Ignacio Ramonet

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Ignacio Ramonet
Salon du livre 2011 a Geneve - Ignacio Ramonet.jpg
Ramonet in Geneva, 2011.
BornIgnacio Ramonet Miguez
(1943-05-05) 5 May 1943 (age 81)
Redondela, Galicia, Spain
Alma mater Bordeaux Montaigne University
Years active1972–present
Notable works Fidel Castro: biografía a dos voces

Ignacio Ramonet Miguez (born 5 May 1943) is a Spanish academic, journalist and writer who has been based in Paris for much of his career. After becoming first known for writing on film and media, he became editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique , serving from 1991 until March 2008. [1] Under his leadership, LMD established editorial independence in 1996 from Le Monde , with which it had been affiliated since 1954.

Contents

Ramonet published an editorial in December 1997 in LMD on the Tobin tax that led to the launching of ATTAC. This is an activist organization promoting taxation of foreign exchange transactions.

Ramonet is one of the founders of the NGO Media Watch Global, and its president. He frequently contributes to El País , among other media, and participates in an advisory council to the Venezuelan network Telesur.

Life

Ramonet was born in Redondela (Pontevedra), Spain, in 1943. He went to Tangier, Morocco, to study engineering. He continued these studies at Bordeaux, Rabat and Paris. In Paris he earned a PhD in Semiology and the History of Culture, at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences)- EHESS, one of the French Grande Écoles.[ citation needed ]

He has been a professor of Communication Theory at Paris Diderot University. He also taught at the Sorbonne. He first started writing journalism as a film critic and writer about film for various magazines. Ramonet later wrote more frequently about media culture, communications, and national affairs, becoming associated with Le Monde Diplomatique , started in 1954 as a monthly publication associated with the newspaper.

He was elected as editor-in-chief in January 1991, serving to March 2008. Under his leadership, the magazine became editorially independent of Le Monde in 1996. It has been an independent critic outside academia of media culture and its ties to national society.

In 2007 Ramonet participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project.

Opinions

Socialism

Ramonet says that it is a betrayal of socialism for some social democrat parties to have chosen the third way between socialism and capitalism. [2]

Fidel Castro

In May 2004, Ramonet supported Castro when Castro disputed Forbes Magazine's claim that he was the seventh wealthiest head of state. [3]

In 2006, after Castro had retired from public life, Ramonet praised Castro's legacy in a series of articles in Foreign Policy journal. He said reforms under Castro "have proceeded from a popular movement in which the hopes of peasants, workers, and even professionals from the small urban bourgeoisie have converged". [4] He was approved as Castro's only authorised biographer. [5] In September 2006, Ramonet published Fidel Castro : Biografía a Dos Voces. [6]

Against globalization and neoliberalism

Ramonet has called for autarky and for regulation, taxes and tariffs that reduce international trade. [2]

ATTAC

According to Ramonet, globalization and ultra-liberalism threaten the sovereignty of national states. In his December 1997 editorial "Disarming the markets", Ramonet attributed the Asian economic crisis to globalization, and said that it threatened the identity of national states. To counter this, he called for an NGO to promote the Tobin tax on foreign exchange. He became a founder of Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens' Action (ATTAC). [2]

Works

Articles

See also

Related Research Articles

A Tobin tax was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. It was suggested by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penalize short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency. By the late 1990s, the term Tobin tax was being applied to all forms of short term transaction taxation, whether across currencies or not. The concept of the Tobin tax is being picked up by various tax proposals currently being discussed, amongst them the European Union Financial Transaction Tax as well as the Robin Hood tax.

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References

  1. "To our readers". Mondediplo.com. 2008-03-03. Retrieved 2014-02-12.
  2. 1 2 3 Vilka är franska Attac? - Globaliseringskritikernas gurus Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine , Johan Norberg, Liberal Debatt 1-2001
  3. "Cuba: Infortuné Fidel - l'Express". Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
  4. Ignacio Ramonet: "Cuba's Future is Now", "Castro's Enviable Record" and "Viva Fidel!" in Was Fidel Good for Cuba?, Foreign Policy, 27 December 2006 (pdf)
  5. Cuba’s revolution 50 years on, Financial Times, 24 January 2009
  6. Ramonet, Ignacio (2006). Fidel Castro, biografía a dos voces. Random House Mondadori. ISBN   0-307-37653-2.