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    Khaleeji Capital, Not Just about the Oil Konstantin Kilibarda January 11, 2012

    A Review of CAPITALISM AND CLASS IN THE GULF ARAB STATES
    by Adam Hanieh
    Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

    Adam Hanieh’s Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011) is an indispensable text for anyone interested in the Middle East. This groundbreaking study traces the historical trajectory of capital, class and state formation in the Gulf and its role in shaping global capitalism since WWII. According to Hanieh, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – established in 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – effectively institutionalizes the preference of Gulf elites for neoliberal strategies of internationalization and financialization. He coins the term “Khaleeji Capital”, which is derived from khaleej, meaning gulf, "but goes beyond a geographic meaning to convey a common pan-Gulf Arab identity that sets the people of the region apart from the rest of the Middle East.”
     

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    So Real it Hurts - Notes on Occupy Wall Street Manissa McCleave Maharawal October 4, 2011

    I first went down to Occupy Wall Street last Sunday, almost a week after it had started. I didn't go down before because I, like many of my other brown friends, was wary of what we had heard or just intuited that it was mostly a young, white male scene. When I asked friends about it they said different things: that it was really white; that it was all people they didn't know; and that they weren't sure what was going on. But after hearing about the arrests and police brutality on Saturday, September 24th and after hearing that thousands of people had turned up for their march I decided I needed to see this thing for myself. 

    So I went down for the first time on Sunday, September 25th with my friend Sam. At first we couldn't even find Occupy Wall Street. We biked over the Brooklyn Bridge around noon on Sunday, dodging the tourists and then the cars on Chambers Street. We ended up at Ground Zero and I felt the deep sense of sadness that that place now gives me: sadness over how, what is now in essence just a construction site, changed the world so much for the worse.

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    The Reluctant Welfare State Morrigan Phillips June 20, 2011

    Social welfare programs are easy fodder for budget debates. A mere 18 percent of the federal budget is earmarked for discretionary spending, which includes welfare programs like public housing, food stamps, and cash assistance. Yet to hear foes spin it, one might think that social welfare programs comprise the bulk of the US budget and are responsible for sinking the country into unimaginable debt.

    To close the fiscal year gap and keep the government running for the rest of fiscal year 2011, Republicans recently took aim at discretionary spending with the Welfare Reform Act of 2011. When the dust settled, the cuts to social services—though less than they would have been due to the quick action of activists, advocates, and some elected officials—were stark. (See sidebar for outline of recent cuts.) These cuts are beginning to play across the country as cash-strapped cities and states have fewer funds from the federal government to use to deliver services.

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    Engaging the Crisis: Organizing Against Budget Cuts, Building Community Power in Philadelphia Kristin Campbell April 1, 2010

    On November 6, 2008, just days after Philadelphians poured onto the streets to celebrate the Phillies winning the World Series championship and Barack Obama the US presidency, Mayor Michael Nutter announced a drastic plan to deal with the city’s $108 million budget gap. Severe budget cuts were announced, including the closure of eleven public libraries, sixty-two public swimming pools, three public ice skating rinks, and eliminating several fire engines. Nutter also stated that 220 city workers would be laid off and 600 unfilled positions would be eliminated entirely, amounting to the loss of nearly 1,000 precious city jobs.

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    Towards a National Take Back the Land Movement Kamau Franklin April 1, 2010

    At the height of the financial crises in 2008 Max Rameau, a community organizer in Miami for the past ten years, began to see a quiet devastation taking hold in community after community: foreclosure signs, houses for sale, unrented properties, the downward slide of home values as people worried about increased mortgage payments, soaring levels of unemployment, and a gathering storm of homelessness unparalleled since the Great Depression. Max notes, “All around me people seemed to be at the brink of disaster. The government was not doing much so we stepped in and tried to do something dramatic and worthwhile.

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    The Grassroots Hustle: Fundraising Strategies for the Rest of Us Max Uhlenbeck April 1, 2010

    Raising money. Whether you’re part of a small collective, a local community-based nonprofit or a national network or organization, it’s a skill that we all need, but rarely talk about as we work to build a stronger and more vibrant left culture and movement here in the US. Following the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic depression since then, many organizations with small to midrange budgets have had to scale down their organizing activities significantly, sometimes even closing up shop altogether.

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    Burning Too Few Illusions Mike Davis July 14, 2002

    The 1992 Los Angeles riot never happened. Forgive me—I am not trying to be clever. This is not a philosophical provocation in the mode of Jean Baudrillard’s notorious claim that the 1989 Gulf War was ‘impossible.’ Rather, it is a straightforward argument from the factual record: the 1992 riot, as visualized by most of the world, never happened.

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    Making the World's Poor Pay: The Economic Crisis and the Global South Adam Hanieh November 25, 2008

    The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists-not usually known for their exaggerated language-now openly employ phrases like "systemic meltdown" and "peering into the abyss." On October 29, for example, Martin Wolf, one of the top financial commentators of the Financial Times, warned that the crisis portends "mass bankruptcy," "soaring unemployment," and a "catastrophe" that threatens "the legitimacy of the open market economy itself....The danger remains huge and time is short."

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    Confronting Capitalism's Crisis Kate Griffiths, Rachel Parsons, and Isaac Silver December 22, 2008

    The financial crisis of the last two months is the most dramatic since the stock market crash of 1929. Bubbles have burst, Wall Street institutions “too big to fail” have fallen hard, and the entire financial system has been remade in a period of weeks. But by the time these events made headlines, an economic crisis was already well underway and being felt around the world. Those most vulnerable to upheaval in the real economy have faced loss of jobs, homes, and access to food and services for decades.

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