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Wanted: Red-Green Alliance for Radically Democratic Reorganization of Production
Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences. Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]
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Getting to the Bottom of Sea-level Rise
Sea level rise will displace millions across the world. Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN. JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) — In the past few months, newspapers across the globe have been flooded with a debate over new studies projecting a higher and faster sea-level rise by the next century, which would sound the death-knell for low-lying countries […]
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Global Crisis: Economists’ Conference in Havana
The global economic crisis was the main protagonist on the first day of Globalización 2009, the 9th International Conference of Economists on Globalization and Problems of Development, presided over by First Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura; Dominican President Leonel Fernández Reyna; Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo Hernández; Nobel Laureates in economics Edmund Phelps […]
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We Are at the Beginning of a Long, Profound, Painful Process of Change
Statement by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin and Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute, before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, February 26, 2009. Mr. Chairman and […]
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A Voice of Peace in Sderot: Interview with Nomika Zion
Sderot is a small city about 1km away from the Gaza border, well known because it has suffered many hits from the Qassam rockets that the Gaza resistance has been launching on and off for about 8 years. When we think of residents living under the threat of missiles, hiding in bunkers, it’s quite […]
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Capitalism’s Burning House: Interview with John Bellamy Foster
WIN: According to a quotation by Jim Reid that you and Fred Magdoff included in your article entitled “Financial Implosion and Stagnation” (Monthly Review, December 2008), the U.S. financial sector has made around 1.2 Trillion ($1,200) of “excess” profits in the last decade relative to nominal GDP. How has the structure of the capital […]
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A Structural Crisis of the System: Interview with István Mészáros
István Mészáros won the 1971 Deutscher Prize for his book Marx’s Theory of Alienation and has written on Marxism ever since. He talks to Judith Orr and Patrick Ward about the current economic crisis. The ruling class are always surprised by new economic crises and talk about them as aberrations. Why do you believe they […]
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Obama Visit Suggests No Big Changes in Relations to Mexico; Promise to “Upgrade” NAFTA’s Labor, Environmental Clauses
With only a few days left until his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama met with President Felipe Calderón in the second week of January, the first meeting with a foreign leader since his election last November, indicating the importance of the U.S. relationship with its southern neighbor. Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN), Mexico’s most conservative major […]
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Camp Hope Holds Obama to “Change” Pledge
“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English. We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history. Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]
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End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet.
“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English. We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history. Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]
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Antiwar Organizing in the Obama Era
“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English. We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history. Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]
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Saving 7 Billion Environments
As I write this, the most serious economic crisis in 80 years is rolling across the planet. Only time will tell if we are now going into one of history’s U-turns or if it’s all just part of the normal boom-and-bust business cycle. And no one yet knows how badly humanity and the ecosphere […]
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Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
In the prime of our youth
We dreamt of hope
Testimonies of a new world
Anthems of a new tomorrow
A world in which no one
Suffered sorrow or knew of hunger
On this side there were multitudes
On the other the elite
On this side the hungry, the naked
On the other the treasures of Egypt -
The Third Hurricane
It could loose strength but it is already raining in most of the country. It’s raining on farming areas absolutely drenched by the recent rainfalls. The water reservoirs filled up to almost full capacity due to hurricanes Gustav and Ike will be releasing water on cultivated fields and valleys. This already happened at the end of August and early September. This hurricane has been given the misleading name of Paloma.
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Capitalism and Climate Change
John Bellamy Foster: We need to go down to 350 parts per million [the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], which means very big social transformations on a scale that would be considered revolutionary by anybody in society today — transformation of our whole society quite fundamentally. We have to aim at […]
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Seized! The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security
Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits […]
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Taking Politics Seriously: Looking beyond the Election and beyond Elections
We have nothing against voting. We plan to vote in the upcoming election. Some of our best friends are voters. But we also believe that we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth. Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means […]
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Iran: Comprehensive Sustainable Development as Potential Counter-Hegemonic Strategy
The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future. In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]
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The White House ghost
Three days ago, on Friday October 10, the world was shocked by the impact of the Wall Street financial crisis. There is no way to count the millions of dollars in paper money injected by the Federal Reserve into the world’s finances to keep up banking operations and to prevent depositors from losing their money.
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Step Up to the Plate: Ending the Food Crisis
When: World Food Day, Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 7 PM Where: Great Hall of Cooper Union, 7 E. 7th Street (at 3rd Ave.), New York City Cost: Free (suggested donation at the door) RSVP (encouraged): whyevents@whyhunger.org. Seating is first come, first served. As U.S. food pantries face long lines and empty shelves while food […]