Syria and the Left
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Syria and the Left
Behind the humanitarian disaster of the Syrian civil war is a political crisis the Left urgently needs to understand. The Syrian tragedy is a key moral and political question today. Yet it has not been easy for leftists around the world to decide where they stand on Syria.
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Reports on the Resistance: Opposition, Protest, Resistance to Trump Muslim Ban – Day 2
Opposition and resistance to Trump’s Muslim ban continued for a second day on Sunday, January 29 with more massive demonstrations in American cities, as some corporate CEOS as well as Republican and many Democratic politicians also spoke out against Trump’s Muslim ban. Democrats rushed to put themselves at the head of what have been many…
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Reports on the Resistance: Trump’s Muslim Ban Spurs Strong Resistance: Thousands at Airport Protests
Thousands from New York City to Seattle went on January 28 to the nation’s major airports to protest President Donald’s Trump’s order banning for 120 days Muslim immigrants and refugees from seven nations, an order issued that same day. The protests, initiated by immigrant rights groups through social media, took place not only at the…
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Redeeming the revolution: A review of “October 1917 – Workers in Power”
Fred Leplat and Alex de Jong, eds. October 1917 – Workers in Power. London: Merlin Press, the IIRE and Resistance Books, 2016. 256 pages Nearly a century ago, the workers and peasants of Russia overthrew the Provisional Government and established the world’s first socialist republic. It was a seminal moment in human history. For the capitalists of…
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Women's March 2017: The Birth Of a New Women's Movement (?)
I came back when the Women’s March in D.C. exhausted but thrilled, convinced that we are seeing the birth of a new women’s movement. Hearing about all the other Women’s Marches around the world only confirmed that impression. The size, the inclusiveness, the defiant but good-humored spirit and the progressive politics make me very optimistic.
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Reports on the Resistance: Millions of Women March Against Trump and His Policies
Millions of women around the world marched on Saturday, January 21, to repudiate Republican Donald Trump’s presidency, his vulgar and misogynistic language and behavior, and his anti-woman policies. On Trump’s first full-day as president, he was greeted in Washington, D.C. by a magnificent pink demonstration of women in protest promising he would face four years…
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Left of Death: The Socialist Case Against the Death Penalty
On January 10, 2017, white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof was sentenced to death by a jury of his peers in federal court. He was deemed competent to stand trial multiple times, despite serious questions regarding his mental stability. He was afforded what, by all means, appeared to be a competent legal team to…
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Mass Protests Across Mexico against Gas, Electrical Price Increases
Tens of thousands in every state in Mexico have for the last week joined protests against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government after it raised prices on gasoline by between 14 and 20 percent and electric rates by 4.5 percent. The protests so far are not as well organized, as disciplined, or as large as the…
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The End of the “American Century”: Whither US Global Hegemony and the Indispensable Nation?
“This is the end, my only friend, the end/Of our elaborate plans, the end/Of everything that stands, the end/No safety or surprise, the end.” – Jim Morrison, The Doors Will Donald Trump’s ascension to the imperial presidency mark the nadir of the declension of the United States as the global hegemon? While Trump’s fantasies about…
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Mazzocchi and the Moment
In recent months I’ve been thinking a lot, more than usual, of Anthony Mazzocchi, longtime official of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, leading presence in the movement for occupational health and safety, and one of the very brightest lights of a serious working-class politics in the post-World War II era until his…
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The Banality of Evil: Elites Close Ranks Behind Trump
Happy Thanksgiving! As we celebrate the America’s founding myth of the Pilgrim Fathers welcomed by the Indians, the National Guard, militarized local police and (unlicensed) security guards continue to brutalize unarmed Standing Rock Sioux Indians (and members of dozens of other tribes) protesting the construction of the unapproved Dakota Access Pipeline on their sacred lands…
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Letter from Standing Rock
We arrived at the Standing Rock encampment late afternoon on Thursday as the sun was beginning to go down. Driving into the site was truly amazing: it is enormous! It is a village of about 500 (probably more) tents, vans, RVs, etc, some of them huge and housing dozens of people. Lots more people who are participating…
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Towards an Anarchist Money and Monetary System: An Interview with Nathan Cedric Tankus
Though conceived out of conversations concerning the Eurozone crisis in summer 2015, this interview with Nathan Cedric Tankus engages with heightened focus by the left on finance capita. Tankus is research scholar at the Modern Money Network, an organization committed to: “The creation and improvement of monetary and financial institutions governed by the public and…
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Third Parties—My Personal Experience
I joined the Peace and Freedom Party under the guidance of leaders of the International Socialists (IS), including Mike Parker and Jack Weinberg, in 1967-68. This was my only real involvement in a third party. It was not only long ago, it was a different context: there was a large, lively left movement, which at the…
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Who Would You Vote for in 1840? And Who Will You Vote for on Nov. 8?
Imagine that it is 1840 and someone approaches you on the street and hands you a flyer for James G. Birney, the presidential candidate of the new Liberty Party. The flyer says that the Liberty Party opposes slavery. It is the only party that does. The Democrats and the Whigs–the two parties of the two-party…
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Trump’s Temerism
The night of the penultimate presidential debate I was at a screening of the Brazilian film Aquarius, which tells the story of a woman fighting a corrupt development company to remain in her apartment building. During the Q&A session with the director and force-of-nature actress Sonia Braga, a handful of demonstrators stood up, silently, holding…
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The End of Lulism and the Palace Coup in Brazil
In general, analyses of Brazil’s current political and economic crisis emphasize the economic policy “errors” of the government, inherited by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) from her predecessor, Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. While it is true that certain federal policy decisions have interfered with the dynamics of the Brazilian distributive…
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The 'War' against Islamic State: A Military Strategy Doomed to Political Failure
The last terrible terrorist attack by the so-called “Islamic State” (also known as Daech) killed at least 300 people in Baghdad’s central shopping district of Karrada on July 2. It was the worst single car bomb attack in Iraq since U.S. and British led forces toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein 13 years ago and deepened the…
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Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s Nov. 6 Election, and the Betrayal of a Revolution
For many years now Nicaraguans on both the right and the left have referred to Daniel Ortega, a leader of the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, as a “dictator.” Now it appears that when country votes on November 6, he may succeed in becoming the country’s virtual monarch. Dan La Botz, author of the new book…
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Trump’s Sexual Assaults Spark Revival of Women’s Movement
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bragging about his sexual assaults on women appears to be sparking a revival of the women’s movement. Trump’s remark that he could “grab women by the pussy”—followed by more women coming forward to describe his sexual assault on them over many years—has led to social media protests and to demonstrations…
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Rage for Aleppo and Syria
They say that generals usually prepare for the last war. This has happened to the peace movement, too. The anti-war coalitions in the U.S. and UK are acting as if this was 2003 and everyone need to focus on Western imperial adventures. Instead circumstances are quite different. The main carnage right now has little to…
