What the New Deal Can Teach Us About Winning a Green New Deal

Growing awareness of our ever-worsening climate crisis has boosted the popularity of movements calling for a Green New Deal. At present, the Green New Deal is a big tent idea, grounded to some extent by its identification with the original New Deal and emphasis on the need for strong state action to initiate system change on a massive scale. Given contemporary conditions, it is not surprising that people are looking back to the New Deal period for inspiration. However, inspiration is not the same as seeking and drawing useful organizing and strategic lessons from a study of the dynamics of that period. While there are great differences between the crises and political movements and possibilities of the 1930s and now, there are also important lessons that can be learned from the efforts of activists to build mass movements for social transformation during the Great Depression. My aim in this paper is to illuminate the challenges faced and choices made by these activists and draw out some of the relevant lessons for contemporary activists seeking to advance a Green New Deal

Don’t Believe the Hype, Big Finance Continues to Threaten Our Survival

This article is reprinted with permission from Reports From The Economic Front and the author. Our special thanks to the author, Dr. Martin Hart-Landsberg

The Pitfalls and Possibilities of Socialist Transformation: The Case of Greece

With its 2015 electoral victory in Greece, Syriza became the first left political party to lead a European government since the founding of the European Union. As such, its eventual capitulation to the demands of the Troika was a bitter development, and not only for the people of Greece. Because the need for change remains as great as ever, and efforts at electoral-based transformations continue, especially in Europe, this paper seeks to assess the Greek experience, and in particular Syriza’s political options and choices, in order to help activists more effectively respond to the challenges faced when confronting capitalist power. Section 1 examines how Greece’s membership in the euro area promoted an increasingly fragile and unsustainable economic expansion over the period 2001 to 2007. Section 2 discusses the role of the Troika in Greece’s 2008 to 2014 downward spiral into depression. Section 3 discusses the ways in which popular Greek resistance to their country’s crisis helped to shape and nourish Syriza as a new type of left political organization, “a mass connective party.” Section 4 critically analyzes the Syriza-led government’s political choices, highlighting alternative policies not chosen that might have helped the government break the Troika’s strangle hold over the Greek economy and further radicalize the Greek population. Section 5 concludes with a presentation of five lessons from the Greek experience of relevance for future struggles

An analysis of Iranian negotiating style as evidenced from the 1979 US hostage crisis and the Iran-EU nuclear negotiations from 2003 to 2006

The intention of this research is to analyse the process and methodology of the Iranian negotiating style. The research is mainly premised on Putnam’s two-level game metaphor (1988) and the “ultimate decision making unit” of Hermann et al. (1987), the purpose being to identify key leadership units, individuals, and formal and informal networks in Iran. The study further takes cognisance of key elements of the Iranian national character, which naturally impacts directly on what Iran considers to be a suitable negotiating style. It provides an overview of how the 1979 revolution changed Iranian diplomacy and how it forced international political theorists to take note of the cultural-religious dimension, ignored until then as elements of international politics and theory. Two case studies, deal respectively with the US hostage crisis (1979-1981), and the Iran-E3/EU nuclear negotiations, between 2003 and 2006. The analysis shows how Iran assumed the character of a revolutionary country and how its new religiously driven diplomacy is evolving. The study finally identifies and illustrates the active deployment of Shî’a negotiation doctrine as the basis of Iranian diplomacy and the use of techniques such as taqiyyah, tanfih and khod’eh. A model for negotiations with Iran is developed using key elements of the research. AFRIKAANS : Die studie fokus op Iranese onderhandelingstyl en - metodiek. Twee teorieë, naamlik Putnam (1988) se “twee-ledige interaktiewe onderhandelingsproses” en Hermann et al. (1987) se leierskapsmodel, is gebruik om Iran se gefragmenteerde leierselite asook die staat se formele en informele netwerke wat ‘n sleutelrol vervul in onderhandeling te identifiseer. Bykomend hiertoe is ‘n analise gemaak van faktore soos kultuur en godsdiens wat onderliggend is aan Iran se “nasionale karakter” en dus ’n direkte invloed uitoefen op Iranese onderhandelingstyl. Die studie wys ook hoe die 1979 rewolusie ‘n verandering gebring het deur godsdiens en kultuur tot gelykwaardige dimensies van die internationale politiek te verhoog nadat dit voorheen heeltemal geïgnoreer is. Dit bly egter vreemd vir die Weste. Die studie slaag daarin om deur middel van twee navorsingsondersoeke rakende Iran se oorname van die VSA ambassade in Tehran tussen 1979 en 1981) en die Iran-E3/EU kernonderhandelings tussen 2003 en 2006 die fokus te plaas op die identifisering en ontwikkeling van ‘n Iranese onderhandelingstyl. Tegnieke soos taqiyyah, tanfih en khod’eh wat die basis van Iran se diplomatieke onderhandellingstyl vorm, word vervolgens bespreek terwyl ‘n model vir onderhandelinge met Iran ook ontwikkel is uit die gegewens wat verkry is uit die navorsing.Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2010.Political Sciencesunrestricte

The Rare Decays \piee, \etaee and \etamumu$ in Chiral Perturbation Theory

We calculate the decay rates for \piee, \etaee and \etamumu in chiral perturbation theory. The linear combination of counterterms necessary to render these amplitudes finite is fixed by the recently measured branching fraction for \etamumu. We find \Br(\piee ) = 7\pm 1\times 10^{-8} and \Br(\etaee )=5\pm 1\times 10^{-9}.Comment: (6 pages, 1 figure available on request, uses harvmac.tex), UCSD/PTH 92-23, CALT-68-180

The saddle-point method for condensed Bose gases

The application of the conventional saddle-point approximation to condensed Bose gases is thwarted by the approach of the saddle-point to the ground-state singularity of the grand canonical partition function. We develop and test a variant of the saddle-point method which takes proper care of this complication, and provides accurate, flexible, and computationally efficient access to both canonical and microcanonical statistics. Remarkably, the error committed when naively employing the conventional approximation in the condensate regime turns out to be universal, that is, independent of the system's single-particle spectrum. The new scheme is able to cover all temperatures, including the critical temperature interval that marks the onset of Bose--Einstein condensation, and reveals in analytical detail how this onset leads to sharp features in gases with a fixed number of particles. In particular, within the canonical ensemble the crossover from the high-temperature asymptotics to the condensate regime occurs in an error-function-like manner; this error function reduces to a step function when the particle number becomes large. Our saddle-point formulas for occupation numbers and their fluctuations, verified by numerical calculations, clearly bring out the special role played by the ground state.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figures. Ann. Phys. (N.Y.), in pres

Novel Schizophrenia Risk Gene TCF4 Influences Verbal Learning and Memory Functioning in Schizophrenia Patients

Background: Recently, a role of the transcription factor 4 (TCF4) gene in schizophrenia has been reported in a large genome-wide association study. It has been hypothesized that TCF4 affects normal brain development and TCF4 has been related to different forms of neurodevelopmental disorders. Schizophrenia patients exhibit strong impairments of verbal declarative memory (VDM) functions. Thus, we hypothesized that the disease-associated C allele of the rs9960767 polymorphism of the TCF4 gene led to impaired VDM functioning in schizophrenia patients. Method: The TCF4 variant was genotyped in 401 schizophrenia patients. VDM functioning was measured using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). Results: Carriers of the C allele were less impaired in recognition compared to those carrying the AA genotype (13.76 vs. 13.06; p = 0.049). Moreover, a trend toward higher scores in patients with the risk allele was found for delayed recall (10.24 vs. 9.41; p = 0.088). The TCF4 genotype did not influence intelligence or RAVLT immediate recall or total verbal learning. Conclusion: VDM function is influenced by the TCF4 gene in schizophrenia patients. However, the elevated risk for schizophrenia is not conferred by TCF4-mediated VDM impairment. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Base

Suppressed Black Hole Production from Minimal Length

Large extra dimensions lower the Planck scale to values soon accessible. Motivated by string theory, the models of large extra dimensions predict a vast number of new effects in the energy range of the lowered Planck scale, among them the production of TeV-mass black holes. But not only is the Planck scale the energy scale at which effects of modified gravity become important. String theory as well as noncommutative quantum mechanics suggest that the Planck length acts a a minimal length in nature, providing a natural ultraviolet cutoff and a limit to the possible resolution of spacetime. The minimal length effects thus become important in the same energy range in which the black holes are expected to form. In this paper we examine the influence of the minimal length on the expected production rate of the black holes.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure