Archive | Commentary

As President Biden visited Israel, and the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passed 3,300, the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity. The emergency briefing paper came on the heels of the U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza.

Critical reflections on the Australian 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum and the Israel-Palestine War in the context of British settler colonialism and imperialism.

…Zionism is the ideology that fuses creation of (ancient) Jewish collectivity with claims to (modern) sovereignty over land allegedly promised by God to Jews and their descendants.

One accusation still seems to lack an adequate response: Is the U.S. working class inherently anti-degrowth because it would mean a massive loss of jobs?

FIFTY years back, Pinochet’s coup destroyed Allende’s government and the structure of liberal democracy in Chile. Allende died with a machine gun in his hands, defending his attempt to build socialism in Chile against the combined power of the U.S. and the forces of reaction in Chile, including the military.

Delhi police on Tuesday raided the offices of news media company NewsClick. The news media house has been under investigation for allegedly receiving funds from China.

Foster explains Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism and how the concept of “metabolic rift” highlights the alienation between humans and nature caused by capitalism’s focus on profit over sustainability.

The working class makes the world go round. The working class should not be positioned as the most vulnerable in need of help, but as those who labour and deserve a just distribution of the fruits of their labour.

Long Live Weelaunee.

Never before has society had the ability it does today to bring together different communities and resources in order to produce new knowledge. It is social, universal labour, and its private appropriation as intellectual property under capitalism stands in the way of liberating the enormous power of the collective to generate new knowledge and benefit people.

The war in Ukraine, a horrific tragedy for the people of that unhappy country, fateful as well for many young Russians and potentially menacing for all the world, with burnished weapons of every size and destructive power waiting in silos or submarines for a slip, a blunder, a provocation.

The relationship between Chile, the curtailment of its socialist reforms, and the ongoing processes in other countries in the region and in the Global South more generally have been systematically erased in Chile, from official historiography and media narratives alike.

“Brigadistas: An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War” is a page-turner of a graphic novel, illuminating the courage and commitment of young Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who put their lives on the line against fascism in Spain. The Brigadistas left behind a profound legacy of courage and international solidarity for the U.S. left that still resonates today.

Thomas Sankara, radical leader and martyr of Burkina Faso, understood that the problem of ecological destruction was rooted in capitalism and imperialism.

Isabel was, and will remain, an inspiration to us and to everyone else who was privileged to know her. We extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to her sons, Michael, Carl and Paul, and to her whole extended family, and many comrades and friends.

Despite the limitations of the BRICS project, it is clear that the increase in South-South trade and the development of Southern institutions (for development financing, for instance) challenges the neo-colonial system even if it does not immediately transcend it.

The U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela are by no means an isolated case, though they are some of the most severe. If the U.S. can’t win with tanks and guns, it hopes that a campaign to suffocate the people will expedite regime change.

“Return to the Source”, a condensation of Amílcar Cabral’s developing ideas until his assassination by Portuguese agents in 1973, reveals an astounding intellectual sophistication expressed in formulations clear enough for even the less educated among his audience of fellow Africans.

Again Victor Grossman turns to his faded history books, and to the uprisings—and then the defeat of divided leftists between 1919 and 1933. Where today is the LINKE, the party of peace, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, socialism? It is in a crisis!

The mining super-majors are keen to walk away from their legacy responsibilities, which in the case of South Africa date back to colonial times under British rule, continuing under apartheid, and in the last generation since 1994.