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Brazil is in danger of becoming a country whose political economy is rooted in militarism, diverting precious social wealth to the military and police as it imposes a military ethic onto public life.

As we write these notes at the beginning of March 2022, the eight-year limited civil war in Ukraine has turned into a full-scale war. This represents a turning point in the New Cold War and a great human tragedy. By threatening global nuclear holocaust, these events are also now endangering the entire world. To understand the origins of the New Cold War and the onset of the current Russian entry into the Ukrainian civil war, it is necessary to go back to decisions associated with the creation of the New World Order made in Washington when the previous Cold War ended in 1991.

It is impossible not to be moved by the outrageousness of warfare, the ugliness of aerial bombardment, the gruesome fears of civilians who are trapped between choices that are not their own.

Josh Shepperd joins Money on the Left to discuss the research and activism that hastened the rise of public media in the United States. Assistant Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Shepperd shows how public-interest broadcasting platforms like NPR and PBS exist in the U.S. today in large part as a consequence of hard-fought battles by committed scholars and advocates throughout the inter- and post-war periods.

The question to ask is what today’s New Cold War is trying to change or “solve.” To answer this question, it helps to ask who initiates the war. There always are two sides—the attacker and the attacked. The attacker intends certain consequences, and the attacked looks for unintended consequences of which they can take advantage. In this case, both sides have their dueling sets of intended consequences and special interests.

In the strategic vision of the U.S., Russia should be disarmed to become part of Europe as a “sidekick” and a bridgehead to contain China, the “more dangerous enemy” as Kissinger described it.

Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

Arguably the best known contemporary proponent of Chinese exceptionalism in the English-language is Martin Jacques, best known for his 2009 bestseller ‘When China Rules the World’, a tour-de-force in the repackaging of orientalist tropes for the 21st-century.

Out of his world of struggle and his world of books emerged Pansare’s commitment to culture and to intellectual liberation. Along with his comrades, he set up the Shramik Pratishthan (Workers’ Trust), which not only published books but also held seminars and lectures. One of the most popular programmes organised by the Trust was the annual literary festival in honour of the Marathi writer Annabhau Sathe.

He has founded an intellectual group opposed to the restrictions, public health measures, vaccination requirements and other actions taken by public officials to combat the spread of the virus and its lethality.

The product of pedagogical labour becomes something set apart from life and abstracted into the commodity of “degrees” which can be bought and sold on the educational market.

Four emblematic coups have now been substantially reversed: Chile (1973), Peru (1992), Honduras (2009), and Bolivia (2019). Each of these coups was driven by political forces of the far right backed by the military and by the United States government.

In this episode, we talk with Colleen Hooper (@hoopercolleen), assistant professor of dance at Point Park University. Hooper’s 2017 article in the Dance Research Journal, titled “Ballerinas on the Dole: Dance and the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA), 1974-1982,” is the subject of most of our conversation.

Andrew Elrod joins Money on the Left to discuss the political economy of inflation and price controls, past and present. Elrod holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is presently Research Specialist at United Teachers Los Angeles, a 36,000-member labor union. In our conversation, Elrod overturns one of the […]

We are delighted to announce the online Spanish translations of pamphlets/ manifestos published by Daraja Press and Monthly Review Essays. These pamphlets are parts of the series, Moving Beyond Capitalism – Now! and Thinking Freedom.

Why do foolhardy spoilers insist on causing embarrassment? Why must out-of-step fools upset well-steered apple-carts? Why did German vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach open his big mouth on Saturday in far-off Mumbai—and spill so many beans? Many or most U.S. media overlooked it—that is, buried it. Or emasculated it. In Germany they couldn’t fully ignore it—though unpleasant […]

December 2013 marked the beginning of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Ebola, a severe hemorrhagic virus which causes muscle and joint pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding, spread from Guinean forests to the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone by the summer of 2014.

Ecocide–the destruction of the entire ecosystem–is a real prospect. Its possibility has been well known to scientists since the 1980s, if not earlier. Every projection of its pace has under estimated the actual rate of breakdown.

In 1947, thousands of youth brigade volunteers from around the world joined their Yugoslav comrades in the hills of Bosnia to build a railroad. As the most popular song from the construction sites put it, not only were these activists making a railroad, but the railroad made them.

Articles in this series: Commons and classes before capitalism ‘Systematic theft of communal property’ Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class Against Enclosure: The Commoners Fight Back  by Ian Angus In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a […]