USA: The Plot Against America review – fascism grips in taut political allegory

We may never know what prompted two of the most sociopolitically concerned writers in modern television history to turn at this precise juncture to adapting Philip Roth’s 2004 novel

The Plot Against America, which imagines an America that has elected a populist celebrity demagogue as president and begins to slide towards fascism. But they have, and David Simon’s and Ed Burns’s six part HBO series has reached our shores. Roth always insisted that his story about aviation hero Charles Lindbergh beating Roosevelt in the 1940 election was not a political allegory. But politics has changed.

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The Plot Against America review – fascism grips in taut political allegory | Television & radio | The Guardian

French Presidential Elections: Inequality guru sees ‘French Roosevelt’ in candidate Hollande - by Geert de Clercq

 

Francois Hollande

French economist Thomas Piketty has long fed global debate about income inequality and called for supertaxes on the rich. Now he has the ear of French presidential challenger Francois Hollande, who plans to apply his advice if elected. 

Hollande, a Socialist running strongly against President Nicolas Sarkozy, has made waves in France and beyond with a plan to tax all income over E1 million (R10.3m) a year at 75 percent.

His proposal comes in an international context of protests against a rising wealth gap in Western countries by the “occupy” and “indignados” movements, a US election campaign focused on taxation and the debt crisis besetting euro zone governments. 

Frontrunner in polls ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting, Hollande is the first mainstream politician in a big industrial country to propose such drastic tax hikes for the rich. 

The 40-year-old Piketty, seeing a welcome historical parallel with the US response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, said Hollande might be “the next Roosevelt”.

For more: Inequality guru sees ‘French Roosevelt’ in candidate Hollande - Business News | IOL Business | IOL.co.za

Alternet - US Economy: Only a Roosevelt-Scale Counterrevolution Can Prevent Great Depression II - by Robert Kuttner-

For the complete report from AlterNet click on this link

US Economy: Only a Roosevelt-Scale Counterrevolution Can Prevent Great Depression II - by Robert Kuttner

"Free-market extremists brought the US this needless economic collapse. Here's a rundown of the mistakes we've made and the reforms we need now.The current carnage on Wall Street, with dire spillover effects on Main Street, is the result of a failed ideology -- the idea that financial markets could regulate themselves. Serial deregulation fed on itself. Deliberate repeal of regulations became entangled with failure to carry out laws still on the books. Corruption mingled with simple incompetence. And though the ideology was largely Republican, it was abetted by Wall Street Democrats."