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Leo Panitch (born May 3, 1945 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) is a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project and the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly (GTWA).

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

At the "Globalization, Justice and Democracy" symposium (Delhi University, November 11, 2010), Panitch, drawing on his book In and Out of Crisis (with Greg Albo and Sam Gindin), addressed a lack of ambition on the left which has been more debilitating than its lack of capacity in the current global economic crisis, and outlines the kinds of immediate demands for radical reforms as well as longer term socialist strategic orientation that is needed today.

References[link]

• Is this a global recession? - Leo Panitch on the US recession. Friday January 25th, 2008
• Real News Debate: Why is the US threatening Iran - What is behind President Bush's warning about WW III? Tuesday October 23rd, 2007
• US recession fueled by low wages and consumer debt - Thursday January 24th, 2008 02:05:37
• Do stimulus packages work? - Friday January 25th, 2008 08:37:04
• If you were President . . . - Friday January 27th, 2008 09:00:00
• Is this a global recession? - Leo Panitch on the US recession. Friday January 25th, 2008 09:00:00
• Will unions respond to economic crisis - Sunday January 27th, 2008 10:52:18
• Debt-fueled rat race drives economic crisis - Leo Panitch part 1. Sunday May 4th, 2008 08:11:54
• Search The Real News - Leo Panitch on The Real News
• Pursuing a Just World Order, Crisis for the Left - Leo Panitch.

External links[link]

• "What you need to know about May Day" by Leo Panitch
• "Whose Violence?" by Leo Panitch
• Launch of the Socialist Register 2008
• Putting the U.S. Economic Crisis in Perspective by Leo Panitch
• Leo Panitch archives at York University
• Thoroughly Modern Marx by Leo Panitch

Sam Gindin is a Canadian academic and intellectual who served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and later as chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union after the latter became independent from its American parent organization.

Gindin is a graduate of the University of Manitoba. He worked as a research officer for the New Democratic Party of Manitoba and later taught at the University of Prince Edward Island. He obtained his MA in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but while working on his PhD dissertation in 1974, he took up the position of first director of research for what was then the Canadian section of the UAW. He rose within the union and served as an assistant to both Bob White and Buzz Hargrove, where he participated in major collective bargaining, the formation of union and social policy, and strategic discussions on the structure and direction of the union. He also wrote a book on the history of the CAW entitled The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union.

In 2000, Gindin retired from the CAW. He joined the faculty of York University in the Political Science department as Packer Visitor in Social Justice, where he continues to teach.

External links[link]

• Sam Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (online version of book from the CAW website).
• Sam Gindin bio on the York University website.
• Sam Gindin articles on the Socialist Project website.

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The Crisis

First Issue of The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, November 1910. New York: NAACP, 1910
Editor	W.E.B. Du Bois
Staff writers	Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean
Monthly[1]
Publisher	NAACP
First issue	November 1910 (1910-November)
Company	The Crisis Publishing Company
Country	United States
Based in	New York, NY
Language	English
Website	www.thecrisismagazine.com
ISSN	1559-1573

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.^[2]

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell.^[1] Published monthly, by 1920 its circulation had reached 100,000 copies. Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. …Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.^[3]

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal programme of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

Although The Crisis was officially an organ of the NAACP, Du Bois had a large degree of control over the periodicals expressed opinion. Du Bois wrote in Dusk of Dawn that he intended for The Crisis to represent his personal opinions:

I determine to make the opinion of the Crisis a personal opinion; because, as I argued, no organization can express definite and clear cut opinions… the Crisis would state openly the opinion of its editor, so long, of course, as that opinion was in general agreement with that of the organization.

Du Bois contends that the periodical suffered during the Great Depression as the "circulation dropped steadily until by 1933 it was scarcely more than ten thousand paid subscriptions." Du Bois left the magazine for both financial and ideological reasons.

Throughout the Du Bois years The Crisis published the work of many young African American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Its greatest era as a literary journal was between 1919 and 1926, when Jessie Redmon Fauset was literary editor. Fauset encouraged such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer.

Following the departure of Fauset and Du Bois, the influence of The Crisis declined. The magazine was unable to sustain the high literary standards it had achieved under Fauset, but it continued to have a powerful political voice.

References[link]

A 1911 copy of The Crisis depicting "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the black kings of the Upper Nile", a copy of the relief of Nebmaatre I on Meroe pyramid 17.

Du Bois, WEB (1940), Dusk of Dawn, Library of America, ISBN [[Special:BookSources/97809400450332|97809400450332]] .

Partington, Paul, The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Black America's First Weekly Magazine, ISBN 978-0-9602538-2-1 .

External links[link]

• The Crisis, http://www.thecrisismagazine.com/ .
• History, NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/about/history/ .
• The Crisis, Footnote, January 1918, http://www.footnote.com/browsemore/179488128_Boom%20and%20Bust:%201920-1935/ .
• The Crisis, Books, Google, http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=The+Crisis+Magazine&btnG=Search+Books#q=The+Crisis+Magazine&hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1,bkt:m&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=TrrMTILMLJG4sQPMn9CPDg&ved=0CBMQpwU&fp=fd2e97bdff999388 .
• The Crisis, 1, 10–23, The Modernist Journals Project, Nov. 1910 – Apr. 1911, May 1915 – Apr. 1922, http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=crisiscollection .

Doug Henwood (born December 7, 1952) is an American journalist who writes frequently about economic affairs. He publishes a newsletter, Left Business Observer, that analyzes economics and politics from a left-wing perspective, and is a contributing editor at The Nation.

Early years[link]

Henwood was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, and grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. He received a B.A. in English from Yale University in 1975. Late in high school and while at Yale, Henwood identified as a conservative, briefly joining the Party of the Right, which Henwood wrote about in an article in The Nation entitled "Partying on the Right":

Sometime late in high school, I fell under the spell of Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley, and about the first thing I did when I got to college was join the Party of the Right (POR).

From 1976-9, Henwood did graduate work in English at the University of Virginia, concentrating on British and American poetry and critical theory but left before obtaining his doctorate. He then worked for two years as a copywriter and assistant to a medical publisher in New York.

Writing[link]

In September 1986, Henwood launched Left Business Observer.^[1] Topics to which he has devoted coverage include:

• Income distribution and poverty in the U.S. and elsewhere in the First World
• the globalization of finance and production
• the worldwide attack on pensions
• Third World debt and development
• the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
• the media business
• the influence of foundations on politics and culture
• what it means to be a leftist in a world that seems to have forgotten what that means

Henwood has written three books. His first, The State of the USA Atlas (1994), is a social atlas of the U.S. in the Pluto atlas series. This was followed in 1997 by Wall Street (Verso Books), in which Henwood described the workings of high finance. His most recent work is After the New Economy (New Press, 2003), an analysis of the 1990s boom and bust.

His writing has also appeared in The Nation, Grand Street, Village Voice, Newsday, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian (UK).

Radio[link]

Henwood began hosting Behind the News in 1996, a weekly radio show and podcast produced at KPFA and, formerly, WBAI. The show features interviews with activists, intellectuals and academics, preceded by a summary of recent economic headlines.^[2] Notable former guests include Noam Chomsky, James K. Galbraith, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Lapham, George McGovern, Joseph Stiglitz, Gore Vidal, and Slavoj Žižek.^[3]

On November 11, 2010, Henwood announced that he would be retiring Behind the News in its current form, instead broadcasting from another venue as well as on his website. This change arose from an interim producer's decision to reschedule Henwood's show to Saturdays and reduce its airtime to twice a month despite Henwood's having raised substantial funds during the network's previous fund drive, conditions that the host found unacceptable.^[4]

Family[link]

He is married to journalist Liza Featherstone. They live in Brooklyn with their young son.

References[link]

• State of the U.S.A. Atlas, by Doug Henwood (1994) ISBN 978-0-671-79696-9
• Wall Street, by Doug Henwood (1997) ISBN 0-86091-670-7 [1]
• After the New Economy, by Doug Henwood (2003) ISBN 1-56584-770-9
• Partying on the Right, by Doug Henwood, February 6, 2003, The Nation

External links[link]

• Left Business Observer with brief bio
• LBO News ("blog")
• Free downloadable version of Wall Street
• "Unconventional Wisdom: An Interview with Doug Henwood" by Bhaskar Sunkara (The Activist, 21 February 2010)
• "Interview with Doug Henwood" by Joel Schalit (Tikkun, Jan-Feb 2005)
• "Economic Unorthodoxy: An Interview with Doug Henwood" (24 April 2004)
• "The Invisible Recovery: An Interview with Doug Henwood" (Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, 26 November 2003)
• "The 'New Economy' and the Speculative Bubble: An Interview with Doug Henwood" (Monthly Review, April 2001)
• "Bubbles: An Interview with Doug Henwood", by Christian Parenti (Alternative Press Review, Spring 2001)
• "The Marxist Wall Street Couldn't Ignore", by Annalee Newitz, Salon.com, December 1998
• Doug Henwood at the Internet Movie Database

The Greek is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Bill Raymond. The Greek is the head of an international criminal organization involved in narcotics and human trafficking.^[1] The Greek is a mysterious figure involved in numerous criminal activities. His given name is never mentioned on the show, and though he is known only as "The Greek", he has stated (in the episode Port in a Storm) that he is not actually Greek. A quiet and unassuming man, the Greek prefers to keep a low profile, operating all of his business through his lieutenant Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos. His smuggling organization operated from a small diner in Baltimore for years, and while Vondas would conduct business the Greek would listen in quietly at the counter. Nick Sobotka, upon seeing the Greek identify himself, was amazed that the shadowy figure had been in plain sight the entire time.

Despite his calm appearance, the Greek is cunning and ruthless, and only interested in facts that make him more money. Series creator David Simon has said that The Greek is an embodiment of raw unencumbered capitalism.^[2] Anyone interfering in this process is eliminated immediately, and he prefers to leave victims headless and handless to hinder identification.

The Greek's smuggling operation includes importing sex trade workers, illicit drugs, stolen goods and chemicals for drug processing. He bribes union stevedores to move containers through the Baltimore port for him and uses his muscle, Sergei "Serge" Malatov, to run containers back and forth from the port to his warehouse, a front managed by "Double G" Glekas. The Greek supplies the major drug dealers in East Baltimore with pure cocaine and heroin, using Eton Ben-Eleazer to move his drugs. His chief client is Proposition Joe, but he is also affiliated with smaller drug dealing organizations like those run by "White Mike" McArdle. His sex trade interests in Baltimore include a brothel run by a madam named Ilona Petrovitch, bringing in girls from eastern Europe. He manages to avoid prosecution for his crimes because an FBI counter-terrorism agent named Kristos Koutris tips him off if a criminal investigation gets too close. It is suggested he and Vondas may serve as federal informants.

Biography[link]

Season 2[link]

The Greek began to draw police attention in Baltimore when his contact at the docks, Frank Sobotka, became the target of an investigation. At the same time a container of thirteen dead young women intended for the sex trade was discovered at the docks, triggering a high-profile homicide investigation. The container belonged to the Greek and the girls were killed by a crewman onboard the vessel that had delivered them. The ship's crew had been paying the girls for sex and when one of the girls refused, she was killed. The crewman responsible dumped her overboard and collapsed the air pipe to kill the remaining women. The Greek had Sergei track the crewman down, interrogated him personally, and had Vondas kill him.

As the investigation continued the police were able to link Eton and Sergei to the drug smuggling operation. When police began tracking containers as they left the port, The Greek and Vondas began to close down the operation temporarily by dumping their cell phones and stealing "clean" containers. Persuading Sobotka to keep the smuggling operation going he bought further protection from Agent Koutris by betraying a load of Colombian cocaine, giving him time to destroy incriminating evidence in the warehouse and Glekas' store.

The Greek recognized that the investigation was too extensive to stop and made plans to leave, sending Vondas to assure Proposition Joe that supply of drugs would continue albeit with new faces. He attempted to buy Sobotka's silence with promised legal aid for his son, but when he learned from Koutris that Frank was planning to turn informant he had the union man killed. Although Frank's nephew Nick Sobotka was able to identify The Greek in a photo and Sergei was pressured to give up the location of his hotel suite, Vondas and the Greek had already boarded a flight to Chicago. Aware that the Greek and Vondas were gone, the police left the investigation behind and moved on to the drug dealers he supplied.

Seasons 4 & 5[link]

The Greek continued to supply "Proposition Joe" Stewart, who formed an organization with other drug dealers called the New Day Co-Op to provide The Greek's product to them in exchange for reduced violence and sharing of territory. When Omar Little steals an entire shipment of heroin from the Greek's men as it is being delivered to Stewart's people, Marlo Stanfield demands a meeting with Spiros "Vondas" Vondopoulos in order to allay his fears that Stewart was responsible.^[3][4] Once Stanfield is satisfied, he waits for the Major Crimes Unit's investigation into his activities to cease and then moves to establish a direct relationship with Vondas and the Greek. After getting in communication with Vondas through former soldier Sergei,^[5][6] Marlo eventually sells himself as Joe's replacement by convincing the Greek that he requires an insurance policy in the form of a replacement for Proposition Joe, in the event that anything should happen to him. Realizing that Stanfield will move against Stewart regardless of his approval, the Greek accepts Marlo's proposal to act as an "insurance policy," knowing that it will mean Joe's death.^[7][8]

After Stewart's murder, Stanfield meets with Vondas to initiate their new business relationship.^[9][10] Stanfield's tenure proves short lived when he is forced into retirement by an investigation, and the other Co-Op members purchase the connection from Stanfield. In the closing scenes of the series finale, Slim Charles and Fat-Face Rick take over meeting with Vondas while the Greek listens quietly in the background.^[11][12]

References[link]