Archive | Commentary

This world needs revolutionaries who refuse orders to kill and exploit. Two midwives named Shifra and Puah were such revolutionaries. When a racist ruler asked them to limit the reproduction of slaves—out of fear of a slave uprising—they disobeyed.

Only an ecosocialist revolution can stop our demise, but capitalism’s behemoth keeps people deceitful and mostly unaware of being on the verge of a catastrophic end. We must arise—now!

John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, Deborah Veneziale, and Vijay Prashad, Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023), 108 pages, $15. The “singular reality” (my phrase) on display here is the imagined reality in the mind’s eye of Beltline/Pentagon global strategists. Few readers will be surprised at the cravings of […]

The U.S. knows from its experience in defeating Germany, Japan, and the “Asian Tigers,” that a decisive way to slow a competitor’s growth rate is to get it to reduce its level of investment, which is what it is now trying to do to China.

In the current global climate of conflict and division, it is essential to develop lines of communication and encourage exchange between China, the West, and the developing world.

Ian Angus on chemical warfare against insects.

I recall a circle game from my childhood; after each round another chair was removed, leaving one more child out. We called it “Going to Jerusalem.” Last week Israeli boss Netanyahu arrived FROM Jerusalem. After two days he was out of the Berlin circle—one day too early.

After the truth about the Nord Stream pipeline explosion came to light, the whole world knows that the United States was behind the destruction of critical infrastructure. In fact, the destruction of infrastructure is not a new method to achieve America’s purpose.

In late December, tenants at the Lofts at Cargill Falls Mill in Putnam, Connecticut, an old mill town, received a letter from the Northeast District Department of Health notifying them that a toddler living in the residential complex had severe lead poisoning.

The twentieth century was marked by national liberation struggles that emerged in Africa and Asia, as well as in Latin America, where neocolonial structures had subordinated the formally independent countries. The achievements of the Russian Revolution in 1917 inspired the peasantry and the working class across the Global South. The fight for equality and liberation […]

Musicians around the world depicted and resisted the 2003 invasion of Iraq in other ways, yet others scraped the barrel of base, chauvinistic interests to sing for the imperialists. Sound was a partisan weapon.

The world’s insects are among the principal victims of capitalist agricultural concentration.

The collapse in rapid succession of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank confirms the extremely damaging character of U.S. stimulus policies.

A set of current processes force us to ask ourselves about the possibility of a military conflagration that could affect us all. Some researchers have asked, in the present tense: Are we at war?

Ian Angus discusses the scientific developments that led Marx to develop metabolic rift theory in the 1800s, and a new generation to rediscover it the 21st century.

The gendered forms of violence in capitalist-patriarchal societies are, obviously, related to what is habitually recognized as violence against women.

Were any flags of sympathy displayed when the people of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan were bombed? When drones exploded on hospitals and wedding processions—were there also calls for tribunals against Bush—or Obama?

Hugo Chávez emerged in the history of Venezuela, the Global South, and the international revolutionary movement when the thesis that ideological disputes throughout the world had ended was most entrenched. Far from being over, history had an important task for the Venezuelan people, who rose up against neoliberalism in 1989 and who continue to build a project of twenty-first-century socialism today.

Introduction It is well known that China will continue economic stimulus measures in 2023—the only serious discussion is of what type. To be successful these measures must simultaneously achieve two goals. First, they must adequately respond to China’s short-term situation—that is they must substantially reverse 2022’s economic slowdown. Second, they must aid in achieving the […]

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who leads the Burkinabé government, came to power through a coup d’état in September 2022. He ousted Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself come to power through a coup in January 2022. Neither of these coups was a surprise.