Capitalism

Say what you like about Michael Moore, he certainly knows how to pick his subjects. "Fahrenheit 9/11" was so au courant about the invasion of Iraq it won the 2004 Palme d'Or at Cannes, and 2007's "Sicko" got the jump on the current healthcare imbroglio. Now, barely a year after the Wall Street meltdown, "Capitalism: A Love Story" examines, in typical love-it-or-leave Moore fashion, the causes of the collapse of the century. "Capitalism" is not just Moore's latest documentary, it is, as the filmmaker himself has said, "the movie I've been making for the past 20 years."

The country is polarized, Michael Moore is Hollywood's most polarizing filmmaker, and almost everybody is agitated about the economy. Put it all together, and the timing for Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" couldn't be any more provocative. Moore's latest nonfiction jeremiad -- about the incestuous relationship between government and corporate America -- premieres in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday with the kind of build-up usually reserved for "Spider-Man" sequels. On the heels of the film's raucous, ovation-filled screenings at the Venice and Toronto International film festivals, Moore will continue a high-profile publicity tour that includes appearances on "The Tonight Show," "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "The View" and one of television's stranger stops for an anti-consumption crusader, "The Martha Stewart Show."

Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University. For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court.

Are we witnessing the erosion of capitalism, or its salvation? That question is swirling around the federal government's latest proposed intervention in the private financial markets since Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson announced Friday a plan to take equity stakes in banks as a quick and efficient way to pump them with new capital.

More than 80,000 people gathered for an anti-capitalism conference in Nairobi, marching from Kibera, its largest slum, to the downtown area in a protest of global policies they say hurt the poor. In Nairobi, Kenya's capital, at least 700,000 people live in Kibera, just one square mile, with little access to running water and other basic services. Organizers of the World Social Forum set up the march to contrast the slum with Nairobi's elegant homes and hotels.

On the day 10 years ago that this longtime British colony returned to Chinese rule, even the sky seemed to be crying over the territory's uncertain future. The heavens opened as the old colonial masters waved their farewells and sailed away on the ship Britannia. Crowds lingered under umbrellas during the fireworks display that lighted up Victoria Harbor. At daybreak, another downpour drenched the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army as they crossed the border.

A rare open letter signed by 17 former top officials and conservative Marxist scholars ahead of a key party meeting accuses China's top leaders of steering the country in the wrong direction, pandering to foreigners, betraying the workers' revolution and jeopardizing social stability. "We're going down an evil road," says the letter on the website www.maoflag.net. "The whole country is at a most precarious time."

The "left-behind children" in China's countryside know their parents' cellphone or factory dorm numbers by heart. But when they call them, the phones are usually turned off or ring on and on. "My parents had to work overtime in the factory so they didn't make it home for New Year's," said Yang Weibo, 16, who spent the Chinese holiday with his grandmother. "My mom called to say she was heartbroken. I miss her." Lu Siqin can't help but cry whenever someone mentions her parents.

Communist Cuba will not follow China and open up to private businesses even if President Fidel Castro is too ill to lead the nation again, Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Garcia said. "In the hypothetical case that Comandante Fidel remains ill, would there be a change in Cuban policy toward a market opening? I can categorically say that is not foreseen; the Cuban people do not want that," Rodriguez told reporters during the Non-Aligned Movement summit of developing nations.

The bullet scar on her arm has faded like a distant star, but Maria Sebestyen remembers when tanks clattered through moonlit alleys, the enemy wore a Soviet uniform, and for a brief, bloody moment this city held the world's attention. Revolutions get crushed and enemies change. Today, the fervor and romanticism that defined Cold War defiance seems like quaint history from a worn book. University students carry iPods instead of Molotov cocktails.