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Chico de Oliveira:
Lula in the Labyrinth Amid the complex cross-currents of the Latin American political scene, where to situate Lula’s Brazil? Dynamics of neo-populism and statification, social credits and government graft as elements of a novel reconstitution of power under a Workers Party president.

NLR cover image
NLR 42 was mailed to subscribers on 8th January 2007

CONTENTS

  1. Francisco de Oliveira: Lula in the Labyrinth Amid the complex cross-currents of the Latin American political scene, where to situate Lula’s Brazil? Dynamics of neo-populism and statification, social credits and government graft as elements of a novel reconstitution of power under a Workers Party president.
  2. Peter Mair: Ruling the Void The hollowing of democracies, as ruling elites retreat and voters abstain from mass electoral politics. Peter Mair on the paradoxes of its ‘third wave’ triumph and emergence of a governing class bereft of legitimacy, as parties become appendages of the state.
  3. Jacob Stevens: Prisons of the Stateless Charged in 1951 with defending rights of asylum, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been recast for an age of humanitarian warfare. From Operation Provide Comfort to Bosnia and the Rwandan massacres—a compliant advocate of repatriation at any cost.
  4. Emilie Bickerton: Adieu to Cahiers Life-cycle of Cahiers du cinéma. The trajectory of the pre-eminent film journal, from cine-clubs of Liberated Paris to masterpieces of the New Wave, barricades to the pensée unique, tracked against broader changes in French intellectual culture.
  5. Efrain Kristal: Screening Peru Contradictions of his country’s breakneck urbanization in the cinema of Francisco Lombardi. Film’s rival media—tele-reportage, newspapers, radio, videotaped corruption—brought into play to create new cinematic forms.
  6. Loong-Yu Au: Alter-Globo in Hong Kong Hong Kong labour activist Au Loong-Yu discusses the impact of Chinese sovereignty on the former British colony, and Pacific Rim protests against the WTO. What prospects for an alter-globalization in the East?
  7. Tom Mertes: Whitewashing Jackson Tom Mertes on Sean Wilentz, Andrew Jackson. A retouched portrait of the Democrat founding father—minus Indian massacres, slave exploitation and financial bubble.
  8. JoAnn Wypijewski: Workless Blues JoAnn Wypijewski on Louis Uchitelle, Disposable Americans. Case studies from the underbelly of the US economy: the growth of lay-offs, debt and insecurity from Reagan to the dot.com crash.
  9. Achin Vanaik: Strategy after Bush Achin Vanaik on Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice. Clinton’s grey eminence ponders the hegemon’s next moves. What changes are required for imperial strategy to remain the same?
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Articles:

  1. Mike Davis,
    ‘Fear and Money
    in Dubai’ On the rim of the war zone, a new Mecca of conspicuous consumption and economic crime, under the iron rule of Sheikh al-Maktoum. Skyscrapers half a mile high, artificial archipelagoes, fantasy theme parks—and the indentured Asian labour force that sustains them.
  2. Au Loong-Yu,
    ‘Alter-Globo
    in Hong Kong’ Hong Kong labour activist Au Loong-Yu discusses the impact of Chinese sovereignty on the former British colony, and Pacific Rim protests against the WTO. What prospects for an alter-globalization in the East?
  3. Peter Thomas,
    ‘Being Max Weber’ Peter Thomas on Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: die Leidenschaft des Denkens. The first full biography for 80 years, with new details of the thinker’s life seen through Green spectacles.
  4. Malcolm Bull,
    ‘States of Failure’ The question of agency remains the central lacuna in the construction of systemic alternatives. Building on ‘The Limits of Multitude’ in NLR 35, Malcolm Bull proposes a reconceptualization of the relation between collective will and invisible hand. Can bearings drawn from Hegel, Gramsci, Sartre indicate the route to a new global order through dissolution of the Western imperial state?
  5. Taggart Murphy,
    ‘East Asia’s Dollars’ Discussions of the sustainability of the US current-account deficit—trending upward from $800bn—rarely plumb the long-term motives of its creditors. Taggart Murphy analyses the historical roots of Tokyo’s post-1868 geofinancial support for the ruling superpower, London or Washington, and the implications of China’s rise for Japanese strategy.
  6. Kasian Tejapira,
    ‘Toppling Thaksin’ How Thailand’s billionaire Prime Minister was overthrown by mass mobilizations in April 2006, and role of the Palace–Barracks–Temple triumvirate in his defeat. Kasian Tejapira on the twin conjuncture of 1997—combining a ‘good governance’ Constitution with the Asian financial crisis—that put the country’s corrupt electocracy into the hands of its telecom magnate.
  7. Jacob Stevens,
    ‘Prisons of
    the Stateless’ Charged in 1951 with defending rights of asylum, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been recast for an age of humanitarian warfare. From Operation Provide Comfort to Bosnia and the Rwandan massacres—a compliant advocate of repatriation at any cost.

Editorials:

  1. Tariq Ali,
    ‘War for the
    Middle East’ As fears are voiced within the US establishment of impending debacle in Iraq, a survey of the embattled landscape from Baghdad, Ramallah and Tehran to Beirut and Damascus. American control is slipping, Ali argues—but it is too soon to count on imperial defeat.
  2. Europe, Europe’s political landscape, revealed by the protest votes in France and the Netherlands. Mutation and dilation of the EU in the age of liberal hegemony, and lessons to be drawn from the unprecedented irruptions of discontent against it.
  3. Chechnya, Eager to embrace Putin, Western rulers and pundits continue to connive at the Russian occupation of Chechnya, as Moscow’s second murderous war in the Caucasus enters its sixth year. Traditions of resistance, popular demands for sovereignty and Russia’s brutal military response, in Europe’s forgotten colony.
  4. Iraq, With the now unanimous support of the ‘international community’, can Washington hope to recoup its gamble in Iraq? Prospects for the resistance and the Occupation, as the UN-approved government is hoisted into place.
  5. New Labour Causes and consequences of Britain’s distinctive contribution to the repertoire of latter-day neoliberalism. The domestic and foreign record of the Blair regime, and its hybrid role in a shifting Atlantic order.
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