All Quiet on the Eastern Front: Part 2
Notes from a Pegida counter-demonstration in Dresden
“Say it loud and say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”
There is something exhilarating and powerful about walking through the dark, empty streets of Dresden’s old town chanting this slogan. A solitary message of support in a continent that is in a race to rebuild the old borders and impose new mobility restrictions with as much fanfare as it sought to dismantle them only twenty-five years earlier. Yet the message is also unnerving…
All Quiet on the Eastern Front
Notes from a Pegida counter-demonstration in Dresden
It is 5.30 on a cold and rainy Monday evening in Dresden. To the casual tourist, there might be nothing extraordinary about the time or day of the week. The eerie tranquility of warmly flashing Christmas decorations, the ubiquitous smell of Glühwein, and the ingeniously crafted stands of the world famous Dresden Stiezelmarkt – all suggest that the city is ready to settle into a beloved holiday tradition…
The Paris Climate Deal: Just Words?
Or just enough to move the earth?
As the world leaders read through endless scripted statements about making history and saving the planet for our children, environmental critics were already denouncing the Paris climate deal as a fraud. It is not difficult to see why. First, the deal contains no legal obligations for countries to cut emissions, and there …
Zuckerberg & Chan Are Us
Philanthrocapitalism and the public good
Almost forty-eight years to the day before Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced the creation of their limited liability company and pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares within their lifetimes, a lawyer lectured a roomful of stockbrokers on “How to Obtain Maximum Tax Advantages by Using Securities …
On Pope Francis, Climate Change, and Global Capitalism
A psychological perspective
Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for our Common Home, has drawn worldwide attention to climate change and its relationship to global capitalism in advance of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to be held in Paris in late November …
Jeremy Corbyn’s Attempt to Reinvent British Labour
The changing face of the British Left
On September 12, 2015, Britain’s Labour Party elected as its leader Jeremy Corbyn, a man branded a dangerous socialist and pacifist. He won with 250,000 votes of party members and supporters, out …
The Spectacle of Art’s Reproduction
On the Venice Biennale 2015
When entering the bookstore of the 56th Venice Biennale of Art, you may think that having Marx’s Capital, Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, and the official catalog of the Milan Expo 2015 displayed next to each other is just a fortuitous — and not particularly happy — coincidence. Expo 2015 cost 14 billion euros, utilized thousands of people who worked for free or low wages and in precarious conditions, caused major environmental damage …