Archive | Commentary

Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

Arguably the best known contemporary proponent of Chinese exceptionalism in the English-language is Martin Jacques, best known for his 2009 bestseller ‘When China Rules the World’, a tour-de-force in the repackaging of orientalist tropes for the 21st-century.

Out of his world of struggle and his world of books emerged Pansare’s commitment to culture and to intellectual liberation. Along with his comrades, he set up the Shramik Pratishthan (Workers’ Trust), which not only published books but also held seminars and lectures. One of the most popular programmes organised by the Trust was the annual literary festival in honour of the Marathi writer Annabhau Sathe.

He has founded an intellectual group opposed to the restrictions, public health measures, vaccination requirements and other actions taken by public officials to combat the spread of the virus and its lethality.

The product of pedagogical labour becomes something set apart from life and abstracted into the commodity of “degrees” which can be bought and sold on the educational market.

Why do foolhardy spoilers insist on causing embarrassment? Why must out-of-step fools upset well-steered apple-carts? Why did German vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach open his big mouth on Saturday in far-off Mumbai—and spill so many beans? Many or most U.S. media overlooked it—that is, buried it. Or emasculated it. In Germany they couldn’t fully ignore it—though unpleasant […]

December 2013 marked the beginning of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Ebola, a severe hemorrhagic virus which causes muscle and joint pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding, spread from Guinean forests to the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone by the summer of 2014.

Ecocide–the destruction of the entire ecosystem–is a real prospect. Its possibility has been well known to scientists since the 1980s, if not earlier. Every projection of its pace has under estimated the actual rate of breakdown.

In 1947, thousands of youth brigade volunteers from around the world joined their Yugoslav comrades in the hills of Bosnia to build a railroad. As the most popular song from the construction sites put it, not only were these activists making a railroad, but the railroad made them.

Articles in this series: Commons and classes before capitalism ‘Systematic theft of communal property’ Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class Against Enclosure: The Commoners Fight Back  by Ian Angus In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a […]

The Need for Transparency and Accountability

The most scandalous fact of the current period is that 2.37 billion people are struggling to eat. Most of them are in developing countries, but many are in advanced industrial states.

How have K-12 schools been treated by the state-corporate complex since the start of the pandemic? An analysis of federal policies leads to the conclusion that U.S. schools must be kept open at any cost for two main reasons: maintain an adequate reserve army of labor and quell the idea that any alternative (e.g., less work and publicly compensated costs of living) is possible.

The consequences of the current U.S. sanctions regime, and collusion with the Venezuelan opposition, have been devastating for the Venezuelan people. Against a suffocating embargo and corrupt bureaucracy, the revolution will survive only if the grassroots reinvent it.

In North America, the European colonization started during the 17th century, mainly led by England and France, before undergoing a rapid expansion during the 18thcentury, an era also marked by massive importation of African slaves

Politicians and the media work hard to give the impression that millions of low-wage workers are constantly seeking entry into the U.S. Most U.S. news consumers would probably be astonished to learn that the undocumented population here actually declined during the years from 2008 to 2016. It continued to decline at least until 2019.

After the German elections on September 26th it took, as usual, weeks and weeks for the three coalition parties to agree on one program, full of compromises, pledges and promises (some of which may even been be kept) and to resolve quarrels over who gets which cabinet seat.

The persecution of Julian Assange is a fundamental assault on journalism, press freedom, and freedom of expression.

Deprived of land and common rights, the English poor were forced into wage-labor. CAPITAL VERSUS COMMONS, 4

The Western world lives in discontent. Progressive models have failed to maintain the levels of politicisation, mystique, capacity to question, transformative purpose, and possibilities of concrete changes for the masses.