I want to share my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but also Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided US… Read More The Geopolitics of Peace: Jeffrey Sachs in the European Parliament
Jairus Banaji I’ve divided this presentation into four distinct parts.[1] A shorthand description of these might be Imagine these themes as chapters to a book called Introduction to a History of Capitalism. So, what this talk sets out to do is simply construct a framework where we can think about capitalism historically. To start with the conventional narratives,… Read More Retotalising Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction to its History
Whether in electoral rhetoric or in the most high profile Supreme Court cases or in public policy, the word on everyone’s lips is Development. Punjab’s labour laws have been proposed to be reformed for– Development. Schools are being set up and strengthened for– Development. Building regulations are being changed so that rural areas and urban… Read More The Idea of Development: A Conversation in Chandigarh
Inspired by Che Guevara, Jean Ziegler has spent the past 60 years exposing how Switzerland enabled global wrongdoing. His enemies accuse him of treason Ziegler would use the term “secondary imperialism” to define his country’s modus operandi. This was not the first-order French, British or, later, American imperialism… It was a more discreet kind of… Read More ‘Here lives the monster’s brain’: the man who exposed Switzerland’s dirty secrets
Gareth Dale Hungarian social theorist Karl Polanyi is best known for his exploration of the collapse of liberal institutions that occurred between 1914 and 1945. His book, The Great Transformation, traces the catastrophes of those decades to the globalisation of market liberalism. In his view, the attempt by liberal social engineers to establish a “self-regulated” market… Read More The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi is a classic critique of capitalism – but it wasn’t an overnight success
Gabbard has switched from championing the oppressed to championing the oppressors. It’s tough to say whether she ever truly believes anything she says or merely points her trajectory towards the greatest number of clicks and attention Originally published on November 24, 2021, this investigation delves into Tulsi Gabbard’s political metamorphosis—from self-proclaimed anti-war progressive to champion… Read More From Anti-War Progressive to Pro-Drone Militarist: Tulsi Gabbard’s Odd Political Trajectory (2021)
NB: This is a crime unfolding right in front of our eyes; barely spoken of or called out for what it is by the so-called civilised world. The impunity enjoyed by the USA and Israel, backed up by covert or overt military assistance of the Western powers is a token of their brazen colonial attitude… Read More The Demon of Ethnic Cleansing Has Been Let Out of the Bottle in Israel
Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan. Chris Hedges The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and… Read More Chris Hedges: The Empire Self-Destructs / How the Left Destroyed Itself (AV interview with Yanis Varoufakis)
By Jairus Banaji Paul Mattick Sr. (1904–1981), left Germany for the US when he was 22. Mattick saw the revolutions in Russia and China as ‘not proletarian revolutions in the Marxist sense, leading to the “association of free and equal producers”, but state-capitalist revolutions, which were objectively unable to issue into socialism’. ‘Marxism served here… Read More Paul Mattick Sr. (1904–1981)
It is difficult to imagine today how strongly the reaction in the public was against Fischer’s challenge of a deeply entrenched national myth… the warning he wanted to give to younger historians was to avoid national partiality and not to identify the writing of history with nationalist causes or government politics. He lived his advice.… Read More Professor Fritz Fischer (1908 – 1999)
After the truth-shower 