Syria's 'circle of hell': Aleppo residents describe children without heads, streets filled with blood and injuries never before witnessed by surgeons
Why Piketty isn’t Marx
Thomas Piketty’s thousand-page economics bestseller reduces capital to mere wealth — leaving out its political impact on social and economic relationships throughout history.
by Frédéric Lordon
Thomas Piketty’s global renown shouldn’t stop us from asking some hard political questions — or rather questions about his intellectual and political deception. The media have been almost unanimous about his Capital in the Twenty-First Century (1), proof in itself of the book’s total innocuousness. The world would have to have changed a great deal for Libération, Le Monde, the New York Times, theWashington Post and many more to be so enthusiastic about anything actually controversial. Some English-language media, helped by less than progressive reservations, have managed to keep their heads: the Financial Times took Piketty to task on an obscure statistical point; Bloomberg ran a front cover last May in the style of a teen magazine, showing Piketty as a heartthrob surrounded with stars.
One thing is for sure: only favourably disposed media could hail Piketty as a “21st-century Marx” simply because he calls his book Capital. He admits he has “never managed really” to read Das Kapital (2) or any other works of Marx, does not set out any theory of capitalism, and makes no attempt to challenge its basis (3).
U.S. student held in North Korea tells CNN: 'I wanted to be arrested
Updated 0928 GMT (1628 HKT) May 5, 2015
Won-moon Joo, 21, smiled and seemed relaxed as he walked into a conference room at the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang.
Our North Korean government minders informed us Monday night that we'd be interviewing Joo, a request we made on Saturday, just hours after arriving in the country.
CNN was given exclusive access to the South Korean citizen, who is a permanent resident of the United States and has been detained in North Korea since last month.
Joo was most recently living in New Jersey and studying at New York University. He took a semester off to travel across the United States and says he went to North Korea after an unsuccessful attempt to find work in California.
Nepal’s Young Men, Lost to Migration, Then a Quake
By
KATHMANDU, Nepal — When the dense pillar of smoke from cremations by the Bagmati River was thinning late last week, the bodies were all coming from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas, and they were all of young men.
Hindu custom dictates that funeral pyres should be lighted by the oldest son of the deceased, but these men were too young to have sons, so they were burned by their brothers or fathers. Sukla Lal, a maize farmer, made a 14-hour journey by bus to retrieve the body of his 19-year-old son, who had been on his way to the Persian Gulf to work as a laborer.
“He wanted to live in the countryside, but he was compelled to leave by poverty,” Mr. Lal said, gazing ahead steadily as his son’s remains smoldered. “He told me, ‘You can live on your land, and I will come up with money, and we will have a happy family.’ ”
Russia raises Stalin's ghost amid nostalgia for past glories
By Anna Smolchenko and Olga Rotenberg1 hour ago
Law student Mikhail Kosyrev used to have a negative view of Stalin but his attitude has drastically changed in recent years, he said, insisting the wartime tyrant meant well.
"Over the past five years I've often watched documentary films about Stalin, about that time on television and learnt more about him," the 29-year-old told AFP.
"And now I don't have any negative feelings towards him. He had good intentions."
Since President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000, there has been a growing chorus of Russians who take a positive view of the Soviet tyrant's role in history.
Those attitudes have changed so dramatically on the back of a recent burst of patriotic fervour whipped up by state-controlled media that some analysts speak of a creeping rehabilitation of Stalin.
Peruvian government investigates attack by reclusive tribe
- 9 hours ago
- Latin America & Caribbean
The Peruvian government has sent indigenous culture specialists to help a community in the Amazon rainforest after a man was killed by a member of a reclusive tribe.
The man was shot with an arrow when members of the isolated Mashco Piro tribe invaded his village, Shipetiari, in the rainforest.
It is the third time this year that the Mashco Piro people have been seen.
Anthropologists say they were probably looking for tools or food.
However, it is not known why the Mashco Piro attacked.
The group is estimated to number around 600 and they live in separated groups, constantly moving through the forest.
They occasionally make makeshift shelters along river banks and dig for turtle eggs.
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