A curious article recently appeared in Canada’s Globe and Mail. The authors are US economist Paul Romer and Octavio Sanchez, chief of staff to the President of Honduras. They are promoting Romer’s idea for “charter cities,” in which Canada is invited to play a role in an ostensibly new model to promote development and prosperity […]
Archive | May, 2012
Greece at a Crossroads: Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery
Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South. The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]
March Against Homophobia Celebrates New Outlook in Cuba
“This discussion has changed my mind about homosexuality. Now I understand what my Lesbian friend went through. When she graduated from medical school in Cuba, she cried. She told me that she could live her life the way she wanted to when she was in Cuba. But now she would return to Honduras as […]
Arson Attack on Women’s Health Organization in New Orleans
Women With a Vision (WWAV), a New Orleans advocacy and service organization that provides health care and other support for poor women of color, was the victim of a break-in and arson late Thursday night. A small organization that has won a national reputation for its work, WWAV was founded in 1991 by a collective […]
Always Occupy
And so I left Montserrat, a place of brief and merciful funerals. She does a good burial, Montserrat — the only place in the world where the barefoot gravedigger rules. He gets to choose the hymns sung, judge the quality of the choir’s voices, and keeps up a running conversation as he joyfully sets about […]
Greek Election
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Can Germany’s Left Party Be Saved?
What is the matter with Germany’s Left Party? Or, more bluntly, can it be saved? What is the truth about the charismatic leader Oskar Lafontaine, from West German Saarland, who suddenly, surprisingly withdrew from the fight for party leadership? Is he really out of the running? And is that good or bad? What are the […]
Living in Two Cities: Tarif and Evelyn Warren
On May 14, Evelyn Warren and Michael Tarif Warren, attorneys at law, held a press conference. They stood outside the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse and announced that their case, Warren v. City of New York, had been settled. They had dropped their lawsuit against the city and the NYPD officers who had beaten and arrested them […]
Socialism in the 21st Century
“We have the objective ground for building an alternative historical bloc, to use Gramsci’s language. An alternative historical bloc — I would call it ‘anti-comprador.’” — Samir Amin Samir Amin is a Marxist economist. Video by NewsClick (14 May 2012). | Print
The Montserrat Drum
Goat a dance Goat a cry Drum a sing Always slain but always new. Drum A Dance Edgar Nkosi White is a poet and playwright. | Print
Democracy Imperiled: The Greek Political Crisis
Recent developments in Greece provide an acute illustration of the long-standing contradiction between capitalism and democracy. This contradiction has also been felt in Greece in the past, including in the history of military coups aimed at the repression of popular movements and at ensuring the country’s subordination to the wishes of the United States during […]
Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
Some Good News, and Lots of Bad News, from Germany
Here’s “good news” and “bad news” from Germany. The good news: the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel took a real whipping in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia (usually abbreviated to NRW), the largest German state in terms of population. Her smiling, almost benign mien, with little bluster or braggadocio, disguises less and less her […]
Egyptian Workers Speak Out
“What were the reasons for this revolution if not for us to have a voice, to establish our worth, our dignity, to feel like we’re humans, with the right to say yes or no?” Video by Mosireen. | Print
The 67th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Fascism
No political action can be judged outside its epoch and circumstances. No one knows even one percent of the fabulous history of man; yet, thanks to that history, we know events that exceed the limits of the imaginable. The privilege of having known some of the people involved, including the places where some of the […]
