Archive | July, 2019

On June 2nd Christian Democrat Walter Lübcke was shot dead in front of his home. Stimulated by fascist blogs, one of them that of a prominent adherent of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the murderer, a dyed-in-the-wool fascist, had been plotting the attack ever since hearing Lübcke’s fierce reply to vicious anti-foreigner catcalls at a public event four years earlier.

For him to think he can keep governing for another year and a half as if nothing has happened is insulting to our core.

In this talk, Tanner Mirrlees scrutinizes the rhetorics of “technological optimism,” “technological pessimism,” and “technological revolutionism,” discusses the political economy of communication, highlights how capitalism’s basic logics endure in the “digital age,” and concludes with an overview of how workers, citizens, and publics are trying to redesign and rebuild the digital age in support of working class power, participatory democracy, and social justice.

The U.S. objection to Iran is not based on international law, but merely based on its political objectives. This is clearly illustrated by open U.S. support for nuclear energy and nuclear weapon development in India; and nuclear weapon stockpiling in Israel, which the U.S. has always fully backed.

Keynote Paper delivered at the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, July 21, 2019. Today’s world is at war on many fronts. The rules of international law and order put in place toward the end of World War II are being broken by U.S. foreign policy escalating its confrontation with countries that […]

Throughout the mid-20th century, discussions and theoretical debates concerning the nature of the capitalist state persisted within Marxist circles. Some names are tightly connected with these events, including Ralph Miliband, Nicos Poulantzas, and Fred Block.

Cuba witnessed the nation’s first transgender legal union this week when a couple was married at the Palace of Marriages of San Francisno de Paula in Havana, the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex) reports.

The potential mass appeal of the Freedom Budget failed to materialize in part because “realistic” compromises were made by its supporters: partisans of the Green New Deal should not make the same mistake.

Aijaz Ahmad argues that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its fronts, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), display distinct fascistic characteristics, but the Indian state continues to live by the liberal playbook, no matter how hollow the Indian liberal institutions may have become. He anchors this proposition in a distinctive theoretical position.

While the ratio of debt to GDP fell in 2018—for the first time in a decade—for both advanced & emerging market economies it remains high, much higher than at the start of the 2007-08 crisis; and has also continued to rise in some major economies.
https://mronline.org/2019/07/22/debt-update/

Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.

Harris favored criminalizing truancy, raising cash bail fees and keeping prisoners locked up for cheap labor.

n March–on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster–Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”.

Frida Kahlo was not a heroine, nor was she a victim. She painted her pain and her suffering but she defied and overcame them in the very act of painting. She was also more than her suffering; an artist who explored her own history, the history of her own country—its past and its future—and who understood who its enemies were.

There are signs of a new tanker war in the Persian Gulf, with Britain joining a coalition that wants a war with Iran.

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

The protesters’ immediate demand is for governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign, but the mobilizations have also highlighted the widespread rejection of Puerto Rico’s status as a colony of the U.S.

Impossible to deny the reality of poverty in our world. Studies of the data on income and wealth routinely show that billions of people on the planet live with minimal access to resources. These studies demonstrate that poverty cannot be measured merely by the financial resources that are not available; they demonstrate how billions of people have no access to electricity, safe drinking water, education, or health care.

Based on remarks by Mr Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, Deputy General Manager of the BIS, at the Conference of the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), Paris, 17 April 2019.

Why is it that just 1p of a £2.50 cup of coffee goes to the farmer who cultivated and harvested the coffee beans?