By JACKSON DIIANI Question: Who owns the parking meters in Chicago? Answer: Morgan Stanley and the city of Abu Dhabi. In 2008, in order to offset a budget crisis, the city council leased the parking meter system to a company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC, owned by Morgan Stanley and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Rates in most… Read More Is America like the Soviet Union in 1990?
From Egypt to Bangladesh, photographer Lucien Migné has documented the work of marginalised groups whose livelihoods have remained largely untouched by the modernisation of work by Chloé Farand – All photographs by Lucien Migné For a moment, the workers disappear in the clouds of dust that billow across the white limestone plains as the old circular… Read More Danger and dignity in some of the world’s vanishing trades – a photo essay
It has become an article of faith among many economists that China’s pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s ushered in a sustained reduction in poverty. This narrative relies on figures from the World Bank, showing that over the past 40 years the number of people in China living in “extreme poverty” (less than US$1.90… Read More China’s capitalist reforms are said to have moved 800 million out of extreme poverty – new data suggests the opposite
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these around the world. This is how democracies become new… Read More What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies
Michael Hardt Progressive and revolutionary movements of the 1970s, which took place across the globe, provide an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action, even more than those of the 1960s. The sixties were a crucial historical turning point and we can certainly learn from those movements, both the victorious and… Read More The Subversive Seventies
Before the port construction began, Vizhinjam was the largest and most important fishing village in Kerala. It was home to some 4,500 fishing families and several thousand boats Of all the Indian states I know, Kerala has the most active civil society organisations that flourish independently of governments and political parties. These groups work in… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Heed the words
This work of a lifetime presents high-octane, high-political drama – and attempts to rehabilitate the ‘bourgeois’ provisional government that preceded the Bolsheviks Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924 – By Robert Service Reviewed by Pratinav Anil This is, by my count, Robert Service’s 12th book that touches on the Russian Revolution, either substantively or… Read More Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution
NB: Israel is committing genocide with impunity; conducted in front of our noses. Read the UN definition of genocide; and the brazen hypocrisy of the propaganda about the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea‘. Read also the history of the decades long ethnic cleansing against Palestinians; and the demand for a unitary, secular state. The… Read More Butchery in Gaza continues/European arms factories blockaded by their workers/Reuters journalist murdered by Israeli tank fire/UN Chief invokes Article 99 after 34 years
Bharat Bhushan The government has denied that there are requests by Israel to export 100,000 Indians to replace Palestinian workers. Glossing over such reports, a spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs said the government was not aware of any specific requests and if taken up, the initiative would be a “long-term” issue. Yet, India… Read More Unworkable: Swapping Palestinian workers with Indians
Palestinian workers who were expelled back to Gaza from Israel last week have accused Israeli authorities of “torture,” alleging they were stripped naked, held in cages, viciously beaten and, according to one worker’s account, subjected to electric shocks. “They broke us and beat us with batons and metal sticks… they humiliated us… they have made… Read More Gaza workers expelled from Israel accuse Israeli authorities of abuse, including beatings
After the truth-shower 