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 […]
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The Trump Phenomenon
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 […]
An Open Letter to ASEAN Heads of State
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 Socialism?” Revisited: Reflections Inspired by Albert Einstein
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! — […]
Emily: Edited 4 the Revolution
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 […]
Obama, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is on Cuba
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, […]
A Wonderful Parade Against TTIP
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 Letelier-Moffitt Assassination: New Evidence
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 […]
Resisting Wholesale Electronic Invasion of the Fourth Amendment
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 […]
To Recover Strategic Thought and Political Practice
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 […]
P(h)ew: The “Nonpartisan” Embrace of Narendra Modi by the Pew Research Center
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 […]
RISE: Scotland’s Left Alliance
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 […]
On the Current Conjuncture and Agrarian Reform in Brazil
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 […]
Altruism: Viral & More Dangerous Than ISIS
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 […]
#CizreyeSesVer / #GiveVoiceToCizre: Urgent Call for International Action
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 […]
Refugee Crisis: The Result of Western Wars and Destabilization
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 […]
Bombs for Peace: A Review
George Szamuely. Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013 (Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by the University of Chicago Press). Paper. Pp. 611. In Bombs for Peace, George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute at London Metropolitan University, has produced a revealing and sharply […]
People’s Power & People’s Protagonism: Linking Practice to Visions of Twenty-First Century Socialism
Register Now – Limited Space Available! SF BAY AREA – SEPTEMBER 13TH, 4-6PM * REGISTER HERE (Presentation Theater, University of San Francisco School of Education, 2350 Turk Boulevard, San Francisco) NEW YORK CITY – SEPTEMBER 18TH, 7-9PM * REGISTER HERE (Verso Loft, 20 Jay St [10th Floor], Brooklyn) We are honored to bring Marta […]
Immigrants, Welcome and Unwelcome
A silent three-year-old, lying drowned on a Turkish beach; the tearful protest of a Syrian man as he, his wife and baby are torn from the tracks next to a locomotive by Hungarian police; desperate families jammed into tiny, leaky boats, hoping to reach Europe alive or, if they do, facing ever new obstacles from […]
The Devaluation of the Yuan
The Chinese central bank’s decision last week to let the yuan depreciate, in three stages by almost 4 percent against the US dollar, was officially explained as a move towards greater market determination of its exchange rate. Though this explanation pacified stock markets around the world, China’s devaluation of the currency portends a serious accentuation […]
