Archive | May, 2018

Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Moon Jae-In and the coming summit with Donald Trump do not constitute a volte-face by the North Korean leader.

Are we Marxists? Do Marxists exist? Stupidity, thou alone art immortal. The question will probably be taken up again over the next few days, the period around Marx’s centenary, and will bring forth rivers of ink and idiocy.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that U.S. President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case.

There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final.

Did Maulana Bhashani—the famous Red Maulana—ever read Marx? I recently asked this question to a prominent biographer of Bhashani—Syed Abul Maksud.

This a very professional movie made by a leftist director (Raul Peck), starring a number of rather good actors. It covers the time between 1842, when Marx was the chief editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, and early 1848, when the “Communist Manifesto” was finished.

Morales explained that “the empire acts out of fear of the sovereign vote and knows that it will never again subject the free people.”

A Donald-Bibi drama is being staged; each is playing his part on cue. Only days after Netanyahu’s press conference attack on Iran, Trump tore up the U.S. copy of the Iran nuclear agreement.

Trump’s anti-Iran move on Tuesday was deeply worrying for allies of the US. It is a blow for those countries, especially in Europe, that were hoping to build on the big expansion of trade with and investment in Iran after the July 2015 nuclear deal was signed.

The following is the second part of the interview with Samir Amin. The first part was published in the Frontline issue dated May 11, 2018.

No I am not talking about my encounter with the ghost of Karl Marx in Bangladesh.

The Venezuelan people will go to the polling stations across the country on Sunday, May 20th. This is the fifth presidential election since Hugo Chavez won the vote in 1998. It is the second since the death of Chavez in 2013.

This reneging on international agreements by the U.S. is not an isolated case. This is the pattern that the U.S. has been following now for the last 25 years.

Friedrich Engels, while informing a common friend about Marx’s death in March 1883, wrote “…mankind is shorter by a head, and the greatest head of our time at that”.

Ecological resistance in the twenty-first century has more and more been informed by the development of Marxian ecology and ecosocialism more generally.

This is the bicentenary year of the birth of Karl Marx; and the best way of observing it is to recall the teachings of that great man—and act according to them.

On every scale, from the smallest cells to the entire planet, the essential elements of life are constantly used and re-used. Biogeochemical cycles are the basis of the biosphere.

VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro promised more revolution and less corruption as tests were carried out at polling stations across the country prior to elections due later this month.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s reliance on data behemoth and right-wing affiliate Palantir for its Iran analytics raises the possibility that it will be used as a Trojan horse for intelligence-gathering by Iran’s enemies such as the U.S. and Israel.

The German postal service has released a postage stamp, designed by visual artist Thomas Mayfried, to commemorate the 200th birthday of Karl Marx.