The author of a new book on the ongoing crisis in the eurozone discusses the survival of the euro, the default alternative, who might gain from a failed austerity, and the prospects for global Keynesianism. An interview.
Concerned by misrepresentation of Egypt’s withdrawal from the recent NPT meeting in Geneva, a retired Egyptian Ambassador puts the record straight and suggests ways to put the Conference on WMD in the Middle East back on track.
This second of two essays on military spending and the EU crisis, explores the role of the European arms trade, corruption and the role of arms exporting countries in fuelling a debt crisis, and why these 'odious' debts need to be written off. See Part One here.
Finland underwent a spectacular populist upheaval in 2011, when the True Finns won over nearly one fifth of the vote and went on to become the main opposition party to the current government. The prelude to this was growing disquiet towards Finland’s consensus-dominated political culture.
Combining support for the welfare state with xenophobic populist sentiments, The Finns have clouded and shaken the traditionally straightforward Finnish political landscape. Beyond this textbook example of mainstream recognition for a previously radical faction, what do the Finns really stand for?
There is a vital need, for the sake of the future, for new forms of collective action to combine feeling with thought, neither denying the seriousness of the crisis nor closing our minds to a ‘radical hope’ that deep political change is possible. Empathetic imagination is as necessary as science.
Right-wing populist parties tend to be anti-multinational and anti-intellectual: they endorse nationalistic, nativist, and chauvinistic beliefs, embedded - explicitly or coded - in common sense appeals to a presupposed shared knowledge of ‘the people’.
Why is widespread social anxiety fuelling xenophobia rather than criticism of neoliberal capitalism? What role has the state played? Have we arrived at the paradoxical situation where the best we can do is to call on the state to do its job?
