Subjects Archives: Inequality

On February 4, twelve days after Juan Guaidó’s self-juramentation, the National Assembly held an ordinary session to discuss and approve an instrument called “Statute Governing the Transition to Democracy to Restore the Validity of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

On Tues, Feb. 5, as the Macron government pushed harsh repressive laws against demonstrators through the National Assembly, the Yellow Vests joined with France’s unions for the first time in a day-long, nation-wide “General Strike.”

I am Nicolás Maduro, constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and I want to send a message to the American people to alert them to the media, communication and psychological warfare campaign that is developing in the international media and, above all, in the U.S. media against Venezuela.

A young author presents intimate snapshots of ordinary life as it is lived by millions of Venezuelans during a grueling crisis fueled by deadly U.S. sanctions and coup efforts.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro says he plans to take legal action against the United States to defy the sanctions.

What happens in Venezuela going forward will have major consequences for the entire region and the world; and, with the U.S. already pushing countries to pick sides, the world may soon become as divided as it was immediately preceding WW II.

The practice of citing conservative agitators is often characterized as “bothsidesism,” but here the news outlets only presented one side—the one on the far right—without even a hint that the claims might not have a factual basis.

Steve Ellner examines the Trump Administration’s recognition of a shadow government and, in so doing, the U.S.’s violation of international law.

Inequality is sexist. It is also transphobic and racist. This is a reality demonstrated by Oxfam’s recent report on wealth and inequality, and a reality well understood by the people who live it.

The U.S.-Russia talks in Geneva regarding the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty have ended in failure.

The Empire’s European castle of vassals is crumbling. Right in front of our eyes. But Nobody seems to see it. The European Union (EU), the conglomerate of vassals–Trump calls them irrelevant, and he doesn’t care what they think about him, they deserve to be collapsing.

Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.

The Israeli-U.S. war declared on the Palestinian boycott movement is coming to a head, culminating in a well-orchestrated effort aimed at suffocating any form of tangible protest of the ongoing Israeli colonization of Palestine.

Late last year, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton went to Miami (USA), where he coined a new–chilling–phrase: troika of tyranny. It echoed former U.S. President George W. Bush’s phrase, axis of evil. Bush’s axis included Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The World Bank’s latest annual report on poverty and shared prosperity has an unsurprisingly positive message that only 10% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty in 2015, which is the most recent year that available data allows for global poverty estimates to be made.

I don’t remember where I was on September 12, 2012. I was in Chicago, but I wasn’t in the streets when the approximately 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) walked out of school and onto the picket lines.

In this episode, we’re joined by Steven Attewell, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies.

“Liberal democracy is crumbling.” A Harvard Law Professor opened a recent talk with this matter-of-fact statement and the audience readily murmured its assent.

Through his relationship with the Chartist radical and labor poet Ernest Jones, Karl Marx came to realize the necessity of opposing slavery and colonialism in ending capitalism.

Ahead of the 2019 elections in India—the largest exercise of electoral democracy in the world–Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) discusses the current political context in the country and the left-led resistance to the deepening assault on basic human rights led by India’s right-wing.