Behind this recent outbreak of ethnic conflict… there hovers a dark commercial deal signed by the Biren Singh BJP led government with several mining companies soon after he came to power in 2017. What is little known and seldom highlighted by the mainstream media is the fact that the hill districts of Manipur contain rich deposits… Read More Fractured memories of Manipur: myths, history and personal encounters
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Monday that he intends to vote against legislation authorizing $886 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, arguing the Pentagon budget should be cut in favor of investments in healthcare, education, housing, climate action, and other priorities. “As a nation, the time is long overdue for fundamental changes to our national… Read More Sanders demands cutting military spending amid healthcare and climate crises
Financial trouble at the company that supplies more than a fifth of the UK population with water has raised alarm about the dire state of an industry that delivers a resource people can’t live without. The problems are most acute at Thames Water, London’s utility, but the wider industry across England and Wales is struggling to deliver a… Read More Britain’s water industry crisis: Sewage spills, huge leaks and crushing debts
Dilip Simeon NB: This work-in-progress paper was my contribution to a conference hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen, Norway. The conference( May 31-June 2, 2023) was titled 200 Years of Socialism: Revisiting the Old Dilemmas: First Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality Lecture Abstract: The Bolshevik confiscation of the… Read More Militant capitalism, bad infinity, and the longing for total revolution
BY JULIA GLEDHILL AND WILLIAM D. HARTUNG While Republicans may now be “weaponizing” the political scene, the Pentagon’s weaponization story has lasted forever and a day. As TomDispatch regulars and Pentagon experts William Hartung and Julia Gledhill point out, when it comes to major purchases of weaponry (and the “investment” of taxpayer dollars in the giant weapons-making corporations that produce them),… Read More The Ultimate All-American Slush Fund
First posted April 11, 2012 By Colin Leys and Barbara Harriss-White The dominant process underlying the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the mid-nineteenth century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or commodification. In advanced capitalist countries this process is now outstripping our political and social capacity to adjust… Read More Commodification: the essence of our time
Brett Christophers Coming up with economic policy is a difficult, unforgiving task. To make the best of it, it helps to work with an accurate model of how the economy works. If you use a misleading model and act on it, you can’t reasonably expect good outcomes: in that scenario, we end up, as JM… Read More Look at what hedge funds really do – and tell me capitalism is about ‘rewarding risk’
Pankaj Mishra Early in January, Gautam Adani, an Indian businessman and associate of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was the world’s third richest man. By the end of the month he had lost much of his fortune, after being accused by the US-based research investment firm Hindenburg Research of pulling the ‘largest con in corporate… Read More The Big Con: Modi’s India and the New World Order
United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) decried the massive profits of the pharmaceutical industry during a House hearing on Tuesday, arguing that the public should be given the option to buy into government programs like Medicare. “I believe that the profit-seeking motive in the pharmaceutical industry is out of control, and I think that… Read More Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez torches Big Pharma’s ‘out-of-control’ and ‘predatory’ profiteering
Marina Prentoulis New Democracy’s victory was not unexpected, but the eye-watering share of the vote the party received is a different matter. The conservative government often points to its record of growth and investment, backed by European Commission forecasts, but the proceeds of this have not been felt evenly: a growing number of Greece’s population over… Read More Centre-left politics has been dealt a crushing blow in Greece. What can we learn from it?
After the truth-shower 