Shelter and Solidarity brings together Vijay Prashad, Ezili Dantò and Moise St Louis to try to come to terms with the Haitian and Cuban peoples’ complex responses to forced reverse-reparations, sanctions, invasions, and constant threats of “regime change”…. while keeping a focus on what we have to do, as activists in the heart of the Empire…. | more…
A common line of argument from the contemporary American left is that “socialism has never been tried.” It’s understandable that Western socialists would make this argument to members of the US proletariat, who have been deeply affected by years of red scare propaganda. This argument however, ignores the millions who have struggled and died in an effort to move beyond the contradictions of capitalism… | more…
In their new book “Extraordinary Threat,” Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur delve into the critical questions: What is the nature of Venezuela’s government? Is it a dictatorship? Are Venezuela’s problems due to misgovernment, or are they due to U.S. interference? What would happen if Venezuela fell to U.S. imperialism? How has the U.S. been able to get away with this? And above all: Taking Venezuela as a case study, how does regime change propaganda work? | more…
Lamrani abundó que en este contexto de doble castigo bloqueo-pandemia resulta lógico el malestar de las personas, escenario que Estados Unidos busca aprovechar para conseguir su objetivo trazado desde el triunfo de la Revolución en 1959: ‘romper el orden establecido y conseguir un cambio de régimen’…. | more…
After years of running opinion pieces about “legal” and “illegal” immigrants, media outlets now ignore the irony of government officials illegally blocking Central Americans from legally seeking asylum. | more…
It is with this attentiveness to the historic shortcomings and duplicity of left organizations that Yates rejects so-called democratic socialism, which even in its heyday failed to fundamentally challenge capitalism. Setting our sights on the mere (and, as history shows, inevitably temporary) reform of a fundamentally exploitative system instead reflects a colossal failure of imagination akin to the prisoner who spends all his energy advocating for a larger window in his cell… | more…
“….it’s also striking to note that Haiti has all kinds of natural resources, including gold! They’re licking their lips on Wall Street, salivating, contemplating the possibility of descending en masse on Haiti to exploit Haiti’s vast natural resources.” | more…
Marge Piercy asks: “Can thousands in the street change our long, laudy history, now?” | more…
It’s a set of loose propositions that fundamentally come down to this. If you look at the overrepresentation of black Americans in prisons or the overrepresentation in terms of being suspended from schools K through 12, you can come to one or two conclusions. You can come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with black people, or you can come to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with society…. | more…
“…In 2018, Venezuela was only able to import $11.7 billion in goods, according to Torino Capital. The impact on medicine imports was especially destructive. According to U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot, while its economy was still growing in 2013, Venezuela was importing about $2 billion per year in medicine. By 2018, that amount had fallen to an astonishing low of $140 million—an especially horrifying development because medicines are much more difficult to substitute with local production than food. It is impossible to deny that a collapse in medicine imports has killed thousands of people between 2017 and 2018, as Mark Weisbrot and U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs argued in a paper published in April 2019. Weisbrot and Sachs cite a 31 percent increase in general mortality in the 2017–2018 period, according to a survey by anti-Maduro Venezuelan academics. That increase works out to an extra forty thousand deaths….” | more…
“The new conception of nature was complete in its main features; all rigidity was dissolved, all fixity dissipated, all particularity that had been regarded as eternal became transient, the whole of nature shown as moving in eternal flux and cyclical course.” -Engels | more…