A Marxist critique of the Australian Greens
Ben Hillier Over the course of nearly 40 years, the Greens have been transformed from a tiny environmentalist organisation into a sizeable and serious party perceived to be to the left of the ALP. This article will look at the origins of the Greens and the class basis of their politics; examine the demographics of [...]
US: How corporations and local governments see the poor as piggy banks
Barbara Ehrenreich Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, [...]
What’s next for NATO?
Lawrence Korb and Max Hoffman The 28 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO—the 63-year-old military alliance created to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its control from Eastern Europe into Western Europe—face a daunting agenda of immediate and long-term challenges as they gather in Chicago this week for their seventh summit in [...]
Getting harder for pollsters to sample
Crispin Hull Things are getting more difficult for pollsters. Polling techniques and interpretation may be getting more sophisticated, but the critical base of all polling – the random sample – is getting harder to come by. Most politicians act with public bravado when asked about the latest poll at any time. They usually say there [...]
US Election: How Citizens United is leading to more racism in TV campaign ads
Lee Fang Yesterday, the New York Times broke the news that Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, is planning to unleash a race-baiting advertising assault against President Obama late in the campaign. Rickets, who used his Super PAC to fund an upset victory in Nebraska’s Senate election this week, intends to finance the [...]
Belo Monte: Brazil’s damned democracy
Manuela Picq The Belo Monte dam project shows the government’s failure to respect indigenous rights and reform energy policy. It’s rather ironic to find commonalities between President Rousseff’s government and past Brazilian military regimes. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is particularly emblematic of democracy’s victory over dictatorship. Not only has she consolidated democratic politics and overseen [...]
Ghosts of ideologies past hover around Abbott’s budget reply
Mark Rolfe To quote American baseball manager Yogi Berra, it was “déjà vu all over again” last night when I listened to Tony Abbott’s budget reply. I was back in the 1970s but without the big-collared shirts and clunky shoes. And I felt like invoking Hawaii Five-0, saying “Book ‘em, Danno” for the crimes of [...]
BoJo’s Return: The London Mayoral Election
Binoy Kampmark When he first won the London Mayoral elections, writers threatened to leave in droves, have sex changes or become French. But Boris Johnson, known to many as BoJo, has been re-elected in a bitter and closely fought contest with his sparring partner ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone. The defeated former mayor has stuck to his [...]
Romney begins vetting Vice President picks
Alexander Bolton Mitt Romney’s campaign has begun vetting running mates, a process that will narrow his list of possible veep picks. The team for Beth Myers, the Romney adviser leading the search for the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, has already contacted potential running mates, according to a source close to the Romney campaign. By beginning the [...]
On the History of the US Economy in Decline
Noam Chomsky The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead -because victory won’t come quickly – it could prove a significant moment in American [...]