Subjects Archives: Imperialism

Above all, we’d like to demand the right to dream. For us, the present is unacceptable. We demand the future.

The Liberal Party of Canada is ensnared in a scandal alleging high-level government intervention to shield a major engineering firm from criminal prosecution over its practices abroad. The timing of the scandal is note worthy. It has emerged after a high profile role taken by the governing Liberals in destabilizing Venezuela. Looking at the firms operations in Venezuela provides a broader context of Canadian capitalism and imperialism.

It is not Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran that are in dire and crucial need of ‘regime change’. It is the United States of America, it is the entire European Union; in fact, the entire West.

The media are trying to turn the 1% into a protected minority.

The House of Representatives may pass their resolution, but that won’t close the door on the discussion Omar’s courage has helped to open. If anything, their behavior and incitement against her has pried it open even further.

Let me finish this interview with our motto: “Fight, fight, don’t stop fighting for a government of the workers and of the people.”

It is a fundamental task for the class struggle that we succeed in liberating Lula so that he becomes the principal spokesman, he is the one who has the capacity to help mobilize the masses against the system and the project of the extreme right.

NPR’s Facebook page seems to go out of its way to conceal the fact that it’s U.S. government–supported, calling itself “a privately supported, not-for-profit membership organization.” Maybe the P stands for “Private”?

As socialists rally in the United States over their country’s backing of a right wing coup in Venezuela, the supposedly socialist members of Congress–Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)–are hitting talking points that worry critics like Roger Waters and activists in the streets alike.

The Trump administration set a 23 February deadline for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to bow to U.S. demands and cede power to self-appointed “president” Juan Guaidó.

Not to be dramatic, but it’s probably the best thing we’ve ever read.

The Great Recession of 2008 marked the end of a lengthy period of international economic growth and rapidly increasing international trade. Now, some ten years later, economic activity, including trade and foreign direct investment, remains far below pre-crisis levels with little sign of revival.

As heads of government, democratically entrusted with safeguarding the welfare of all Venezuelans, Chavez and Maduro bear overall responsibility for the economic crisis, but they are not alone.

The U.S. left makes celebrities of self-styled “socialists” that have no solidarity with real strugglers against imperialism in the world.

The mood in Caracas (Venezuela) is sombre. It appears that the attempted coup against the government that began on 23 January is now substantially over (as the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tells me).

There is one desperate chance left to thwart the impending ecocide and extinction of the human species.

Let us call things by their proper names: this is not humanitarian aid. If the U.S. had really wanted to help the people of Venezuela, they would have acted via UN agencies accredited in the country, as other states successfully do.

In all of the talk about Venezuela, many are missing the real conversation that should be had. Naturally, after being subjected to sensationalist and heavily-biased media reports, most Americans frame the situation in terms of “dictatorship,” “humanitarian crisis,” and “U.S. intervention.”

Everything is connected to this, including the fear and hate that the West feels and spreads about countries like Venezuela, Russia, China, Iran, South Africa, Syria or Cuba.

A few days after the Time story, CNBC (6/22/16) carried a claim that there was no acetaminophen to be found anywhere, either: “Basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.”