Subjects Archives: History

We live in an age of unprecedented historical crisis. Its severity can be gauged by the fact that we are not facing a more or less extensive cyclic crisis of capitalism as experienced in the past, but the deepening structural crisis of the capital system itself.

The initiative came from Polish Communists seeking to aid compatriots jailed or forced into exile in the Soviet republic.

Diverse international groups along with the U.S. State Department have taken notice of Rodrigo Duterte’s record of killings and wanton defiance of universal norms of justice. Duterte’s regime might claim to honor the right to life, liberty, and security of persons guaranteed by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other Covenants; but its practice consistently defiles those norms. Mass media and internet platforms cannot keep up with the regime’s punitive outrages.

When the American journalist, I.F. Stone, published The Hidden History of the Korean War at the height of the military conflict in 1952, its message did not find a warm welcome at home.

Esther Bejarano’s death hits hard, leaving a painful gap in Germany’s anti-fascist scene. Most media and many politicians voiced their praise and mourning—after almost totally ignoring her in life and attacking and trying to squelch organizations she was active in, as an avowed Communist.

Du Bois, trained in history and sociology, was the first to conduct a scientific study on race in American society. Kosambi was trained in mathematics but was the first to scientifically investigate ancient Indian history.

If find it hard to recount Dick’s [Richard C. Lewontin] scientific accomplishments—not because I don’t know them, but because they’re already well known and you can read about them in many places. He made fundamental contributions in theoretical population genetics, in experimental population genetics (out of his lab came the first assays of genetic variation at individual loci using both electrophoresis and DNA sequencing), and even in ecology. He never wrote a trivial paper.

In this episode, we’re joined by Rohan Grey (@rohangrey), President of the Modern Money Network, Director of the National Jobs for All Coalition, Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and JSD student at Cornell Law school. Our conversation is dedicated to Rohan’s current work on the political, economic, and cultural implications of money’s digital future.

The last year has witnessed an extensive public conversation, from the 1619 Project in the New York Times to protests in the streets, about American historical memory.

Paternalistic U.S. government political posturing toward Africa has a history of turning into fatal consequences for the masses of African peoples.

This year’s commemoration of Juneteenth–the day the last of the enslaved Black people in the United States were formally emancipated–is also a reminder that the job of ending all forms of slavery is not yet finished. As Karl Marx wrote, we have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to win!

This is the moment for the vast majority of Peruvians that they have been waiting for; those Peruvians that have always been considered as “non-people” by the oligarchy.

A week ago Saxony-Anhalt voted! The media prediction – a neck-and-neck race – was cock-eyed! But outside Sachsen-Anhalt (in German), did anyone really give a damn? Yes, some did!

Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. His dream of an Indigenous confederacy largely died with him. Yet his appreciation of the moment and the possibilities for transformation lived on and should give us all pause.

A brief but spectacular achievement, the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project (FTP) (1936-1939) provided jobs for some 13,000 destitute people at its height and created and produced 63,600 performances of 1,200 major theatrical works.

We face many big challenges. And we will need strong, bold policies to meaningfully address them. Solving our child-care crisis is one of those challenges, and a study of World War II government efforts to ensure accessible and affordable high-quality child care points the way to the kind of bold action we need. 

Three Texan authors build on a long tradition of dissent from patriotic accounts of Texas history in a new book on the racism baked into our story of the Alamo.

CounterSpin interview with Joseph Torres on media and the Tulsa massacre.

Surrounded by assasination plots and having been deceived from all sides, Louverture “was extremely reluctant to communicate his intentions even to his leading military officers, or to share power with them in any meaningful way.”

Cuba, the first Latin America country to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, presently is short of syringes for immunizing its population against the virus. It’s not feasible for Cuba to make its own syringes. The U.S. blockade prevents Cuba from importing them from abroad.