Alternative Communal Revolutionary Forces (FARC). This is the name of the new political party with which former Colombian guerillas are looking to enter the country’s political arena.
Archive | 2017
In month after Charlottesville, papers spent as much time condemning anti-nazis as nazis
Since the Charlottesville attack a month ago, a review of commentary in the six top broadsheet newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, LA Times, San Jose Mercury News and Washington Post—found virtually equal amounts of condemnation of fascists and anti-fascist protesters.
State conservatives block city progressives
Conservative forces, organized by infamous groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), are using their influence in state legislatures to pass preemption laws. The purpose is to stop, and even roll back, the gains of progressive local coalitions by usurping the authority of city governments, thereby rendering popular strategies, like ballot and elected official vote […]
Why do we still have employer sanctions?
The AFL-CIO was one of the main supporters of employer sanctions back in 1986. It only took 13 years for the labor federation to learn its lesson: in February 2000 it officially called for the elimination of the policy. Another 17 years have now passed, and the case against the sanctions has only grown more […]
Not a duel, but a duet
Not even the stubbornest non-voters can ignore the coming Election Day in Germany, as always on a Sunday, September 24. With 34 parties, some state or local but most of them national, every stroll offers a wide choice of handsome, smiling candidate photos and bold clichés.
Past continuous: Karl Marx’s Capital can help unravel the perplexities of modern-day capitalism
On September 14, it will be exactly 150 years since the publication of Capital: Critique of Political Economy, the first volume of Karl Marx’s epochal Das Kapital. The historicity of the book can be gauged by the fact that this first of three bulky tomes was published by a Hamburg publisher two years after the […]
A question of class: A new class politics, a connective antagonism
Inequality is rising, social divisions are becoming more entrenched, social guarantees once taken for granted have yielded to a generalized culture of insecurity and a common fear of decline.
We must have a new Poor People’s Campaign and Moral Revival
Channeling the incisive analysis of our best historians, TaNehisi Coates cut through the talking points of political pundits last week to name Donald Trump America’s “First White president.” Writing for The Atlantic, the National Book Award recipient made clear how there could be no Donald Trump without President Obama. The chaos from which the whole […]
Beating the drum for a “good” nuclear war with North Korea
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has proven herself to be one of the most hawkish U.S. representatives to the UN, likely a reflection of the increasingly hawkish veer of the U.S. President Donald Trump, who had originally campaigned on anti-interventionism.
A lost document from the Cold War
This article covers the first substantive Internet posting and analysis of a unique Cold War document, the “Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China.”
The informal empire of London
The division of the world is not only by classes, but by North and South as well. And unfortunately the British left does not realise that, and the framing of being anti-neoliberal, in contrast to anti-imperialist, denies this differentiated reality.
Bernard D’Mello on revolution in the global south
From the time of independence in 1947, India has had the resources and the potential to achieve a high level of human development—yet the great majority of the country’s people have remained desperately poor.
Yes, Google uses its power to quash ideas it doesn’t like—I know because it happened to me [updated]
Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet.… [But as a now-global monopoly] the company has an incentive to suppress information about itself.
UCS experts’ view of risk and preparedness as the impacts of hurricanes Harvey and Irma mount
We’ve witnessed the destruction done by Hurricane Harvey and now, less than two weeks later, with clean-up in Texas and Louisiana scarcely underway, we see the path of Caribbean devastation Hurricane Irma is leaving as it heads toward mainland U.S.
War and colonialism in the Central African Republic
For the vast majority of media outlets Africa is a continent in chaos, a place of countless massacres, epidemics, and starvation caused by conflicts, that generate extremist groups which mercilessly loot, rape, and kidnap.
Politics above law: how Trump channels far right icon Carl Schmitt without knowing it
It is safe to assume that Trump has not read the writings of the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt, who wrote his most important books during the Weimar Republic and leading up to the Nazi regime. At the root of these writings was Schmitt’s emphasis on placing politics above law.
Unions edge closer to existential crisis
Our nation is often flummoxed by the chaotic and deceptive behavior of the Trump administration. Yet, these distractions disguise an economic agenda. That agenda is unapologetically determined to benefit corporate financial interests against the interests of all working people.
Making their own history
More than half a century ago, E. P. Thompson pioneered a new approach to labor history in The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson was dismayed with the bourgeois idea that history is made by great men, and the occasional princess or queen, but also frustrated with socialist histories that replace statesmen and business […]
Dangerous times: John Pilger discusses North Korea, China and the threat of nuclear war and accident
The US continues to provoke North Korea with military exercises near its borders. It also fails to live up to diplomatic agreements. Western media continue to distort the chronology of cause and effect, inverting reality to claim that North Korea is provoking the West.
Who’s working for Facebook?
There are plenty of reasons to be interested in—and, even more, concerned about—Facebook. Many of them are raised in the recent review of Facebook-related books by John Lanchester [ht: db]: the fragmentation of the polity (via the targeting of posts), the dissemination of “fake news” (which played an important role in the 2016 U.S. presidential […]
