Stories about Thinking Politically.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, many people in the West believed NATO was no longer needed. NATO claimed to be strictly a defensive alliance and its only rival had disbanded.
This is a report of a 2015 public event on this subject, with talks given by John Mearsheimer and Rick Rozoff. This provides some basic information BEFORE the Russian invasion in 2022 that many people don't know and/or don't want to know.
So what is there to say? Elections so often seem like exercises in scripting state power, organizing attention around a limited set of possibilities. But how might our sense of possibility change if we understand this election not as a stop on the march of progress, with Macron’s win positioned as evidence of republican righteousness, but in the context of a historical juncture that requires attention to the past’s enduring role in structuring the conditions of our present?
Noting the extensive number of progrssive protests, mobilizations, and social disruptions from below since the mid-1980s, not just in the US but around the world, this article suggests that what is going on is the expansion of the global economic and social justice movement, a bottom-up form of globalization. It suggests that this is, ultimately, a rejection of industrial civilization itself. And it points out, through an examination of the effects of climate change, that the continued existence of industrial civilization is imposing a burden on the peoples of the world that far outweighs its benefits, and suggests that protests will expand as more and more people understand the costs of industrial civilization.
Here is my analysis of what’s going on in Ukraine after one month. It may not prove acceptable to many. Certainly not liberals, the ruling elite in Washington, or even some left liberal and socialist left. But I’ve always spoken my mind on this blog and will continue to do so, with no allegiances to any political forces or organizations. So here goes:
First, this is a proxy war engineered by US neocons and political elites, that has its origins going back as far as 1999, when the neocons began to gain greater control over US foreign policy. The dress rehearsal for the current conflict originates with the Clinton administration. Once Clinton could not keep his zipper shut and the radical right used the opportunity to exact whatever concessions they wanted from him in his final two years in office, the shift in US foreign policy began and has gained momentum ever since.
The war being waged against global humanity by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is a hybrid war that utilizes all the tools it has at its disposal – sanctions, mass incarceration, coups, drugs, disinformation, culture, subversion, murder, and direct military engagement to further white power. The Eurocentrism and “White Lives Matters More Movement” represented by the coverage of the war in Ukraine stripped away any pretense to the supposed liberal commitment to global humanity. The white-washing of the danger of the ultra-right and neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and state and the white ethno-nationalism that the conflict generated across the Western world demonstrated, once again, how “racialism” and the commitment to the fiction of white supremacy continues to trump class and class struggle and the ability to build a multi-national, class based anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist opposition in the North.
On March 11, 2022, Gabriel Boric will be inaugurated as Chile’s president, barring an earthquake, military coup, or some other unexpected event. He will be the most left-wing president of Chile since Salvador Allende, who held the office from November 2, 1970 until his overthrow and murder in a military coup on September 11, 1973.
The article excerpted below, “Gabriel Boric, Last President of the Old or First President of the New?” by Pablo Abufom explores the question posed in the title. It appeared on the Viento Sur website on December 21, 2021 here and on the Fourth International website here. We republish it now because the question it poses will begin to be answered shortly. We will start with a brief review of the history leading up to the present moment.
Examines the recent farmers' struggles in India, which resulted in overturning unjust laws initiated by India's right-wing government.
Allow us to first dispense with the argument that revolutionary movements are synonymous with violence. While self-defence is a human right, a revolutionary movement is one whose intent is a change in social system.
