The Obama presidency is in a quagmire. The tremendous promise encapsulated in the campaign slogan “Change we can believe in” and the enormous expectations of reform after the Bush years have not been realised. Energy has given way to hesitancy… Continue Reading
We are coming out of the tunnel,” affirmed finance minister Elena Salgado creatively, when the third quarter unemployment figures came out in late October. 4,137,500 people were jobless, 17.93 percent of the population available for work. The Spanish state’s official… Continue Reading
The social climate in Greece is charged with the electricity that you find in the air before a tropical storm.” That was the description by a leading columnist on Greece’s most popular daily newspaper. He is not alone in this… Continue Reading
Just one month after Angela Merkel’s new conservative-liberal government took office in Germany it faces its first difficulties. Franz Josef Jung of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) resigned from the government amid allegations of a cover-up relating to the Kunduz… Continue Reading
After last year’s huge days of action, demonstrations and the radical conflicts against redundancies in the car industry, has French rebelliousness disappeared over the past few months? Are we witnessing a downturn in struggle as a result of the social… Continue Reading
Ireland is undergoing a form of shock therapy and major political changes are in the offing. The government has embarked on pay cuts and reductions in the public sector as its principal strategy for getting out of a recession that… Continue Reading
Despite the euphoria that gripped the financial markets in the second half of 2009, the world economy continues to be hit by severe shocks. Another hit it in late November. The most surprising thing about the announcement that Dubai World… Continue Reading
Richard Seymour – Racism in Britain Today from swpUkTv on Vimeo. Richard Seymour, author of The Liberal Defence of Murder and the ‘lenin’s tomb’ blog presents the latest in our series of seminars. The electoral success of the fascist British… Continue Reading
Many on the left viewed last year’s food crisis and price rises as a blip, a delayed by-product of the debt-induced boom of the mid-2000s aggravated by speculation. According to this argument, concerns over the ability of capitalism to feed… Continue Reading
Joseph Mensah (ed), Neoliberalism and Globalisation in Africa: Contestations from the Embattled Continent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), £40 This collection examines Africa’s special place in globalisation. Africa south of the Sahara often appears in cheery UN and World Bank reports after… Continue Reading