Archive | Commentary

The pandemic has sharpened and transformed pre-existing inequalities, reconfiguring the processes that sustain and guarantee life.

Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party.

March 2, 2021 was the five year anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, who opposed the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. That date was less than one month after the deaths of dozens of people from Tehri Dam disaster in Uttarakhand, India. The two stories together tell us far more about consequences of the insatiable greed of capitalism for more energy than either narrative does by itself.

In the post-Christmas edition of the United Kingdom’s daily socialist newspaper the Morning Star, the editorial commented on the holiday television broadcast of the 1983 film Educating Rita. In it, author Jim Leman pointed out that the 1980s story of a mature working-class hairdresser attempting to enter university, encouraged by a benign academic on tenure, could not happen today. 

Only at the end of his life did Karl Marx leave the shores of Europe and travel to a country under colonial dominion. This was when he went to Algeria in 1882. ‘For Mussulmans, there is no such thing as subordination’, Marx wrote to his daughter Laura Lafargue.

Money floods the system, eats into the loyalties of politicians, corrupts the institutions of civil society, and shapes the narratives of the media. It matters that the dominant classes in our world own the main communications outlets and that these outlets shape the way people decipher the world around us.

Is U.S. President Joe Biden’s January 27 Executive Order to address ‘climate crisis’ as good as many activists claim, enough to reverse earlier scepticism?

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies (newly merged in 1998), signed an agreement with the government of Guyana in 1999 to develop the Stabroek block, which is off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region.

The reasons behind the protest actions that began in Russia in January 2021, the social forces involved, and the possible consequences.

If a United Nations report wouldn’t suffice, an international commission wants to prove there is a practical way justice will be assured and perpetrators of human rights violations in the Philippines be held accountable. The Independent International Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations in the Philippines or INVESTIGATE PH had a global launch Thursday, […]

On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became international law for the 122 states who signed the agreement in July 2017.

At 21 years of age, Arya Rajendran is barely eligible to vote. Nevertheless, she is now the mayor of Kerala’s capital city Thiruvananthapuram, population 2,585,000. She is a second-year student at All Saints College. She concentrates in math.

While it is not clear how many people have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the United States (is it under 400,000 still? Over 500,000 yet?), it is clearer than ever that we are experiencing a continent-wide public health catastrophe. Perhaps this is unsurprising.

The U.S.-American night-mare, tight-lipped and pouting, was finally forced to gallop off to its luxurious stable in Florida. Almost every European joined in “Hurrah!” cheers as it watched him go!

“The nationalists to be effective must harness the nation into action, into revolt.… The nation will stir itself to action only on assurance of nationalization. i.e.… Freedom from slavery of Imperialist—capitalists.” —Bhagat Singh

A vaccine alone will not be enough to end the pandemic as it must also be made available at an affordable price and allocated in a way that achieves equity. It follows that suspending intellectual property rights related to COVID-19 is the most appropriate solution to our current situation of global vaccine apartheid.

On January 5, 2021, the newly elected National Assembly took its seats in Venezuela’s capital. That day the Lima Group released a statement most of its members signed saying that they did not recognize the legality of the assembly.

The peasants gathered on the Delhi border understand all these issues much more clearly than either Modi or the intelligentsia advocating a shift away from food grains. Ironically, it is the latter group who are suggesting that the peasants are ignoramuses!

What happened Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol was a violent takeover of Congress by a fascist mob, not a “protest by Trump supporters.” And, although five people died and there were more than 50 arrests, it’s obvious to the wide public that these overwhelmingly white lawbreakers were handled much differently than they would have been had they been Black or other people of color.

The first newsletter of the new year is written in collaboration with our friend, the great linguist and prophetic voice, Noam Chomsky. What follows is a statement by Noam and me.