Empire’s Aggression On Syria

by Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents.org | 07 April, 2017

With the pounding of 59 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles on Shayrat airbase in Syria the Empire has widened its aggression in the strategically crucial country. The sounds of destruction announce imperialism’s and aggression, interference and intervention. This is the sound of “peace” imperialism likes to impose on peoples of other countries.

Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Donald Trump, the US president, branded Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, a “dictator”, and called on “all civilized nations to join” the US “in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.” He said “as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail.”

‘Unlawful and Unconstitutional’: US Pols React to Syria Attack

teleSUR | 07 April, 2017

Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017

Several prominent U.S. politicians from across the political spectrum called President Trump’s unilateral attack on Syria Thursday “unlawful” and “unconstitutional.”

Prominent Republican Sen. Rand Paul was quick to respond to news of the attack suggesting it was unconstitutional, given that the U.S. “was not attacked” and Trump neither sought nor received congressional approval.

The World Reacts to the US Attack on Syria

teleSUR | 07 April, 2017

USS Porter launches a Tomahawk missile in the Mediterranean Sea during Wednesday’s attack on Syria. April 6, 2017 | Photo: Reuters

The world reacted to news of the U.S. attack on Syria Thursday evening, with Bolivia quickly calling for a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday to discuss the situation.

Russia issued a statement early Friday calling the attack an “aggression against a sovereign nation,” according to the Guardian.

The Kremlin said the attack was based on an “invented pretext” claiming the Syrian army did not have chemical weapons.

Just Wait Until I Get Tenure

by Michael D. Yates

MR Online | 03 April, 2017

A Facebook friend, Steven Salaita, recently wrote a post about academe arguing that tenure-track professors are kidding themselves if they say they will become more radical once they get tenure. Given Steven’s vicious treatment by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, whatever he writes about higher education is worth reading. I agreed with his post, and I made a long reply. Here, I incorporate what I said into a more coherent commentary.

The first thing to understand about colleges and universities is that they are workplaces. And like all workplaces in capitalist societies, they are organized as hierarchies, with power radiating downward. From the Board of Trustees, to the top administrators, to the tenured faculty, to the tenure-stream faculty, to the vast mass of adjuncts and short-term contract faculty, to the administrative staff, clerical workers, custodians, groundskeepers, and cafeteria employees. Those at the top have as their central objective control over the enterprise, so that their power can be maintained, that revenues from tuition, grants, money from various levels of government, and the like keep flowing in, that the prestige of the college or university grows. And, of great importance, that those below them do not and cannot make trouble by challenging their authority.

The benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism: An integral part of the South African history

by Sehlare Makgetlaneng

Pambazuka News | 07 April, 2017

There has been the dialectical and organic relationship between the benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism in South Africa since their inception in the country. The capture of the interlinkages between these problems in the South African history for their concrete understanding and resolution is through the theoretical use of the relationship between race and class and the theoretical and practical recognition of the primacy of class over race in South Africa. Capitalism since its inception in South Africa has constituted the primary or irreconcilable contradiction with the masses of its exploited people. This work uses the dialectical relationship between race and class to explain the relationship between the benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism in the South African political economy.

Priorities Right On Kids’ Meals

Morning Star | 07 April, 2017

FREE school meals for every primary school child would be a godsend to millions of families across the country.

Labour is absolutely right to be championing such a policy — and right too in proposing to pay for it by slapping VAT on private school fees.

This immediately gives the lie to Theresa May’s tired riposte that Labour, as usual, was planning to “bankrupt Britain.”

The value of the school meals initiative launched by Jeremy Corbyn and shadow education secretary Angela Rayner in Lancashire goes beyond the cost of a kid’s lunch because it strikes at the heart of the austerity myth the Tories — with willing accomplices in the monopoly media — have been trying to dupe us with for seven years.

Remembering Vilma Espín on the 87th anniversary of her birth

by Eduardo Palomares Calderón

Granma | 07 April, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of the Second Front

SANTIAGO DE CUBA.– Colonel Alberto Vázquez García’s participation in the clandestine struggle in Santiago de Cuba, his early incorporation into the Rebel Army, and being among the founders of the Frank País Second Eastern Front, allowed him to interact with Vilma Espín Guillois. Today, on the 87th anniversary of the birth of this extraordinary Cuban woman, he offers some of his fondest memories of her.

“We were practically neighbors, because we lived two and a half blocks from each other. In addition, I was a bus driver on a route that passed by the University of the Oriente, and I often saw her take the bus to go to classes, but it never crossed my mind that this young girl would become that outstanding figure of the struggle and the triumphant Revolution.”

Isabelle Huppert: Theater defies space and time

by  Mireya Castañeda

Granma | 05 April, 2017

On receiving the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama, for her performance in the film Elle, Isabelle Huppert noted: “There are people from all over the world here in this room from China to the Arabic world, from America to Europe. Do not expect cinema to build walls and borders.” Photo: http://www.unesco.org

“TO be or not to be, that is the question.” This is probably the most famous phrase in theater history, pronounced by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in a soliloquy in the first scene of the third act of William Shakespeare’s homonymous tragedy.

It is natural to recall it now, on the occasion of the celebrations for World Theater Day, established in 1961 on a UNESCO proposal, as a tribute to the inauguration in Paris on March 27, 1948, of the International Theater Institute (ITI), which brings together representatives from all countries of the world.