October 2017 - Page 5 of 6

Writing While Socialist

Vijay Prashad and Mark Nowak October 9, 2017 Vijay Prashad and Mark Nowak

Editor’s Note: Over the past year, the scholar and activist Vijay Prashad taught a series of nonfiction writing workshops to students, activists, workers, and journalists across India. The workshops sought to develop an ethics and practice of socialist writing to foreground what Prashad calls “the small voices of history.” Here he talks to the poet Mark Nowak, founder of the Worker Writers School in New York City, about the political valence of socialist writing in a time of rampant populism, racism, and xenophobia. This is the second in a series of dialogues between Prashad and Nowak. Their first conversation, The Essentials in Socialist Writing, was published in Jacobin. read more

Why Europe Needs a New Deal, Not Breakup

Yanis Varoufakis and James K. Galbraith October 9, 2017 Yanis Varoufakis and James K. Galbraith

Source: The Nation

The American New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt’s first two terms combined the goals of financial stabilization, reconstruction, conservation, and employment—jobs for the jobless; public works; power systems and new industries, especially in the South; soil conservation and reforestation to battle the Dust Bowl; and a potent mix of regulations and insurance to assert public power over high finance.

Europe today needs all of these. Its overgrown banks, haunted by the specter of insolvency, are pushing households into foreclosures and evictions across the continent, and at an accelerating scale in the most depressed countries. States are bankrupt and will only become more so as the European Central Bank begins to tighten under pressure from German savers crushed by negative interest rates. Like America 80 years ago, Europe has a vast periphery. In its South, there is a semi-permanent Great Depression, whereas in the East there is great need for new and renewed industries, transport networks, housing, and social investments. Above all, Europeans need jobs. read more

The Cost of Conflict Minerals: Murder of UN Investigators Highlights Western Complicity in Congo’s Violence

John Lasker October 4, 2017 John Lasker

The decades-long conflict in the Congo around minerals, militias, and political power has cost the lives of millions.

Where is Santiago Maldonado? Disappearance of Argentine Activist Sparks Movement for Political Justice

Dario Farcy October 4, 2017 Dario Farcy

The social activist and craftsman Santiago Maldonado was disappeared by government security forces in August during a police raid on a Mapuche indigenous community in the Argentine province of Chubut.

The Case for Robust Debate in the “Post-truth” Era

Patrick Barrett and Deepa Kumar October 4, 2017 Patrick Barrett and Deepa Kumar

Today, it seems we have not learned the lessons of the “post-truth” election. The anonymity of the internet, combined with a severely impoverished political culture, has created a situation in which the most common form of engagement with contrary opinions is ad hominem attacks and claims of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”

Germany and the Rise of a ‘Fascist International’

John Feffer October 2, 2017 John Feffer

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Germany funds foundations for its political parties. If the far right gets one, we’re one step closer to globalizing the alt-right.

Germany got its very own electoral shock this week when the far right won 13 percent of the vote in country’s parliamentary elections.

For the first time in more than half a century, the far right will be represented in the German parliament, with more than 90 seats. Although it’s now Germany’s third most popular party — behind the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SDP) — the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is still too toxic to become part of a ruling coalition. read more