-
A rate cut that failed to please
On 31 July, the United States Federal Reserve System (U.S. Fed) announced its decision to cut its benchmark short-term interest rate by one quarter of a percentage point to a target range between 2% and 2.25%. It also announced that it would put an end to its policy of selling chunks of its holdings of securities, so as to unwind its bloated balance sheet.
-
German unions are waking up to the climate disaster
The call to stop the production of coal and cars often sounds like a threat to jobs. But German trade unions have realized that the green transition needs to happen—and they’re fighting to make sure it’s bosses, not workers, who pay for climate justice.
-
The next European country as a strategic target of the far-right
Nationalism has always been, to some degree, a feature across Europe’s political spectrum, but in recent years, fostered by the likes of Donald Trump and funded by American religious ‘conservatives’ there has been an explosion in voter support for right-wing and populist parties.
-
What the New Deal can teach us about winning a Green New Deal: Part III—the First New Deal
If we hope to win a Green New Deal we will have to build a movement that is not only powerful enough to push the federal government to take on new responsibilities with new capacities, but also has the political maturity required to appreciate the contested nature of state policy and the vision necessary to sustain its forward march.
-
The systemic crisis of world capitalism
THE hallmark of a systemic, as distinct from a cyclical or sporadic, crisis of capitalism is that every effort to resolve the crisis within the broad confines of the system, defined in terms of its prevailing class configuration, only worsens the crisis.
-
Review of Money and Totality by Fred Moseley
Today, as the global economy flounders from crisis to crisis, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the essential basis for a correct understanding of what is going on. Moseley’s book reaffirms key elements of this analysis.
-
Syria: A new low in nasty propaganda
It may be a new low in propaganda. National Public Radio (NPR) used the news that Syrian First Lady Asma Assad had overcome breast cancer to mock her and continue the information war against Syria. They interviewed a Human Rights Watch staffer named Lama Fakih who is an American from Michigan now based in Beirut.
-
Remembering Samir Amin: a Marxist of the South
With the passing of the great anti-imperialist and Marxist intellectual Samir Amin on August 12 of last year, the international communist movement lost a giant.
-
Bernie Sander’s climate plan is more radical than his opponents’ – and more likely to succeed
IF YOU TRIED to design a program with the aim of offending the top brass of the world’s most powerful corporations and the politicians whose careers they bankroll, you’d get something like what Bernie Sanders unveiled today in his $16.3 trillion Green New Deal platform.
-
Prabir Purkayastha on How Big Data’s Threat to Elections and Democracy Is Quickly Becoming a Global Problem
The cost of the 2016 U.S. elections was $6.5 billion if we combine the presidential and congressional elections. The Indian Parliamentary election of 2019 outspent the 2016 U.S. 2016 election, costing about $8.6 billion.
-
Henry A. Giroux and the culture of neoliberal fascism
HENRY A. GIROUX’s book The Terror of the Unforeseen analyzes the conditions that have enabled and led to Donald Trump’s rule and the consequences of that rule, that have ushered in an authoritarian version of capitalism. Giroux provides a realistic analysis that holds out the hope that, through collective efforts, change is possible and democracy can be saved.
-
Blacks don’t blame immigrants for the boss’s crimes
Large proportions of African Americans registered strong opposition to building a wall on the southern border, keeping undocumented people in limbo, and mass deportations.
-
Top 1% up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50% down $900 Billion.
The insights of this new data series are many, but for this post here I want to highlight a single eye-popping statistic. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1 percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.
-
Kashmir on the edge of the abyss
Tariq Ali on the situation in Kashmir.
-
Hybrid wars are destroying Democracies
In Brazil recently, I gave an interview to Brasil de Fato, which was born in 2003 as the weekly magazine of the World Social Forum. It is now one of the most important windows into Brazil’s political world. The newsletter this week carries the text of most of the interview.
-
Oil lobbyist touts success in effort to criminalize pipeline protests, leaked recording shows
In an audio recording obtained by The Intercept, the group concedes that it has been playing a role behind the scenes in crafting laws recently passed in states across the country to criminalize oil and gas pipeline protests, in response to protests over the Dakota Access pipeline.
-
Seattle and the socialist surge in the U.S.
Seattle’s Socialist City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, is in the midst of a major fight for re-election. U.S. elections are long and expensive compared to most of the world. Seattle city elections are in two parts: a primary that runs through August 6 and then a run-off between the top two candidates decided on November 5.
-
What did Engels say about revolution?
Engels was a revolutionary democrat and a revolutionary realist, argues Dragan Plavšić
-
Washington intensifies its collective punishment of Venezuelans
Despite previous sanctions leading to over 40,000 deaths in Venezuela over two years, the U.S. is escalating its economic offensive.
-
Here’s the evidence Corporate Media say is missing of WaPo bias against Sanders
Bernie Sanders has taken to calling out corporate media for their anti-progressive bias, and their feathers have gotten quite ruffled.