Ezra Nawi’s Sentencing Postponed

In BR’s web-only feature, The Trial of Ezra Nawi, David Schulman reports that peace activist Ezra Nawi was scheduled for sentencing on September 21. According to Nawi’s support site, the sentencing has been postponed. Nawi faces incarceration for an act of civil disobedience in 2007: resisting Israeli border police who were bulldozing a Palestinian home in Um al-Kheir. BR will stay abreast of Nawi’s sentencing and notify readers once it is rescheduled.

Meanwhile, Obama’s meeting on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reached no firm conclusion. Speaking to the UN, Obama insisted that peace negotiations should resume without preconditions–thereby sidestepping the Palestinian demand for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Obama impatiently pushes ahead, but might do well to consult another piece from the BR archive (one of my favorites): Joseph Levine’s History Matters, in which he dissects the historical claims and current status of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Contrary to the U.S.’s current easing up on Netanyahu, Levine asserts:

As the occupier and principal aggressor, Israel must demonstrate good faith by taking significant actions to meet Palestinian demands. If Israel does not enact such measures, then the world community, especially the United States and the United Nations—the external parties chiefly responsible for the terrible situation in the first place—must employ sanctions to ensure Israeli compliance.

Strong words, but I encourage you to read the rest of Levine’s argument and reflect as we wait for negotiations to commence.

Upstanding Citizens of United 93

Thinking back on eight years ago today, we invite you to delve into the BR archive and revisit Elaine Scarry’s “Citizenship in Emergency.” Scarry commemorates the superb citizenship demonstrated by passengers of United Flight 93, who rallied to our country’s defense in a way our leaders at the time proved incapable. In twenty-three minutes, United 93 passengers gathered information about events on the ground, deliberated a course of action, voted, and took action–all while communicating with loved ones and coming to terms with death.

While we reflect on the unprecedented tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, we are–all of us–responsible for our country’s defense, and for insuring that our systems of defense are enacted in the best way possible. With each anniversary, allow our remembrance to move us from mourning into action, strengthening our participatory democracy in honor of the egalitarian process utilized by the citizens of United 93.

For another in-depth look at defense and democracy, check out Elaine Scarry’s Who Defended the Country?, edited by our own Joshua Cohen and published by Beacon Press in 2003.

Minimum Wage Round-up

As an unsigned editorial in The New York Times pointed out today,

An estimated 2.8 million employees will get a raise on Friday, as the federal minimum wage rises from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. Another 1.6 million whose hourly pay hovers around $7.25 are also expected to get a boost as employers adjust their pay scales to the new minimum. The raise is badly needed. It is also wholly inadequate.

In honor of this much needed but totally insufficient increase in pay to much of low-wage America, here is a collection of past Boston Review articles that look at wages and inequality in the United States.

• Inequality Matters: Nancy Birdsall on globalization’s failure to “lift all boats.” (March/April 2007)




• American Sweatshops: Jennifer Freeman on organizing American workers in a global economy (Summer 2005)




• The American Jobs Machine: Erik Olin Wright and Rachel Dwyer take a close look at those left behind in the Clinton-era “jobs boom.” (December 2000/January 2001)




• For a Living Wage: Arnie Graf and Jonathan Lange examine the political reasons behind the decline in real wages (Summer 1997)




• Solving the New Inequality: Richard Freeman kicks off a New Democracy forum on economic disparities in the U.S., with responses by Frances Fox Piven, Heidi Hartmann, Paul Krugmann, Michael Piore, James Tobin, James Heckman, and Ernesto Cortes, and a reply to the responses from Freeman (December/January 1996-1997)

Cyberwar hysteria? Reading Morozov against recent attacks

I found Evgeny Morozov’s article in the latest BR to be a compelling argument against cyberwar hyperbole, and I thought his call for a focus on infrastructure needs rather than on overblown claims Internet terrorism was a sound one.

A friend in NYU’s Computer Science department pointed out after reading the article that he was troubled by the author’s tendency to put the weight of responsibility for cyber-security on “end-users,” that is, consumers of software systems and platforms, rather than on those who designed the systems. I think this point is valid, and while perhaps Morozov’s emphasis on user action is to be expected in a time so focused on individual responsibility rather than systemic accountability, I too am skeptical of blaming individual Internet users for any security problems they may encounter. The solutions that Morozov espouses —

be careful, and avoid trafficking data in open spaces

– are somewhat over-simplified, and while his caution about believing government hype about cybersecurity may be justified, he may be going too far in obscuring the real steps that governments can take to protect their citizens and their own classified data.

Of course, the moment I was ready to turn the page on Internet terrorism, the news media became saturated with coverage about North Korean cyberattacks on South Korea and the US. Read the rest of this entry »