Netanyahu: The Message is Clear
Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu won an impressive electoral victory in Israel on March 17. He did it by making two last-minute public statements. One was that there would be no Palestinian state while he is...
View ArticleNegotiations and Their Enemies
Perhaps the correct title should be “negotiators and their enemies.” These days, negotiations are very much in the news. The United States is negotiating with Cuba, with Iran and, most recently it...
View ArticleThe Greek Melodrama, or Who Really Wants What?
By any definition, what is going on in Greece today, or rather what is going on between Greece and outside countries and institutions, is a melodrama, a melodrama of epic proportions. What we mean by a...
View ArticlePost-Britain: Does It Matter?
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the United Provinces (more or less today’s Netherlands) was the hegemonic power of the capitalist world-system, which was then geographically smaller. Within...
View ArticleProtesting Mainstream Parties
In countries with contested elections, there are usually two mainstream parties considered as being somewhere in or near the center of the views of the voters in that country. In the last few years,...
View ArticleTurkey: Instability Ahead
Turkey held parliamentary elections on June 7, 2015. Against the expectations of virtually everyone, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP in its Turkish initials) lost its absolute...
View ArticleThe Latin American Left Moves Rightward
The last fifteen years or so has seen a major shift in Latin America’s political orientation. In a large number of countries, left parties have come to power. Their programs have emphasized...
View ArticleFlags and Other Symbols: Do They Matter?
The short answer is: very much. The United States as a whole, and in particular the states in the south that were part of the attempted secession in 1861 called the Confederacy, have been embroiled in...
View ArticleGreece: Who’s to Blame, and For What?
Anyone who has been following world events recently could not have failed to read endless analyses in the media concerning economic realities in Greece. The most remarkable thing about these analyses...
View ArticleFree-Trade Treaties are Anti-Free Trade
Free trade is one of the principal mantras of capitalism as an historical system. Free trade is preached as the optimal arrangement for expanding production, lowering costs of production and therefore...
View ArticleU.S. Presidential Elections
If one follows the media, and especially U.S. media, the prospective 2016 presidential elections in the United States are showing a striking shift in tone and process from anything previously known. I...
View ArticlePassions About Migrants
In a world in which almost any subject seems to arouse deep cleavages within and among countries, arguably the one that has today the deepest and geographically widest resonance is migrants. At the...
View ArticleResurgence of the World Left?
The sweeping triumph on September 24 of Jeremy Corbyn to be the leader of Great Britain’s Labour Party was stunning and totally unexpected. He entered the race with barely enough support to be put on...
View ArticleObama’s Impossible Options in the Middle East
President Barack Obama is being criticized on all sides for whatever he does these days in the Middle East. And well he might, since there is probably nothing he can do to become the deciding and...
View ArticleThe Important Canadian Elections
To almost everyone’s surprise, Justin Trudeau, leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, won the Canadian elections with a stunning absolute majority of seats in the federal parliament. The surprise was both...
View ArticleThe Many Brazils
Brazil is a major world power – in terms of size, population, and influence. Yet in many ways it is a combination of so many different and contradictory faces that it is hard for anyone, including...
View ArticleArgentina’s Election: Who Won What?
On Nov. 22, 2015, Mauricio Macri defeated Daniel Scioli in Argentina’s presidential election somewhat narrowly by just under three percentage points. Most analysts called this the triumph of the right...
View ArticleElectoral Losers
This has been a bad year for parties in power faced with elections. They have been losing them, if not absolutely then relatively. Attention has been focusing on a series of elections where so-called...
View ArticleThe BRICS – A Fable for Our Time
The story of the BRICS is a strange one. It starts in 2001 when Jim O’Neill, at that time the chairman of the Assets Management division of Goldman Sachs, the giant investment house, wrote a...
View ArticleSaudi-Iranian Collaboration: A Forgotten Story
On January 2, 2016, the Sunni government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) executed the leading imam of the Shia community in KSA. The Shiite government of Iran denounced this execution, as did...
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