All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. -- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto,1848
The fortunes of the American economy have grown so alarming and the pace of the decline so swift that economists are now straining to describe where events are headed, dusting off a word that has not been indulged since the 1940s: depression. -- New York Times, February 28, 2009
Babies die
mothers moan
parents muted
children cry
Words crawl to books
(covers are folding
small insect wings)
cower in lexicons
forage for meaning
fugitive fugitive
borders are closed
Weighted by tear-load
words can’t go far
bombs bare steel teeth
to phosphorus flames
parsing the wailing
pages of flesh
Burned into shrill
memorial air
The appearance of an article in the London Review of Books early in 2006 by two mainstream academics calling attention to an “Israel Lobby” in the United States was definitely news. I was in Durban, South Africa, at the time, working on Overcoming Zionism, and the thought immediately flashed that the field of action had opened up quite a bit. There was nothing especially new or revelatory in what John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt [henceforth M/W] were writing; and there was quite a bit to cavil about in the way they were writing it.
One key concept in Karl Marx’s theory of capitalist economic crisis is “the destruction of capital through crises” (Marx 1989: 127). He meant by this not only the destruction of physical capital assets, but also, and especially, of the value of capital assets. In an economic slump, machines and buildings lay idle, rust and deteriorate, so physical capital is destroyed. More importantly, debts go unpaid, the prices of assets fall, and other prices may also fall, so the value of physical as well as financial capital assets is destroyed.
Lance Selfa, The Democrats: A Critical History (Chicago: Haymarket Books 2008).
Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
The purpose of this book is to chronicle an intellectual history of American education, showing how educational and political trends in the 1930s and 1940s shaped education in the 1950s, with some historical analysis of the period beyond. The work offers a rich blend of documentary evidence and philosophical reflection.
The election of Barack Obama in November 2008 gave rise to passionate celebrations, at least in some parts of the country. Here is one account (by the President of Barnard College):
Robert J. Foster, Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
"We need to stop the bleeding" - anonymous insider at the World Economic Forum 2009