Indonesian workers’ movement – a sleeping giant comes to life

OCTOBER 31, 2012 – October 3, as many as 2.8 million workers in Indonesia staged an enormous strike, bringing the entire economy to a standstill from 9am until 6pm. It was the biggest mass action by labour in that country since 1965. The protests closed 5,000 factories in 12 provinces. In Jakarta alone, the machines at 800 factories went silent (Al Jazeera 2012; Budiasa 2012; Sagita and Primanita 2012; Sijabat 2012a).

Of Terror, the IMF, Keynes, and the Fiscal Multiplier

OCTOBER 17, 2012 – Thursday October 11, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde said that both Greece and Spain should slow down their cuts to government spending. Well, not exactly. Her exact words were: “time is of the essence, meaning that instead of frontloading heavily, it is sometimes better, given circumstances and the fact that many countries at the same time go through that same set of policies with a view to reducing their deficit, it is sometimes better to have a bit more time” (Lagarde 2012). On its face, this makes little sense. But after wading through the doublespeak, and putting the entire quote in context, what it turns out she is saying is “slow down the cuts”. This is a complete reversal of two generations of neoliberal orthodoxy, and an implicit repudiation of the policies carried out by the IMF and its “sister” organizations in that period.

The colour line in the U.S. presidential election

OCTOBER 15, 2012 – In the run-up to the November 2 presidential election in the United States, polls are indicating an almost evenly divided electorate. As of this writing, support for President Barack Obama was standing just above 46%, support for Republican challenger Mitt Romney just above 47% (RealClearPolitics). Given these figures, imagine entering a room of 200 randomly chosen U.S. voters, with people sitting at tables by party-affiliation, but with no table signs to indicate which party-table was which. To avoid a night of tea-party polemics, you might reasonably wish to find a table of Obama supporters, and you figure the odds aren’t too bad – roughly 50-50. This is statistically true, but sociologically misleading. There is a straightforward way to qualitatively improve your chances of finding a table of Obama supporters, and avoiding a table of Romney supporters. The U.S. remains an extremely racially-divided society, and your encounter with an Obama supporter would be made much easier, with just a little research.