Forget about the “Good Anthropocene” (“The Robbery of Nature” reviewed by Counterfire)
For Bellamy Foster and Clark, embracing the Good Anthropocene is simply a failure to appreciate the depth of the social change required… | more…
China’s socialist model: Continuously producing new Marxists (Zhun Xu speaks at The People’s Forum NYC)
Zhun Xu, author of “From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty,” spoke alongside Chris Matlhako, Elias Khalil Jabbour, and Bikrum Gill on a panel titled, “Political Economies of Chinese Socialism.” | more…
The fictitious cause of Venezuelan precarity (“Extraordinary Threat” reviewed in Counterpunch)
Chavez inherited an impoverished country with a thin, glittering layer of affluence at the top. To the horror of Washington and Venezuelan plutocrats, he promptly began redistributing wealth to the poor… | more…
WATCH! MR Conversations: “Extraordinary Threat,” with Emersberger, Podur, Wilpert and Paez-Victor
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…
Listen: Joe Emersberger on Alex Saab, “knight errant” (Coauthor of “Extraordinary Threat” interviewed by Gorilla Radio)
…in the service of besieged Venezuela, en route to Iran, another nation similarly blockaded by America, when he was intercepted by Cape Verde authorities and thrown into prison there…. | more…
WATCH! MR Conversations: “Dissenting POWs,” with Wilber, Lembcke, Zeiger and Rothstein (PLUS: Excerpts)
The conversation begins with the story of Vivian Rothstein’s participation in a 1967 peace delegation to North Vietnam, and her encounter there with the Americans held at Hoa Lo Prison — the subject of ‘Dissenting POWs.’ One might think that that delegation’s visit to Hoa Lo Prison, and the dissent expressed by almost half of its POW inmates, would have been so controversial as to gain a fair amount of attention at the time…. | more…
Misogyny, memory, and the pathologization of dissent (Listen: Lembcke on “Warrior Nation;” Plus: “Dissenting POWs” reviewed in Counterpunch)
“Vietnam veterans were commonly portrayed in film and news reports as casualties of the war, their mission sold out on the home front and their homecoming marked by ingratitude and condemnation. Representations of POWs followed a similar path…It was trauma, not politics and conscience, that moved in-service resisters.” | more…
Listen: As back-orders for “How to Read Marx’s ‘Capital'” pile up, Antifada speaks with Michael Heinrich
Michael Heinrich “has a powerful critique of vulgar Marxism and the orthodoxies of the 19th and 20th centuries…Nerds, you’re not going to want to miss this one!” | more…
The lies peddled about Venezuela’s past (FAIR publishes ‘Extraordinary Threat’ excerpt)
It is worth summing up some of these key lies: 1) Venezuela was “once prosperous.” In fact, Venezuela was an unequal country in which most people were poor despite the country’s oil wealth; 2) Venezuela was a democracy before Chavismo. In fact, politicians alternated holding power according to an undemocratic agreement, and rammed austerity down the throats of Venezuela’s poor by committing massacres, such as the Caracazo…. | more…
Critical clarity of perspective on pandemic’s cause (‘Dead Epidemiologists’ reviewed by Marx & Philosophy Review of Books)
Dead Epidemiologists “speaks more plainly than academic jargon is wont to allow. Yet, in my view, this is one of the book’s biggest strengths. It makes the book accessible, and that accessibility is going to be important if we, as a global community, are to tackle the problem that Wallace and his colleagues articulate…” | more…
Time to rewrite the history of Juneteenth (Gerald Horne interviewed by The Defender Network)
“I’m going to argue that it’s not only June 19, 1865, that we should mark, but also June 19, 1867, because that’s when the French leader Maximillian was killed. It marks the end of the attempt to continue our enslavement in Mexico. It’s a history that I would urge others to investigate….” | more…
“The collateral effect of winning:” An encounter between lawyer Michael Tigar and one of his clients (Listen: Northern Sun Radio News Show)
In this interview on KFAI-Minneapolis with hosts Don Olson and Dave Gutknecht, Michael Tigar encounters one of his clients for the first time, live on the radio. | more…
Refusing to “lose the game by forfeit” (“Venezuela, the Present as Struggle” reviewed by Counterfire)
‘Processes of societal change must be carried out both “from above” and “from below”, without turning our backs on these contested spaces,’ said Antonio González Plessman, one of those interviewed by Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert… | more…