Latest News: Posts Tagged ‘Strongmen’
NEW VIDEO: THE MONSTER ENTERS author Mike Davis in conversation with STRONGMEN editor Vijay Prashad
Monday, October 12th, 2020VIJAY PRASHAD on the return of the IMF to Latin America at the Real News
Monday, November 26th, 2018Argentina’s legislature approved a drastic austerity budget for fiscal year 2019 on Thursday which will cut social spending by as much as 35 percent and increase debt service payments by 50 percent. The budget is expected to cause a further contraction of Argentina’s economy. The austerity budget is being implemented to a large extent. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, which has given Argentina alone a $56 billion dollars, one of its largest loans ever.
Read the full interview here.
“More books like Strongmen are needed… Strongmen part two, please.” – STRONGMEN reviewed at Asian Affairs
Friday, November 9th, 2018Until recently, progressives believed the retreat of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War would be like water running uphill. ‘There is no coherent alternative to liberal democracy,’ wrote Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History (1992).
But the Marxist historian Vijay Prashad, who edited Strongmen, a timely book about a handful of the world’s top-dog, so-called ‘strongmen’, counters with a verbal punch from Antonio Gramsci who said in his Prison Notebooks, ‘The crisis consists in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great deal of morbid symptoms appear.’.
Read the full review here.
Unintended Consequences: US Sanctions on Russia and Iran Weaken Dollar’s Rule – VIJAY PRASHAD on The Real News
Thursday, October 25th, 2018As the US tries to keep countries such as India from dealing with Iran and Russia, it is driving more and more countries to seek alternatives to the US dollar, threatening the dollar’s hegemony, says Vijay Prashad.
Watch the full interview here.
“Readers seeking a literate crash course in bottom-of-the-barrel geopolitics will quickly devour this book.” – STRONGMEN reviewed at Kirkus
Tuesday, September 18th, 2018Strongmen come in many flavors, writes editor Prashad (Red Star over the Third World, 2017, etc.), but they share a commonality: They “are nothing other than cowardly when it comes to social reality.”
The fascist dictators in modern clothing, writes Prashad in his introduction to this edited volume, “do not advertise themselves as fascists,” but they speak the same language: Protect the homeland from outsiders, obey, and worship your leader. “Older, decadent language can be heard,” writes Prashad, “the language of death and disorder.”.
Read the full review here.
Modi’s Political Grammar – read an excerpt from STRONGMEN at Indian Cultural Forum
Tuesday, September 4th, 2018An old Persian fable – The Devil’s Syrup – highlights the purpose of the Devil: to disrupt, create chaos and gain power through anarchy. An honest man enters a confectioner’s shop. The Devil quietly drips a drop of sugar syrup on the confectioner’s balding head. A fly sits on his head and begins to suck the syrup. The honest man sees the fly, takes off his shoe and whacks the fly on the confectioner’s head. The confectioner is angry. He doesn’t believe that the honest man was merely hitting the fly. The honest man says that was the only reason, but the confectioner does not believe him. A fight ensues. Others arrive. The shop is destroyed.
Read the full excerpt here.
“Deserves a place on the shelves of schools, colleges, universities and public libraries in those countries who treasure their democratic heritages and who don’t want to see them destroyed.” – STRONGMEN reviewed at ColdType
Thursday, August 30th, 2018Until recently, progressives believed the retreat of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War would be like water running uphill. “There is no coherent alternative to liberal democracy,” wrote Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History (1992). A better quote to describe large parts of the world as it is now came from George Orwell half a century ago in his long essay, Inside the Whale. “Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorship – an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction.
Read the full review here.
