Archive | Commentary

I was reflecting on the wisdom I acquired in one of my early college classes, “Introduction to American Government,” and subsequent historical readings. First, the conventional wisdom of American political life was that Vice Presidents are rarely of any administrative or political consequence. Generally, sitting Vice Presidents represent the United States at funerals of foreign […]

What defines global capitalism today?

Summary This document elaborates an emerging economic paradigm that is already latent in Zohran Mamdani’s plans and practices. The paradigm, which we call Democratic Public Finance (DPF), reframes money as an inexhaustible and malleable public institution. According to DPF, money is public credit, a capacious tool for mobilizing everyone’s capacities to meet our needs and […]

On October 8, 2023, the Israeli war machine, armed and financed by Washington, launched the first genocide in history to be broadcast live before the eyes of the world. As we enter October 2025, the second year of this open genocide, neighborhoods in Gaza continue to be leveled, hospitals bombed, and children condemned to death […]

Big tech, ever on the hunt for new markets for their generative AI systems, are pushing hard to get them into U.S. public schools as well as colleges and universities. Their interest goes beyond short term profits—it is also about “grooming” a new generation to accept, if not embrace, the world big tech seeks to […]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO’s) 2025 summit in Tianjin produced a series of outcomes that, although modest in appearance, are strategically significant. The most prominent developments were the agreement in principle to establish an SCO Development Bank, seeded with approximately ¥2 billion in grants and a further ¥10–14 billion in concessional loans from China.

In the early hours of Friday, June 13, 2025, as most of Tehran slept, an Israeli missile hit a residential apartment block in the Sattarkhan district. Among the dead was 23-year-old Parnia Abbasi, a poet, bank employee, and recent graduate, alongside her teenage brother and both parents. Hours earlier, she had made plans to meet […]

With the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, the People’s Republic of China entered a new historical period in its development. Starting in 1978, the country began to prioritize a development model with characteristics quite distinct from those prevailing during the previous period (1949–78). From then on, China began to emphasize the growth of […]

BRICS+ is contradictory, uneven, and fragile—but in its openings, the Global South carves space for sovereignty and struggle Multipolarity Emerges from Crisis, Not Consensus The story they sell is that “order” was built by reasoned men in sensible suits. The story we live is different. Multipolarity did not grow out of seminars or summits; it […]

As scholars dedicated to questions of justice and ethics we believe that Yvette Cooper’s recent proscription of Palestine Action represents an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement and on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly, and protest.

In 1958 the assistant headmaster did the Bible reading at the morning assembly of the Karachi Grammar School (Pakistan), founded in 1848 by the Church of England. The reading from Acts 17:23 concerned St. Paul’s declaration upon seeing the Athenian monument to an unknown God. “What you worship but do not know—this is what I […]

Chris Townsend has been organizing workers, conducting political work for labor unions, and teaching young workers to organize for almost all his adult life. He is, as we say, “the real deal.” While most of us opine and pontificate about labor, Chris does the dirty work. He organizes. His contributions over several decades have played […]

A recent paper in Science addresses an intriguing question: Did North America have settled agriculture before the arrival of Europeans? Or were the people in what would come to be known as North America still in the hunter-gatherer stage—unlike Mesoamericans, who had advanced civilisations, such as the Mayans, Aztecs, and the Incas? The answer is […]

The Covid pandemic’s onset prompted speculation that the disease had been created in a lab in China, specifically as a weapon against the United States. This new and highly contagious virus did wreak profound socioeconomic trauma and widespread suffering, borne disproportionately by the disadvantaged. Initially it caused nearly 1.2 million deaths in the United States. […]

Despite the hot sun, few Americans were wearing rose-colored glasses these days, but rather fear dark clouds ahead. Many feel worried, even despairing. But sometimes they could rejoice at bright spots.

In a recent video recapping his primary victory in Queens, Zohran Mamdani did something almost radical for today’s political landscape: he cut through the usual Beltway euphemisms and mapped out the varied, living elements of the coalition that won. Most postmortems stay tangled in polite code. We get anxious talk of “electability,” “swing voters,” whether […]

The dramatic shift in the Trump led U.S. foreign policies, as seen recently in the bombing in Iran, has created enormous confusion and consternation within establishment centers of power.

The June 2025 US-Israeli military assault on Iran—featuring Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and the US Operation Midnight Hammer confronted by Iran’s defensive Operation True Promise 3—despite achieving short-term tactical victories, represents a profound strategic failure that has accelerated the US-led imperial decline and strengthened global anti-imperialist forces. Rather than cementing Western hegemony, this illegal act […]

On the morning of January 21, 1960, 431 black and six white coal miners were entombed in a sudden collapse at Clydesdale Collieries near Coalbrook in Sasolburg, Free State Province.[1] The first rockfall took place at about 4:30 p.m. No one was killed or severely injured. While the rock still creaked and split, many of […]

For today I have been asked to speak a bit about my country, Puerto Rico, and the socioeconomic crisis that is currently developing there.1 Given the time constraints, I want to provide you with a brief overview of what is being experienced there by the victims of the crisis. I want to also speak a […]