Archive | Newswire

Murders of trade unionists and social leaders, paramilitary activity, coca production… If we only paid attention to the mainstream media we would not get the idea that these problems are actually growing in Colombia, one year after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC came into place. To get a better picture and understand how all these elements connect to US policy and corporate interests, we interviewed Daniel Kovalik, a lawyer and human rights activist who has long been involved in the struggle for peace and justice in Colombia.

IMF, World Bank, & Structural Adjustment

The late Hungarian philosopher explained how alienation can only be overcome by collective action which challenges capitalist relations of production.

Tensions between the US and North Korea are again rising in the wake of North Korea’s November 28th test of an ICBM that experts believe has the potential to deliver a nuclear bomb to cities on the east coast of the US, including Washington D.C.

No other Latin American Marxist was such a preacher of Marti’s ideas than Fidel Castro.

In October 2016, while President Barack Obama was still in office, five climate change activists, including me, cut chains and closed emergency shutoff valves on five tar sands oil pipelines in four states. In one morning, we briefly stopped the flow of all Canadian tar sands oil into the United States.

The New York Times’ radical reasonableness offers us a clear vision of the ways one can continuously adapt its position to the political context as to be in position of respectful negotiation with the status quo.

The ink has yet to dry on President Rodrigo Duterte’s Proclamation No. 360 signed last Thursday but killings and harassments of activists, indigenous peoples and human rights defenders have already increased over the weekend.

Talk by Robin D. G. Kelley on “What is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter?” recorded November 7, 2017 at Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Sponsored by the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Nary a day goes by that President Trump and/or the talking heads on CNBC fail to mention the following unemployment chart as evidence that “everything is awesome” with the U.S. economy…

In May 1924, near the small town of Como, close to the border of Italy and Switzerland, the two great figures of early Italian communism faced each other at a meeting of the Parti Communista d’Italia (PCI) leadership.

Duterte is a consistent political swindler and demagogue who depends heavily on lying.

In this short video, Tithi Bhattacharya, editor of ‘Social Reproduction Theory’ (Pluto, 2017), discusses ‘SRT’, and the question of who produces the worker under capitalism?

Venezuela is an emblematic case of the infernal cycle that Latin America has been struggling with over the last two centuries. It all began in 1810, when Simon Bolivar, a figurehead of the Spanish colonies in their fight for freedom, began borrowing from London in very unfavourable conditions to finance the wars of independence.

In the fatherland of Karl Marx, the question begs itself: is his Das Kapital still up to date? Over two thirds of respondents voted for “Yes, it is more up to date than ever before.”

Key to social reproduction theory (SRT) is an understanding of the ‘production of goods and services and the production of life are part of one integrated process’, or in other words: acknowledging that race and gender oppression occur capitalistically.
In this article, Susan Ferguson, a contributor to Social Reproduction Theory, shows how SRT can deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. She explores the history of this dialectical approach, its variances, and its potentialities; providing an answer to the question: social reproduction theory, what’s the big idea?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States—an independent government agency that regulates interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable—emitted a preliminary proposal on Tuesday that seeks to repeal “net neutrality”.

The Precariat under Rentier Capitalism Guy Standing We are in the midst of a Global Transformation, analogous to Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation described in his seminal 1944 book. Whereas Polanyi’s Transformation was about constructing national market systems, today’s is about the painful construction of a global market system. To use Polanyi’s term, the ‘dis-embedded’ phase has been dominated by an ideology of market liberalisation, commodification and privatisation, orchestrated by financial interests, as in his model. The similarities also extend to today’s fundamental challenge, how to construct a ‘re-embedded’ phase, with new systems of regulation, distribution and social protection.

The New York Times‘ obituary (11/21/17) for pioneering media critic Edward Herman was not entirely unsympathetic; it ended, after all, with a quote from FAIR founder Jeff Cohen’s remembrance of Ed (FAIR.org, 11/14/17).

So, farewell then, Robert Mugabe, ruler of Zimbabwe for 37 years. As the western media celebrate your demise, and Zimbabwe’s people wonder what will happen next, it is worth making a note of some forgotten events that helped pave the way for your country’s crisis. As one might expect, this involves the Brits.