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Twenty Years After Seattle: Dispensing with Myths
GlobalizationOver the last two decades, counterproductive myths have developed around the Battle of Seattle. Now is a good time to dispense with them. One way to do this is to revisit the history from the perspective of those who were involved in organizing the mass direct action. I was one among them – at that time, a 22 year-old activist living in Olympia, Washington. Along with dozens of others, I helped found the Direct Action Network (DAN) and spent months organizing for the protests.
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Global Economic Volatility and Socio-Political Reactions
Economic CrisisTrade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy. The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy will be as significant as the 1880s-90s, 1930s-40s and more recent 2008-09 meltdowns.
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As Germany greenlights Huawei, US has lost its 5G war
GlobalizationOn Monday, the news broke that Germany would not be excluding Huawei from participating in its fifth-generation (5G) internet networks. With the country’s new “security catalog” being released, setting out rules and guidelines to ensure safety in the building of the network, no formal bans or exclusions of individual vendor companies were specified, giving the Shenzhen telecommunications firm the green light.
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The IMF Is Utterly Indifferent to the Pain It’s Causing
GlobalizationFor the past 40 years, the IMF has had the same agenda: to make sure that developing countries adhere to the rules of globalization set by the advanced capitalist states. Sovereignty of these developing countries has become irrelevant, as their governments have to accede to pressure from the IMF on fiscal and monetary policy as well as their trade and development agenda.
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Non-Aligned Movement gathers in Venezuela to resist dictatorship of dollar
GlobalizationOfficially founded in 1961 by post-colonial icons like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, and Yugoslavian leader Josef Tito, NAM was originally conceived as an alliance between countries seeking independence from both the US and Soviet power blocs during the height of the Cold War. Nearly 30 years since the end of the Cold War, the US is still attempting regime change operations or carrying out unparalleled economic aggression against NAM member states.
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The Global Currency War Has Begun
GlobalizationFor the past decade or more, US policy has been to use both monetary policy and tax policy to subsidize capital incomes to the tune of trillions of dollars a year, every year. It used to be that monetary (Fed) and fiscal policy were used to ‘stabilize’ the economy in the event of recession or inflation. No longer. A decade and more of using these policies to subsidize capital incomes has led to the effective negation of the effectiveness of these policies for economic stabilization.
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U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses
GlobalizationUnlike medieval serfdom, people subject to this End of History scenario can choose to live wherever they want. But wherever they live, they must take on a lifetime of debt to obtain access to a home of their own, and rely on U.S.-sponsored control of their basic needs, money and credit by adhering to U.S. financial planning of their economies. This dystopian scenario confirms Rosa Luxemburg’s recognition that the ultimate choice facing nations in today’s world is between socialism and barbarism.
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Trump’s Trade Threats are Really Cold War 2.0
GlobalizationTrump’s trade tantrum is that other countries are simply following the same economic strategy that once made America great, but which neoliberals have destroyed. U.S. negotiators are unwilling to acknowledge that the United States has lost its competitive industrial advantage and become a high-cost rentier economy. Its GDP is “empty,” consisting mainly of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) rents, profits and capital gains while the nation’s infrastructure decays and its labor is reduced to a part-time “gig” economy.
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NAFTA renewed. Now what?
GlobalizationWas the push to renegotiate NAFTA only about Trump playing to his base? Was Trump reacting to a decline in the American empire? Was it about moving away from multilateral agreements to bilateral ones where U.S. strength weighs heavier? Is the narrowing of options that the renegotiation of NAFTA exposed just about free-trade agreements, or does it point to a more general characteristic of capitalism today?
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Neoliberalism’s Dark Path to Fascism
Economic CrisisNeoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite—eight families now hold as much wealth as 50 percent of the world’s population—while demolishing government controls and regulations always creates massive income inequality and monopoly power, fuels political extremism and destroys democracy.
