Geography Archives: Global

U.S. Space Command was created in 1985 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to manage the “Star Wars” program: a U.S. Cold War plan to use space supremacy to menace the Soviet Union with orbiting battle platforms, powered by nuclear reactors and loaded with space-based weaponry like hypervelocity guns, particle beams and lasers. 

Social media, in March 2020, was awash with rumours. Swans and dolphins could be seen in totally deserted Venetian canals. A group of elephants marched into a village in Yunnan (China), drank corn wine, and went to sleep in a tea garden.

For Samir Amin’s anniversary on Sept 4, Global University for Sustainability invited Samir’s friends to reminisce their interactions with Samir and celebrate the very rich life that Samir lived.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born 250 years ago, on 27 August 1770. A towering genius with an encyclopaedic mind, Hegel revolutionised every field that he dedicated himself to. As Marxists, we owe him a tremendous debt.

‘Once they are taken to be ideas about a historical world-system, whose development itself involves “underdevelopment,” indeed is based on it, [Marx’s theses] are not only valid, but they are revolutionary as well.’

By redefining a range of categories, Wallerstein seeks to reconstruct the scenario of the world, using a kind of political economy of culture to replace various Enlightenment thoughts—the presuppositions of various social sciences and their classification systems.

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the teaching of history as a form of indoctrination with Professor James W. Loewen.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed, more than anything, the deep interconnectedness and mutual dependence of different sectors, areas of life, and countries and regions within the global capitalist system.

2019 was a very good year for the world’s wealthiest individuals. The normal workings of global capitalism created both more billionaires and more combined wealth owned by those billionaires.

On 18 August, soldiers from the Kati barracks outside Bamako (Mali) left their posts, arrested president Ibrahim Boubacar Këita (IBK) and prime minister Boubou Cissé, and set up the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP).

Austin Hayden Smidt returns to Rev Left

The ruling class always tries to divide the working class. We must make certain that the working class is not divided internally and we can draw on the past to find examples of working-class organizations that have actively worked to generate a cohesive and class-conscious membership.

The “Information Has Value” frame provides a welcome opening to discuss information capitalism, including the commodification of information, information labor, concentration of ownership, and audience data extraction/surveillance.

The IPCC Report’s warning in October 2018 that the world has twelve years to avoid climate disaster was undoubtedly a major factor in galvanising a global wave of climate change activism, especially in the form of Greta Thunberg and mass school strikes and the Extinction Rebellion movement.

On 7 May 2018, Professor Samir Amin gave a lecture entitled “Marx and Living Marxism are More Relevant Today Than Ever” at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Social media addiction short film 2017

The revolutionary wave of 1848 began with a joyous struggle for democracy. But it ended with violent struggles between workers and capitalists, liberals and socialists, revolutionaries and reformers. The experience was a decisive influence on the development of Marx’s theory of revolution.

Young children marvel at an obvious contradiction in capitalist societies: why do we have shops filled with food, and yet see hungry people on the streets? It is a question of enormous significance; but in time the question dissipates into the fog of moral ambivalence, as various explanations are used to obfuscate the clarity of the youthful mind.

The centrality of race in the devilment of capitalism continues to be resisted by “the sort of hardline, orthodox folks who only look at class, alongside the sort of liberals and so-called racial multiculturals who have the misconception that race no longer matters,” said Charisse Burden-Stelly, professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College.

The U.S. economy is undergoing a major transformation largely driven by the coronavirus pandemic. One hallmark of that transformation is the explosion in what is called “remote” work.