Latest news with #neoliberalism
Khaleej Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Renowned Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim dies at 88
Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, famed for his critiques of political repression, neoliberalism and Western hegemony, has died at the age of 88, the culture ministry announced on Wednesday. Ibrahim "passed away today, leaving behind an immortal literary and humanitarian legacy," Culture Minister Ahmed Fouad Hanno said in a tribute, calling the writer a "pillar of modern Arabic literature". Born in Cairo in 1937, Ibrahim was famed around the Arab world as a chronicler of social injustice, known for his sparse, documentary-style prose and his fierce independence. His writings — which blurred the line between the personal and the political — captured the struggles of the Arab world in the postcolonial era, particularly those of his native Egypt. Arguably his most famous novel, "Zaat" (1992), tells the story of Egypt's modern history — from the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952 to the neoliberalism of the 1990s under president Hosni Mubarak -- through the eyes of an ordinary, middle-class woman. It was adapted into a prime-time television series in 2013, bringing Ibrahim's scathing portrayal of power to a new generation of Egyptians in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprising that ousted Mubarak. A dissident through and through, Ibrahim was first jailed for his leftist politics in 1959, under then president Gamal Abdel Nasser. His five years in prison would form the basis for his debut 1966 novel, "That Smell", which was initially banned. Ibrahim's renown later saw many of his works translated into English and French. In 2003, he refused to accept a prestigious literary prize from the Mubarak government charging that it "oppresses our people, protects corruption and allows the Israeli ambassador to remain while Israel kills and rapes". The last was a reference to alleged Israeli abuses in the occupied territories during the second Palestinian intifada or uprising. Among Ibrahim's most celebrated works are "The Committee" (1981), a Kafkaesque allegory of bureaucracy and surveillance, and "Stealth" (2007), a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood during World War II. Generations of Arab writers found inspiration in his minimalist style, heavy with irony and rooted in everyday life.
RNZ News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Watch live: Opponents of Regulatory Standards Bill dominate first morning of hearings
Watch live: Opponents dominate early hearings on Seymour's bill Opponents of the Regulatory Standards Bill are saying it is unconstitutional, ignores Te Tiriti o Waitangi and will do the opposite of what it claims. The bill is facing scrutiny at select committee this week , with about 30 hours of hearings packed into four days. ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour says it aims to improve lawmaking and regulation, but its critics - who make up the majority of submitters - argue it does the opposite. None of the MPs who make up the committee actually showed up in person - all appearing via teleconferencing - so it was just submitters, media and staff from the clerk's office actually in the room on Monday morning. Submitters were given five minutes for individuals and 10 minutes for groups, leaving little time for questions. Chair Ryan Hamilton said that was standard practice, but has received some pushback from some of the submitters. ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour. Photo: VNP/Phil Smith Multiple submitters on Monday called the bill "constitutionally unsound". Māori lawyer and legal academic Ani Mikaere said it had nothing to do with its proclaimed objective of improving regulation, and "its true goal is to further embed neoliberalism". She said it would create a default non-compliance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the Regulatory Standards Board it created would be "unqualified, unrepresentative, and unaccountable" - serving the interests of corporate elites. She said ACT had gained disproportionate influence over the government, and National and New Zealand First lacked a backbone and were being completely upstaged and "reduced to the role of chorus line in the ACT pantomime". She also targeted Seymour's claim made in an RNZ interview that bots were behind the overwhelming opposition in submissions , calling it a "frankly childish tirade" with no evidence to back it up. Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer told the committee the bill was "the strangest piece of New Zealand legislation I have ever seen". Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith "It is quite bizarre, and it will not work," he told MPs. "And the idea that anything good could come from it is idle." Sir Geoffrey said the legislation would produce "a terrific amount of extra work" and hinder ministers' objectives, all based on an "unproven ideology" that the country was over-regulated. Appearing for the Iwi Chairs Forum, Rahui Papa said the bill amounted to a "power grab for the few, a power grab that will support the old boys' network". He said the bill had intentionally sidelined Te Tiriti o Waitangi and was "all about money over manaakitanga". He argued the bill would negatively affect environmental and social protections. Natalie Coates spoke for the Māori law society Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa, and opposed it in its entirety, saying it should be "thrown in the bin, or at the very least gutted and completely rebuilt from scratch". Natalie Coates. Photo: supplied She said it was constitutionally unsound, flagrantly breached and ignored Te Tiriti o Waitangi, prioritised neoliberal values and economic liberty over collective wellbeing, and - if passed - would proceed despite significant public opposition and against official advice. "That is not good lawmaking built with the whole country in mind. It is a minor party pushing their political waka against the tide, blind to the current beneath. Strengthening our regulatory system is of course a good aim, but the bill as currently framed doesn't do that and in fact would destabilise it - privileging some interests, sidelining others that have been longstanding legal tradition in Aotearoa." People appearing in support of the bill were relatively few and far between by comparison. Seymour himself did not make a submission, but argued the bill was all about supporting better lawmaking and limiting the amount of poor regulation - ultimately saving the government, and therefore the taxpayer, money. He said it forced the government to explain where it had breached principles of the bill, though critics said those principles were narrow and in support of a neoliberal viewpoint. Seymour argued opposition to the bill was just alarmism grounded in misinformation, and that its opponents did not really understand it . Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not
The convergence of the US Senate's passage of Donald Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill' in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America is ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both. The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism, the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism. Up to now, uncertainty about Trump's place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them. Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump's charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump's appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway 'swamp'. He renewed them both instead. This is where Trump's ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism. Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped). The 'beautiful' domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump's signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and 'reforming' welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare. On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now. Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn't materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence. Ironically, Trump's warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative 'never Trump' scourges became 'sometimes Trump' supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering. With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran's nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump's place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far. Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump's strike on Iran's nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump's escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran's regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies. With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president. Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not
The convergence of the US Senate's passage of Donald Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill' in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America is ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both. The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism, the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism. Up to now, uncertainty about Trump's place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them. Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump's charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump's appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway 'swamp'. He renewed them both instead. This is where Trump's ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism. Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped). The 'beautiful' domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump's signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and 'reforming' welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare. On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now. Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn't materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence. Ironically, Trump's warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative 'never Trump' scourges became 'sometimes Trump' supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering. With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran's nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump's place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far. Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump's strike on Iran's nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump's escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran's regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies. With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president. Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College
New York Times
29-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Progressives and the Third-Party Question
To the Editor: Re 'Viable Third Party in '28? Conditions Are Right, but Odds Are Still Long,' by Nate Cohn (The Upshot, June 15): The opening for a third party is not where Mr. Cohn thinks it is. It is not with his 'new neoliberals.' Most of the wealthy donors, professional politicians and party operatives who run the two major parties still promote the neoliberal policies that Mr. Cohn claims provide the recipe for a successful third party: 'deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration.' Mr. Cohn promotes the trendy 'abundance agenda' that is simply rebranding the old nostrum of growth, not redistribution that neoliberals have been running on since they began displacing New Deal liberals in the 1970s. Mr. Cohn fantasizes that a third party could emerge from an 'establishment-friendly campaign' with 'the support of wealthy elites.' But disaffected voters are anti-establishment and disgusted at billionaires buying elections. Polling consistently shows majority support for progressive reforms that the major parties won't support, including Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, free public child care and education through college, and taxing the rich to fund such reforms. The opening is for a progressive third party. Howie HawkinsSyracuse, writer was the Green Party candidate for president in 2020. To the Editor: Nate Cohn argues that conditions for a third party could be coming into place. As the founder of the kind of party he describes, I can tell you this: Third parties don't work. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
