GUNS AND BUTTER: WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO STIMULATE A LAGGING ECONOMY? (Foreign Policy in Focus) Mark Engler takes on this question, reviewing the works of such “military Keynesians” as Michal Kalecki who argue that military expenditures are the most effective way, and such skeptics as Seymour Melman who assert that, morally and practically, [...]
WE CAME, WE SAW, HE DIED. (World Socialist) These infamous words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton celebrating the killing of Moammar Gaddafi echo around Clinton’s call for an “investigation” of the circumstances of that killing. That, says Bill Van Auken, is like a murderer calling for an investigation of a murder. The facts [...]
AN “UNCOMMODIFIED RADICAL PUBLIC SPACE RIGHT IN THE HEART OF GLOBAL CAPITAL.” (AlterNet) Writer Arun Gupta so characterizes the extraordinary encampment of protesters calling themselves Occupy Wall Street. City officials are losing patience with this “uncommodified” (free services) community which tries to provide for the sanitation and health care needs of an occupying population. The [...]
CAN BRITAIN’S “GROTTIEST PLACE TO LIVE” BE RESTORED TO ITS VICTORIAN SPLENDOR? (UK Independent) The town is Margate, a seaside place in Kent County, and developer guru Andrew Ashenden , who has specialized in restoring other “grotty” UK towns, thinks it just might happen. His vision for this restoration features an unsual promotion of small-scale [...]
TODAY IS THE 10th ANNIVERSARY OF INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN….BUT WHO IS CELEBRATING IT? (Antiwar.com) Certainly not President Obama, who is in the midst of a re-election campaign in which peoples’ minds are focused on retaining their jobs and their economic benefits in a recessionary period. While the majority of Americans—and the overwhelming majority of Afghans—oppose [...]
WHERE ARE THE HAPPIEST FAMILIES IN ITALY? WHY IN FLORENCE OF COURSE! (The Florentine) How do we know this? Because the Chamber of Commerce of Monza and Brianza, an “administrative province” that contains the city of Florence, conducts a survey in Italy and reports this fact. Only 19% of Florentines define themselves as “unhappy,” compared [...]
UZBEKISTAN: SHOULD THIS “STRATEGIC PARTNER” OF THE U.S. BE PUNISHED FOR ITS “APPALLING RECORD ON HUMAN RIGHTS”? (IPS News) A coalition of human rights organizations calls on President Obama not to renew the military assistance it provides to this central Asian country and cites the example of other “Arab Spring” countries that have rebelled against [...]
AMAZON.COM: GIVING CUSTOMERS A LITTLE BIT OF DOMESTIC SWEATSHOP LABOR WITH EVERY PURCHASE… When one thinks of substandard working conditions in the world of retail and consumer products, what usually comes to mind are images of “sweatshop” factories overseas, in the manufacturing stage of a product’s journey to the United States. But in a remarkable [...]
CHINESE INVESTORS PUTTING A LOT OF “STOCK” IN THE COUNTRY’S GREEN-ENERGY CAR INDUSTRY. BYD, which makes an electric car, puts itself up for stock market sales and the market responds by large increase in price, despite the company’s recent poor earnings report. Analysts suggests that BYD is a surrogate for the interest of investors in [...]
UNITED FOR PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY. (Black Agenda Report) This term has been used derisively for an anti-war organization, United For Peace and Justice. The suspicion that UFPJ and other mainline “anti-war” groups were simply tools of the Democratic Party in its struggle to gain power is supported by a recent study of two professors [...]
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