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‘The threat to privacy and data security posed by language models like ChatGPT is real enough. I frankly doubt that there’s any practical way to contain them. The most effective means that I can think of…to counter the spread of malicious doctrines and ideology are education in critical thinking, organization to encourage deliberation, and modes of intellectual self-defense.’ —Noam Chomsky

The dangers and immense suffering caused by all attempts at solving deep-seated social problems by militaristic interventions, on any scale, are obvious enough. If, however, we look more closely at the historical trend of militaristic adventures, it becomes frighteningly clear that they show an ever greater intensification and an ever-increasing scale, from local confrontations to two horrendous world wars in the twentieth century, and to the potential annihilation of humankind when we reach our own time.

Before the pandemic was announced by the World Health Organisation in March 2020, the poorer nations of the world already struggled with seriously high—and unpayable—levels of debt.

In the first few months of 2018, Nicaragua hardly appeared to be a strong candidate for an attempted coup. Daniel Ortega’s government had an 80 per cent approval rating in a poll a few months earlier.

As the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report tells us, there is still a chance to keep warming at no more than the 1.5°C target, but tipping points to climate catastrophes much worse than we are witnessing now will kick in if this target is breached. It is now crystal clear that ongoing wars, in particular the Ukraine war, create huge obstacles to the global cooperation necessary for any chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target. Following the lead of China’s peace plan, we should support the call for an immediate ceasefire in the Ukraine war, and for all parties involved to negotiate.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the brutal murder of the South African Communist Party (SACP) General Secretary, Comrade Thembisile Martin “Chris” Hani.

This world needs revolutionaries who refuse orders to kill and exploit. Two midwives named Shifra and Puah were such revolutionaries. When a racist ruler asked them to limit the reproduction of slaves—out of fear of a slave uprising—they disobeyed.

Only an ecosocialist revolution can stop our demise, but capitalism’s behemoth keeps people deceitful and mostly unaware of being on the verge of a catastrophic end. We must arise—now!

John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, Deborah Veneziale, and Vijay Prashad, Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023), 108 pages, $15. The “singular reality” (my phrase) on display here is the imagined reality in the mind’s eye of Beltline/Pentagon global strategists. Few readers will be surprised at the cravings of […]

The U.S. knows from its experience in defeating Germany, Japan, and the “Asian Tigers,” that a decisive way to slow a competitor’s growth rate is to get it to reduce its level of investment, which is what it is now trying to do to China.

In the current global climate of conflict and division, it is essential to develop lines of communication and encourage exchange between China, the West, and the developing world.

Money on the Left presents a public conversation with Dan Berger about his important new book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey (Basic Books, 2023). Berger’s Stayed on Freedom tells a new history of Black Liberation through the intertwined narratives of two grassroots organizers.

The universal premises of culture and politics have been subject to criticism from the moment that Enlightenment theories emerged. In postmodern theory, radical skepticism replaces judgement and makes universal speculation seem like either an absurd game or a violent imposition.

In this reprise from October 1993, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy ask: “Isn’t there anyone around here who understands how this capitalist system works?”

Ian Angus on chemical warfare against insects.

I recall a circle game from my childhood; after each round another chair was removed, leaving one more child out. We called it “Going to Jerusalem.” Last week Israeli boss Netanyahu arrived FROM Jerusalem. After two days he was out of the Berlin circle—one day too early.

After the truth about the Nord Stream pipeline explosion came to light, the whole world knows that the United States was behind the destruction of critical infrastructure. In fact, the destruction of infrastructure is not a new method to achieve America’s purpose.

In late December, tenants at the Lofts at Cargill Falls Mill in Putnam, Connecticut, an old mill town, received a letter from the Northeast District Department of Health notifying them that a toddler living in the residential complex had severe lead poisoning.

The twentieth century was marked by national liberation struggles that emerged in Africa and Asia, as well as in Latin America, where neocolonial structures had subordinated the formally independent countries. The achievements of the Russian Revolution in 1917 inspired the peasantry and the working class across the Global South. The fight for equality and liberation […]

Musicians around the world depicted and resisted the 2003 invasion of Iraq in other ways, yet others scraped the barrel of base, chauvinistic interests to sing for the imperialists. Sound was a partisan weapon.