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.

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.

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)

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. The New York Times announced on Wednesday that the

South Korean authorities [had] issued a cybersecurity warning on Wednesday after the Web sites of several major government agencies and financial institutions were disabled,

and the Washington Post cited government officials from the U.S. and South Korea in its piece that day about the “Swarm of Internet Attacks” facing both countries.

It’s unclear what to make of Morozov’s article in light of these events. On the one hand, the attacks on U.S. government sites and newspapers (including the Post) seem to indicate that maybe Morozov has it wrong – that is, maybe the hype about cyberwar is not as overblown as he claims. On the other hand, though, the press coverage seems to focus on repeating the claims of a government that just made a big fuss over the need to create a cyber-command office for the military and might be feeling some need to overstate the necessity for such an office.