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Cihan Tuğal,
‘Turkey and the Arab Spring’ Turkey has been hailed in the West as a democratic model for the Islamic world. Cihan Tuğal takes a cool look at the Erdoğan government’s domestic and foreign-policy record, from ‘zero problems’ diplomacy to the blockade of Libya and dirty war on Damascus, airstrikes on Turkish Kurds and silence on Bahrain.

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NLR 76 was mailed out to subscribers on 5th September.

CONTENTS

  1. Cihan Tuğal: Democratic Janissaries? Turkey has been hailed in the West as a democratic model for the Islamic world. Cihan Tuğal takes a cool look at the Erdoğan government’s domestic and foreign-policy record, from ‘zero problems’ diplomacy to the blockade of Libya and dirty war on Damascus, airstrikes on Turkish Kurds and silence on Bahrain.
  2. Wolfgang Streeck: Citizens as Customers Post-Fordist capitalism has transformed consumers’ expectations, offering limitless diversification of commodities. Wolfgang Streeck explores the implications for a public sphere which cannot hope to match the cornucopia of the market. The consumption of politics by the politics of consumption?
  3. Jan Breman: The Undercities of Karachi Pakistan’s turbulent metropolis as battleground for gangsters and politicians, and the iniquitous rural order that propels impoverished haris to its slums.
  4. Robin Blackburn: Alexander Cockburn, 1941–2012 A tribute to Alexander Cockburn—director of CounterPunch, Marxian environmentalist, long-standing editor of New Left Review. Robin Blackburn traces his path from County Cork to Soho, Havana to Manhattan, the Florida Keys to California’s Lost Coast.
  5. Alexander Cockburn: Dispatches Reports from Paris and Moscow on the bicentenary of 1789 and dissolution of the USSR—mitterandistes hailing the Girondins as forerunners of themselves, while Yeltsin thanks George Bush for his support—and lethal advice for Western foreign correspondents.
  6. Yiannis Mavris: Greece's Austerity Election Social and demographic analysis of the May and June 2012 polls, as the country reels under EU structural adjustment. Narrow basis of Samaras’s ‘national’ government, DIMAR’s defection and emergence of SYRIZA as a new force on the left.
  7. José Carlos Avellar: The Three-Headed Horse Echoes and parallels between the work of Eisenstein, Picasso and Orozco in the late 1930s. The recurring spectres of war, conquest and destruction stalking the world from Moscow to Guadalajara to Guernica, travelling back and forth between film, wall and canvas.
  8. Sven Lütticken: Dialectic of Dionysus Sven Lütticken on Asger Jorn, Fraternité Avant Tout. The Danish artist and Situationist wrestles with Engels and Nietzsche.
  9. Joel Andreas: Sino-Seismology Joel Andreas on Martin King Whyte, Myth of the Social Volcano. Empirical survey of attitudes to inequality in the PRC, offering comfort for Beijing.
  10. Dylan Riley: Bernstein's Heirs Dylan Riley on Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics and Ashley Lavelle, The Death of Social Democracy. Conflicting assessments of Bernstein’s legatees and the future of a reformist left.
  11. Emilie Bickerton: Paper Empires Emilie Bickerton on Thierry Discepolo, La Trahison des éditeurs. The Hexagon’s ‘quality’ book trade skewered by a leading radical publisher.
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Articles:

  3. Jan Breman,
    ‘Undercities of Karachi’ Pakistan’s turbulent metropolis as battleground for gangsters and politicians, and the iniquitous rural order that propels impoverished haris to its slums.

Editorials:

  1. 2011, Echoes of past rebellions in 2011’s global upsurge of protest. Against a backdrop of world economic slump, what forces will shape the outcome of contests between a raddled system and its emergent challengers?
  2. Arab Concatenation, From Tunis to Manama, 2011 has brought a chain-reaction of popular upheavals, in a region where imperial domination and domestic despotism have long been entwined. A call for political liberty to reconnect with social equality and Arab fraternity, in a radical new internationalism.
  3. NLR at 50, What remains of the neo-liberal order after the implosion of 2008—with what implications for a journal of the left? Notes for a future research agenda, as NLR enters its quinquagenary year.
  4. Wall Street Crisis, Against mainstream accounts, Peter Gowan argues that the origins of the global financial crisis lie in the dynamics of the New Wall Street System that has emerged since the 1980s. Contours of the Atlantic model, and implications—geopolitical, ideological, economic—of its blow-out.
  5. NPT, What are the geopolitical origins of the NPT, and what are its actual effects? Non-proliferation as nuclear privilege of the few, weapon of intimidation of the one, submission of the many—and its impact on the peace movement.
  6. Afghanistan, Reasons for the West’s stalemate in Afghanistan sought neither in lack of troops and imperial treasure, nor in Pakistani obstruction, but in the very nature of the occupation regime. Tariq Ali on the actual results of ‘state-building’ in the Hindu Kush, as a broken country is subjected to the combined predations of NGOs and NATO.
  7. Concert of Powers, A reckoning of global shifts in political and economic relations, with China emerging as new workshop of the world and US power, rationally applied elsewhere, skewed by Israeli interests in the Middle East. Oppositions to it gauged, along with theoretical visions that offer exits from the perpetual free-market present.
  8. Force and Consent As war looms again in the Middle East, what are the aims of the Republican Administration, and how far do they mark a break in the long-term objectives of US global strategy? The changing elements of American hegemony in the post-Cold War world.
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