The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride down the troughs of capitalism and up the peaks of radical social activism. Glancing around the world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual.
First, look to Wall Street where Monday's stock market crash was worse than any since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, and where one investment bank after the other faces ruin or bale-out – three of the USA’s five largest flushed down the toilet.
Fourteen yea...read more
The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride down the troughs of capitalism and up the peaks of radical social activism. Glancing around the world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual.
First, look to Wall Street where Monday's stock market crash was worse than any since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, and where one investment bank after the other faces ruin or bale-out – three of the USA’s five largest flushed down the toilet.
Fourteen years ago, these same New York financiers put extreme pressure on Nelson Mandela’s new African National Congress government (a time I worked in his reconstruction and development program ministry and saw first hand). Mandela was defeated by neoliberal strategies - nicknamed ‘Freedom next Time’ and ‘Shock Doctrine’ by John Pilger and Naomi Klein, respectively, in their excellent South Africa chapters in recent books.
