Archive | September, 2018

Fifteen districts started the school year on strike in Washington state—the latest to ride the West Virginia wave.

That Hurricane Florence broke rainfall records for tropical storms in both North and South Carolina shouldn’t be surprising, as global climate change has increased extreme precipitation in all areas of the continental United States.

Climate change catastrophe is, as this article is written, facing hundreds of thousands on the eastern seaboard of the United States and on the Philippines island of Luzon, as Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut make landfall simultaneously. Mangkhut also threatens Hong Kong, South China and maybe Vietnam.

Since Spain only occupies a small part of the border, the wall would need to be built through many different countries.

At a time when the American population is radicalizing, when popular movements are coalescing around “radical” demands—Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE, tuition-free college, etc.—it can be useful to draw collective inspiration from the Workers’ Bill proposed by the U.S. communist party in 1930.

September 10, 2018 Prison Radio broadcast from Mumia Abu-Jamal on the significance of a “lock down” that has been instituted for the entire state of Pennsylvania.

A group of union leaders, popular economy advocates, Senegalese street vendors, and militants from the Excluded Workers Movement and CTEP (MTE-CTEP) were taken into jail by Argentine police, in a situation marked by a high dose of violence and violation of their human rights Buenos Aires City.

Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, the trajectory of the world economy has been hesitant, unstable and prone to many risks. Output recovery has been limited and fragile; and, more significantly, even in the more dynamic economies, it has not increased good-quality employment or reduced inequality and material insecurity.

The Social Wealth Fund plan is insidious in the sense that it has the capacity to redirect vast amounts of energy and resources toward a goal presented as “socialist” when in reality it is fundamentally incompatible with socialism. We must bring the discussion out into the open to prevent such seductive ideas from compromising the basic vision and integrity of socialism.

‘The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.’ —Marx

THE latest advert for Ukraine’s armed forces depicts chiselled military hunks over a caption: “THEY WILL PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENTS — Ukrainian Army: protecting the borders of civilisation.”

Legal advocates have scored some major class-related victories in 2018. In January, an appellate court held that the administration of California’s money bail system violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of indigent defendants.

What does it mean for whites if climate change is real?

Our global ecological crisis has created an increasing interest in Marx’s theory of metabolic rift as a crucial aspect of capitalism (Foster 2013). To appreciate fully how capitalism creates this rift, it is important to examine the human metabolic relation with nature in general and theoretical terms.

The great social thinker, Samir Amin, has died. The social sciences have lost three unique figures in this year. First, the Brazilian Theotonio dos Santos, who inspired many to study the world system from a radical perspective. He was followed by the Peruvian Aníbal Quijano, who posed the concept of “cultural revolution” to give the peoples of Latin America their own identity.

What passes for Critical Theory today is nugatory; it is philosophically weak, and politically compromised. In Thompson’s words, the project has ‘abandoned the search for the real mechanisms and sources of social power’.

In 1980, the magazine Tricontinental, published by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), dedicated its issue no. 119 to Haiti. The editors wrote, ‘Very little is known about the Haitian people’s struggle,’ as the imperialists have ‘erected a wall of silence around Haiti.’

SHADOW chancellor John McDonnell has outlined Labour’s plans to reform the City today that include a financial transactions tax (FTT) expected to raise around £5 billion a year for public services.

Israeli operatives and their U.S. lobbyists sprang into action when the Movement for Black Lives came out in support of the boycott Israel movement.

Given the humble goal of Caracas to free itself from the domineering whims of a U.S. imperialism keen on reviving the notorious Monroe Doctrine, it is obvious why the U.S. would see sinister motives in the fraternal reception Beijing has offered to the Venezuelan head of state.