The left will continue to lose because all left parties in Sweden are stuck in fossilized social movement formations tied to national growth, globalization without sufficient attention to declining regions, identity, complaints about welfare state reductions without attention to wealth creation, and deconstructions of the negative consequences of state or corporate actions.  More

A cycle of protests began in Haiti in July 2018, and—despite the pandemic—has carried on since then. The core reason for the protest in 2018 was that in March of that year the government of Venezuela—due to the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States—could no longer ship discounted oil to Haiti through the PetroCaribe scheme. Fuel prices soared by up to 50 percent. More

No one listened better than Studs.  For those of you old enough to remember, that’s Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories — he essentially created the form — ranging from Working and Hard Times to The Good War. More

Be careful who you praise and the degree of zeal you do it with.  The slain Shinzo Abe, shot dead in Nara on July 8, towered over Japanese politics.  In doing so, he cast a lengthy shadow.  In death, this shadow continues to grow ever more darkly. The reaction from certain figures outside Japan left More