More than £75bn was wiped off the FTSE 100 on Wednesday, as Swiss authorities stepped in to reassure panicked markets over the health of the embattled European banking giant Credit Suisse. The Swiss central bank and its financial markets regulator issued a joint statement on Wednesday evening, pledging to provide emergency funding if necessary. They… Read More More than £75bn wiped off FTSE 100 amid Credit Suisse crisis
Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar SystemBy Perry Mehrling. Reviewed by Herman Mark Schwartz Money makes the world go round, or as Karl Marx put it, Geldgespräche, Quatsch-Spaziergänge. How does this work at the global or international level? Perry Mehrling’s elegantly written biography of the MIT economist Charles Poor Kindleberger illuminates the relationship between… Read More Money as Empire?
Mika sings Any other world In any other world you could tell the differenceAnd let it all unfurl into broken remnants Smile like you mean it and let yourself let go ‘Cause it’s all in the hands of a bitter, bitter manSay goodbye to the world you thought you lived inTake a bow, play the… Read More Mika: Any other world
Hunter-gatherers don’t live in an economic idyll but their deep appreciation of rest puts industrialised work to shame Vivek V Venkataraman In the seminar I teach about hunter-gatherers, I often ask my students whether they think life was better in the past or today. There are, of course, always a few people who insist they… Read More Lessons from the foragers
Stalin presented Orthodox leaders with a proposal: the Soviet state that had destroyed their Church would bring it back In September 1943, as the tide of the Second World War was turning in the Soviet Union’s favour, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called a meeting at the Kremlin. Alongside the foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and… Read More At the Kremlin in 1943
Rebecca Cairns, CNN. Photos by Tim Laman I’m willing, more than most people, to go through some discomfort.” That’s how American conservation photographer Tim Laman ended up with water rising over his knees in a marshy river delta at midnight, his camera gear floating by his side. “I got myself into a situation,” he admits.… Read More Wildlife photographer took 40,000 photos to capture these extraordinary birds
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Middle East Eye reports that the South African parliament has voted to downgrade the Israeli embassy in Pretoria to liaison status. The resolution was introduced by the tiny center-left National Freedom Party, which has only two seats in parliament. Its passage was assured, however, when the African National Congress supported it.… Read More South Africa downgrades Israeli Embassy over Ongoing Apartheid
THE CONVERSATION By Simin Fadaee Forty-four years after Iranians rose up against their hated monarch in February 1979, a group of 20 organisations engaged in long-term social and economic struggles – including labour unions, teachers, women’s groups and youth and student movements – issued an ultimatum to the government of the Islamic Republic. The Charter of Minimum… Read More Iran: Unions and Civil Rights groups demand Democracy and social Justice
Exclusive: papers kept classified for decades reveal India’s first PM acted on advice from most senior general Anisha Dutta India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was urged by his most senior general to agree to a ceasefire with Pakistan in 1948, the Guardian can reveal after viewing letters on Kashmir that have been kept classified in India… Read More Kashmir letters cast doubt on claims Nehru blundered by agreeing ceasefire
NB: An extraordinary film by one of India’s most talented film-makers. What I saw were three visual metaphors: an eclipse of the sun which never lifted; a professor entering a dark place to contemplate darkness; and an armed woman waiting silently for something unspeakable. For me, the first metaphor signified the contemporary planetary condition; the… Read More Amar Kanwar: Such A Morning
After the truth-shower 