One often overlooked imperialist adventure was the 1983 U.S. invasion of the small Caribbean nation of Grenada.
The objective of the invasion was the consolidation of a pro-U.S. regime after the assassination of the charismatic Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.Read More »
Requesting the International Criminal Court to investigate Venezuela’s government is a significant escalation in Ottawa’s campaign of interference in the domestic affairs of another country.
Supported by five like-minded South American nations, it’s the first time a member state has been brought before the ICC’s chief prosecutor by other members.Read More »
Turmoil reigns in Venezuela. A story serves to illustrate and to introduce the report presented here.
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) on its website claims that the national police in Táchira state recently arrested and tortured PCV member José Luis Daza, who remains in prison in Caracas. The location of the incident near the Colombia-Venezuela border points to the role of Colombia in undermining the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Henry Heller
A MARXIST HISTORY OF CAPITALISM
Routledge, 2018
Since the 1970s, Marxist discussion of how and when capitalism was born has been dominated by two competing academic currents. World-System Theory, first enunciated by Immanuel Wallerstein, locates the origin of capitalism in the expansion of world trade and the plunder of the new world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Political Marxism, developed by Robert Brenner, says the transition took place somewhat earlier, and only in rural England, where feudal lords converted themselves into capitalist landlords.Read More »
Revolutions and even near-revolutions are earthmoving events that leave a profound mark on any society. They change basic norms, redefining the social modus operandi, and just as often turn against their own children like the mythical Saturn. In Nepal, one can see how an almost-brought-to-completion revolution – led by a powerful and creative Maoist movement – has produced divisions among its leaders who are now desperately trying to regroup, reorganize, and get moving again.
The advance of the extreme right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election confirms the global threat of the growth of authoritarian reaction. With nearly 50 million votes, 46 percent, it will take an enormous upset for the center-left Workers Party candidate to defeat him in the runoff in two weeks’ time.
CULVER CITY, Calif.—Count on this city’s unique Wende Museum for always thought-provoking historical and cultural programming relating to the Cold War in all its aspects. Its two current exhibitions are “War of Nerves: Psychological Landscapes of the Cold War,” a collaborative initiative of the Wende Museum and Wellcome Collection, and “Red Shoes: Love, Politics, and Dance During the Cold War.” These exhibitions will be on view through January 13, 2019.
Facebook has become The Great Censor, ready to pull the pages of dissenters that seek to “stir up political debate” in ways that threaten the legitimacy of corporate rule.
“Facebook is indispensable to maintaining the global corporate monopoly on truth — as is Google.”
Facebook has declared war on political dissent. In a rash of purges last week, the behemoth corporation banned 30 pages, with a total of 22 million fans, on the grounds that the accounts were “created to stir up political debate in the US, the Middle East, Russia and the UK.” At the top of the list were the anti-police lawlessness pages Cop Block , Filming Cops , The Free Thought Project and Police the Police, with a combined audience of 8.1 million. The other banned pages range across the non-establishment spectrum , from the reactionary Right Wing News, to Punk Rock Libertarians and the pro-marijuana page, Hemp.
Many of us who were in their teens in the 1960s, grew up with Frontier. Leftism was the hallmark of intellect and sensitivity in those days. Developing leftist leanings was as natural as, say, fondness for football. And reading Frontier in the 1970s was as essential as reading the daily newspaper. We would rely on the dailies for news and look forward to the weekly Frontier for its views. News without views makes no sense, we had learnt meanwhile.
But Frontier was important for us for another reason. There was a time when the guardians and teachers would advise the youth to read The Statesman to have an idea of good English. We learnt about Frontier‘s brilliant linguistic style from some of our teachers. We would try to emulate Frontier‘s English. We, of course, failed but would boast of some words and phrases picked up from Frontier‘s editorials. Interestingly, we loved Samar Sen’s poems as much as Samarbabu’s style of English. He seemed to be two selves combined into one.Read More »
Presently, public discourses are abuzz with the topic of the sordid state of State-run Banks, as usual, for all the failures of Economy and Policy as a whole, all Public sector enterprises, their management and workers are held liable. At this point, the State and the enterprises under it, are projected as entities, in mutual conflict of interest. Since 2014, the rosy promise of ‘good days’ nosedived, all the flights of anti Kashmir and anti Pakistan pseudo ‘Nationalism’ failed to take off, saffron cow communal agenda, failed in Delhi and Bihar in 2015 and 2016. The next fake war against black money, by the organised mass loot of Note Ban, paid dividend in UP polls, but GST wrong implementation, again proved counterproductive in Gujarat. The problem is, the job, for which they were brought in by multi-National Corporate houses, remained unfulfilled. So a new destructive drama of cleansing Banks is put on stage.Read More »
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