Please Disrupt Capitalism! and The Return of Hope (tags)
The old quotation from Gramsci describes our plight: "The old dies and the new cannot come into the world. It is the time of the monster." The Good News is that the time of no alternatives is over. The Bad News is that the wrong alternatives are discussed.
The Military-Industrial Complex is the Greatest Threat for World Peace (tags)
Fighting the dominant culture of war that is promoted by all the media justifications of war and war propaganda is vital. This culture must be decoded as misanthropic and shattered. Building a culture of peace is the project of the century.
Social Inequality Today (tags)
The neoliberal rollback has created growing instabilities. An advancing process of de-democratization and social re-feudalization is connected with the rise of the new "super-rich." Piketty warned of the growing inequality between rich and poor.
At the end of yet another «historic» marathon session Brussels negotiations between the Greek government and its creditors, a «definitive» agreement has yet again been found to «resolve" the Greek crisis: Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and his team have come to accept as a condition for new loans to the virtually bankrupt Greek government, a plan of austerity measures significantly harsher than he had rejected a week earlier and against which he had, supposedly, held a referendum! The only point where he apparently got something concrete, is that of the reduction in military spending: the creditors have accepted that it is weaker than what they asked for...
Free Trade and Economic Growth instead of Democracy and Ecology (tags)
The TTIP agreement between the EU and the US creates a parallel private arbitration system where corporations can sue states for lost profits and decisions are irrevocable. Labor and environmental regulations can be invalidated as “takings” or “indirect expropriation.”
How Economists Change the World (tags)
Theory development is also a war over dominance. The goals of Hayek's war were expulsion of the Keynesians, liberalization of the financial markets, abandonment of full employment policy, dismantling the social state and weakening unions.
Political economies are calibrated to a form of economics oriented exclusively in competitiveness and high profits...The selling off of public services through the agreement on trade with services and the new edition of MAI were prevented because of social protest.
Both Germany and the US seem locked into unsustainable models. The Alternative Economic Policy study group has been publishing memorandums for 20 years urging a radical change of course: qualitative growth, expansion of public sector and reducing working hours.
KPCC.org Gets School Board Fight Wrong (tags)
KPCC.org has a story about the controversial LAUSD school board race, but they can't even get the combatants right.
Alternative for the Euro Zone (tags)
In a new study, leftist economists from a dozen EU countries criticize the policy of the German government in the Euro crisis. Its analysis and the proposed solutions are wrong. The state deficits are not the cause of the crisis. The financial crisis caused the state deficits.
When Financial Management Paralyzes Democracy (tags)
The 2010 Attac Bank Tribunal in Berlin was a civil society legal proceeding that decried the speculative business model: take excessive risks and burden taxpayers with the costs. Rating agencies should be public. Banks that are too big to fail are too big to exist and should be broken up
Worldwide Economic Crisis: Two Opposite Models as Answers (tags)
In a large part of the population, there is a consensus that capitalism has no answers to the great social challenges of social security, hunger and climate change. An alternative investment program (emphasizing children, culture and climate change) gives a long-term answer.
More Employment through a Different Distribution (tags)
More employment comes through reduced working hours and public investments more than tax subsidies. The state has destroyed jobs. The global attack of neoliberalism has gravely damaged the democratic welfare state.
Worldwide Wars and Anti-Military Options (tags)
The author suggersts three reasons for the nerve-wracking calm in Germany: 1) objective and very cruel mass unemployment, 2) self-stigmatization and 3) people don't think there is anything to share. At the end he urgers: Be IMI-Instinctively Mainstream Ignoring.
German Greens, Conservatives draw closer together (tags)
Last week, the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) started official talks aimed at forming a new coalition government in the state of Baden-Württemberg, after elections were held there at the end of March. Both parties aim to agree on a coalition pact by May 6. The state’s premier, Günther Oettinger (CDU), made this announcement two days before the CDU’s parliamentary faction was due to meet. The CDU had previously held two meetings each with the FDP and the Green Party to assess the possibilities of forming a coalition government. The discussions with the Greens signified yet a further convergence between the two parties and will undoubtedly be viewed in the not-too-distant future as a preparation for the first CDU-Green state government.
Second Annual Irish Cultural Festival at Loyola Marymount University (tags)
An article on the upcoming (March 2006) "Second Annual Irish Cultural Festival at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.
UK plan to pressure Syria on weapons (tags)
Britain is pressing to use the combined weight of the European Union's "big three" countries to put pressure on Syria baath party over weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and Iraq, the Guardian has learned. The move follows Libya's dramatic agreement to dismantle its WMD arsenal and is designed to show that Europe, galvanised by Britain, has the clout to help the US deal peacefully with security issues in the Middle East.