“En el comportamiento hacia la mujer, botín y esclava de la voluptuosidad común, se manifiesta la infinita degradación en que el hombre existe para sí mismo… Del carácter de esta relación se desprende en qué medida el hombre ha llegado a ser y se concibe como ser genérico, como ser humano: la relación entre hombre y mujer es la más natural de las relaciones entre uno y otro ser humano”. Marx ... read full story / add a comment

The Paris Agreement has mostly been greeted with enthusiasm, though it contains at least one obvious flaw. Few seem to have noticed that the main tool mooted for keeping us within the 2℃ global warming target is a massive expansion of carbon trading, including offsetting, which allows the market exchange of credits between companies and nations to achieve an overall emissions reduction. That's despite plenty of evidence that markets haven't worked well enough, or quickly enough, to actually keep the planet safe.

The debate over whether to include carbon markets in the final agreement came right to the wire. Some left-leaning Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia vehemently opposed any mention, while the EU, Brazil, and New Zealand, among other countries, pushed hard for their inclusion – with support from the World Bank, the IMF and many business groups. ... read full story / add a comment

The current economic, political, and social situation in Venezuela is very complicated, which makes it somewhat difficult for outsiders to make sense of. On the one hand there are many people who defend the Bolivarian revolution, pointing to the successes it has had in reducing poverty and inequality and in increasing citizen participation and self-governance. On the other hand, there is a chorus of critics, not just from the usual suspects on the political right, but often from the left, who criticize the Maduro government's economic management of the country, corruption, the high inflation rate and shortages, and the trial of a high profile opposition politician, who the government accuses of fomenting violence. How did Venezuela get here? What happened since Hugo Chavez's death? Did the project derail, get stuck, hit a speed bump, or crash altogether? In order to answer this question, I will first analyze the origins of the current economic situation. ... read full story / add a comment

Nei giorni scorsi non sono mancate numerose commemorazioni ufficiali per celebrare il 35° anniversario del terremoto che il 23 novembre del 1980 sconquassò il Sud Italia con un’intensità che superò il 10° grado della scala Mercalli ed una magnitudo pari a 6,9 della scala Richter. Una scossa durata ben 90 secondi fece tremare tutto l’Appennino meridionale, radendo al suolo decine di paesi dell’Irpinia e della Lucania. A 35 anni di distanza il ricordo di quella tragedia ha suscitato ancora emozioni di sgomento e cordoglio, un profondo senso di angoscia, misto a dolore r rabbia... ... read full story / add a comment

Our goal is to formulate ten theses on what we believe constitutes the historical background of the Syrian refugee crisis within the context of the Arab Spring. One central argument is that Western meddling in this process was turned into a violent contest for state power that has resulted in grave human tragedy. The recent Paris attacks with over 100 fatalities – resulting in a state-of-emergency declaration and arson of refugee camps in retaliation – indicate that the Syrian refugee crisis has already taken on a greater importance for global politics. ... read full story / add a comment

Il terrorismo islamico è solo una forma di depistaggio. È proprio una curiosa circostanza, niente affatto casuale, quella in cui uno degli attentatori di Parigi porti addosso un prezioso documento personale come il passaporto (guarda caso, di nazionalità siriana). Una strana "circostanza" che somiglia molto ad un atto di depistaggio. Siamo giunti al paradosso che chiunque si sforzi di ragionare liberamente (e criticamente) con la propria testa è accusato di "fantasticare"... ... read full story / add a comment

KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 84, October 2015 has just been posted on our site. The PDF is up at: http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/x3fh0j. Contents list is at http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c86835 ... read full story / add a comment

The immense catastrophe that struck Turkey in the streets of Ankara, the capital city, on 10 October, when two bombs exploded in the midst of a thronging crowd of what would possibly turn out to be hundreds of thousands of people, leading to the death of an indefinite number of people, in any case exceeding one hundred, and the wounding of hundreds, some still under the risk of death, is a sharp reminder, if any were needed, that this is a country undergoing a severe political crisis. The tragic loss of life, ranging from a nine-year old boy to a seventy-year old woman and involving the deaths of a very high number of young people, has left the working-class movement, the broad left, the community of Alevis, the minority religious denomination in Turkey, and the Kurdish people, all of whom were involved in the peace demonstration that was attacked, in profound grief and mourning. It is cause for consolation, however, to witness the fact that the main aim of this hideous attack has been thwarted since, despite the grief, the masses have not been intimidated and have come out in militant mood both to protest and to bury their dead.

In unusually precipitated fashion, the government has claimed to have carried out an investigation on what it purports to be a double suicide bombing. They point their fingers at the ill-famed ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS) and claim that this was an attack on the unity of Turkey (why those who target the unity of the country have for decades now attacked the demonstrations of the working-class or of the oppressed minorities and never a right-wing rally remains a mystery!) ... read full story / add a comment

Shortly after the news of the Ankara massacre started circulating on social media, a video surfaced, showing the very moment of the first explosion, foregrounded by a group of young peace rally participants on a line of halay. The protesters were singing and dancing to prominent ozan Ruhi Su’s “Ellerinde Pankartlar,” composed to commemorate the bloody May 1 Labor Day celebrations in Taksim Square in 1977—when at least 42 people were massacred and more than 120 people were injured. ... read full story / add a comment

Quando avevamo la migliore scuola elementare del mondo ed hanno deciso di smantellarla... ... read full story / add a comment

La città curda di Cizre, un insediamento con una popolazione di circa 150000 anime nella Turchia sud-orientale si trova per la seconda volta sotto assedio delle forze armate turche e delle cosiddette "forze operative speciali" della polizia, dopo che il precedente assedio era stato tolto per una tregua di due giorni. Oltre al coprifuoco ci sono tagli all'erogazione di elettricità e vige l'interruzione di tutti i mezzi di comunicazione, compresi i telefoni mobili ed Internet. Dopo il primo assedio è venuta fuori tutta l'evidenza del terribile dramma umano. Uccisi oltre 30 civili, di età compresa fra i 35 giorni di vita di un bambino ed i 75 anni di un anziano. Prima che l'assedio fosse tolto, fonti governative dichiaravano che le forze di sicurezza avevano ucciso più di una dozzina di combattenti del PKK, negando vittime civili. Come un neonato ed un vecchio possano aver contribuito alla lotta del PKK rimane un mistero irrisolto da parte dei portavoce governativi, di fronte all'evidenza del fatti. [English] ... read full story / add a comment

El mundo no se libera del fascismo.
Este niega cualquier concepto de individualidad y lo opera en masa, es un brazo de la física contemporánea, dónde, las probabilidades mayores o menores del fenómeno, subyacen bajo el conjunto de los individuos. ... read full story / add a comment

The United States trumpets education as one of its shining successes of the war in Afghanistan. But a BuzzFeed News investigation reveals U.S. claims were often outright lies, as the government peddled numbers it knew to be false and touted schools that have never seen a single student. ... read full story / add a comment

e Kurdish town of Cizre, a settlement with a population of approximately 150 thousand souls in Southeastern Turkey, is now under siege by the Turkish armed forces and the so-called “special operation force” of the police for a second time, after a previous one-week long siege was lifted for an interlude of two days. Around-the-clock curfew is accompanied by power cuts and the interruption of all means of communication including mobile telephones and the Internet. The evidence that came out when the first round of siege was lifted attests to a terrible human drama. Over 30 civilians are dead, ranging from a 35-day old infant to a 75-year old man. Before the siege was lifted, government sources claimed that security forces had killed more than a dozen fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish guerrilla army, denying any civilian deaths. How the baby and the old man could have contributed to the fight of the PKK remains a mystery unexplored by government spokespeople after the facts have come to light. [Italiano] ... read full story / add a comment

Casi emblematici ed antitetici di "Buona Scuola"... ... read full story / add a comment

La nuova emigrazione dei giovani dall'Irpinia, tra le varie conseguenze, ha comportato una desertificazione del territorio, ma soprattutto l'abbandono di ogni speranza di cambiamento e, dunque, il sedimentarsi di una mentalità sempre più fatalistica... ... read full story / add a comment

Premetto subito che mi piacerebbe assistere al risveglio di una dialettica democratica in questa comunità. (...) All'uopo potrebbe servire Facebook. In un recente passato, ho già avuto occasione di annotare che il limite oggettivo di questo spazio virtuale di confronto e di partecipazione politica, è insito nel mezzo stesso di comunicazione, attualmente circoscritto ad una cerchia ancora elitaria di cittadini che utilizzano abitualmente Internet ed i social network. Comunque, ben venga lo strumento del web in soccorso alla libertà di espressione e di critica, dunque alla convivenza democratica e civile. Invito chiunque ad afferrare il senso di una questione estremamente delicata qual è, appunto, l'istanza o la rivendicazione di una maggiore partecipazione collegiale e democratica proveniente dal basso, vale a dire da settori consistenti della cittadinanza (...), che non deve scadere in futili pretesti per scatenare sterili o rissose polemiche personali. (...) ... read full story / add a comment

Once again the radical left petite bourgeoisie has failed.
This is not particular to Greece. It is a general tendency of struggles in many other social formations as well, wherever the petite bourgeoisie instead of the working class is leading the struggle. One lesson to learn is that whenever we persist in hoping that something positive will come from petite bourgeois leadership, however radical they might seem, THE RESULT WILL BE THE SAME: A TOTAL CAPITULATION TO CAPITAL.
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“Communists supposed it… but Syriza surpassed their expectations…” ... read full story / add a comment

There are preliminary ideas about anarchism and the difficulty it faces. The short piece of writing is sombre in places but ends on a positive note. It is an attempt to separate anarchism from other ideologies. ... read full story / add a comment