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Billions of children are being punished by the pandemic
There are immense casualties from this Great Lockdown. Incomes have collapsed for half the world’s population, while hunger rates are on the rise. But there are other casualties, other victims, often less remarked upon.
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America liberated! Trump found in bunker!
An ad-hoc alliance of radical armies demanding justice for Black lives broke through federal barricades today to storm Capitol Hill.
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Place, Participation & #Unis4All with Benjamin Wilson
Economist Benjamin Wilson joins Money on the Left to discuss heterodox approaches to place, participation, and the politics of university finance. Associate professor of economics at SUNY Cortland, Wilson received his interdisciplinary Ph.D. from University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), where he took courses with some of the leading lights of heterodox economic theory, including […]
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If we’re going to defund militarized police departments, why not add the Pentagon?
The U.S. military’s budget, like so many police department budgets, is bloated, and diverts our tax dollars into forces of domination and violence. Now is the time to question our spending priorities at the local and federal level.
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Black socialist leader: ‘Demands must clarify our reality’
You see, not all Black folk look or think alike. And not every organization will have the same political analysis of the events before our eyes.
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Who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize in a time of pandemic?
A few weeks ago, I was talking to Noam Chomsky about the state of the world. At one point, Noam smiled and said that he is not aware of any German doctors in Italy, even though both countries are in the European Union; instead, Cuban and Chinese doctors went to Italy to help the Italians fight the global pandemic.
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“Indian racism towards Black people is almost worse than white peoples’ racism” An Interview with Arundhati Roy
We ourselves live in a pretty sick society that seems incapable of feelings of sisterhood, brotherhood, solidarity.
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Turkey’s big bet has put Libya in center of a global power struggle
The series of debilitating military setbacks that Libya’s renegade general Khalifa Haftar suffered in recent months have spurred diplomatic activities over the conflict in the country. But the war is far from over.
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Iran’s skyrocketing stock exchange signals historic political shift
In Iran, this spring brings a historic opportunity for neoliberal opposition parties personified by President Rouhani. The utopian dream will now get its first chance to prove itself as a cash-starved Islamic Republic embarks on its boldest ever embrace of privatization of state-owned companies.
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Tear down the racist statues, end racist debt and pay for reparations
Bring down the statues, surely. But more than that: cancel the debt and provide reparations to the formerly colonized for the centuries of theft and brutality.
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Dossier 20: Health is a political choice
In the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 25 offers an expanded vision of what it could mean to be a human being. Human beings, it notes, have ‘the right to a standard of living adequate for [their] health and well-being’. This includes ‘food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services’; human beings also have the ‘right to security’, which means they have the right to compensation for any lack of livelihood due to circumstances beyond their control.
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Economic collapse and unemployment councils—then and now
Hunger, homelessness, and evictions were features of the Great Depression in the United States. Jobs disappeared and working conditions deteriorated. Some “250,000 teenagers were on the road.” And how many others? By 1933 one third of farm families had lost their farms. Unemployment that year was 25 percent. The lives of working people were devastated.
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Gautam Navlakha’s struggle for justice
Indian activist and journalist Gautam Navlakha is in prison as part of what many observers have termed a crackdown on dissent in India. The 68-year-old has been fighting a years-long legal battle against the Indian state.
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The murder of George Floyd is normal in an abnormal society
There is no need to wonder why George Floyd (age 46) was murdered in broad daylight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The script of his death is written deep in the ugly drama of U.S. history.
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NATO returns to Libya to challenge Russia
The great game in Libya has begun surging with the United States shedding its strategic ambivalence and resorting to a proactive role. At the end of May, the Pentagon marked a dramatic escalation by accusing Moscow of bolstering “Kremlin-linked mercenaries” who are allegedly helping Khalifa Haftar, the eastern warlord in Libya.
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Vale Jack Mundey: Inspirational Australian Union Leader
Jack Mundey, the leader of the NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation between 1968 and 1974 has passed away at the age of 90. An initiator of the “green bans”, Jack was a Marxist who rediscovered the ecological essence of Marxism.
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Taiwan and WHO in the COVID-19 pandemic
The ruling establishment’s intrigue against the WHO might seem at odds with Taiwan’s failed bid to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) this past May, but there was no contradiction between Taiwan being seen fighting a David and Goliath-like battle with both the WHO and China, thereby flaring up geopolitical tensions from without. Both served the interests of the ruling class of Taiwan.
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Reflections from Vermont
That there are good and honorable people who believe that the Democratic Party can be turned around. I don’t. Our major task is to change the entire nature of political discussion in the country. In my view that’s just not going to happen within the Democratic Party.
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U.S. declares a vaccine war on the World
Donald Trump launched a new vaccine war in May, but not against the virus. It was against the world.
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Oil price collapse & the crisis
Is oil a stranded asset? Or is the system defunct? This thought-provoking talk was given by Andy Higginbottom, Associate Professor in the Politics Department of Kingston University in Britain. In this talk he looks at Marx’s theory of rent as surplus profit and its parallels within the oil markets.