Archive | Commentary

Disregard by the dominant powers of human lives in places such as Iraq has a long history. It goes back a hundred years.

This analysis shows there could be no more startling illustration of the operation of the brutal and ruthless British Establishment in an undisguisedly Imperialist cause.

Berlin, alone among Germany’s 16 states, has declared International Women’s Day a paid holiday, compensating for the fact that the city-state has fewer religious holidays than all the others. A third of the city was once part of the (East) German Democratic Republic, which always marked the day; that may also have contributed to the decision. This was its first year.

Above all, we’d like to demand the right to dream. For us, the present is unacceptable. We demand the future.

The Liberal Party of Canada is ensnared in a scandal alleging high-level government intervention to shield a major engineering firm from criminal prosecution over its practices abroad. The timing of the scandal is note worthy. It has emerged after a high profile role taken by the governing Liberals in destabilizing Venezuela. Looking at the firms operations in Venezuela provides a broader context of Canadian capitalism and imperialism.

As heads of government, democratically entrusted with safeguarding the welfare of all Venezuelans, Chavez and Maduro bear overall responsibility for the economic crisis, but they are not alone.

In an interview with The Wire, the well-known Marxist scholar talks about the surge of populist and right-wing politics and the future of neoliberalism, capitalism and technology.

A majority of Germans want peaceful relations with Russia (and in general), despite the media, politicians and big biz groups pulling toward catastrophe.

These two matters—the battle of ideas and the new intellectual—take up the first two parts of this dossier. The third part enters a brief discussion of our political context and offers a map of our concerns and our research. We look forward to your response to our invitation to a dialogue.

New report predicts the impact of climate change on Nepal’s mountains may be much worse than we thought.

On Tues, Feb. 5, as the Macron government pushed harsh repressive laws against demonstrators through the National Assembly, the Yellow Vests joined with France’s unions for the first time in a day-long, nation-wide “General Strike.”

Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, doesn’t have a constitutional leg to stand on for this open attempt at a coup.

The Secretariat has the honour to transmit to the Human Rights Council the report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador, pursuant to Council resolution 36/4.

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.

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.

Lacking, for now, the support of Venezuela’s own military the only way the coup can succeed is with military help from a foreign power, the obvious candidates being the U.S., NATO and Brazil’s new President Jair Bolsonaro——a cross between Pinochet and a used car salesman.

Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.

The masses of red flowers for Karl Liebknecht and, even more for Rosa Luxemburg, was higher than I have ever seen them. Both were murdered one hundred years ago. Why do those two names mean so much to so many people?

Ahead of the 2019 elections in India—the largest exercise of electoral democracy in the world–Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) discusses the current political context in the country and the left-led resistance to the deepening assault on basic human rights led by India’s right-wing.

In this essay, I will argue that the leadership of the climate justice movement and the movement for radical social change, which in my opinion is essential for tackling the eco-social world crisis, have fallen short to meet the opportunities and challenges that the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests in France (Greeman, December 3, 2018; December 28, 2018) and the Sunrise Movement in the United States have presented.