Subjects Archives: Culture

An independent researcher argues that Venezuela is undergoing an agroecological transition.

The United States tells the world and its citizens that it is the greatest country on the planet, where freedom and democracy reign, and where there is an American dream that gives everyone the opportunity to live flourishing “middle class” lives with white-fenced houses and two cars. For the American working masses, however, as the great critical comedian George Carlin noted, “it’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

In every country and culture, capitalism depends on an ideological mirage of equal opportunity and reward for effort, to conceal, as much as possible, the reality of brutal exploitation and inequality.

In a recent official Declaration on Human Dignity, Dignitas Infinita, the Pope has endorsed a document that effectively outlaws sex change for transgender Catholics. The Declaration is both harsh and unrelenting in its tone, dismissive of new science and judgemental of those Catholics who in good faith make life choices contrary to the edicts of the Church. Nothing new here, but just another slap in the face for people who seek to live their God given lives as authentically and honestly as possible.

Reichstag Fire was a crucial event in the conversion of Germany from a liberal democracy into a fascist dictatorship in 1933.

The ten-day event featured more than 150 Venezuelan theater groups and invited companies from 20 other countries.

On March 29, the Constitutional Court of Senegal confirmed Bassirou Diomaye Faye as the next president-elect of the West African country, assuaging fears of a constitutional crisis after the political outsider won the election the previous week.

Declassified visits Belfast as Ireland appears on the edge of something truly historic, with most agreeing that Brexit was the game-changer.

The ruthless pursuit of profit lies behind the tragedy of Palestine as much as the global warming crisis. We should resist it resolutely, writes climate activist MAIR BAIN.

Words can be highly deceptive; and Hindu rashtra is a perfect example of this.

I. To summarise the reception history of Marx in Japan is no small task.1 In fact, it is essentially impossible to give an adequate overview of one of the deepest, most prolific, and most variegated linguistic repositories of the Marxist tradition. Although it remains remarkably little-known in contemporary European or North American intellectual circles, Marxism […]

Rose was born into immense wealth and privilege in England but gave it all up to devote her life to the working and oppressed people of the world and to the liberation of Ireland and the fight for a socialist republic in particular.

Jared Kushner joins the chorus calling for Israel to expand its occupation to Gaza’s waterfront through forced displacement, but, if history is any judge, Palestinians will remain.

Ruling ends formal discussion in official geological organization.

Caracas communards and campesino organizations are building ties through fair-price food distribution.

The Central African Republic has, despite being at the centre of the continent, been a country on the margins of global power since independence. Despite a conflict which has lasted for more than a decade, the country remains largely ignored. Ben Jackson writes that while African conflicts are often underreported, for example the war in Sudan barely gets a mention, the situation in the Central African Republic demands our attention.

Historically speaking, Zionist feminism shares key characteristics of colonial feminisms of the nineteenth century.

My main argument is: On balance, the fledgling socialist country did more to liberate human sexuality and gender in a shorter period of time than any society since the rise of classes. Despite the serious political errors the country made, I believe those errors would have been corrected had there been the time and space for the organized voices of oppressed groups to develop and assert their rights.

Film-maker Jonathan Glazer’s crime at the Oscars was to threaten the establishment’s stranglehold on the West’s narrative about Israel–and itself

In mid-February, Chaguan, the (pen-named) Economist columnist based in Beijing, reviewed a new book by Professor Minxin Pei, who was introduced as an academic based at Claremont McKenna College in California. You can read the introductory paragraphs of this review here. Chaguan is, in real-life, David Rennie, the son of a former MI6 Director.