For Yugoslavia 10 years ago  

Posted by talos in , ,


Yugoslavia (link includes translated lyrics) by Tatu member Lena Katina
On the Tenth Anniversary of the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia by the Global Balkans Network.

Jump You Fuckers!  

Posted by talos in , ,


Dan Hind on the obvious (pdf)


"...we should try to establish exactly what caused the crisis, who is responsible, and how. And that does require a certain amount of finger‐pointing. Not because it is fun, although it is, but because we can’t afford to be magnanimous to the policy‐makers and opinion‐formers who steered us into this. If we do we’ll leave them in place to manage the crisis as confidently and ineptly as its prelude. They will seek to reconstruct a system on the same disastrous lines, they will fail, and they will, with every appearance of regret, resort to ever more desperate measures. You probably found this article online, so I shall say no more."

What was once not so radical a notion  

Posted by talos

"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves... is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous--and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed."

John Maynard Keynes, "National Self-Sufficiency," The Yale Review, Vol. 22, no. 4 (June 1933), pp. 755-769..

Via "Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis", John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Brian Ashley, Co-Managing Editor of Amandla...

From the Crisis of Distribution to the Distribution of the Costs of the Crisis  

Posted by talos in ,

From the Crisis of Distribution to the Distribution of the Costs of the Crisis:
What Can We Learn from Previous Crises about the Effects of the Financial Crisis on Labor Share?

by Özlem Onaran

"The paper analyzes the possible distributional consequences of the global crisis based on the lessons of the past crises experiences. The decline in the labor share across the globe has been a major factor that led to the current global crisis. What we are going through is a crisis of distribution, and similarly the policy reactions to the crisis are part of a distributional struggle. The paper presents the effects of the former crises in the developing countries and in Japan on income distribution, wages, and unemployment. This comparison is important not only because it compares developing vs. developed country cases, but also because it highlights the differences of the currency crises vs. domestic financial crises regarding the distributional consequences. However, despite differences, the cumulative effect is in both cases a dramatic pro-capital redistribution. Building on these lessons, the paper discusses the possible different effects of the current global crisis in the developed countries, Eastern Europe, and developing countries, and concludes with policy alternatives to avoid the socialization of the costs of the crisis."



Selected excerpt from policy alternatives:

In order to fundamentally solve the problems of this crisis, economic policy must most of all solve the distributional crisis. A new socio-economic and political paradigm is required focusing on full-employment, productivity led wage growth, and a shortening of work-time. This process should also decide on critical sectors for the society, in which the ownership rights cannot be left to the private sector and private profit motive. The crisis has indicated that the finance and the housing sectors are clear candidates for public ownership enhanced with democratic and transparent control mechanisms of all the stakeholders. The energy crisis is indicating that the energy sector and alternative energy investments also require public ownership. The problems with the private pension funds as well as private supplies of education, health, and infrastructure are showing that social services are also too critical to be ruled by private profit motives. A creative and participatory public discussion should question, in which other sectors public ownership would produce more egalitarian as well as more efficient outcomes. This does not mean to praise the public sector as such, but calls for the participation and control of the stakeholders (the workers, consumers, regional representatives etc.) in the decision making mechanisms within a public and transparent economic model. Such a shift in decision making also facilitates economy wide coordination of important decisions for a sustainable and planned development based on solidarity.

Do Communists Have Better Sex?  

Posted by talos in , ,

Link: Liebte der Osten anders?


This film ["Do Communists Have Better Sex"], a mixture of scholarly research and light-hearted presentations of stereotypes about the role of sex in divided Germany (from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall), is a welcome addition to recent discussions of sexuality in East and West Germany...
...But where the director might have offered in-depth analyses of the private and public topic of sexuality and sexual mores, the insertion of numerous "humorous animation sequences"... throughout the film take the place of critical discussion, offering the viewer instead facile stereotypes that all too often leave one cringing in embarrassment. It will be difficult for some scholars or students to get beyond one of the first animated scenes, in which a doctor measures the penises of a West German man (16.9 cm) and an East German man (17.5 cm). No evidence in the film backs up such an absurd cartoonish claim...


Distantly though clearly related in a very essential, if conceptual way, see Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' masterpiece, titled Cunnilingus in North Korea, if you haven't already...

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