Archive | Commentary

The revelation of how election campaigns work and the fierce battle over Bernie Sanders’ access to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) database constitute a Leninist moment, even if for a very non-Leninist democratic socialist. The storm occurred within the confines of the presidential election, nowhere near the boundary of revolution.  Yet it was indeed a […]

Chavism received a serious blow in the parliamentary elections this last Sunday, December 6. The strength of the blow is such that the movement is still reeling. The Venezuelan opposition, loosely organized in an electoral bloc called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), achieved not just a majority of seats in the National Assembly but also […]

Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate & Capitalism.  He is co-author, with Simon Butler, of Too Many People?  Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), and editor of the anthology The Global Fight for Climate Justice (Fernwood, 2010). He talked to Phil Gasper about what to expect from the Paris summit […]

This paper was presented at “Color Revolution and Cultural Hegemony,” the 6th World Socialism Forum in Beijing, China, October 16-7, 2015. The term “color revolution” is code.  It is a code for regime change, and the term is often treated as synonymous with activities of the CIA and its assorted vehicles such as the National […]

Donald Trump is a wild card in the US presidential contest.  But his role reflects the loss of legitimacy of established US politicians. It is shocking — and perhaps peculiar to the United States — that a candidate can build up popular support while bragging of his immense personal fortune and his consequent ability to […]

20th November 2015 Your Excellencies, the Honorable Heads of Government of ASEAN Nations, welcome to Malaysia.  We in the Parti Sosialis Malaysia wish you have a pleasant and productive summit.  We hope it would not be too presumptuous of us to put forward a few observations and suggestions that have a bearing on the main […]

Why should one seek socialism?  It is common to adduce that socialism would be more just and fair than capitalism, but that does not fully resolve the issue, since people are not always motivated by social justice.  Moreover motivation — especially for undertakings that are difficult and risky, such as changing a whole society! — […]

Who says us white leftists have no feeling for High Art?  Hundreds of thousands of capitalist imperialist museum-going, opera-loving, overly literate fuck-faces, that’s who. To smash this top-down bourgeois conspiracy, I am taking a couple of months off from writing this column to start a highly classy — yet class-conscious — literary journal, to be […]

  Millions of Americans believe that President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba and ended over 50 years of U.S. efforts to strangle its economy.  They might have been puzzled when the United States stood up against every other nation save one, in opposing the UN General Assembly resolution which passed, 191-2, on October 27, […]

It was a day to remember, a date for the record books!  It marked a surprising development in German politics!  And who said Germans don’t like protest marches or demonstrations?  The organizers counted 250,000, a quarter of a million.  Of course the police scaled that down — to 150,000.  But who’s counting?  It was definitely […]

The Guardian reports that Chilean President Augusto Pinochet personally ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, in Washington, D.C. in September 1976. So, you may say, what’s new?  After all, my partner Sam Buffone and I sued Chile for these murders and won a judgment.  At the trial, our expert witness said that […]

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Foundation for Criminal Justice dinner, Denver, Colorado, July 24, 2015 A few months ago, I spoke to a group of lawyers in Los Angeles.  I talked about legal ethics.  I mentioned Henry Drinker, author of ABA ethical rules, author of a book that was the basis for the […]

It is common to understand the diverse “processes” in Latin America — in the period marked initially by Zapatismo in the mid-1990s and later by the emergence of left or popular governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador along with center-left governments in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina — within the theoretical framework of a return or […]

The Pew Research Center released a new survey that reveals a very favorable perspective of Narendra Modi among Indians.  In fact, the header for the report reads: “The Modi Bounce: Indians Give Their Prime Minister and Economy High Marks, Worry about Crime, Jobs, Prices, Corruption.”1  According to the results 87% of Indians have a “favorable […]

One year on from the historic Scottish independence referendum politics here are utterly changed. The long dominant Labour Party, which opted to campaign against independence — alongside the Conservatives, loathed by the big majority of Scots voters, and the now virtually demolished Liberal Democrats in the Better Together alliance — reaped the whirlwind at the […]

  The political crisis that began after the re-election of Dilma Rousseff and the offensive by the opposition and the most conservative sectors of the country has put some warnings on the agenda again. Given the national and international political conjuncture, one of the main warnings is not to equate political struggle with electoral struggle […]

Early this month in Germany, a few thousand refugees from war-torn Syria and neighboring countries spilled out of a train station and into Munich.  Rather than being tripped by the locals, or thrown inside cargo trucks, or sorted out according to skin color (as per quaint Old World custom), the migrants were actually welcomed by […]

Turkey is increasingly drifting into a civil war.  Politics of violence have escalated after the general elections of June 7 led by the AKP provisional government.  Today, the peace and negotiation process between PKK and the Turkish state has come to a halt and war has started again. Just within the last month, severe clashes […]

Everyone is talking about refugees, but why isn’t anyone talking about the reason why they have to leave their homes?  What is happening in the Middle East is no natural disaster.  The refugee crisis is a direct result of a policy of destabilization and war. Translation by Antikrieg TV.  See, also, Dietmar Bartsch and Sahra […]