Archive | December, 2020

Fanon’s idea that the measure of time not be that of the moment but that of the rest of the world takes on urgent significance as climate extinction meets global pandemic.

A prominent Hong Kong pundit and anti-China activist named Kong Tsung-gan has become a go-to source for Western media. An investigation by The Grayzone confirms Kong as a fake identity employed by an American teacher who’s a ubiquitous figure at local protests.

In saying that the terrible explosion in Beirut is an ecosocialist issue I am not counterposing this claim to the fact that this is also an issue of corruption, of government incompetence, of health and safety and many other things.

On August 4, 2020, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Venezuela. Appearing before the committee was U.S. State Department Special Representative Elliott Abrams.

One way to evaluate the seriousness of the Trudeau government’s stated objectives in seeking to oust Venezuela’s elected government is to examine their policies elsewhere in the region.

Comics, graphic novels, narrative drawing, illustrated fiction–call it what you like–is a growing arena for serious social and political commentary.

The coordinator of a media platform that works with social movements talks to VA about the history and challenges of popular communication.

The Trump administration wants to keep other countries from weaponizing technology the way the U.S. and its allies already have.

When it comes to China, Democracy Now, Jacobin, The Nation  and others on the imperial-minded U.S. ‘left” are allies of white supremacy.

This week is the 75th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only time nuclear bombs have been used in a conflict—and one could only hope the last time. To commemorate the anniversary, I thought it would be appropriate to devote this column to taking a hard look at current U.S. nuclear weapons policy, and to do that, I had a chat with our new Global Security Program Washington representative, Kevin Davis.

In a major essay to mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, John Pilger describes reporting from  five ‘ground zeros’ for nuclear weapons – from Hiroshima to Bikini, Nevada to Polynesia and Australia. He warns that unless we take action now, China is next.

The novel coronavirus continues its march through the world, with 18 million confirmed cases and at least 685,000 deaths. Of these, the United States of America, Brazil, and India are the worst-hit, harbouring about half of the world’s cases.

On Saturday, crowds came to Berlin from all over Germany for a huge mass parade, estimated at 17,000 to 20,000. The big crowd in Berlin, after picking up steam for weeks with smaller rallies, insisted that the whole corona virus pandemic had ended or maybe hadn’t really existed at all!

In the early hours of this Monday morning, the indefinite general strike and roadblocks began throughout Bolivia, called by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) and the organizations that constitute the Unity Pact, which demand that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal respect the election date established by law for September 6.

A disturbing new document outlines plans for a U.S. regime-change scheme against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government, overseen by USAID, to bring about a “market economy” and a purge of Sandinistas.

What can a virus tell us about climate breakdown, in its causation and in humanity’s response?

Although the date drew little notice in the U.S. media, July 27, 2020 marked the 67th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, an agreement that ended the fighting but not the war between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

In his famous speech from the dock in April 1964, Nelson Mandela spoke of ‘revolutionary democracy’ rooted in precolonial forms of collective deliberation and decision making.

On the 60th anniversary of Jean-Paul Sartre’s key text on Marxism, Robert Boncardo shows us why it is still relevant, and urgently needed, today.

A short and rather vaguely worded open letter published in Harper’s Magazine(7/7/20) earlier this month caused an unlikely media storm that continues to rumble on.