Two more leftie references

Two books that I came across while reading two very different sources, but would probably play well with the audience here:

• Globalization and Its Discontents is a book that I found on thinkingpeace.com, written by Joseph Stiglitz, a former economist in the Clinton administration. The (rather long) description he gives of the book tells of how he believes globalization can be a force for huge amounts of good in developing countries, it's the way in which it's been implemented -- by an IMF with its head up its own ass, by politicians with their own agendas, by corporate powerhouses looking for their own advantage -- that is hurting the countries who need help the most.


• I read about One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank in Chris Turner's Planet Simpson. I haven't yet read where Turner's going with what Frank wrote about market populism and the "New Economy", but I suspect he'll take it to where his brilliant essay in Shift Magazine a few years back took it: after September 11 2001, when America had the chance to take what had happened and move forward, when they could have decided to reassess their place in the world, to reconsider their view of those less fortunate than themselves, to strenghen their ties with allies and build new alliances with former enemies now sympathetic to their plight, they waited with baited breath for their leaders to tell them what to do. And the first thing these fearless visionaries told them to, the brave first step they begged of their constituents was...please go shopping.