Features – Page 4 – Lanka Socialists Forum

13 Mar

The Russia Problem

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeatures, Politics

MARCO D'ERAMO 07 MARCH 2022 For once, we find ourselves sharing the barely hidden wishes of the Pentagon, White House and entire Western establishment: if only a nice group of boyars could unite in an old-style plot to overthrow Putin and put an end to a war whose objectives remain difficult to comprehend. By boyars I mean the upper echelons of the armed forces or billionaire oligarchs and their contacts in the intelligence and security services; a whole class of potentates who seem ever more uncomfortable with their leader’s adventurism. Yet even if Putin fell and his adventure in Ukraine…

11 Mar

For a Cuba with Democracy and Solidarity

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeatures, Politics, World

By: Samuel Farber March 9, 2022 This article, which originally appeared in Spanish in La Joven Cuba, the principal independent left-wing blog in Cuba, on Feb. 21, 2022, under the title “An Alternative for Cuba: political and economic democracy,” provides a critical perspective on the economic policies of the Cuban government and of some of its critics, and offers an alternative to both. The Economic Reforms Implemented by the Governmentand Proposed by its Critics The economic reforms in Cuba should be analyzed in economic terms as well as in terms of their social and political consequences, especially with respect to their impact on the…

11 Mar

Russian Imperialism

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeatures, Politics, World

From the Tsar to Today, via Stalin, the Imperialist Will Marks the History of RussiaBy: Zbigniew Marcin KowalewskiMarch 4, 2022 Sergei Nikolsky, a Russian philosopher specializing in culture, argues that perhaps the most important thought for Russians “from the fall of Byzantium to the present day is the idea of empire and being an imperial nation. We have always known that we inhabit a country whose history is an uninterrupted chain of territorial expansions, conquests, annexations, their defense, temporary losses and new conquests. The idea of empire was one of the most valuable ideas in our ideological baggage and it was…

11 Mar

How Europe is funding Putin’s war

wisidagamage0 CommentsEconomy, Features, Politics, World

European countries are reluctant to stop buying oil and gas from Russia for fear of economic consequences at home. BY CORNELIUS HIRSCH, GIOVANNA COI AND JAMES RANDERSON February 24, 2022 Who's paying for Russian President Vladimir Putin's jet fighters and tanks? The same EU countries that say they want him to stop his assault on Ukraine, a country that is supposedly their ally. It's a crazy paradox that Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki raised at an EU leaders' summit on sanctions against Moscow that ran into Friday morning. The bloc was unable to agree measures against the SWIFT international payments system because so many…

08 Mar

Covid-19 didn’t cause the care crisis—privatisation did

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeatures, Labour, World

Originally From: https://socialeurope.eu/covid-19-didnt-cause-the-care-crisis-privatisation-did ROSA PAVANELLI 8th March 2022 The scandal of Europe’s biggest eldercare operator highlights how a public good has been turned into a private asset class. Her priority is the patient—that might not be true of the company she works for (Alexander Raths / shutterstock.com) Imagine discovering your elderly loved ones in a care home were receiving half-portions of meals, just so a corporation could cut costs and pump up profits. This is just one of many disturbing revelations by the French journalist Victor Castanet from his three-year investigation into Europe’s largest care operator, Orpea. Yet not only patients are paying…

03 Mar

‘The accumulated loss’

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeatures, Technology, World

By David Leonhardt Good morning. We look at Benjamin Franklin’s lessons about vaccine persuasion. Nearly 60 million American adults — or about one of out every four — remain unvaccinated against Covid-19. They have made an irrational choice that exposes them to severe illness. But they have also made a choice with a long historical tradition. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden declared, “We will never give up on vaccinating more Americans.” And Biden is right that a continued vaccination campaign can do a lot of good, given that a large majority of Covid deaths and…