It is Boeing and Bank of America...

(click here to view entire commentary)

How DePaul Is Terrified Of Anything Finkelstein

2007-06-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

The "F-word"

By Evan Lorendo

Dissident Voice

June 29th, 2007

We came to DePaul’s graduation to hold banners saying, “Tenure for Finkelstein and Larudee” and we came to support the twenty five or so graduating seniors that were to hand the president, Fr. Denis Holtschneider, a letter of disapproval instead of shaking his hand. Our plan was to hold the signs up for as long as we could, but to do it silently so we would not be disruptive; and this was actually my biggest fear-not getting the message across with tact. My fears quickly went away as I noticed that the graduation was only fractionally as formal as I expected. There were signs, banners, and airhorns- it seemed more like a party than a graduation and the administration accepted this because the moment was about the students, not DePaul.

We were there as each name was read, A-Z, holding our signs and cheering after each graduate handed the president a letter. The process worked like clockwork- the announcer would read a card, the student would walk across stage, shake the president’s hand/ give him a letter, wave to the camera, and then the next person was up. One by one each graduating senior was allowed to express themselves any way they wanted to, be it having their middle name announced, wearing sunglasses, dancing in front of the camera, hugging the president, or slapping him on the behind. Everything was fair game because this was the student’s graduation. But halfway through the letter ‘S’, there was a long pause. As a bystander, there was an obvious problem and you could see it on the announcer’s face. The student had handed the announcer a card that read ‘Norman Finkelstein’ and she did not know if she should read it or not. Finally you could read her lips on the two jumbotrons- “I can’t read this”. So the student leaned over into the microphone and screamed the words- ‘Norman Finkelstein’. At that moment you could see the demeanor of every administrator on stage change. The student made her point.

But what is so wrong with reading the words ‘Norman Finkelstein’? They are words and they can not hurt. An argument can be made that words do hurt, but neither the words ‘Norman’ nor ‘Finkelstein’ have a negative connotation. In fact, it has been my experience that those words are positive around DePaul, especially in regards to students. So why could they not be read? After all, students were walking across the stage and accosting the president of a university for the sake of a show. They were trying to create a spectacle and did so with no repercussions. And that is the way it is supposed to be, its about the graduates. So why not read the name, the name of someone who was so valueless to the university that they let him go a week before?

It’s because those words inspire. Those words inspire students to learn, they inspire students to understand the world they live in, they inspire students to dissent. And those words inspire fear among the administration...

(click here to view entire report)

Palley on Fast Track

2007-06-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

Providence Business News

June 29, 2007

Excerpt from report:

“It would be a very good thing to have fast track expire,” Thomas Palley, founder of the Washington-based Economics for Democratic & Open Societies Project and critic of current U.S. trade pacts, told Bloomberg News. “Fast-track sets up a policy process that is uneven and favorable to corporate interests by limiting congressional oversight.”

(click here to view entire report)

Manage globalisation better to make it work: Stiglitz

2007-06-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

moneycontrol.com

June 21, 2007

Excerpt from interview:

Q: Why do you think central banks are still paranoid about inflation?

STIGLITZ: I think there is an inflation paranoia that has developed particularly amongst central banks. The evidence is overwhelming that so long as inflation remains low to moderate and we are talking about well below the numbers that you are seeing, it has no significant adverse affect on economic growth or overall prosperity.

There was this scare in the 70s and early 80s - from the oil price shock. We weathered the oil price shock of the last three-four years without any significant inflation prices going up. The countries of East Asia weathered the crisis, where the exchange rates changed enormously without any inflation. So, I think the issue today is not inflation, it remains unemployment.

The number of people unemployed in the world is reaching a record high and so I think there is a need for central banks to keep a balanced view. Yes they should keep an eye on inflation but so long as inflation remains moderate, there are no reasons to tighten the economy, dampen it down in ways that will likely result in more unemployment.

Q: Most large emerging countries across the world are now becoming left dominated countries, it's seen in large parts of Latin America, in China and India there has been a resurgence of Left participation in government and Russia is probably one of the four BRIC countries that you are seeing a disintegration of Left but what do you think of the fact that the worldover in emerging markets, labour oriented policies seem to be making a comeback?

STIGLITZ: I think there is an easy way of reading that. Which is that the Thatcher, Reagan or more broadly, the American style capitalism hasn’t worked for most people. Recent data that has come out of the most successful market economy - the United States - which shows that over the last 30 years median income of males in their 30s is going down. So, that means today’s children are worse off than their parents.

GDP goes up but all that increase of GDP is going to the small sliver of the population at the top. If you have democratic elections, it's not surprising that, with most people worse off, they are going to say we want another way. We want to weigh an economic system that provides more social protection. We want growth but we want to make sure that the growth is more equitably distributed.

So, the big challenge is whether these new policies will be able to deliver on that. Whether they can maintain that economic growth and distribute it more fairly. There are few examples that give us hope. Scandinavian countries have performed in overall economic growth just as well as the US and the best performing advanced industrial countries. But in terms of equity and in terms of broad social indicators, they have far surpassed the US.

The only statistics in which the US surpasses these countries is the percentage of population in the prison and in that it surpasses by a factor of 10! So, if you ask what kind of society people want, they say, maybe that model isn’t right for us, maybe I will try the Scandinavian model which atleast for those countries has worked well. And one thing we have learned is that, one size doesn’t fit all and the question is to adapt those policies to particular circumstances of their own country...

(click here to view entire interview)

Debate on Microcredit

2007-06-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

Foreign Policy In Focus

June 21, 2007

Excerpt from economist Robert Pollin:

Sam Daley-Harris and I agree on two crucial points. First, we agree that providing accessible credit and other financial services to poor people can help reduce poverty. And second, we agree that, by itself, microfinance is by no means the solution to global poverty. In other words, we agree that microfinance can play some role in reducing global poverty. But this still tells us little as to how microfinance can play this role, and to what extent it can be a leading force in fighting poverty.

As I emphasize in my article, microfinance initiatives need to be embedded in a range of mutually supportive initiatives and institutions in order to have a significant impact on poverty reduction. To begin with, I think that credit access to the poor needs to be subsidized on a large-scale basis, just as, from the 1950-70s in particular, development banks successfully promoted manufacturing and export success throughout much of the developing world on the basis of major credit subsidies. Daley-Harris does not question whether charging poor borrowers interest rates of 30-50% on average is good policy. Indeed, he doesn’t mention the issue of interest charges on micro loans at all. However, when we refer broadly of providing “access” to credit to poor people, it should be a matter of foremost importance whether the credit is affordable. It is not plausible to expect that a poor country can mount a major attack on poverty by making credit available only at confiscatory rates. My article briefly describes how providing large-scale subsidies, which can reduce the level of risk to lenders and thereby the interest rates on microfinance loans by as much as 75%, is affordable for poor governments. The case I focused on to make this point was Kenya, one of the world’s poorest countries.

Daley-Harris makes clear that microfinance needs to be supported by other interventions in a broad fight against global poverty. But he is vague as to what these other institutions should be. I emphasized in my article the significance of the transition away from various “developmental state” models since the early 1980s to the currently ascendant neoliberal policy model in developing countries. Under neoliberalism, agricultural extensions, marketing support, and other forms of government assistance to small entrepreneurs have been greatly reduced; financial market policy is focused on liberalizing regulations and welcoming speculative finance; macroeconomic policy is focused on suppressing inflation through austerity; and governments make no effort at stimulating the expansion of decent wage employment. All of these measures operate powerfully against any efforts by microfinance institutions to significantly improve the lives of the poor.

The Grameen Bank was created in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus in 1976. Today, as Daley-Harris states, Bangladesh is “the world’s most saturated microfinance market.” Daley-Harris presents evidence on the advances Bangladesh has made in reducing poverty since the Grameen Bank opened. However, consider a few simple comparisons. In 1965, the average per capita income in Bangladesh was $269 (in inflation-adjusted 2000 dollars). In that same year, per capita income in Indonesia was $195, 28% lower than that in Bangladesh. As of 2004, Bangladesh’s per capita income had risen to $402 while that in Indonesia was at $906. In other words, Bangladesh’s per capita income had risen by 150% while Indonesia’s had risen by 460%. But more to the point regarding poverty reduction: in the most recent years for which the World Bank reports figures, in Bangladesh the $1 dollar/day poverty rate was 36% (2000) while in Indonesia (in 2002) it was 7.5%.

Indonesia, moreover, is by no means a star in the firmament of East Asian Tigers. If we consider Thailand, for example, in 1965, its per capita income was about 50% higher than that in Bangladesh. By 2004, it had risen to almost 600% higher than Bangladesh. More importantly, as of 2002, Thailand had pushed the $1 dollar/day poverty rate down to only 2%.

What is responsible for the far greater economic achievements of Indonesia and especially Thailand relative to Bangladesh over the past 40 years? Without pursuing here an extended debate about developmental strategies, we can at least say that Indonesia and Thailand achieved their successes despite the far less extensive role for Grameen-style microfinance institutions serving their countries’ poor. This does not mean that we should gainsay the real contributions of the Grameen Bank that I cite in my article. But if we are committed to ending global poverty, it does mean that our attention should focus to a far greater degree on the overall development strategy in which microfinance institutions operate and less on microfinance per se as a tool of poverty reduction...

(click here to view entire debate)

DePaul Students Protest Tenure Denials

2007-06-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sit-ins ended under threat of expulsion

By Christopher Brown

OhmyNews

June 24, 2007

Excerpt from report:

Christopher Brown: Mehrene Larudee was overwhelmingly recommended for tenure in her department, yet she was denied tenure as well. Can you talk about why?

DePaul Student Leader Kathryn Webber: Sure. And this is really the most egregious. Her tenure decision was entirely unfair. Their excuses for why she was denied tenure are even weaker. They maintain that her scholarship is shallow and her teaching is, and I quote, "below the departmental mean." But you have some student evaluations that are below and some above and her overall evaluations are overwhelmingly positive.

Everyone who has been involved in reporting her student evaluations have said she is good. There was really no question that she deserved tenure. She had been elected to be the departmental program chair of the International Studies Program before the tenure decision had even come through! Because they were expecting that there would be no question, it was supposed to be an automatic thing. It's really shocking and it seems to be entirely because she supported professor Finkelstein...

(click here to view entire report)

AAUP strongly criticizes DePaul for tenure denials

2007-06-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2007

The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., Ed.D.
President DePaul University
1 E. Jackson
Chicago, Illinois 60604

The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors is deeply concerned about the implications of the denial of tenure and promotion in the cases of Norman G. Finkelstein (Political Science) and Mehrene Larudee (International Studies). Dr. Finkelstein, an internationally known scholar on the Middle East and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, was recommended by his department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee. Dr. Larudee received recommendations for tenure and promotion from her department, college-wide personnel committee and Dean Chuck Suchar.

We assert that your reasons for denial of tenure to Dr. Finkelstein violate the standards of the A.A.U.P., and those of DePaul’s own Faculty Handbook. Your letter of denial of tenure to Dr. Finkelstein, which sustained the 4-3 vote of denial of tenure from the University Board on Promotion and Tenure, focused on the topic of tone and collegiality as evidenced in his writings.

There are also issues related to due process that appear not to have been adhered to in either Dr. Finkelstein’s or Dr. Larudee’s case. DePaul’s rules require allowing a candidate to be not only informed of each decision during the tenure-review process, but also to respond to any negative vote. These likely due process violations of your own regulations are significant if they denied these candidates all due transparency and the right of response.

In particular, we object to the reasoning of the University Board on Promotion and Tenure (U.B.P.T.) which you quote in your June 8, 2007 letter to Dr. Finkelstein. The U.B.P.T. acknowledges Dr. Finkelstein’s abilities as a teacher and a scholar, which would normally be more than sufficient to justify tenure. The sole basis of denying tenure, it appears, is the “collegiality” criterion that is invoked, calling Dr. Finkelstein’s work “deliberately hurtful” and denouncing him for his “inflammatory style” and “personal attacks” in his writings. The U.B.P.T. declares that these issues are “relevant” because “an academic’s reputation is intrinsically tied to the institution of which he or she is affiliated.” It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research, including those that appear under the University of California Press, might hurt a college’s reputation. Please recall the seminal A.A.U.P. 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure affirms “teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and the publication of its results.”

All of these reasons are unsustainable in considering tenure, and threaten academic freedom. Neither A.A.U.P. standards nor DePaul’s guidelines allow for “collegiality” to justify a tenure denial. Nor is there any prohibition on alleged “personal attacks” in the writings of scholars. These kind of criteria fall under the category of “collegiality,” that the A.A.U.P. explicitly rejected in its 1999 statement “On Collegiality as a Criterion for Faculty Evaluation.” As that statement observed, “Historically, 'collegiality' has not infrequently been associated with ensuring homogeneity, and hence with practices that exclude persons on the basis of their differences from a perceived norm…Certainly a college or university replete with genial Babbitts is not the place to which society is likely to look for leadership.”

(click here to read entire letter)

Showdown at DePaul: Why DePaul’s Faculty Must Speak Out Now

2007-06-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Abraham

Dissident Voice

June 23rd, 2007

DePaul University’s Promotion and Tenure Board’s decision to deny tenure to Professors Norman G. Finkelstein and Mehrene Laurdee on June 8th, 2007 has placed DePaul University on the brink of a legitimacy crisis, a legitimacy crisis that threatens to irrevocably harm the very fabric of a university that has placed social justice and activism at the very heart of its Vincentian mission since 1898. What does it mean that this Vincentian University has denied tenure to two passionate advocates of social justice who not only met the tenure requirements of their departments and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences but clearly surpassed them? What would St. Vincent de Paul have made of this year’s tenure and promotion decisions? Would he have agreed with them? From what I know of St. Vincent de Paul’s life and work, I’m almost certain he would be distressed by what has transpired under the name of “Vincentian tenure standards,” which are transparent code words for “proving one’s ideological serviceability to the interests of the powerful,” in this case DePaul’s would-be patrons. Finkelstein and Larudee apparently failed that test.

Norman Finkelstein has written passionately about the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, indicting powerful elites who capitalize upon the moral capital of the Holocaust for financial gain while demonstrating indifference toward the suffering of those on the receiving end of US high-tech weaponry in the Palestinian occupied territories and South Lebanon. Larudee, the sister of International Solidarity Movement leader Paul Larudee who was jailed in Israel for a brief time, is a specialist on international organizations and developing countries. During their time at DePaul, Finkelstein and Larudee have inspired numerous students to create a better world, sparked vigorous debate on the issues of our age, and dared to speak truth to power, which in an era of clichés and political correctness is the minimum intellectual responsibility requires.

As an untenured assistant professor on this campus, who thought serious scholarship would find a site of articulation within the university named after St. Vincent de Paul, I have questioned not only my DePaul colleagues’ commitment to academic freedom, but the motivations and rationalizations of many of my colleagues who remain silent in the wake of the grave injustice that took place on June 8 th, 2007, when Finkelstein and Larudee received their denial letters from President Dennis Holtschneider...

(click here to view entire report)

Who Frees Us From Capital?

2007-06-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Assheuer

Die Zeit

June 2007

The economic magic formula was alluringly simple even for inexperienced sorcerers. Rubbish would be changed into gold, water into wine and poverty into affluence. The magic formula that will enter history as the “Washington Consensus” sounded: If all nations rein in the state and trust the invisible hand of the market, if they lower taxes, revitalize budgets, fight inflation, privatize public assets and welcome capital investors with open arms – then the sad lot of all people on earth would improve. Their prosperity will grow and multiply in the course of time. People, hear the signals: “More Market, Less State.”

An economic program has hardly wounded the economies of the world society like that propounded harmoniously by experts of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Treasury Department at the beginning of the nineties. Whole continents bowed to the Washington Consensus in the hope of growth and prosperity, not only a handful of countries. The hope remains but the euphoria fades. The magic formula “More Market, Less State” loses credit despite respectable successes in fighting inflation and revitalizing budgets.

In Latin America, former model students bid farewell to their American mentors. Governments fall like dominos and seek their own national way. Even in Europe, politicians consider protectionism and state intervention. The same ministers who were intoxicated yesterday by the blessings of free trade now demonize finance market capitalism as the invasion of “mosquitoes.”

(click here to view entire report)

Bush Loses Trade Negotiation Lever With Collapse of WTO Talks

2007-06-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

By Mark Drajem

Bloomberg

June 22, 2007

Excerpts from report:

The WTO talks in Potsdam, Germany, among trade and agriculture ministers from the U.S., the European Union, India and Brazil broke down yesterday as the U.S. and EU said the developing nations weren't committing to cut their industrial tariffs enough, and India and Brazil said the U.S. and EU wouldn't reduced their farm subsidies sufficiently. The talks had been one incentive for Congress to consider renewing fast- track authority.

The lapse of fast-track is likely to end a five-year U.S. push for individual free-trade deals with countries from Chile to South Korea.

...

"It would be a very good thing to have fast track expire,'' said Thomas Palley, founder of the Washington-based Economics for Democratic & Open Societies Project and critic of current U.S. trade pacts. ``Fast track sets up a policy process that is uneven and favorable to corporate interests by limiting congressional oversight."

(click here to view entire report)

Latin American countries will join to create Banco del Sur, a regional alternative to the World Bank and IMF

2007-06-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

Center for International Finance & Development

Sources:

Montevideo COMM—“Crearan Banco del Sur en Julio”

Reuters America Latina—“Venezuela espera firmar creacion del Banco del Sur en julio”

June 22, 2007

Next month the leaders of seven Latin American states—Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela—hope to finalize the creation of a regional development bank that is to be called Banco del Sur (trans. Bank of the South).

Originally, the plan had been to kick-off the new institution on June 26, but delays were caused by disagreements between the leaders of the six states, according to the Venezuelan finance minister. Nicaragua is the latest addition to the states that will form Banco del Sur, announcing its intent to be a part of this venture today.

July will mark the signing of an act to create Banco del Sur; the constitution and implementing instruments of the new institution will follow. However, there is little doubt that Banco del Sur’s creators intend to use this entity to support a different approach to development than the brand they claim has been advanced by the World Bank and IMF.

Banco del Sur, the brainchild of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is intended to offer Latin American countries an alternative to the World Bank and IMF models of development. The World Bank and IMF have been criticized—particularly by Latin American states—for focusing only on liberalized free market models of development, an approach which some believe is at cross-purposes with the World Bank and IMF’s stated goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development. Specifically, President Chavez has accused the World Bank and IMF of serving as little more than instruments of the United States’ imperialism...

(click here to view entire report)

Don't Cry for Doha

2007-06-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

By Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik's weblog

June 22, 2007

Well the Doha Round appears to have collapsed yet again over disagreements on agricultural subsidies and tariffs. Even though we should never underestimate the ability of trade negotiators to resuscitate the dead, we will now likely see the usual hand-wringing about the huge costs of failure to conclude the round and about the losses to the world's poor nations. In fact, there was little to be gained from Doha, and little to lose from its collapse. Unless that is the U.S. over-reacts and turns the predictions of catastrophe into a self-fulfilling prophecy...

(click here to view entire report)

DePaul Students Turn Graduation Into Protest

2007-06-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

Students Support 2 Professors Denied Tenure

By Katherine Schrup, NBC5 Next

June 19, 2007

CHICAGO -- DePaul University's recent decision to deny tenure to two professors prompted some students to take a stand in their defense at Sunday's graduation.

During the ceremony, some students held up signs in favor of the professors, Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee. Some students also refused to shake DePaul's president the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider's hand and turned their backs to him while he gave the closing remarks.

Finkelstein, who has taught in the political science department at DePaul since 2001, became a controversial figure for his criticism of Israel and for accusing some Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for monetary gain. He has published many books, including "The Holocaust Industry" and Beyond Chutzpah".

Finkelstein also engaged in a public feud with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, best known as one of the defense lawyers in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Dershowitz wrote faculty members at DePaul urging them to vote against Finkelstein's tenure.

Finkelstein released a statement to the protesting students, saying: "This University must acknowledge and reverse the terrible mistake it has made. For an institution of higher learning to act so blatantly against academic freedom is a sad commentary on the state of our nation."

Holtschneider released a statement, saying: "Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest and public debate concerning this decision. This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case."

Holtschneider also said in the statement that he could "find no compelling reasons" to overturn the decision.

Larudee, an international studies professor, was denied tenure even though she passed the first two stages of the process unanimously.

"It makes DePaul look very stupid nationwide," Larudee said. "There are a lot of people who understand that you can't do this. The university has made a very bad mistake in terms of its reputation nationwide, and it really should remedy that."

(click here to view entire report)

Rodrik on unfettered global finance

2007-06-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

By Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik's weblog

June 19, 2007

Excerpt from report:

I think there is a fundamental incompatibility between unfettered global finance and a fragmented system of political sovereignty at the national level. I am also not convinced that this new international financial capitalism has actually lived up to its promise: it has on the whole not been beneficial to developing nations, and it has created great inequality in the rich countries...

(click here to view entire report)