The North Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), by bringing North Americans and Europeans together, allows participants to reflect on their own situation through the lens of the thinking of other leftists who face similar political issues in different contexts. There are commonalities in the division between social movements on the one hand and political parties/labor organizations […]
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The Contrarian
Over the years Gore Vidal has spilled a lot of ink telling readers how the mass media murdered serious book culture in the United States, but he is the only living US novelist to have his own coffee table book. Snapshots in History’s Glare is a photo album of fine design and no small expense […]
Iran War Talk: “Once the Military Option Is on the Table, It Never Goes Away”
October 28, 2010 Today, Marc Lynch — a professor at George Washington University who blogs at Foreign Policy — published a timely piece entitled “Keep the Iran War Talk Quiet.” As Marc notes, “there’s some hope that Iran will return to nuclear talks with the P-5+1 in Geneva on Nov.15, even if they probably will […]
The IMF and Economic Recovery: Is Fund Policy Contributing to Downside Risks?
Introduction The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year. Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery. The Acting Chair of the Executive Board states that “[t]he recovery is losing momentum […]
Lower-End Homes Pull Prices Down in August
The August Case-Shiller 20-City Index showed that house prices have resumed their decline, dropping by 0.2 percent for the month. Prices fell in 15 of the 20 cities in the index for the month. The drop was led by a decline in the prices of homes in the bottom tier of the Case-Shiller index. Prices […]
Chronicles of Insurrection: Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism
Once I went to May Day. I never got workers’ festivities. The day of work, are you kidding? The day of workers celebrating themselves. I never got it into my head what workers’ day or the day of work meant. I never got it into my head why work should be celebrated. But when I […]
Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America
The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of […]
The Cat and the Coup
“The Cat and the Coup is a documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall. As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life […]
Why France Matters Here Too
For many weeks now, the historic social change sweeping across France has drawn increasing attention globally. It should. A genuine, mass democratic upsurge has surprised all those who thought, hoped, or feared that such things could no longer happen in countries like France or the US. Millions of French people — in left political parties, […]
Pity the Nation
Kashmir, Oct. 26 — I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written […]
The Econobubble Revisited
In a recent article, I discussed the 2010 Economics Nobel Prize in rather unflattering terms. However, nothing beats the decision to award the 1997 Economics Nobel to Robert Merton and Myron Scholes for developing “a pioneering formula for the valuation of stock options.” “Their methodology,” trumpeted the Nobel committee, “has paved the way for economic […]
Dilma Adventure!
Only a few days left for the second round of the 2010 elections, our mobilization continues. To energize the activists for Dilma some more, here is a game made for the presidential election, in which we can get Dilma to the Palácio do Planalto. The idea comes from Professor Alex Leal, in the Digital […]
Zapatero’s Wink to the Left
Zapatero winks to the Left . . . and gets back to the business of cuts. Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 22 October 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi […]
Economics, Ideology, and Imperialism
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, eminent Marxist economist, taught in CESP-JNU (Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University) over the last four decades. He has been one of the most outstanding economists in India and a great teacher. He has retired from JNU recently. On the occasion of his farewell, the students of CESP […]
Kino Pravda 3G
The detritus of mobile phone footage of protests, from Tehran to Toronto, over the last year . . . assembled without grand narratives of the mainstream media. Public Studio is a transient Toronto artist collective. | Print
Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: Part 2, The 2009 Iranian and Honduran Elections
As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009. This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]
G20: The United States and Neo-mercantilism
Here comes the travail of crisis. The more they talk about coordination, the more it becomes necessary to concentrate on the conflicts revealed by the very talk of coordination. The G20 finance ministers’ meeting, held in South Korea on Friday, has already been mortgaged by the case opened by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding […]
Chávez Hails “New Middle East”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: Condoleezza once said . . . that the United States was going to create “a new Middle East.” Here’s a new Middle East, but not the one they wanted — another Middle East. * * * Summary of the Venezuelan Presidential Visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran, 18-20 October 2010 […]
Ten Theses on New Developmentalism
On May 24 and 25 of 2010, a group of economists sharing a Keynesian and structuralist development macroeconomics approach convened in São Paulo to discuss ten theses on New Developmentalism — the name that some of them have been using for some years to describe the national development strategy that middle income countries are today […]
The Paradox of Capitalism
John Maynard Keynes, though bourgeois in his outlook, was a remarkably insightful economist, whose book Economic Consequences of the Peace was copiously quoted by Lenin at the Second Congress of the Communist International to argue that conditions had ripened for the world revolution. But even Keynes’ insights could not fully comprehend the paradox that is […]
