I am a child of the atomic age. The atomic bomb, that is, the threat of nuclear war and mass destruction, has been in my consciousness—sometimes in the background but frequently in the foreground—nearly all of my life.
Category: War and peace
Anti-Imperialism and the Rise of Authoritarianism, “Left” and Right
WITH MILITARISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM ON THE RISE in numerous global and regional powers, there is a crucial need for updating and strengthening a politics of socialist anti-imperialism. Historically, many on the left felt the need to ally with the Soviet
Union . . .
Unity in Israel Means New Low for Palestinians
Any hope of a far-off, mythical two-state solution is scheduled to vanish on July 1st with the annexation of an unspecified amount of settled Palestinian land. When that happens, the terms that have defined the last 50 years of negotiations in Israel/Palestine will have been officially overturned.
Trump Threatens Venezuela under Cover of Coronavirus
Although Venezuela is only reporting 153 coronavirus infections and seven Covid-19 deaths as of April 4, that is likely a radical underestimation of the contagion’s spread. Venezuela’s healthcare system has been pushed to the breaking point by years of U.S. . . .
Will Omar’s PEACE Plan Bring Peace?
Rep. Ilhan Omar put forward the Pathway to PEACE (Progressive, Equitable, and Constructive Engagement), a package of seven bills to move U.S. foreign policy in a progressive direction on Feb. 12. Ironically it . . .
Revolution in Permanence in Syria, After the Uprisings
Joseph Daher, Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.
The Swiss-Syrian Marxist academic Joseph Daher’s sweeping study, Syria After the Uprisings, represents an important contribution to our political and historical understanding of Syria’s Revolution. . . .
Report: The China Question conference
The China Question will hopefully provide the impetus for a more confident response on the left to the challenge of what looms as a new Cold War. In wider progressive circles, of course, knowledge of China and consciousness of the strategic questions discussed here is mixed. In many ways, the debate is only just beginning.
IASWI’s Statement on Assassination of Qasem Soleimani and its Aftermath
Say no categorically and proactively to U.S. warmongering and stand firmly in solidarity with the working class and the poor and oppressed people of Iran, and not the tyrannical Iranian regime, and help strengthen anti-capitalist, anti-poverty and social and economic justice movements in Iran and across the region.
Remembering and Forgetting: No to War with Iran!
The criminal negligence of the Iranian regime and military — shooting down a passenger airliner that had just taken off from their own Tehran airport — should immediately remind us of the dozens, if not hundreds of occasions when United . . .
review
The AFL-CIO’s Cold War
The Cold War was the period in the twentieth century, approximately between 1946 and 1991, where world politics were dominated by the confrontation between two blocs of states, led respectively by the United States and the Soviet Union. . . .
Civic Resistance to Japanese Militarism
Japan’s 5.26 trillion-yen fiscal 2019 defense budget set a new record for the fifth straight year, as the country continued to beef up its armed forces while keeping a wary eye fixed on North Korea and China. The . . .
Enough!
Somewhere,
somewhere perhaps
in the desert of Iraq,
or perhaps in Palestine
or the Afghan hills,
amidst the cacophony of shells,
the reek of boiled-off flesh,
somewhere,
a voice awakens,
Read more ›
Doug Henwood Has It Wrong This Time
Doug Henwood, who often has so many intelligent and useful things to say about economics and politics, has it wrong this time. A few days ago on his Facebook page he commented on an article that I had written about . . .
The Socialist Position on the Latest U.S. Attack on Iran: The Assassination of Suleimani
President Donald Trump has virtually declared war on Iran with the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in an airstrike near Baghdad International Airport. The assassination of Suleimani will very likely lead to war, . . .
Trump’s Reckless Assassination of Iranian General Is an Act of War
The Middle East and the world woke up on the morning of Friday, January 3 to the shocking news that U.S. missiles had struck the Baghdad Airport, in a targeted assassination of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani.
Donald Trump’s cold-blooded assassination is . . .
The Politics of Citizenship Registration in India from the Perspective of a Bengali Refugee
Human beings have been repeatedly subjected to mass displacement and migration due to war, strife and conflict originating on the grounds of religion, race or ethnicity. If a “sneak peak” is taken into the pages of documented human history of . . .
Reply to Greg Shupak
Greg Shupak and I, as he notes, differ on one key interpretation of U.S. intervention in Syria. For him, the U.S. intervention, as it shifted its focus to defeating ISIS, never meant a shift away from an anti-Assad stance; rather, . . .
Reply to Ella Wind on Syria and the U.S.
In “Syria, the United States, and the Left,” Ella Wind criticizes my April 2018 article, “U.S. Out of Syria.” Wind says that I misrepresent U.S. policy towards Syria by “demonstrate[ing] the scale and ferocity of the U.S. intervention by a . . .
Syria, Refugees and Solidarity
The recent Turkish offensive on north-eastern Syria and US withdrawal of troops from the region is unleashing yet another humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.
In the past few days over 130,000 Syrians have fled for their lives, in desperate search of . . .
Declaration of Solidarity With the Kurds and People in Resistance in Northern Syria
In response to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, decided by the President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and in anticipation of the impending military attack of the free people in Rojava that this deal enables, . . .
On Gutter Journalism and Purported “Anti-Imperialism”
Gutter journalism is unfortunately not the preserve of openly right-wing tabloids. There has existed since the advent of Stalinism a “left-wing” strand of public mudslinging: Zhdanov was the counterpart of Goebbels. The Stalinist slander apparatus originally targeted the USSR’s left-wing . . .
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