Reviewed By Michael Tomasky
The New York Review of Books – March 6, 2014
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/new-populism/
Social Democratic America
By Lane Kenworthy Oxford University Press, 238 pp
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/social-democratic-america-9780199322510;jsessionid=CA47E66EA000F006CD9D6003C9C91A51?cc=us&lang=en&
Barack Obama’s fifth State of the Union address received the usual praise from Democrats and many cable news commentators, but the fact is the occasion was rather grim, and his approach in some ways frustrating. With all his talk of raising the minimum wage and other executive actions that would circumvent Congress, he implicitly admitted that progress on Capitol Hill is now all but impossible. At the same time, he couldn’t quite bring himself to invite direct confrontation with the Republicans, who control the House and will continue to block most of his programs. The general verdict on MSNBC was that he was successfully positioning himself above the fray. But is that really possible in today’s Washington? The city seems all fray, all the time.
When it came to policy, the speech highlighted the set of economic concerns that has risen to the forefront of Democratic politics these last couple of years: “Obama Vows to Act Alone on the Economy,” as The New York Times summarized matters the following day. The president spoke of unemployment insurance and similar issues related to the economic struggles of the middle class, emphasizing measures that could be carried out by executive orders. He did not, as many liberals had hoped, speak at length about inequality. Apparently he and his advisers decided that was a bit of a downer for a State of the Union address and chose instead to stress inequality’s sunnier flip side of expanding opportunity. But the point was made, perhaps as much by what wasn’t in the speech—no pleas for reducing the deficit and cutting entitlements, to name two inside-the-Beltway priorities that liberals loathe and that Obama had previously suggested he favored or would at least consider.
Read more.....
Monday, February 17, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
A New Book: The Imperial University Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent
Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira, Editors
The University of Minnesota Press, 2014
At colleges and universities throughout the United States, political protest and intellectual dissent are increasingly being met with repressive tactics by administrators, politicians, and the police—from the use of SWAT teams to disperse student protestors and the profiling of Muslim and Arab American students to the denial of tenure and dismissal of politically engaged faculty. The Imperial University brings together scholars, including some who have been targeted for their open criticism of American foreign policy and settler colonialism, to explore the policing of knowledge by explicitly linking the academy to the broader politics of militarism, racism, nationalism, and neoliberalism that define the contemporary imperial state.
The contributors to this book argue that “academic freedom” is not a sufficient response to the crisis of intellectual repression. Instead, they contend that battles fought over academic containment must be understood in light of the academy’s relationship to U.S. expansionism and global capital. Based on multidisciplinary research, autobiographical accounts, and even performance scripts, this urgent analysis offers sobering insights into such varied manifestations of “the imperial university” as CIA recruitment at black and Latino colleges, the connections between universities and civilian and military prisons, and the gender and sexual politics of academic repression.
Contributors: Thomas Abowd, Tufts U; Victor Bascara, UCLA; Dana Collins, California State U, Fullerton; Nicholas De Genova; Ricardo Dominguez, UC San Diego; Sylvanna Falcón, UC Santa Cruz; Farah Godrej, UC Riverside; Roberto J. Gonzalez, San Jose State U; Alexis Pauline Gumbs; Sharmila Lodhia, Santa Clara U; Julia C. Oparah, Mills College; Vijay Prashad, Trinity College; Jasbir Puar, Rutgers U; Laura Pulido, U of Southern California; Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, California State U, Long Beach; Steven Salaita, Virginia Tech; Molly Talcott, California State U, Los Angeles.
Contents
Introduction. The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State
Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira
I. Imperial Cartographies
1. New Empire, Same University? Education in the American Tropics after 1898 By Victor Bascara
2. Militarizing Education: The Intelligence Community’s Spy Camps By Roberto J. González
3. Challenging Complicity: The Neoliberal University and the Prison-Industrial Complex By Julia C. Oparah
II. Academic Containment
4. Neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of Dissent: Policing Protest at the University of California By Farah Godrej
5. Faculty Governance at the University of Southern California By Laura Pulido
6. The BDS Movement and Violations of Academic Freedom at Wayne State University By Thomas Abowd
7. Decolonizing Chicano Studies in the Shadows of the University’s “Heteropatriracial” Order By Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo
III. Manifest Knowledges
8. Normatizing State Power: Uncritical Ethical Praxis and Zionism By Steven Salaita
9. Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity By Alexis Pauline Gumbs
10. Teaching outside Liberal-Imperial Discourse: A Critical Dialogue about Antiracist Feminisms
Sylvanna Falcón, Sharmila Lodhia, Molly Talcott, and Dana Collins
11. Citation and Censure: Pinkwashing and the Sexual Politics of Talking about Israel By Jasbir Puar
IV. Heresies and Freedoms
12. Within and Against the Imperial University: Reflections on Crossing the Line By Nicholas De Genova
13. Teaching by Candlelight By Vijay Prashad
14. UCOP versus R. Dominguez —The FBI Interview: A One-Act Play á la Jean Genet By Ricardo Dominguez
The University of Minnesota Press, 2014
At colleges and universities throughout the United States, political protest and intellectual dissent are increasingly being met with repressive tactics by administrators, politicians, and the police—from the use of SWAT teams to disperse student protestors and the profiling of Muslim and Arab American students to the denial of tenure and dismissal of politically engaged faculty. The Imperial University brings together scholars, including some who have been targeted for their open criticism of American foreign policy and settler colonialism, to explore the policing of knowledge by explicitly linking the academy to the broader politics of militarism, racism, nationalism, and neoliberalism that define the contemporary imperial state.The contributors to this book argue that “academic freedom” is not a sufficient response to the crisis of intellectual repression. Instead, they contend that battles fought over academic containment must be understood in light of the academy’s relationship to U.S. expansionism and global capital. Based on multidisciplinary research, autobiographical accounts, and even performance scripts, this urgent analysis offers sobering insights into such varied manifestations of “the imperial university” as CIA recruitment at black and Latino colleges, the connections between universities and civilian and military prisons, and the gender and sexual politics of academic repression.
Contributors: Thomas Abowd, Tufts U; Victor Bascara, UCLA; Dana Collins, California State U, Fullerton; Nicholas De Genova; Ricardo Dominguez, UC San Diego; Sylvanna Falcón, UC Santa Cruz; Farah Godrej, UC Riverside; Roberto J. Gonzalez, San Jose State U; Alexis Pauline Gumbs; Sharmila Lodhia, Santa Clara U; Julia C. Oparah, Mills College; Vijay Prashad, Trinity College; Jasbir Puar, Rutgers U; Laura Pulido, U of Southern California; Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, California State U, Long Beach; Steven Salaita, Virginia Tech; Molly Talcott, California State U, Los Angeles.
Contents
Introduction. The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State
Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira
I. Imperial Cartographies
1. New Empire, Same University? Education in the American Tropics after 1898 By Victor Bascara
2. Militarizing Education: The Intelligence Community’s Spy Camps By Roberto J. González
3. Challenging Complicity: The Neoliberal University and the Prison-Industrial Complex By Julia C. Oparah
II. Academic Containment
4. Neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of Dissent: Policing Protest at the University of California By Farah Godrej
5. Faculty Governance at the University of Southern California By Laura Pulido
6. The BDS Movement and Violations of Academic Freedom at Wayne State University By Thomas Abowd
7. Decolonizing Chicano Studies in the Shadows of the University’s “Heteropatriracial” Order By Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo
III. Manifest Knowledges
8. Normatizing State Power: Uncritical Ethical Praxis and Zionism By Steven Salaita
9. Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity By Alexis Pauline Gumbs
10. Teaching outside Liberal-Imperial Discourse: A Critical Dialogue about Antiracist Feminisms
Sylvanna Falcón, Sharmila Lodhia, Molly Talcott, and Dana Collins
11. Citation and Censure: Pinkwashing and the Sexual Politics of Talking about Israel By Jasbir Puar
IV. Heresies and Freedoms
12. Within and Against the Imperial University: Reflections on Crossing the Line By Nicholas De Genova
13. Teaching by Candlelight By Vijay Prashad
14. UCOP versus R. Dominguez —The FBI Interview: A One-Act Play á la Jean Genet By Ricardo Dominguez
Colonialism's Enduring Dividends
Why European Companies Have an Advantage in Emerging Markets
By Bhaskar Chakravorti, Jianwei Dong, Kate Fedosova
Foreign Affairs - February 13, 2014
Last year was a turning point for the global economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, emerging economies made up a higher proportion of the world’s collective GDP (adjusted for purchasing price parity) than advanced ones. That might seem like bad news for the old guard, but, in fact, it is an opportunity. Although the last twelve months have not been kind to emerging markets, forecasters still project significant long-term growth in many up-and-coming economies. In telecommunications, for example, a 2014 MarketLine report projected 16.4 percent market volume growth in emerging markets by 2017, four times the projected growth in Europe over the same period.
But it isn’t at all clear that Western corporations have recognized this new reality or how it will change their ways of doing business. Boston Consulting Group’s 2013 Global Readiness Survey found that only nine percent of multinationals’ top executives were based in emerging markets. Some corporations appear more ready and able than others to embrace these new economic realities, but it depends on which side of the Atlantic they are on. According to 2012 estimates from Morgan Stanley, companies headquartered in Europe generated just over 30 percent of their revenue from emerging markets, but U.S. companies got less than ten percent of their revenue from them. Corporate goals and management structures, which are similar among European and American firms, do not explain the difference. In fact, trends suggest that much of the wide transatlantic gap is a product of history -- and of colonialism in particular.
Read more......
By Bhaskar Chakravorti, Jianwei Dong, Kate Fedosova
Foreign Affairs - February 13, 2014
Last year was a turning point for the global economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, emerging economies made up a higher proportion of the world’s collective GDP (adjusted for purchasing price parity) than advanced ones. That might seem like bad news for the old guard, but, in fact, it is an opportunity. Although the last twelve months have not been kind to emerging markets, forecasters still project significant long-term growth in many up-and-coming economies. In telecommunications, for example, a 2014 MarketLine report projected 16.4 percent market volume growth in emerging markets by 2017, four times the projected growth in Europe over the same period.
But it isn’t at all clear that Western corporations have recognized this new reality or how it will change their ways of doing business. Boston Consulting Group’s 2013 Global Readiness Survey found that only nine percent of multinationals’ top executives were based in emerging markets. Some corporations appear more ready and able than others to embrace these new economic realities, but it depends on which side of the Atlantic they are on. According to 2012 estimates from Morgan Stanley, companies headquartered in Europe generated just over 30 percent of their revenue from emerging markets, but U.S. companies got less than ten percent of their revenue from them. Corporate goals and management structures, which are similar among European and American firms, do not explain the difference. In fact, trends suggest that much of the wide transatlantic gap is a product of history -- and of colonialism in particular.
Read more......
Could you name a British black intellectual, now Stuart Hall has gone?
We have a strong tradition of black thinkers in the UK, yet interest and coverage is rare outside Black History Month
By Paul Warmington
theguardian.com, Saturday 15 February 2014
As a pioneer of cultural studies and coiner of the term "Thatcherism", Prof Stuart Hall, who died this week, was in the truest sense a public intellectual. He was also something else: probably the only black British intellectual who most people could readily name.
A bit of prompting might produce mention of Paul Gilroy of King's College, author of The Empire Strikes Back and Black Atlantic, who has recently returned to Britain after several years in America's more fertile ebony towers. But how many other black British thinkers have a public profile?
When I began writing a book called Black British Intellectuals and Education, even friends sympathetic to the project asked, "Are you sure about the title? What do you mean by black British intellectuals?" This is not a state of affairs Hall would have relished. But let's be clear. Britain has a powerful black intellectual tradition: from Olaudah Equiano and the black anti-slavery campaigners, to those who arrived in the mid-20th century, (think, for instance, of Claudia Jones, founder of the Notting Hill carnival), up to the present day. Yet, Hall and Gilroy aside, most struggle to gain coverage in our classrooms, lecture halls or TV screens. Moreover, while it is certainly not the case that all great intellectuals are academics (the great polymath CLR James, for instance, was not university educated), British academia has offered poor soil for the coming generation of black thinkers.
Read more......
By Paul Warmington
theguardian.com, Saturday 15 February 2014
As a pioneer of cultural studies and coiner of the term "Thatcherism", Prof Stuart Hall, who died this week, was in the truest sense a public intellectual. He was also something else: probably the only black British intellectual who most people could readily name.
A bit of prompting might produce mention of Paul Gilroy of King's College, author of The Empire Strikes Back and Black Atlantic, who has recently returned to Britain after several years in America's more fertile ebony towers. But how many other black British thinkers have a public profile?
When I began writing a book called Black British Intellectuals and Education, even friends sympathetic to the project asked, "Are you sure about the title? What do you mean by black British intellectuals?" This is not a state of affairs Hall would have relished. But let's be clear. Britain has a powerful black intellectual tradition: from Olaudah Equiano and the black anti-slavery campaigners, to those who arrived in the mid-20th century, (think, for instance, of Claudia Jones, founder of the Notting Hill carnival), up to the present day. Yet, Hall and Gilroy aside, most struggle to gain coverage in our classrooms, lecture halls or TV screens. Moreover, while it is certainly not the case that all great intellectuals are academics (the great polymath CLR James, for instance, was not university educated), British academia has offered poor soil for the coming generation of black thinkers.
Read more......
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The Arab World Learning Barometer
Brookings - February 7, 2014
http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2014/arab-world-learning-barometer
The Arab World Learning Barometer is an interactive tool developed by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Using the latest available data, the barometer provides a snapshot of the state of education and learning in the Middle East and North Africa.
The barometer measures the quality of education and learning by examining four areas: getting into school, staying in school, whether students are learning basic skills while in school, and the link between education and youth unemployment. The barometer brings together often scarce data for 20 countries in the Arab region. The data cover the 2001-2012 period and do not reflect setbacks due to recent conflicts in the region.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2014/arab-world-learning-barometer
The Arab World Learning Barometer is an interactive tool developed by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Using the latest available data, the barometer provides a snapshot of the state of education and learning in the Middle East and North Africa.
The barometer measures the quality of education and learning by examining four areas: getting into school, staying in school, whether students are learning basic skills while in school, and the link between education and youth unemployment. The barometer brings together often scarce data for 20 countries in the Arab region. The data cover the 2001-2012 period and do not reflect setbacks due to recent conflicts in the region.
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet
Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever
By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stones - February 12, 2014
Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century.
But the crazy thing is, nobody at the time quite knew it. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 – also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – was just the latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the Reagan years.
Read more....
By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stones - February 12, 2014
Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century.
But the crazy thing is, nobody at the time quite knew it. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 – also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – was just the latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the Reagan years.
Read more....
Under the Spell of Yoga
By William Dalrymple
The New York Review of Books
Around 1600, a dramatic shift took place in Mughal art. The Mughal emperors of India were the most powerful monarchs of their day—at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they ruled over a hundred million subjects, five times the number administered by their only rivals, the Ottomans. Much of the painting that took place in the ateliers of the first Mughal emperors was effectively dynastic propaganda, and gloried in the Mughals’ pomp and prestige. Illustrated copies were produced of the diaries of Babur, the conqueror who first brought the Muslim dynasty of the Mughal emperors to India in 1526, as well as exquisite paintings illustrating every significant episode in the biography of his grandson, Akbar.
Then, quite suddenly, at this moment of imperial climax, a young Hindu khanazad (or “palace-born”) prodigy named Govardhan began painting images of a sort that had never been seen before in Mughal art. They were not pictures of battles or court receptions. Instead they were closely observed portraits of holy men performing yogic asanas or exercises that aimed to focus the mind and achieve spiritual liberation and transcendence. The results of Govardhan’s experiments in painting—along with a superbly curated selection of several hundred other images from the history of yoga—were recently on view in “Yoga: The Art of Transformation,” a remarkable exhibition at the Freer and Sackler galleries in Washington, D.C., which will travel next to San Francisco and Cleveland.
Read more....
The New York Review of Books
Around 1600, a dramatic shift took place in Mughal art. The Mughal emperors of India were the most powerful monarchs of their day—at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they ruled over a hundred million subjects, five times the number administered by their only rivals, the Ottomans. Much of the painting that took place in the ateliers of the first Mughal emperors was effectively dynastic propaganda, and gloried in the Mughals’ pomp and prestige. Illustrated copies were produced of the diaries of Babur, the conqueror who first brought the Muslim dynasty of the Mughal emperors to India in 1526, as well as exquisite paintings illustrating every significant episode in the biography of his grandson, Akbar.
Then, quite suddenly, at this moment of imperial climax, a young Hindu khanazad (or “palace-born”) prodigy named Govardhan began painting images of a sort that had never been seen before in Mughal art. They were not pictures of battles or court receptions. Instead they were closely observed portraits of holy men performing yogic asanas or exercises that aimed to focus the mind and achieve spiritual liberation and transcendence. The results of Govardhan’s experiments in painting—along with a superbly curated selection of several hundred other images from the history of yoga—were recently on view in “Yoga: The Art of Transformation,” a remarkable exhibition at the Freer and Sackler galleries in Washington, D.C., which will travel next to San Francisco and Cleveland.
Read more....
Bob Dylan and the Ethics of Market Fascism
By Tony Kashani,
Truthout | Op-Ed15 February 2014
Come senators, congressmen,Please heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he who gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outsideAnd it is ragin'.It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan – "The Times They Are A-changin'," 1964
The Culture of Spectacle
On Sunday, February 2, 2014, according to most reliable news sources, 111.5 million people (mostly US residents) participated in viewing the imperial spectacle known as the Super Bowl XLVIII. To be sure, this Super Bowl was not dissimilar to its predecessors; a made-for-television event of commodification, showcasing a package of mediocrity with a mind-numbing violent team sport to be utilized for selling useless junk. According to Bill Wanger, executive vice president for programming and research at Fox Sports, "Big-event television is a great way for people to have a communal event, to talk about it socially and to talk about it as a group."
Wagner presupposes viewers are ready-made consumers who have lost the ability to think, or perhaps had never developed that ability in the first place. Therefore, if Fox Sports and their free market economy coconspirators set the agenda, people longing for community and communal experiences will simply follow it.
Read more...
Truthout | Op-Ed15 February 2014
Come senators, congressmen,Please heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he who gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outsideAnd it is ragin'.It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan – "The Times They Are A-changin'," 1964
The Culture of Spectacle
On Sunday, February 2, 2014, according to most reliable news sources, 111.5 million people (mostly US residents) participated in viewing the imperial spectacle known as the Super Bowl XLVIII. To be sure, this Super Bowl was not dissimilar to its predecessors; a made-for-television event of commodification, showcasing a package of mediocrity with a mind-numbing violent team sport to be utilized for selling useless junk. According to Bill Wanger, executive vice president for programming and research at Fox Sports, "Big-event television is a great way for people to have a communal event, to talk about it socially and to talk about it as a group."
Wagner presupposes viewers are ready-made consumers who have lost the ability to think, or perhaps had never developed that ability in the first place. Therefore, if Fox Sports and their free market economy coconspirators set the agenda, people longing for community and communal experiences will simply follow it.
Read more...
Friday, February 14, 2014
Qatar scales back ambitions amid financial constraints
By Bill Law
BBC News - 11 February 2014
Sheikh Tamim inherited a country whose big ambitions at being a regional - even global - power were foundering.
Its support for Islamist movements in revolutionary Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria was backfiring, straining relations with Western allies and Gulf neighbours alike.
Meanwhile at home, conservatives were increasingly vocal in the criticism of what they perceived to be the wholesale importation of Western cultural and educational institutions and values.
Read more....
BBC News - 11 February 2014
When Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad Al Thani succeeded his father as emir of energy-rich Qatar in
June, few observers knew very much about him.
A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the
33-year-old was said to be conservative and cautious, the antithesis of
the image of a flamboyant Gulf prince.Sheikh Tamim inherited a country whose big ambitions at being a regional - even global - power were foundering.
Its support for Islamist movements in revolutionary Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria was backfiring, straining relations with Western allies and Gulf neighbours alike.
Meanwhile at home, conservatives were increasingly vocal in the criticism of what they perceived to be the wholesale importation of Western cultural and educational institutions and values.
Read more....
Thursday, February 13, 2014
A Book Review: Does Capitalism Have A Future?
By Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian and Craig Calhoun.
Oxford University Press - December 2013
Reviewed By Christel Lane is Professor of Economic Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.
Published by Lindon School of Economic Review of Books - February 13, 2014
The current recession and the economic crisis it has engendered have
brought forth a torrent of publications on the state of global
capitalism. This collection of contributions from five internationally
renowned scholars in the field of the political economy of
capitalism/state socialism is different. It goes beyond the mere
diagnosis of the origins and consequences of the crisis and additionally
provides searching, incisive, highly stimulating, yet also accessible
answers to an exceedingly important question: whether capitalism will
endure and, if not, what might come after capitalism as we know it.Taking
the macro sociological analyses developed in their prior publications
as starting points, four of the above authors present novel prognoses
for the future of capitalism or its likely replacement. They do not
indulge in futurology but always extrapolate from structural tendencies
discernible at the current stage of capitalism. The fifth contributor,
Georgi Derluguian, in contrast, looks for any lessons that might be
derived from the historical development and collapse of state socialism
in the former Soviet Union. Here it is notable that all the contributors
rule out state socialism of the Soviet kind as a successor regime to
capitalism. These chapters are framed by a collectively written
introduction and conclusion.
While Wallerstein and Collins envisage the collapse of the world capitalist system in the coming three or four decades, Michael Mann contends that capitalism will persist, albeit in a reformed version. Calhoun suggests that, to endure, capitalist political economies have to introduce very drastic institutional transformations. All authors, though to different degrees, additionally focus on intersections of capitalist development with ecological crisis. For reasons of space, I can review only three of the five chapters, although all offer excellent analyses.
Wallerstein examines the changes in both Kondratiev and Hegemonic Cycles, perceived as mechanisms that, during normal times, bring capitalism back to equilibrium. However, during the coming three to four decades equilibrium will no longer be attainable. Wallerstein diagnoses exhaustion of possibilities to increase capital accumulation and therefore predicts capitalism’s collapse in the near future. Michael Mann points out that Wallerstein’s systemic perspective, implying law-like developments, recurring cycles, and a mono-causal logic of political-economic transformation, is bound to ignore complex interactions of networks of power and therefore is much more likely to arrive at a diagnosis of system collapse. Despite Wallerstein’s world-system perspective, his analyses do not pay sufficient regard to developments in the emergent economies of China and South America, where economic crisis tendencies have been hardly present since 2008.
In the final section of his chapter, Wallerstein examines the political struggle over possible replacements of capitalism. This section is somewhat disappointing. It diverges from his previous conceptual framework, with the economy almost disappearing from the discussion. Also his selection of the spirit of the Porto Alegre camp as one candidate for pointing towards a possible future remains too broad and vague to convince.
Randall Collins shares some aspects of Wallerstein’s systemic perspective, but focuses on only one long-term structural weakness within capitalism. This is the disappearance of the traditional middle class whose jobs are being automated. While technological displacement of manual labour was already discussed by Marx, a similar displacement of the middle class is presented as novel. Collins holds that, unlike in the past, capitalism can no longer generate any escape routes from such displacement by creating more or new jobs for middle class labour. Left without the means to consume, we face the disappearance of markets capitalists rely on for constant accumulation. This, together with the resulting political disaffection, will destroy the capitalist system. When unemployment, from 2030 onwards, reaches 50 to 70 percent of the work-capable population, Collins argues, the capitalist system can no longer survive. As in Wallerstein’s scenario, the unveiling of the post-capitalist future – said to entail a massive redistribution of wealth – remains quite vague as to new technological and economic developments. Unless a reversal of technological development is envisaged, redistribution between the classes cannot solve the problem of structural unemployment.
While Collins puts his finger on a development currently under way and provides plenty of examples of technological displacement, he weakens his case by several crucial omissions. He does not present any statistics bearing out a progressive trend in middle class technological displacement. Worse, he provides no definition of the middle class and does not systematically explore what aspects of middle class work make technological displacement likely or, equally feasible, unlikely. He does not consider that the performance of very complex cognitive operations or of work with a strong relational component might be resistant to technological displacement. Furthermore Collins does not allow that consumers of certain groups of services, such as in the areas of medicine, social work, or policing, are likely to show strong resistance to removing human contact from them.
Michael Mann diverges from the above two theorists in that he envisages ‘a kaleidoscopic recombination of the four non-congruent and distinctly shaped networks of social power’. Consequently, the future, in his eyes, will not be determined by the failings of capitalism alone. His deep historical knowledge, genuine consideration of economic development of the whole globe, together with his plausible thesis of a multi-causality of societal transformation, allow him to make very considered analyses of possible future scenarios. Extrapolating from structural tendencies in all four networks of power during the current time, he suggests a number of possible scenarios for the future, including the survival of capitalism. One of these latter scenarios is very optimistic. Mann posits a low-growth global capitalism to emerge around 2050 in which American hegemony has been replaced by a multi-polar network of power. He disputes that this, by itself, must lead to terminal crisis and revolution. Low growth and even between 15 and 20 per cent of unemployment, if accompanied by reformist socialist or social-democratic redistribution, in his view, is sustainable. It may even usher in a variety of capitalism superior to its current neo-liberal form. But before we have time to rejoice at this prospect, Mann outlines the much more serious threat to the globe, emanating from global warming. Although very pessimistic about its social consequences, he nevertheless allows that some political management and solution of the ecological crisis may be possible.
An excellent, collectively written Conclusion to the book compares the various prognoses outlined above and additionally examines the role the social sciences may play in ‘a transformative future’. It is acknowledged that macro-historical analysis such as theirs can do no more than ‘connecting the dots in a big puzzle’. Nevertheless, the authors suggest that both theoretical and empirical social scientists will have plenty of crucial intellectual work to do in rising to the challenges and opportunities posed by a forthcoming transformation or demise of capitalism.
Oxford University Press - December 2013
Reviewed By Christel Lane is Professor of Economic Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.
Published by Lindon School of Economic Review of Books - February 13, 2014
While Wallerstein and Collins envisage the collapse of the world capitalist system in the coming three or four decades, Michael Mann contends that capitalism will persist, albeit in a reformed version. Calhoun suggests that, to endure, capitalist political economies have to introduce very drastic institutional transformations. All authors, though to different degrees, additionally focus on intersections of capitalist development with ecological crisis. For reasons of space, I can review only three of the five chapters, although all offer excellent analyses.
Wallerstein examines the changes in both Kondratiev and Hegemonic Cycles, perceived as mechanisms that, during normal times, bring capitalism back to equilibrium. However, during the coming three to four decades equilibrium will no longer be attainable. Wallerstein diagnoses exhaustion of possibilities to increase capital accumulation and therefore predicts capitalism’s collapse in the near future. Michael Mann points out that Wallerstein’s systemic perspective, implying law-like developments, recurring cycles, and a mono-causal logic of political-economic transformation, is bound to ignore complex interactions of networks of power and therefore is much more likely to arrive at a diagnosis of system collapse. Despite Wallerstein’s world-system perspective, his analyses do not pay sufficient regard to developments in the emergent economies of China and South America, where economic crisis tendencies have been hardly present since 2008.
In the final section of his chapter, Wallerstein examines the political struggle over possible replacements of capitalism. This section is somewhat disappointing. It diverges from his previous conceptual framework, with the economy almost disappearing from the discussion. Also his selection of the spirit of the Porto Alegre camp as one candidate for pointing towards a possible future remains too broad and vague to convince.
Randall Collins shares some aspects of Wallerstein’s systemic perspective, but focuses on only one long-term structural weakness within capitalism. This is the disappearance of the traditional middle class whose jobs are being automated. While technological displacement of manual labour was already discussed by Marx, a similar displacement of the middle class is presented as novel. Collins holds that, unlike in the past, capitalism can no longer generate any escape routes from such displacement by creating more or new jobs for middle class labour. Left without the means to consume, we face the disappearance of markets capitalists rely on for constant accumulation. This, together with the resulting political disaffection, will destroy the capitalist system. When unemployment, from 2030 onwards, reaches 50 to 70 percent of the work-capable population, Collins argues, the capitalist system can no longer survive. As in Wallerstein’s scenario, the unveiling of the post-capitalist future – said to entail a massive redistribution of wealth – remains quite vague as to new technological and economic developments. Unless a reversal of technological development is envisaged, redistribution between the classes cannot solve the problem of structural unemployment.
While Collins puts his finger on a development currently under way and provides plenty of examples of technological displacement, he weakens his case by several crucial omissions. He does not present any statistics bearing out a progressive trend in middle class technological displacement. Worse, he provides no definition of the middle class and does not systematically explore what aspects of middle class work make technological displacement likely or, equally feasible, unlikely. He does not consider that the performance of very complex cognitive operations or of work with a strong relational component might be resistant to technological displacement. Furthermore Collins does not allow that consumers of certain groups of services, such as in the areas of medicine, social work, or policing, are likely to show strong resistance to removing human contact from them.
Michael Mann diverges from the above two theorists in that he envisages ‘a kaleidoscopic recombination of the four non-congruent and distinctly shaped networks of social power’. Consequently, the future, in his eyes, will not be determined by the failings of capitalism alone. His deep historical knowledge, genuine consideration of economic development of the whole globe, together with his plausible thesis of a multi-causality of societal transformation, allow him to make very considered analyses of possible future scenarios. Extrapolating from structural tendencies in all four networks of power during the current time, he suggests a number of possible scenarios for the future, including the survival of capitalism. One of these latter scenarios is very optimistic. Mann posits a low-growth global capitalism to emerge around 2050 in which American hegemony has been replaced by a multi-polar network of power. He disputes that this, by itself, must lead to terminal crisis and revolution. Low growth and even between 15 and 20 per cent of unemployment, if accompanied by reformist socialist or social-democratic redistribution, in his view, is sustainable. It may even usher in a variety of capitalism superior to its current neo-liberal form. But before we have time to rejoice at this prospect, Mann outlines the much more serious threat to the globe, emanating from global warming. Although very pessimistic about its social consequences, he nevertheless allows that some political management and solution of the ecological crisis may be possible.
An excellent, collectively written Conclusion to the book compares the various prognoses outlined above and additionally examines the role the social sciences may play in ‘a transformative future’. It is acknowledged that macro-historical analysis such as theirs can do no more than ‘connecting the dots in a big puzzle’. Nevertheless, the authors suggest that both theoretical and empirical social scientists will have plenty of crucial intellectual work to do in rising to the challenges and opportunities posed by a forthcoming transformation or demise of capitalism.
A New Book: The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anticolonial Imagination
By Benedict Anderson
Verso - November 2013
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1492-the-age-of-globalization
The author of Imagined Communities draws out the story of a global anarchist and nationalist network The exchange of ideas makes history as surely as the exchange of gunfire. The Age of Globalization (previously published as Under Three Flags) is an account of the unlikely connections that made up late nineteenth-century politics and culture. In particular, Benedict Anderson examines the links between militant anarchists in Europe and the Americas and the anti-imperialist uprisings in Cuba, China, and Japan. Told through the complex intellectual interactions of two great Filipino writers—the political novelist José Rizal and the pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes—The Age of Globalization is a brilliantly original work on how global networks shaped the nationalist movements of the time.
Verso - November 2013
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1492-the-age-of-globalization
A New Book: Liberalism: A Counter-History
By Domenico Losurdo
Translated by Gregory Elliott
Verso - February 2014
http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism
One of Europe's leading intellectual historians deconstructs liberalism's dark side. In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery. Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.
Translated by Gregory Elliott
Verso - February 2014
http://www.versobooks.com/books/960-liberalism
A New Book: Constructing America's Freedom Agenda for the Middle East Democracy or Domination
By Oz Hassan
Routledge – 2013
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415603102/
This book explores how George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda for the Middle East and North Africa was conceived and implemented as an American national interest, from the Bush era right through to the initial stages of the Obama administration. It highlights how the crisis presented by September 11 2001 led to regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, but more broadly how American policy towards the region had a softer imperial side, which drew on broader economic theories of democratisation and modernisation. The Freedom Agenda contained within it a prescribed method of combating terrorism, but also a method of engaging with and reforming the entire Middle East region more broadly, with many institutions seeking to use the opportunity to implement neo-liberal market logics in the region. Constructing America's Freedom Agenda for the Middle East highlights the particular understanding of "freedom" that underpins America’s imperial project in the region; a project trapped between a policy of democratisation and domination. This book analyses the Freedom Agenda in significantly more depth than in available current literature and would be of interest to students and researchers of global politics and international foreign policy of recent years.
1. American Interests and a History of Promoting the Status Quo
2. A Constructivist Institutionalist Methodology
3. From Candidate to Crisis: Laying the Discursive tracks of the Freedom Agenda
4. September to December 2001: The Decisive Intervention
5. Constructing the Freedom Agenda for the Middle East
6. Institutionalising the Freedom Agenda: A Policy of Conservative Radicalism
7. Obama’s Freedom Agenda: Conservative Pragmatism and the 2011 Revolutions
Oz Hassan is an Assistant Professor in US National Security at the University of Warwick, UK.
Routledge – 2013
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415603102/
This book explores how George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda for the Middle East and North Africa was conceived and implemented as an American national interest, from the Bush era right through to the initial stages of the Obama administration. It highlights how the crisis presented by September 11 2001 led to regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, but more broadly how American policy towards the region had a softer imperial side, which drew on broader economic theories of democratisation and modernisation. The Freedom Agenda contained within it a prescribed method of combating terrorism, but also a method of engaging with and reforming the entire Middle East region more broadly, with many institutions seeking to use the opportunity to implement neo-liberal market logics in the region. Constructing America's Freedom Agenda for the Middle East highlights the particular understanding of "freedom" that underpins America’s imperial project in the region; a project trapped between a policy of democratisation and domination. This book analyses the Freedom Agenda in significantly more depth than in available current literature and would be of interest to students and researchers of global politics and international foreign policy of recent years.
1. American Interests and a History of Promoting the Status Quo
2. A Constructivist Institutionalist Methodology
3. From Candidate to Crisis: Laying the Discursive tracks of the Freedom Agenda
4. September to December 2001: The Decisive Intervention
5. Constructing the Freedom Agenda for the Middle East
6. Institutionalising the Freedom Agenda: A Policy of Conservative Radicalism
7. Obama’s Freedom Agenda: Conservative Pragmatism and the 2011 Revolutions
Oz Hassan is an Assistant Professor in US National Security at the University of Warwick, UK.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
New Analysis Shows Problematic Boom In Higher Ed Administrators
By Jon Marcus
New England Center for Investigative Reporting - 02/06/2014
The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.
The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years, and slowed only slightly since the start of the economic downturn, during which time colleges and universities have contended that a dearth of resources forced them to sharply raise tuition.
In all, from 1987 until 2011-12—the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available—universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day, according to the analysis of federal figures, by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science research group the American Institutes for Research.
Read more...
New England Center for Investigative Reporting - 02/06/2014
The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.
The disproportionate increase in the number of university staffers who neither teach nor conduct research has continued unabated in more recent years, and slowed only slightly since the start of the economic downturn, during which time colleges and universities have contended that a dearth of resources forced them to sharply raise tuition.
In all, from 1987 until 2011-12—the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available—universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees, or an average of 87 every working day, according to the analysis of federal figures, by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science research group the American Institutes for Research.
Read more...
Stuart Hall obituary
Influential cultural theorist, campaigner and founding editor of the New Left Review
David Morley and Bill Schwarz
The Guardian, Monday 10 February 2014
When the writer and academic Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964, he invited Stuart Hall, who has died aged 82, to join him as its first research fellow. Four years later Hall became acting director and, in 1972, director. Cultural studies was then a minority pursuit: half a century on it is everywhere, generating a wealth of significant work even if, in its institutionalised form, it can include intellectual positions that Hall could never endorse.
The foundations of cultural studies lay in an insistence on taking popular, low-status cultural forms seriously and tracing the interweaving threads of culture, power and politics. Its interdisciplinary perspectives drew on literary theory, linguistics and cultural anthropology in order to analyse subjects as diverse as youth sub-cultures, popular media and gendered and ethnic identities – thus creating something of a model, for example, for the Guardian's own G2 section.
Read more....
David Morley and Bill Schwarz
The Guardian, Monday 10 February 2014
When the writer and academic Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964, he invited Stuart Hall, who has died aged 82, to join him as its first research fellow. Four years later Hall became acting director and, in 1972, director. Cultural studies was then a minority pursuit: half a century on it is everywhere, generating a wealth of significant work even if, in its institutionalised form, it can include intellectual positions that Hall could never endorse.
The foundations of cultural studies lay in an insistence on taking popular, low-status cultural forms seriously and tracing the interweaving threads of culture, power and politics. Its interdisciplinary perspectives drew on literary theory, linguistics and cultural anthropology in order to analyse subjects as diverse as youth sub-cultures, popular media and gendered and ethnic identities – thus creating something of a model, for example, for the Guardian's own G2 section.
Read more....
Inventing the Individual
by Larry Siedentop, book review: An engrossing book of ideas that redefines liberalism as a 'child of Christianity'
By Kenan Malik
The Independent - Friday 24 January 2014
Towards the end of this illuminating book, Larry Siedentop describes a fourteenth century battle between two Christian monastic orders. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were mendicant orders, begging monks who had abandoned the comforts of the cloisters to preach among the poor.
Dominicans emphasised the role of rationality and 'correct' doctrine; Franciscans highlighted the importance of moral equality and human agency, emphasizing the 'spirit' rather that the 'letter' of faith. Dominicans were deeply influenced by Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of theologians, and the driving force in the reintroduction of Aristotelian ideas into Christian thought. Franciscans worried that such borrowing from Aristotle's theory had corrupted Christian belief.
One way to think about Inventing the Individual is as an attempt to restore the Franciscan spirit to both intellectual history and the Christian tradition. Siedentop rewrites the story of Western liberalism not merely to establish it as a Christian project, but also to infuse it with the Franciscan view of faith, politics and human nature.
Read more.....
By Kenan Malik
The Independent - Friday 24 January 2014
Towards the end of this illuminating book, Larry Siedentop describes a fourteenth century battle between two Christian monastic orders. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were mendicant orders, begging monks who had abandoned the comforts of the cloisters to preach among the poor.
Dominicans emphasised the role of rationality and 'correct' doctrine; Franciscans highlighted the importance of moral equality and human agency, emphasizing the 'spirit' rather that the 'letter' of faith. Dominicans were deeply influenced by Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of theologians, and the driving force in the reintroduction of Aristotelian ideas into Christian thought. Franciscans worried that such borrowing from Aristotle's theory had corrupted Christian belief.
One way to think about Inventing the Individual is as an attempt to restore the Franciscan spirit to both intellectual history and the Christian tradition. Siedentop rewrites the story of Western liberalism not merely to establish it as a Christian project, but also to infuse it with the Franciscan view of faith, politics and human nature.
Read more.....
Modernization as Ideology American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era
by Michael E. Latham
The University of North Carolina Press, 2000
Providing new insight on the intellectual and cultural
dimensions of the Cold War, Michael Latham reveals how social science
theory helped shape American foreign policy during the Kennedy
administration. He shows how, in the midst of America's
protracted struggle to contain communism in the developing world, the
concept of global modernization moved beyond its beginnings in academia
to become a motivating ideology behind policy decisions.
After tracing the rise of modernization theory in American social science, Latham analyzes the way its core assumptions influenced the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress with Latin America, the creation of the Peace Corps, and the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam. But as he demonstrates, modernizers went beyond insisting on the relevance of America's experience to the dilemmas faced by impoverished countries. Seeking to accelerate the movement of foreign societies toward a liberal, democratic, and capitalist modernity, Kennedy and his advisers also reiterated a much deeper sense of their own nation's vital strengths and essential benevolence. At the height of the Cold War, Latham argues, modernization recast older ideologies of Manifest Destiny and imperialism.
Read more...
The University of North Carolina Press, 2000
Providing new insight on the intellectual and cultural
dimensions of the Cold War, Michael Latham reveals how social science
theory helped shape American foreign policy during the Kennedy
administration. He shows how, in the midst of America's
protracted struggle to contain communism in the developing world, the
concept of global modernization moved beyond its beginnings in academia
to become a motivating ideology behind policy decisions.After tracing the rise of modernization theory in American social science, Latham analyzes the way its core assumptions influenced the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress with Latin America, the creation of the Peace Corps, and the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam. But as he demonstrates, modernizers went beyond insisting on the relevance of America's experience to the dilemmas faced by impoverished countries. Seeking to accelerate the movement of foreign societies toward a liberal, democratic, and capitalist modernity, Kennedy and his advisers also reiterated a much deeper sense of their own nation's vital strengths and essential benevolence. At the height of the Cold War, Latham argues, modernization recast older ideologies of Manifest Destiny and imperialism.
Read more...
A Flailing State: Daron Acemoglu and Matt Taibbi on Economic Inequality
Radio Open Source - February 6, 2014
We’re somewhere between the legend and the facts of the U.S. economy. The legend, still in our heads, is it’s a rough-and-tumble democracy and a classless society. Facts are: the top of the heap owns almost all the wealth and most of the politicians, and the top of the top – one percent – takes more and more of the income: almost 25 percent of the whole pot in Obama-time – it was less than ten percent in the seventies. Legend is Americans don’t much like redistribution of income. Facts say there’s been a steady upward redistribution of wealth and income over 40 years now. Legend is we’re in a slow recovery from the Great Recession of ’08. Facts say it’s the high end getting the growth: “inequality has deepened,” the President said the other night: “upward mobility has stalled.”
We’re in the studio with Daron Acemoglu, the MIT economist and the co-author of Why Nations Fail. His argument is that the problem goes beyond soaring income inequality — to the eclipse of the myth that Average Joes rule our politics. Well into President Obama’s second term, deep in the doldrums of the status quo, he says the state of the union is “dangerous.” Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone joins us on the phone. He is by now a Diogenes on Wall Street. What I didn’t know was that he trained for his critical role in a ten-year stint in Yeltsin’s Russia, a world of back-room deals and a burgeoning oligarchy. He tells us, ”A lot of things that I saw in the former Soviet Union, we’re starting to see here.”
Read more and listen the program.....
We’re somewhere between the legend and the facts of the U.S. economy. The legend, still in our heads, is it’s a rough-and-tumble democracy and a classless society. Facts are: the top of the heap owns almost all the wealth and most of the politicians, and the top of the top – one percent – takes more and more of the income: almost 25 percent of the whole pot in Obama-time – it was less than ten percent in the seventies. Legend is Americans don’t much like redistribution of income. Facts say there’s been a steady upward redistribution of wealth and income over 40 years now. Legend is we’re in a slow recovery from the Great Recession of ’08. Facts say it’s the high end getting the growth: “inequality has deepened,” the President said the other night: “upward mobility has stalled.”
We’re in the studio with Daron Acemoglu, the MIT economist and the co-author of Why Nations Fail. His argument is that the problem goes beyond soaring income inequality — to the eclipse of the myth that Average Joes rule our politics. Well into President Obama’s second term, deep in the doldrums of the status quo, he says the state of the union is “dangerous.” Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone joins us on the phone. He is by now a Diogenes on Wall Street. What I didn’t know was that he trained for his critical role in a ten-year stint in Yeltsin’s Russia, a world of back-room deals and a burgeoning oligarchy. He tells us, ”A lot of things that I saw in the former Soviet Union, we’re starting to see here.”
Read more and listen the program.....
Troubled Times: Developing Economies Hit a BRICS Wall
By Erich Follath and Martin Hesse
Der Spiegel - Feb. 7, 2014
Der Spiegel - Feb. 7, 2014
It was 12 years ago that Jim O'Neill had his innovative idea. An
investment banker with Goldman Sachs, he had become convinced following
the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that the United States and Europe were
facing economic decline. He believed that developing countries such as
China, India, Brazil and Russia could profit immensely from
globalization and become the new locomotives of the global economy.
O'Neill wanted to advise his clients to invest their money in the
promising new players. But he needed a catchy name.
It proved to be a simple task. He simply took the first letter of each country in the quartet and came up with BRIC, an acronym which sounded like the foundation for a solid investment.
O'Neill, celebrated by Businessweek as a "rock star" in the industry, looked for years like a vastly successful prophet. From 2001 to 2013, the economic output of the four BRIC countries rose from some $3 billion a year to $15 billion. The quartet's growth, later made a quintet with the inclusion of South Africa (BRICS), was instrumental in protecting Western prosperity as well. Investors made a mint and O'Neill's club even emerged as a real political power. Now, the countries' leaders meet regularly and, despite their many differences, have often managed to function as a counterweight to the West.
Read more....
It proved to be a simple task. He simply took the first letter of each country in the quartet and came up with BRIC, an acronym which sounded like the foundation for a solid investment.
O'Neill, celebrated by Businessweek as a "rock star" in the industry, looked for years like a vastly successful prophet. From 2001 to 2013, the economic output of the four BRIC countries rose from some $3 billion a year to $15 billion. The quartet's growth, later made a quintet with the inclusion of South Africa (BRICS), was instrumental in protecting Western prosperity as well. Investors made a mint and O'Neill's club even emerged as a real political power. Now, the countries' leaders meet regularly and, despite their many differences, have often managed to function as a counterweight to the West.
Read more....
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Power, Privacy, and the Internet
The New York Review of Books
February 7, 2014
On October 30–31, 2013, The New York Review of Books held a conference, “Power, Privacy, and the Internet,” at Scandinavia House in New York City, with generous support from The Fritt Ord Foundation of Oslo, PEN America, Sarah and Landon Rowland, The Europaeum of Oxford, The Lead Bank of Kansas City, and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
Simon Head, director of programs for The New York Review of Books Foundation, addressed the theme of the conference:
Read more....
February 7, 2014
On October 30–31, 2013, The New York Review of Books held a conference, “Power, Privacy, and the Internet,” at Scandinavia House in New York City, with generous support from The Fritt Ord Foundation of Oslo, PEN America, Sarah and Landon Rowland, The Europaeum of Oxford, The Lead Bank of Kansas City, and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
Simon Head, director of programs for The New York Review of Books Foundation, addressed the theme of the conference:
The Internet is a transformative technology of our times and it is changing our lives as perhaps nothing else has done since the coming of the telephone, the telegraph, and the mass production automobile a century and more ago. Where the Internet surpasses these earlier technologies is in the speed with which its reach is expanding—in our contacts with one another through Twitter and Facebook, in what we read, hear, and buy; in our dealings with business, government, colleges and schools, and they in their dealings with us. Whether we like it or not we are caught up in these flows of technology and as we are carried along by the flows, some barely visible to us, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand back and distinguish between what is good about these innovations and what is not.We are pleased to present the following recordings from the event. Listeners can also stream or download the audio from the Review’s account on Soundcloud
Read more....
Forty Koch Brothers Donors Exposed After Document Left at Hotel by Mistake Is Leaked
By Jodie Gummow
Sunday, 09 February 2014 AlterNet | Report
The confidential spreadsheet contains a who's who of far-right, mega-rich donors.
A new document providing rare insight into the political machine of the Koch Brothers has surfaced revealing the names of up to 40 donors, as well as senior Koch officials, Washington Post reported.
The list, published by Mother Jones, was mistakenly left behind at a donor conference and includes various corporate executives, real-estate and hedge fund billionaires and GOP financiers.
The list also includes Papa John pizza chain founder and hard-core Republican John Schnatter, Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of Citadel, Silicon Valley real estate investor Carl Berg (worth $1.1 billion) and owner of Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.
Read more....
Sunday, 09 February 2014 AlterNet | Report
The confidential spreadsheet contains a who's who of far-right, mega-rich donors.
A new document providing rare insight into the political machine of the Koch Brothers has surfaced revealing the names of up to 40 donors, as well as senior Koch officials, Washington Post reported.
The list, published by Mother Jones, was mistakenly left behind at a donor conference and includes various corporate executives, real-estate and hedge fund billionaires and GOP financiers.
The list also includes Papa John pizza chain founder and hard-core Republican John Schnatter, Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of Citadel, Silicon Valley real estate investor Carl Berg (worth $1.1 billion) and owner of Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.
Read more....
43 Years Ago Today: Foucault’s Statement on French Prisons
The organization, Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (Prison
Information Group), sought to disseminate information on the French
prison system. They interviewed
prisoners, family members and guards and published their findings in
pamphlets to spread awareness about the inhumane conditions prisoners
were forced to live in.
Eventually, the GIP would bring together thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Gilles Deleuze. The featured image above is from a GIP conference held one year later, in 1972. It would be Foucault’s work with the GIP that led, in part, to his book “Discipline and Punish.”
Below is the original 1971 statement, as translated by Stuart Elden
and posted to his blog. We have re-published it, with permission. Read
his notes about the translation here.
Manifesto of the Groupe d’Information sur les prisons
None of us is sure to escape prison. Today less than ever. Police control [quadrillage][i] over day-to-day life is tightening: in city streets and roads; over foreigners and young people; it is once more an offence to express opinions; anti-drug measures increase arbitrarily. We are kept under ‘close observation’ [Nous sommes sous le signe de la «garde à vue»].[ii] They tell us that the system of justice is overwhelmed. We can see that. But what if it is the police that have overwhelmed it? They tell us that prisons are over-populated. But what if it was the population that was being over-imprisoned? Little information is published on prisons. It is one of the hidden regions of our social system, one of the dark zones [cases noires] of our life. We have the right to know; we want to know [Nous avons le droit de savoir, nous voulons savoir]. This is why, with magistrates/legal officers [magistrats], lawyers, journalists, doctors, psychologists, we have formed a Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons.
We propose to make known [de faire savoir] what the prison is: who goes there, how and why they go there, what happens there, and what the life of the prisoners is, and that, equally, of the surveillance personnel; what the buildings, the food, and hygiene are like; how the internal regulations, medical control, and the workshops function; how one gets out and what it is to be, in our society, one of those who came out.
This information is not in the official reports that we have found. We will ask those who, for some reason, have an experience of the prison or a relation to it. We ask them to contact us and tell us what they know [ce qu’ils savent]. A questionnaire has been compiled which can be requested from us. As soon as we have sufficient responses, the results will be published.
It is not for us to suggest reform. We merely wish to know [connaître] the reality. And to make it known almost immediately, almost overnight, because time is short. This is to inform opinion and to keep it informed. We will try to use all means of information: daily [newspapers], weeklies, monthlies. We therefore appeal to all possible platforms.
Finally, it is good to know what threatens us, but knowledge is also good to defend oneself [Enfin, il est bon de savoir ce qui nous menace; mais il est bon aussi de savoir comme se défendre]. One of our first tasks will be to publish a small Manuel du parfait arrêté (Complete Arrest Guide), paired of course as an Avis aux arrêteurs (Note for Arrestors).
All those who want to inform us, be informed or participate in the work can write to the GIP at 285, rue de Vaugirard, Paris-XVe [Foucault’s home address].
http://www.critical-theory.com/43-years-ago-today-foucaults-statement-on-french-prisons/
Eventually, the GIP would bring together thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Gilles Deleuze. The featured image above is from a GIP conference held one year later, in 1972. It would be Foucault’s work with the GIP that led, in part, to his book “Discipline and Punish.”
Below is the original 1971 statement, as translated by Stuart Elden
and posted to his blog. We have re-published it, with permission. Read
his notes about the translation here.Manifesto of the Groupe d’Information sur les prisons
None of us is sure to escape prison. Today less than ever. Police control [quadrillage][i] over day-to-day life is tightening: in city streets and roads; over foreigners and young people; it is once more an offence to express opinions; anti-drug measures increase arbitrarily. We are kept under ‘close observation’ [Nous sommes sous le signe de la «garde à vue»].[ii] They tell us that the system of justice is overwhelmed. We can see that. But what if it is the police that have overwhelmed it? They tell us that prisons are over-populated. But what if it was the population that was being over-imprisoned? Little information is published on prisons. It is one of the hidden regions of our social system, one of the dark zones [cases noires] of our life. We have the right to know; we want to know [Nous avons le droit de savoir, nous voulons savoir]. This is why, with magistrates/legal officers [magistrats], lawyers, journalists, doctors, psychologists, we have formed a Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons.
We propose to make known [de faire savoir] what the prison is: who goes there, how and why they go there, what happens there, and what the life of the prisoners is, and that, equally, of the surveillance personnel; what the buildings, the food, and hygiene are like; how the internal regulations, medical control, and the workshops function; how one gets out and what it is to be, in our society, one of those who came out.
This information is not in the official reports that we have found. We will ask those who, for some reason, have an experience of the prison or a relation to it. We ask them to contact us and tell us what they know [ce qu’ils savent]. A questionnaire has been compiled which can be requested from us. As soon as we have sufficient responses, the results will be published.
It is not for us to suggest reform. We merely wish to know [connaître] the reality. And to make it known almost immediately, almost overnight, because time is short. This is to inform opinion and to keep it informed. We will try to use all means of information: daily [newspapers], weeklies, monthlies. We therefore appeal to all possible platforms.
Finally, it is good to know what threatens us, but knowledge is also good to defend oneself [Enfin, il est bon de savoir ce qui nous menace; mais il est bon aussi de savoir comme se défendre]. One of our first tasks will be to publish a small Manuel du parfait arrêté (Complete Arrest Guide), paired of course as an Avis aux arrêteurs (Note for Arrestors).
All those who want to inform us, be informed or participate in the work can write to the GIP at 285, rue de Vaugirard, Paris-XVe [Foucault’s home address].
http://www.critical-theory.com/43-years-ago-today-foucaults-statement-on-french-prisons/
A New Issue of Cultural Anthropology: Futures of Neoliberalism
Cultural Anthropology
29.1, February 2014
With the February 2014 issue, Cultural Anthropology goes
fully open access. This means that the journal is now freely available
to anyone anywhere who has access to the Internet (rather than just
those who can afford the fees that allow them to get behind the paywall
of a commercial press), thereby returning publishing to the commons,
where academic life begins. We wish to thank all those who have expended
so much time and labor in making the transition possible—former CA
editors Kim and Mike Fortun, our talented and indefatigable former and
present managing editors Ali Kenner and Tim Elfenbein, web consultant
Ryan Schenk, former Society for Cultural Anthropology presidents Danilyn
Rutherford and Brad Weiss, Oona Schmid at the American Anthropological
Association, members of the OA advisory committee Jessica Cattelino,
Chris Kelty, and Jason Jackson, and Paolo Mangiafico and Kevin Smith at
the Duke University Libraries.
Open access offers new opportunities for dialogue, scholarship, and communication, and new possibilities for accessing, and being accessible to, the world. We invite you to join us in this exciting new stage of publication, and to share—with friends and colleagues around the world—the news that Cultural Anthropology is now openly accessible to all.
It is fitting that this first OA issue falls when we are publishing the final special issue of a four-year series on the “Futures of Neoliberalism.” Among other things, the open access movement has seen itself as a protest against the neoliberalization of the university, as an attempt to push back against the privatization and corporatization of the intellectual commons. The May issue of Cultural Anthropology will feature a series of articles about open access anthropology.
To read articles.......
29.1, February 2014
With the February 2014 issue, Cultural Anthropology goes
fully open access. This means that the journal is now freely available
to anyone anywhere who has access to the Internet (rather than just
those who can afford the fees that allow them to get behind the paywall
of a commercial press), thereby returning publishing to the commons,
where academic life begins. We wish to thank all those who have expended
so much time and labor in making the transition possible—former CA
editors Kim and Mike Fortun, our talented and indefatigable former and
present managing editors Ali Kenner and Tim Elfenbein, web consultant
Ryan Schenk, former Society for Cultural Anthropology presidents Danilyn
Rutherford and Brad Weiss, Oona Schmid at the American Anthropological
Association, members of the OA advisory committee Jessica Cattelino,
Chris Kelty, and Jason Jackson, and Paolo Mangiafico and Kevin Smith at
the Duke University Libraries.Open access offers new opportunities for dialogue, scholarship, and communication, and new possibilities for accessing, and being accessible to, the world. We invite you to join us in this exciting new stage of publication, and to share—with friends and colleagues around the world—the news that Cultural Anthropology is now openly accessible to all.
It is fitting that this first OA issue falls when we are publishing the final special issue of a four-year series on the “Futures of Neoliberalism.” Among other things, the open access movement has seen itself as a protest against the neoliberalization of the university, as an attempt to push back against the privatization and corporatization of the intellectual commons. The May issue of Cultural Anthropology will feature a series of articles about open access anthropology.
To read articles.......
China, the Death Star of Emerging Markets
By William Pesek
Bloomberg - Feb 6, 2014
On any list of banking accidents waiting to happen, China is assured a place at the very top. But could a crash there take the entire global economy down with it?
Absolutely, says Charlene Chu, who until recently was Fitch's headline-generating analyst in Beijing. Chu has fearlessly trod into an area that China is trying desperately to keep off limits: its vast shadow-banking system. Now that she's working for a private firm that doesn't have to rely to governments for revenue, as do rating companies, Chu is free to speak completely openly. And is she ever.
Read more....
Bloomberg - Feb 6, 2014
On any list of banking accidents waiting to happen, China is assured a place at the very top. But could a crash there take the entire global economy down with it?
Absolutely, says Charlene Chu, who until recently was Fitch's headline-generating analyst in Beijing. Chu has fearlessly trod into an area that China is trying desperately to keep off limits: its vast shadow-banking system. Now that she's working for a private firm that doesn't have to rely to governments for revenue, as do rating companies, Chu is free to speak completely openly. And is she ever.
Read more....
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
U.S.-China: 19th Anglo-American Rivalry Redux?
Despite all the recent WWI analogies, Sino-American relations may more closely resemble an earlier time.
By Tim Roberts
The Diplomats - February 07, 2014
Imperial Germany’s competition with Britain, culminating in military conflict in 1914, is a common analogy among observers of the Sino-American relationship today. They warn how a rising power once came to blows with an established hegemon. But there could be a better analogy of rivals, whose pragmatic relationship did not lead to war. The Anglo-American relationship through the Civil War in many ways resembles the evolving Sino-American relationship now.
Obviously there are differences between the Anglo-American relationship 175 years ago and Sino-American relations today. Then there was no United Nations, no Kyoto Protocol, no World Trade Organization, and no Nobel Peace Prizes. If there was any international “law” it was largely the British Empire’s declarations for a balance of power in Europe, equal European access to colonial development of Africa and Asia, a cap on European colonial possessions in the Americas (tacitly ensuring the U.S. Monroe Doctrine), and an end to the African slave trade. The British Navy enforced these policies. The world today is more multilateral than in the mid-nineteenth century.
Read more.....
By Tim Roberts
The Diplomats - February 07, 2014
Imperial Germany’s competition with Britain, culminating in military conflict in 1914, is a common analogy among observers of the Sino-American relationship today. They warn how a rising power once came to blows with an established hegemon. But there could be a better analogy of rivals, whose pragmatic relationship did not lead to war. The Anglo-American relationship through the Civil War in many ways resembles the evolving Sino-American relationship now.
Obviously there are differences between the Anglo-American relationship 175 years ago and Sino-American relations today. Then there was no United Nations, no Kyoto Protocol, no World Trade Organization, and no Nobel Peace Prizes. If there was any international “law” it was largely the British Empire’s declarations for a balance of power in Europe, equal European access to colonial development of Africa and Asia, a cap on European colonial possessions in the Americas (tacitly ensuring the U.S. Monroe Doctrine), and an end to the African slave trade. The British Navy enforced these policies. The world today is more multilateral than in the mid-nineteenth century.
Read more.....
How the West Manufactures “Opposition Movements”
From Egypt, Ukraine, the Turkish-Syrian border, Cuba and Thailand How the West Manufactures “Opposition Movements”
By ANDRE VLTCHEK
The Counterpunch - February 03, 2014
Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be toothless, too scared to intervene.
What is going on? Are popularly elected administrations all over the world becoming irrelevant; as the Western regime creates and then supports thuggish ‘opposition movements’ designed to destabilize any state that stands in the way of its desire to fully control the planet?
They are shouting and intimidating those who want to vote for the moderately progressive government that is presently leading Thailand. There is no dispute over the electoral process – voting is generally free, as both international observers and most of the local Election Commission members agree.
Freedom, legitimacy or transparency is not what is at stake now.
The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes. Some of them are thugs, many hired for around 500 Baht a day (roughly US$ 15) in the villages of the restive southern provinces of the country. They are accustomed to the use of violence, their body language and facial expressions clearly show it.
Read more....
By ANDRE VLTCHEK
The Counterpunch - February 03, 2014
Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be toothless, too scared to intervene.
What is going on? Are popularly elected administrations all over the world becoming irrelevant; as the Western regime creates and then supports thuggish ‘opposition movements’ designed to destabilize any state that stands in the way of its desire to fully control the planet?
They are shouting and intimidating those who want to vote for the moderately progressive government that is presently leading Thailand. There is no dispute over the electoral process – voting is generally free, as both international observers and most of the local Election Commission members agree.
Freedom, legitimacy or transparency is not what is at stake now.
The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes. Some of them are thugs, many hired for around 500 Baht a day (roughly US$ 15) in the villages of the restive southern provinces of the country. They are accustomed to the use of violence, their body language and facial expressions clearly show it.
Read more....
The Moment of Creation
By Gershom Gorenberg
The American Prospect - February 5, 2014
Do America’s current challenges in the Middle East trace back to Harry Truman’s 1948 missteps?
On May 12, 1948, President Harry Truman convened a tense Oval Office meeting. In less than three days, Britain would leave Palestine, where civil war already raged between Jews and Arabs. Clark Clifford, Truman’s special counsel, argued the position of American Zionist organizations and Democratic politicians: The president should announce that he would recognize a Jewish state even before it was established. Secretary of State George Marshall was incensed. “I don’t even know why Clifford is here,” Marshall said. “He is a domestic advisor, and this is a foreign policy matter.”
Marshall was asking for an impossible division. Foreign policy and domestic politics can’t be kept apart in a democracy, nor should they be. But this incident, described in John Judis’s Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, shows that the question of whether U.S. policy toward Israel is captive to a special-interest group has existed even longer than Israel has. The densely researched core of the book follows Truman’s decisions at the moment of creation—of Israel and of U.S. involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Judis shows how American Zionist leaders and sympathetic officials swayed the president to support partition of Palestine and establishment of Israel, against his preference for a single political entity for Arabs and Jews.
Read more....
The American Prospect - February 5, 2014
Do America’s current challenges in the Middle East trace back to Harry Truman’s 1948 missteps?
On May 12, 1948, President Harry Truman convened a tense Oval Office meeting. In less than three days, Britain would leave Palestine, where civil war already raged between Jews and Arabs. Clark Clifford, Truman’s special counsel, argued the position of American Zionist organizations and Democratic politicians: The president should announce that he would recognize a Jewish state even before it was established. Secretary of State George Marshall was incensed. “I don’t even know why Clifford is here,” Marshall said. “He is a domestic advisor, and this is a foreign policy matter.”
Marshall was asking for an impossible division. Foreign policy and domestic politics can’t be kept apart in a democracy, nor should they be. But this incident, described in John Judis’s Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, shows that the question of whether U.S. policy toward Israel is captive to a special-interest group has existed even longer than Israel has. The densely researched core of the book follows Truman’s decisions at the moment of creation—of Israel and of U.S. involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Judis shows how American Zionist leaders and sympathetic officials swayed the president to support partition of Palestine and establishment of Israel, against his preference for a single political entity for Arabs and Jews.
Read more....
The Grand Budapest Hotel: Berlin 2014 – first look review
Wes Anderson's new film adapts the spirit of Stefan Zweig into a Ruritanian picaresque stuffed full of bizarre character studies 4 out of 5
By Andrew Pulver
theguardian.com, Thursday 6 February 2014
Whatever the patchiness of the rest of its lineup, the Berlin film festival tends to start off with a bang, and this year is no exception: the world premiere of the new film from Wes Anderson, that master of archly sculpted dialogue and meticulous, retrofitted design. The arrival of The Grand Budapest Hotel is particularly appropriate, for this is the moment in the Anderson oeuvre when he turns to consider all things Mitteleuropäische – refracted, as a closing credit tells us, through the work of the prolific Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.
Zweig specialised in novellas – Letter from an Unknown Woman, Fear, The Royal Game – normally designed to illuminate some plangent melodrama in interwar Vienna. Without being a direct adaptation of anything specific, The Grand Budapest Hotel distils many of the story's elements. Anderson has concocted what is essentially a Ruritanian picaresque, stuffed full of bizarre character studies, and fashioned with his, by now familiar, handcrafted attention to detail. In fact, like much of Anderson's work, you get the feeling many of the scenes have been lifted directly from a sketchbook; certain sequences here are animated with little discernible effect on the general sensibility.
Read more.....
By Andrew Pulver
theguardian.com, Thursday 6 February 2014
Whatever the patchiness of the rest of its lineup, the Berlin film festival tends to start off with a bang, and this year is no exception: the world premiere of the new film from Wes Anderson, that master of archly sculpted dialogue and meticulous, retrofitted design. The arrival of The Grand Budapest Hotel is particularly appropriate, for this is the moment in the Anderson oeuvre when he turns to consider all things Mitteleuropäische – refracted, as a closing credit tells us, through the work of the prolific Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.
Zweig specialised in novellas – Letter from an Unknown Woman, Fear, The Royal Game – normally designed to illuminate some plangent melodrama in interwar Vienna. Without being a direct adaptation of anything specific, The Grand Budapest Hotel distils many of the story's elements. Anderson has concocted what is essentially a Ruritanian picaresque, stuffed full of bizarre character studies, and fashioned with his, by now familiar, handcrafted attention to detail. In fact, like much of Anderson's work, you get the feeling many of the scenes have been lifted directly from a sketchbook; certain sequences here are animated with little discernible effect on the general sensibility.
Read more.....
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest Israeli draft
Thousands of black-garbed men block highways and battle with police to protest attempts to draft them into the army.
Al-Jazeera - 07 Feb 2014
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews have blocked highways across Israel to protest attempts to draft them into the army, clashing with police who fired stun grenades at large crowds of black-garbed men.
The violent protests on Thursday came just days after a Supreme Court ruling ordered funding halted to ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students dodge the draft and laid bare one of the deepest rifts in Israeli society, highlighting the fundamental disagreements between its secular majority and a devout minority over the character of the Jewish state.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have for years been exempt from military service, which is compulsory for other Jewish Israelis.
The arrangement has caused widespread resentment and featured prominently in last year's election, after which the ultra-Orthodox parties lost ground and found themselves outside the governing coalition.
Read more....
Al-Jazeera - 07 Feb 2014
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews have blocked highways across Israel to protest attempts to draft them into the army, clashing with police who fired stun grenades at large crowds of black-garbed men.
The violent protests on Thursday came just days after a Supreme Court ruling ordered funding halted to ultra-Orthodox seminaries whose students dodge the draft and laid bare one of the deepest rifts in Israeli society, highlighting the fundamental disagreements between its secular majority and a devout minority over the character of the Jewish state.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have for years been exempt from military service, which is compulsory for other Jewish Israelis.
The arrangement has caused widespread resentment and featured prominently in last year's election, after which the ultra-Orthodox parties lost ground and found themselves outside the governing coalition.
Read more....
Academic ideals are being crushed to suit private-sector style management
If universities continue to heed the call of corporatisation, the role of the academic – as we know it – will become extinct
Anonymous academic
Guardian Professional, Sunday 2 February 2014
As an early-career lecturer in a post-1992 university, I often feel like a rare bird in an ornate cage struggling to maintain its dignity in a discount superstore filled with pets. This bird knows it could have been a proud representative of a noble lineage and chirrups dolefully as it ruffles its plumes, but the song is drowned out by the bustling sale of cheap, plastic imitation bird-objects around it.
The British higher education sector is in full-on crisis mode and those chosen or imposed to oversee this crisis are, in the main, non-academics and are recruited from the private sector. Academic ideals are being crushed by the visions of middle-management bureaucrats who view the progress and survival of higher education as requiring its surrender to private sector ideals. The changes in higher education over the past few years have been dramatic, with £9,000 a year tuition fees only the latest and most public step in what appears to be a wholesale corporatisation of the sector.
Along with this "progress" comes inevitable inequality. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) have recently joined forces with Unison, Unite and EIS to organise a series of strikes by members over unfair pay. According to UCU figures, last year the Universities and College Employers Association offered university staff a paltry 1% pay rise, which actually amounts to a 13% pay cut since 2009.
Read more...
Anonymous academic
Guardian Professional, Sunday 2 February 2014
As an early-career lecturer in a post-1992 university, I often feel like a rare bird in an ornate cage struggling to maintain its dignity in a discount superstore filled with pets. This bird knows it could have been a proud representative of a noble lineage and chirrups dolefully as it ruffles its plumes, but the song is drowned out by the bustling sale of cheap, plastic imitation bird-objects around it.
The British higher education sector is in full-on crisis mode and those chosen or imposed to oversee this crisis are, in the main, non-academics and are recruited from the private sector. Academic ideals are being crushed by the visions of middle-management bureaucrats who view the progress and survival of higher education as requiring its surrender to private sector ideals. The changes in higher education over the past few years have been dramatic, with £9,000 a year tuition fees only the latest and most public step in what appears to be a wholesale corporatisation of the sector.
Along with this "progress" comes inevitable inequality. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) have recently joined forces with Unison, Unite and EIS to organise a series of strikes by members over unfair pay. According to UCU figures, last year the Universities and College Employers Association offered university staff a paltry 1% pay rise, which actually amounts to a 13% pay cut since 2009.
Read more...
As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies
By Richard Vedder
Bloomberg - Feb 3, 2014
Put 50 randomly selected U.S. professors in a room. Within 10 minutes they will be complaining about the growing number of administrators in their universities. Professors aren’t right about everything, yet they have a point in this case.
An examination of federal data on the explosion in college costs reveals how far colleges have gotten away from their original mission of providing “higher” education.
The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2010-11, nonprofit colleges and universities spent $449 billion. Less than 29 percent of that -- $129 billion -- went for instruction, and part of that amount went for expenses other than professors’ salaries. Yes, the $449 billion includes money spent on auxiliary enterprises (food and housing operations, for example), hospitals and “independent operations” (whatever they are). Suppose we subtract the $85 billion that pays for all of that from the total. That leaves $364 billion. The $129 billion for instruction of students is still only 35 percent of that.
Read more....
Bloomberg - Feb 3, 2014
Put 50 randomly selected U.S. professors in a room. Within 10 minutes they will be complaining about the growing number of administrators in their universities. Professors aren’t right about everything, yet they have a point in this case.
An examination of federal data on the explosion in college costs reveals how far colleges have gotten away from their original mission of providing “higher” education.
The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2010-11, nonprofit colleges and universities spent $449 billion. Less than 29 percent of that -- $129 billion -- went for instruction, and part of that amount went for expenses other than professors’ salaries. Yes, the $449 billion includes money spent on auxiliary enterprises (food and housing operations, for example), hospitals and “independent operations” (whatever they are). Suppose we subtract the $85 billion that pays for all of that from the total. That leaves $364 billion. The $129 billion for instruction of students is still only 35 percent of that.
Read more....
Prerogatives of Power
Noam Chomsky
Truthout | Op-Ed - Wednesday, 05 February 2014
As the year 2013 drew to an end, the BBC reported on the results of the WIN/Gallup International poll on the question: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”
Read more....
Truthout | Op-Ed - Wednesday, 05 February 2014
As the year 2013 drew to an end, the BBC reported on the results of the WIN/Gallup International poll on the question: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”
The United States was the champion by a substantial margin, winning three times the votes of second-place Pakistan.
By contrast, the debate in American scholarly and media circles is
about whether Iran can be contained, and whether the huge NSA
surveillance system is needed to protect U.S. security.
In view of the poll, it would seem that there are more pertinent
questions: Can the United States be contained and other nations secured
in the face of the U.S. threat?
Read more....
Radio Beijing in the Middle East
By Joseph Braude
broadcaster, and Middle East specialist
The World Post 02/06/201
Ratings matter to commercial radio and television because the size of the audience determines the price of sponsors' airtime. But should they also matter to government-backed foreign broadcasts, which do not sell ads? In Washington, the Arabic-language television network Alhurra and its sister radio channel, Sawa, receive funding from the U.S. Congress to present America to the Arab world. They publish an annual performance review that quantifies success largely in terms of "audience weekly reach," now estimated at 35.5 million. Their data comes from corporate research by the Gallup Organization and analysis from firms such as Nielsen, which tracks everything from Sunday Night Football viewership to how many Americans play video games.
These survey companies would presumably be unimpressed, for example, by government-backed offerings out of Beijing like the 45-minute documentary about the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, which aired late last year on the Arabic service of Chinese Radio International. Perhaps a mere 5,000 listeners tuned in online via the CRI Web site, alongside however many shortwave radio enthusiasts who picked up the aerial signal from its source in Albania. The program featured a synthesized keyboard soundtrack, a lean script, interviews with Chinese language teachers in two Arab countries, and musical interludes by a Beijing rapper (whose lyrics were untranslated).
Read more....
broadcaster, and Middle East specialist
The World Post 02/06/201
Ratings matter to commercial radio and television because the size of the audience determines the price of sponsors' airtime. But should they also matter to government-backed foreign broadcasts, which do not sell ads? In Washington, the Arabic-language television network Alhurra and its sister radio channel, Sawa, receive funding from the U.S. Congress to present America to the Arab world. They publish an annual performance review that quantifies success largely in terms of "audience weekly reach," now estimated at 35.5 million. Their data comes from corporate research by the Gallup Organization and analysis from firms such as Nielsen, which tracks everything from Sunday Night Football viewership to how many Americans play video games.
These survey companies would presumably be unimpressed, for example, by government-backed offerings out of Beijing like the 45-minute documentary about the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, which aired late last year on the Arabic service of Chinese Radio International. Perhaps a mere 5,000 listeners tuned in online via the CRI Web site, alongside however many shortwave radio enthusiasts who picked up the aerial signal from its source in Albania. The program featured a synthesized keyboard soundtrack, a lean script, interviews with Chinese language teachers in two Arab countries, and musical interludes by a Beijing rapper (whose lyrics were untranslated).
Read more....
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
From Egypt, Ukraine, the Turkish-Syrian border, Cuba and Thailand How the West Manufactures “Opposition Movements”
by ANDRE VLTCHEK
The Counterpunch - February 03, 2014
The Counterpunch - February 03, 2014
Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening
in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be
toothless, too scared to intervene.
What is going on? Are popularly elected administrations all over the world becoming irrelevant; as the Western regime creates and then supports thuggish ‘opposition movements’ designed to destabilize any state that stands in the way of its desire to fully control the planet?
***
They are shouting and intimidating those who want to vote for the moderately progressive government that is presently leading Thailand. There is no dispute over the electoral process – voting is generally free, as both international observers and most of the local Election Commission members agree.
Freedom, legitimacy or transparency is not what is at stake now.
The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes. Some of them are thugs, many hired for around 500 Baht a day (roughly US$ 15) in the villages of the restive southern provinces of the country. They are accustomed to the use of violence, their body language and facial expressions clearly show it.
Government officials of the legitimate government have to climb over blockades, or beg protesters to allow them to enter their own offices.
Read more....
What is going on? Are popularly elected administrations all over the world becoming irrelevant; as the Western regime creates and then supports thuggish ‘opposition movements’ designed to destabilize any state that stands in the way of its desire to fully control the planet?
***
They are shouting and intimidating those who want to vote for the moderately progressive government that is presently leading Thailand. There is no dispute over the electoral process – voting is generally free, as both international observers and most of the local Election Commission members agree.
Freedom, legitimacy or transparency is not what is at stake now.
The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes. Some of them are thugs, many hired for around 500 Baht a day (roughly US$ 15) in the villages of the restive southern provinces of the country. They are accustomed to the use of violence, their body language and facial expressions clearly show it.
Government officials of the legitimate government have to climb over blockades, or beg protesters to allow them to enter their own offices.
Read more....
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
A New Book: The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society
By Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval
The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society
An acute analysis of neoliberalism
Verso, 2014
Exploring the genesis of neoliberalism, and the political and economic circumstances of its deployment, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval dispel numerous common misconceptions. Neoliberalism is neither a return to classical liberalism nor the restoration of “pure” capitalism. To misinterpret neoliberalism is to fail to understand what is new about it: far from viewing the market as a natural given that limits state action, neoliberalism seeks to construct the market and make the firm a model for governments. Only once this is grasped will its opponents be able to meet the unprecedented political and intellectual challenge it poses.
The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society
An acute analysis of neoliberalism
Verso, 2014
Obama, Marx, and the Minimum Wage Posted
By Bernard Avishai
The New York Times - January 29, 2014
The President announced on Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, that he will increase the minimum wage for federal contractors to ten dollars and ten cents. He wants, he said, to “give America a raise.” Raising the minimum wage appeals to those who “do not understand economics,” the former Representative Ron Paul argued recently: if you make it costlier for companies to employ each person, you lower the demand for workers and kill jobs. Representative Paul Ryan offered another view: “I think it’s inflationary,” he said. If you raise wages, companies’ costs go up, and then they raise prices to compensate.
These two arguments—which, combined, suggest that raising wages for the poorest winds up hurting the poorest—are very old. So old that in June of 1865, in London, Karl Marx interrupted work on “Das Kapital” to refute them.
Read more.....
The New York Times - January 29, 2014
The President announced on Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, that he will increase the minimum wage for federal contractors to ten dollars and ten cents. He wants, he said, to “give America a raise.” Raising the minimum wage appeals to those who “do not understand economics,” the former Representative Ron Paul argued recently: if you make it costlier for companies to employ each person, you lower the demand for workers and kill jobs. Representative Paul Ryan offered another view: “I think it’s inflationary,” he said. If you raise wages, companies’ costs go up, and then they raise prices to compensate.
These two arguments—which, combined, suggest that raising wages for the poorest winds up hurting the poorest—are very old. So old that in June of 1865, in London, Karl Marx interrupted work on “Das Kapital” to refute them.
Read more.....
It's the Other Oscars - and Yet Again the Winner Slips Away
By John Pilger
Truthout | Op-Ed - Monday, 03 February 2014
It's celebrity time again. The Golden Globes have been, and the Oscars are coming. This is a "vintage year,” say Hollywood's hagiographers on cue. It isn't. Most movies are made to a formula for the highest return, money-fueled by marketing and something called celebrity. This is different from fame, which can come with talent. True celebrities are spared that burden.
Occasionally, this column treads the red carpet, awarding its own Oscars to those whose ubiquitous promotion demands recognition. Some have been celebrities a long time, drawing the devoted to kiss their knees (more on that later). Others are mere flashes in the pan, so to speak.
In no particular order, the nominees for the Celebrity Oscars are:
Read more....
Truthout | Op-Ed - Monday, 03 February 2014
It's celebrity time again. The Golden Globes have been, and the Oscars are coming. This is a "vintage year,” say Hollywood's hagiographers on cue. It isn't. Most movies are made to a formula for the highest return, money-fueled by marketing and something called celebrity. This is different from fame, which can come with talent. True celebrities are spared that burden.
Occasionally, this column treads the red carpet, awarding its own Oscars to those whose ubiquitous promotion demands recognition. Some have been celebrities a long time, drawing the devoted to kiss their knees (more on that later). Others are mere flashes in the pan, so to speak.
In no particular order, the nominees for the Celebrity Oscars are:
Read more....
Monday, February 3, 2014
The End of American Exceptionalism
Conservatives are right: The attitudes they say make America special—religiosity, patriotism, and mobility—are fading. And it has nothing to do with Barack Obama.
By Peter Beinart
The Atlantic - Feb 3 2014
rom the moment Barack Obama appeared on the national stage, conservatives have been searching for the best way to describe the danger he poses to America's traditional way of life. Secularism? Check. Socialism? Sure. A tendency to apologize for America's greatness overseas? That, too. But how to tie them all together?
Read more....
By Peter Beinart
The Atlantic - Feb 3 2014
rom the moment Barack Obama appeared on the national stage, conservatives have been searching for the best way to describe the danger he poses to America's traditional way of life. Secularism? Check. Socialism? Sure. A tendency to apologize for America's greatness overseas? That, too. But how to tie them all together?
Gradually, a unifying theme took hold.
"At the heart of the debate over Obama's program," declared Rich Lowry
and Ramesh Ponnuru in an influential 2010 National Review cover story,
is "the survival of American exceptionalism." Finally, a term broad and
historically resonant enough to capture the magnitude of the threat. A
year later, Newt Gingrich published A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters, in which he warned that "our government has strayed alarmingly" from the principles that made America special. Mitt Romney deployed the phrase frequently
in his 2012 campaign, asserting that President Obama "doesn't have the
same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do." The term, which
according to Factiva appeared in global English-language
publications fewer than 3,000 times during the Bush Administration, has
already appeared more than 10,000 times since Obama became president.
Read more....
Cells from eyes of dead 'may give sight to blind'
By James Gallagher Health and science reporter
BBC News - Jan. 31, 2014
Cells taken from the donated eyes of dead people may be able to give sight to the blind, researchers suggest. Tests in rats, reported in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, showed the human cells could restore some vision to completely blind rats. The team at University College London said similar results in humans would improve quality of life, but would not give enough vision to read. Human trials should begin within three years. Donated corneas are already used to improve some people's sight, but the team at the Institute for Ophthalmology, at UCL, extracted a special kind of cell from the back of the eye. These Muller glia cells are a type of adult stem cell capable of transforming into the specialised cells in the back of the eye and may be useful for treating a wide range of sight disorders.
Read more....
BBC News - Jan. 31, 2014
Cells taken from the donated eyes of dead people may be able to give sight to the blind, researchers suggest. Tests in rats, reported in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, showed the human cells could restore some vision to completely blind rats. The team at University College London said similar results in humans would improve quality of life, but would not give enough vision to read. Human trials should begin within three years. Donated corneas are already used to improve some people's sight, but the team at the Institute for Ophthalmology, at UCL, extracted a special kind of cell from the back of the eye. These Muller glia cells are a type of adult stem cell capable of transforming into the specialised cells in the back of the eye and may be useful for treating a wide range of sight disorders.
Read more....
Half of Americans Believe God Will Decide the Superbowl
By CJ Werleman
Winner That more Americans believe God will influence the Superbowl than the fact the earth is dangerously overheating should deeply trouble us.
AlterNet / January 31, 2014
Winner That more Americans believe God will influence the Superbowl than the fact the earth is dangerously overheating should deeply trouble us.
AlterNet / January 31, 2014
A new study conducted by the Public Research Institute
found that 50 percent of Americans think God will determine the winner
of Sunday’s Super Bowl.
The NFL and Jesus have become practically synonymous in
this country. Teams hold prayer circles before, during, and after games.
The NFL is among the most fervently religious sectors of American life.
On any given Sunday you’ll hear players claiming, “God was with me
today” or “I give thanks to God for our victory.” Prayer and praise of
the Lord Almighty is not confined to the game’s participants, either. PRRI found that more than 25% of Americans pray to God specifically to help their team.
Some highlights from the survey include:
- One-in-four (25%) Americans who report being a fan of a particular team believe that their team has been cursed at some point in time.
- Roughly 1-in-5 (21%) American sports fans report performing a ritual before or while watching their favorite team.
George Lakoff on Communication: "Liberals Do Everything Wrong"
George Lakoff: 'Conservatives don't follow the polls, they want to change them … Liberals do everything wrong' How the progressives have got it wrong and if they don't start to get it right, the conservatives will maintain the upperhand
By Zoe Williams
The Guardian - Friday 31 January 2014
"The progressive mindset is screwing up the world. The progressive mindset is guaranteeing no progress on global warming. The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, fracking is fine.' The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, genetically modified organisms are OK', when, in fact, they're horrible, and the progressive mindset doesn't know how to describe how horrible they are. There's a difference between progressive morality, which is great, and the progressive mindset, which is half OK and half awful."
George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. In Communicating Our American Values and Vision, he gives this precis: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."
Read more....
By Zoe Williams
The Guardian - Friday 31 January 2014
"The progressive mindset is screwing up the world. The progressive mindset is guaranteeing no progress on global warming. The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, fracking is fine.' The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, genetically modified organisms are OK', when, in fact, they're horrible, and the progressive mindset doesn't know how to describe how horrible they are. There's a difference between progressive morality, which is great, and the progressive mindset, which is half OK and half awful."
George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. In Communicating Our American Values and Vision, he gives this precis: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."
Read more....
The Surveillance Blitz
By John Feffer
Sunday, 02 February 2014 - Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed
Our privacy is getting hit from two sides - from corporations as well as the government. Some years ago when I was fielding complaints from authors through the National Writers Union — about not getting paid, about their work being spiked — I received a phone call from an irate woman. She told me that her best ideas were being stolen. She’d be watching television and a favorite drama would suddenly follow a plot line that she’d devised. Or she would go out to see a movie and hear the actors delivering her punch lines. “Do you have any proof that you’ve been sending your scripts to these places?” I asked. “Do you have postal receipts, for example?”
Read more...
Sunday, 02 February 2014 - Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed
Our privacy is getting hit from two sides - from corporations as well as the government. Some years ago when I was fielding complaints from authors through the National Writers Union — about not getting paid, about their work being spiked — I received a phone call from an irate woman. She told me that her best ideas were being stolen. She’d be watching television and a favorite drama would suddenly follow a plot line that she’d devised. Or she would go out to see a movie and hear the actors delivering her punch lines. “Do you have any proof that you’ve been sending your scripts to these places?” I asked. “Do you have postal receipts, for example?”
Read more...
Postmodern origins of intersectionality
Ross Wolfe Writer, critic, translator
THE CHARNEL HOUSE - Feb. 2, 2014
In a three-part series of posts, I’ll try to sketch the conceptual genealogy of intersectionality as a mode of postmodern discourse, politically not far removed from the “politics of difference” or “politics of recognition” characteristic of this period (1980s-2000s). At the same time, I’ll be relating it to concurrent historical transformations taking place within leftist politics. Though social, economic, and political transformations might not straightforwardly determine transformations in other spheres, on a one-to-one basis at least, I nevertheless consider it decisive in the reconfiguration of other ideologies around it. Postmodernism itself is (was?) more or less a symptom of the failure of Marxism to overcome the capitalist social formation in the twentieth century. So “intersectionality,” which I consider to be a botched or bowdlerized attempt to articulate a postmodern political practice — this never having been Crenshaw’s intent, incidentally, since for her it was meant for juridical use — would itself be a further vulgarization of theoretical postmodernism. A subsequent post will attempt to formulate a more rigorous political critique of the concept, thus properly situated, drawing upon the critical social theory of Adolph Reed, the Marxist feminism of Eve Campbell, and the literary criticism of Elif Batuman, as well as other authors who’ve recently written on the subject (Maya Gonzalez of Endnotes, for example). Then after that, in a third post I’ll try to outline the only standpoint from which to grasp the complexities of race, gender, class, and so on without falling into reductionism on the one hand or nebulous, tangled confusions like “intersectionality”: namely, the totality of social relations. Without further ado then, let’s proceed.
READ MORE....
THE CHARNEL HOUSE - Feb. 2, 2014
In a three-part series of posts, I’ll try to sketch the conceptual genealogy of intersectionality as a mode of postmodern discourse, politically not far removed from the “politics of difference” or “politics of recognition” characteristic of this period (1980s-2000s). At the same time, I’ll be relating it to concurrent historical transformations taking place within leftist politics. Though social, economic, and political transformations might not straightforwardly determine transformations in other spheres, on a one-to-one basis at least, I nevertheless consider it decisive in the reconfiguration of other ideologies around it. Postmodernism itself is (was?) more or less a symptom of the failure of Marxism to overcome the capitalist social formation in the twentieth century. So “intersectionality,” which I consider to be a botched or bowdlerized attempt to articulate a postmodern political practice — this never having been Crenshaw’s intent, incidentally, since for her it was meant for juridical use — would itself be a further vulgarization of theoretical postmodernism. A subsequent post will attempt to formulate a more rigorous political critique of the concept, thus properly situated, drawing upon the critical social theory of Adolph Reed, the Marxist feminism of Eve Campbell, and the literary criticism of Elif Batuman, as well as other authors who’ve recently written on the subject (Maya Gonzalez of Endnotes, for example). Then after that, in a third post I’ll try to outline the only standpoint from which to grasp the complexities of race, gender, class, and so on without falling into reductionism on the one hand or nebulous, tangled confusions like “intersectionality”: namely, the totality of social relations. Without further ado then, let’s proceed.
READ MORE....
Why Europe blames Israel for the Holocaust: Post-1945 anti-Semitism
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
The Jerusalem Post - 01/28/2014
The acclaimed British novelist Howard Jacobson opened his speech at the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem last October with piercing sarcasm: “The question is rhetorical. When will Jews be forgiven the Holocaust? Never.”
However, there has been a shift in the underpinnings of anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew among the nations, as the late French historian Léon Poliakov said about the new metamorphosis of Jew-hatred.
Jacobson was piggy-backing on the eye-popping insight of the Israel psychoanalyst Zvi Rex, who reportedly said: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”
The anti-Semitic logic at work here is Europe’s pathologically guilt-filled response to the Holocaust, which, in short, is to shift the onus of blame to the Jews to cleanse one’s conscience. Two German-Jewish Marxist philosophers – Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno – coined an esoteric sociological term for what unfolded in post-Shoah Germany: Guilt-defensiveness anti-Semitism.
Read more...
The Jerusalem Post - 01/28/2014
The acclaimed British novelist Howard Jacobson opened his speech at the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem last October with piercing sarcasm: “The question is rhetorical. When will Jews be forgiven the Holocaust? Never.”
However, there has been a shift in the underpinnings of anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew among the nations, as the late French historian Léon Poliakov said about the new metamorphosis of Jew-hatred.
Jacobson was piggy-backing on the eye-popping insight of the Israel psychoanalyst Zvi Rex, who reportedly said: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”
The anti-Semitic logic at work here is Europe’s pathologically guilt-filled response to the Holocaust, which, in short, is to shift the onus of blame to the Jews to cleanse one’s conscience. Two German-Jewish Marxist philosophers – Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno – coined an esoteric sociological term for what unfolded in post-Shoah Germany: Guilt-defensiveness anti-Semitism.
Read more...
The Hannah Arendt industry
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist – February 1, 2014
During the discussion period following the screening of Margarethe Von Trotta’s “Hannah Arendt” at the New School for Social Research, I took the mike to explain why Arendt’s theories were inadequate to explain genocide. If war crimes, up to and including ethnic cleansing or extermination, were spawned by totalitarianism, what do we make of Thomas Jefferson’s statement that if the American Indians got in the way of nation-building, they should be exterminated? For that matter, what does it say about the New School that its former President—Bob Kerrey—was a war criminal in Vietnam? (Around midnight on Feb. 25, 1969, Kerrey and his men killed at least 13 unarmed women and children.) At this point, Von Trotta and Jerome Kuhn—the head of the New School’s Hannah Arendt Center—began fidgeting in their seats and wearing frowns. Who was this asshole ruining their lovefest? But when I stated that if the USA ever lost a war the way that Hitler did, maybe the Samantha Powers of our world would find themselves in the defendant’s seat just like Eichmann, that was too much for them. They both started speaking over me at once. I caught Von Trotta saying that “this has nothing to do with my film” but of course it absolutely did.
Read more...
During the discussion period following the screening of Margarethe Von Trotta’s “Hannah Arendt” at the New School for Social Research, I took the mike to explain why Arendt’s theories were inadequate to explain genocide. If war crimes, up to and including ethnic cleansing or extermination, were spawned by totalitarianism, what do we make of Thomas Jefferson’s statement that if the American Indians got in the way of nation-building, they should be exterminated? For that matter, what does it say about the New School that its former President—Bob Kerrey—was a war criminal in Vietnam? (Around midnight on Feb. 25, 1969, Kerrey and his men killed at least 13 unarmed women and children.) At this point, Von Trotta and Jerome Kuhn—the head of the New School’s Hannah Arendt Center—began fidgeting in their seats and wearing frowns. Who was this asshole ruining their lovefest? But when I stated that if the USA ever lost a war the way that Hitler did, maybe the Samantha Powers of our world would find themselves in the defendant’s seat just like Eichmann, that was too much for them. They both started speaking over me at once. I caught Von Trotta saying that “this has nothing to do with my film” but of course it absolutely did.
Read more...
Argentina, Paul Krugman and the Great Recession
By Michael Robert
February 3, 2014
http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/argentina-paul-krugman-and-the-great-recession/
It’s just over ten years from its last major currency and debt crisis and Argentina is looking into the gun barrel of major slump again (see my recent post, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/emerging-market-crisis/). In that post, I commented that “Argentina is suffering the most because it already defaulted on its debts back in 2001 and has had large deficits on its balance of payments with the rest of the world. The irony here is that many Keynesians like to use the example of Argentina as a way out of the austerity that the likes of Greece or Portugal are suffering in the Eurozone. Do what Argentina did in 2001: ‘default on your debts, leave the euro and devalue your currency, then you can get growth’, the argument went. Well, the proverbial chickens have come now to roost on that strategy.”
It seems that I am not the only one that has picked up on the contradictions of the Keynesian solutions for the slumps in Greece and Argentina. Neoliberal economists have swung into action to criticise Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Matt Iglesias for promoting the example of Argentina as the way out for Greece in its depression back in 2012 (see http://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/another-krugman-flip-flop-notice-that-he-never-misses-the-mark/ or http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/where_the_stres.html).
Of course, these neoliberal critics argue that what was wrong with Argentina’s policies was not so much going for devaluation, or even defaulting on their foreign currency debts, but more that the government adopted “counterproductive statist policies” like nationalising the energy companies. My criticism was different. Back in February 2012, I posted (http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/exiting-the-euro/) that for Greece: “devaluation would not work, unless a national capitalist economy can improve competitiveness and raise exports to pay for foreign investment. Without that, devaluation can only make the foreign debt burden even worse. Indeed, competitively priced exports will be difficult to achieve if so much capital and raw materials must be imported to make those exports. And Greece’s import component of exports is high. Indeed, the experience of five recent devaluations of economies in crisis (including that of Argentina) shows that they lead to a 10-20% fall in real GDP and take five to ten years to recover to previous real GDP levels (http://www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/1/1621/papers/Rebelo.pdf) – that’s no picnic.”
Read more...
February 3, 2014
http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/argentina-paul-krugman-and-the-great-recession/
It’s just over ten years from its last major currency and debt crisis and Argentina is looking into the gun barrel of major slump again (see my recent post, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/emerging-market-crisis/). In that post, I commented that “Argentina is suffering the most because it already defaulted on its debts back in 2001 and has had large deficits on its balance of payments with the rest of the world. The irony here is that many Keynesians like to use the example of Argentina as a way out of the austerity that the likes of Greece or Portugal are suffering in the Eurozone. Do what Argentina did in 2001: ‘default on your debts, leave the euro and devalue your currency, then you can get growth’, the argument went. Well, the proverbial chickens have come now to roost on that strategy.”
It seems that I am not the only one that has picked up on the contradictions of the Keynesian solutions for the slumps in Greece and Argentina. Neoliberal economists have swung into action to criticise Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Matt Iglesias for promoting the example of Argentina as the way out for Greece in its depression back in 2012 (see http://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/another-krugman-flip-flop-notice-that-he-never-misses-the-mark/ or http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/where_the_stres.html).
Of course, these neoliberal critics argue that what was wrong with Argentina’s policies was not so much going for devaluation, or even defaulting on their foreign currency debts, but more that the government adopted “counterproductive statist policies” like nationalising the energy companies. My criticism was different. Back in February 2012, I posted (http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/exiting-the-euro/) that for Greece: “devaluation would not work, unless a national capitalist economy can improve competitiveness and raise exports to pay for foreign investment. Without that, devaluation can only make the foreign debt burden even worse. Indeed, competitively priced exports will be difficult to achieve if so much capital and raw materials must be imported to make those exports. And Greece’s import component of exports is high. Indeed, the experience of five recent devaluations of economies in crisis (including that of Argentina) shows that they lead to a 10-20% fall in real GDP and take five to ten years to recover to previous real GDP levels (http://www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/1/1621/papers/Rebelo.pdf) – that’s no picnic.”
Read more...
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