Reading

I've been reading Leonardo Sciascia's The Moro Affair, for the second time, and finding it just as disturbing as the first time, though perhaps for new reasons.

I first read Sciascia's work when I heard about The Day of the Owl, a crime novel. A police-procedural, in fact, that knocked the usual police-procedural into a cocked hat. When published in 1961, I gather, it had some impact in Italy because it dramatised the connection between the Mafia and the Christian-Democrat (DC) government. Sciascia, a Sicilian who became one of Italy's major public intellectuals, wrote several other superb crime novels with a philosophical and political edge, a range of other books, plays, and a lot of political journalism. In the 1970s he was elected to the Italian parliament on the Communist (PCI) ticket, but left the party in disgust when its leaders proposed their 'historic compromise' with the corrupt Christian Democrat regime.

Tell me, what planet are we actually on? All these decades later, are we really involved in a “second” or “new” Cold War? It’s certainly true that, as late as the 1980s, the superpowers (or so they then liked to think of themselves), the United States and the Soviet Union, were still engaged in just such a Cold War, something that might have seemed almost positive at the time. After all, a “hot” one could have involved the use of the planet’s two great nuclear arsenals and the potential obliteration of just about everything. But today? In case you haven’t noticed, the phrase “new Cold War” or “second Cold War” has indeed crept into our media vocabulary. (Check it out... Read more

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 1, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

80 Years Ago Denmark Miraculously Saved 8,000 Jews From Nazi Murder

Harvey Wasserman, September 25, 2023 [downwithtyranny.com]

Strategic Political Economy

Αυτό που, τελικά, σκότωσε τον καπιταλισμό είναι το ίδιο το κεφάλαιο, όχι αυτό που γνωρίζαμε από την αυγή της βιομηχανικής εποχής, αλλά μια μετάλλαξή του που εμφανίστηκε τις τελευταίες δύο δεκαετίες. Κάποτε είχα παρακολουθήσει διάλεξη του Φρίντριχ φον Χάγιεκ στο LSE στην οποία, όπως συνήθιζε, καταφέρθηκε κατά του σοσιαλιστικού σχεδιασμού με μια χαριτωμένη προσωπική ιστορία. […]

The post Ο καπιταλισμός πέθανε. Καλώς ήλθατε σε κάτι ακόμα χειρότερο, στην τεχνοφεουδαρχία – NEWS24|7 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

A government shutdown was averted at the last second.

The post Amazon and Google Are Finally Facing the Music appeared first on The Intercept.