Archive | January, 2019

Venezuela, the current target of U.S., President Donald Trump, is a case illustrating the ‘peculiarities’ of imperialist politics. We will proceed to outline the background, techniques and impact of the imperial power grab.

Russia denounced Tuesday the U.S. cynicism by announcing sanctions against the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA and excluding from that sanction U.S. companies operating in the South American nation.

Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.

For over two years we have been told Putin’s Russia has interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We now find the U.S. government has decided it can unilaterally invalidate the actual presidential elections in Venezuela and recognize a person of its choosing as president.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro says he plans to take legal action against the United States to defy the sanctions.

Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo is proposing that massive raids be carried out to hunt down books which contain communist teachings and banned ideologies. The proposal was made after the seizure of hundreds of books around the country allegedly containing “banned ideas”. — Taufiq Siddiq, Jakarta “I’m proposing that if possible, yes massive raids be carried […]

The policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) has been implemented by the ECB since 2015 in the wake of what the Fed had done in the U.S. from 2008 to 2014. It consists of massively purchasing private and public debt securities from banks in the Eurozone and from corporations.

What happens in Venezuela going forward will have major consequences for the entire region and the world; and, with the U.S. already pushing countries to pick sides, the world may soon become as divided as it was immediately preceding WW II.

The practice of citing conservative agitators is often characterized as “bothsidesism,” but here the news outlets only presented one side—the one on the far right—without even a hint that the claims might not have a factual basis.

Corporate media absolutely won’t tell you this, but this year’s Los Angeles teachers strike is the latest chapter in the long running struggle against the privatization of public education in the U.S

Steve Ellner examines the Trump Administration’s recognition of a shadow government and, in so doing, the U.S.’s violation of international law.

The next phase of rebellious art, I have thought all this time, belonged to the rise of the Underground Comix of the later 1960s, with one tip of the hat to the campus satire magazines that in some places gave artists like Austin’s Gilbert Shelton a start, and another to Harvey Kurtzman’s failed magazines after Mad, especially Help! (1961-65).

Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

Erik Olin Wright was radicalized in the 1960s and remained a Marxist because his moral compass simply wouldn’t allow him to drift away. With his death, the Left has lost one of its most brilliant intellectuals.

Inequality is sexist. It is also transphobic and racist. This is a reality demonstrated by Oxfam’s recent report on wealth and inequality, and a reality well understood by the people who live it.

Reports say that the Disarm collective, a local group that campaigns against police violence, has counted 98 cases of serious injuries till now, including 15 cases of people losing an eye to rubber bullets.

Luxemburg was born in 1871, in a Poland divided under German and Russian domination, and she played a role in the working-class socialist movement of each country.

The Trump administration’s January 23 recognition of Venezuela’s National Assembly leader, Juan Guaidó, as the president of Venezuela, in opposition to the “de facto” and “de jure” president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, threatens an avalanche of nations recognizing leaders of various political factions in countries around the world as legitimate governments.

Maduro cut relations with the U.S. and said that envoys of the countries who have stopped recognizing him as elected president have 72 hours to leave the country.

MARTIN LUTHER KING spoke with vision against capitalism, and about the kind of changes needed to replace it: the following quotes reflect some of King’s key thoughts on the subject as US citizens mark Martin Luther King Day.