KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 99, July 2019 has just been posted on our site. The PDF is up at: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/00013n ... read full story / add a comment

Canada’s embassy in Venezuela has just been closed. The spur for this closure is an open attempt by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to overthrow Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Canada is one of the leaders of the Lima Group, a network of countries that came together in 2017 with the express purpose of regime change in Venezuela. Canada’s diplomatic corps has played the role of facilitator for the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Trudeau and Guaidó speak regularly. Their plot against Venezuela thickens. ... read full story / add a comment

After withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran last year and resuming sanctions last November, the White House in April announced that its goal was to “drive Iranian exports to zero.” To make this drive happen, the White House stopped allowing countries like India, China, Japan, Turkey, and South Korea to import Iranian oil: dictating to sovereign countries whom they can trade with. ... read full story / add a comment

Ao longo deste ensaio, desenvolverei o conceito de “Sistemas de Poder” ou “Sistemas Políticos” como ideologia política, sujeito imaterial e indivisível nas relações sociais. A partir da compreensão deste conceito, situarei os quatro Modelos de Governação existentes na história política da humanidade. Os Modelos de Governação podem ter maior ou menor impacto nos governos ao longo da História, tendo em vista as suas próprias necessidades de buscar, em outros Modelos de Governação, soluções inexistentes em si para as demandas e necessidades específicas de cada sociedade, em cada época distinta. ... read full story / add a comment

La guerra del capitalismo transnacional sigue: 129 ex-guerrilleros y más de 600 activistas han sido asesinados por la herramienta paramilitar o militar del Estado colombiano, desde la firma de los Acuerdos. Al Terrorismo de Estado que viabiliza el saqueo multinacional, no puede llamársele “paz”. ... read full story / add a comment

Calma, tensa calma en Caracas y toda Venezuela, tras el publicitario intento de golpe de Estado en Venezuela, donde los sectores radicales de la oposición no lograron ni el apoyo de las Fuerzas Armadas ni que el pueblo saliera a la calle a sumatse a la intentona liderada por el autoproclamado presidente Juan Guaidó y el prófugo Leopoldo López. ... read full story / add a comment

The rise of the far right is a worldwide phenomenon, rooted in the nefarious effects of neoliberal globalization which have pushed the world into mass unemployment and enormous inequalities. I consider it to be a late political effect of the global financial crisis that hit the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It is not an easy task to explain the phenomenon of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and to understand the groups that support him, both within and outside government. It’s difficult, for anyone, to draw a truly complete and sober analysis of what we have experienced. This essay is not based on in-depth research but on collective reflections and debates. I intend to pose some key questions and try to identify some clues to answer them. ... read full story / add a comment

As we head for NATO’s 70th birthday, it’s time to assess the nuclear-armed military alliance that came into being to ensure western military superiority during the Cold War. Most strikingly, during its first 40 years of existence – namely the Cold War, NATO embarked on no wars or military campaigns. Yet in the 30 years since the Cold War and the removal of its political and military rival, the Soviet Union, NATO has massively expanded territorially, changed its mission statement from a defensive to an aggressive posture and embarked on a series of wars, of which their intervention in Afghanistan is getting on for two decades long. ... read full story / add a comment

Entrevista a Henry Boisrolin, del Comité Democrático Haitiano ... read full story / add a comment

BRENTON TARRANT, WHO stands accused of killing 50 adults and children at two mosques in New Zealand last week, wants us to know what inspired his actions. Before livestreaming his massacre of Muslim worshipers, he composed a lengthy document that proudly advocates the murder of innocent people in the name of racial purity. The manifesto is predictably disturbing. It is the work of a nihilist who sees a world so bleak and hopeless that it could be improved through acts of mass murder. There is one word in the 74-page document, however, that stood out to me: “invader.” ... read full story / add a comment

Some of the governments supporting Trump's plan to starve Venezuela into submission are none too savory, themselves. ... read full story / add a comment

Five years after the “EuroMaidan” protests in Kiev and elsewhere toppled the government of now-exiled former president Viktor Yanukovych, the people of Ukraine are set to elect a new leader. Over 34 million Ukrainian citizens will be eligible to cast their vote on 31 March, although several million will be prevented from participating due to the ongoing conflict situation in the country’s eastern Donbass region. Should none of the candidates receive an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on 21 April.

Ukraine consistently ranks among the poorest countries in Europe – last year it overtook Moldova to occupy the top spot in the list. The largest post-Soviet state after Russia in terms of population, it finds itself torn between the European Union promising economic integration and a limited degree of freedom of movement, and deepening the country’s relationship with Moscow, the largest consumer of Ukrainian exports to which Ukraine is tied by centuries of shared history, tradition, and repeated conflict.

EuroMaidan exacerbated the country’s ongoing economic decline and mounting social pressures in 2013–14, ultimately triggering the war in the Donbass region and the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula. These tensions have facilitated the rise of a vicious Ukrainian nationalism that the government led by current president Petro Poroshenko is not afraid to manipulate for its own purposes. Attacks on left-wing activists and ethnic minorities are becoming increasingly common, while armed far-right paramilitaries like the so-called “Azov Battalion” are normalized and integrated into mainstream political life.

That said, not everyone in Ukraine is happy about these developments. Although none of the candidates in the upcoming elections offer a particularly radical or progressive vision for the country, voters will at least be able to decide whether to endorse Poroshenko’s current course or throw their support behind another figure. Loren Balhorn of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung spoke with Kiev-based sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko to get a better understanding of the candidates, the state of the county, and what is at stake for the people of Ukraine in 2019. ... read full story / add a comment

Whatever may be the conclusion of the strike, there is little doubt that the practice of contractualization, which has done so much damage to labor in this country, is facing a mortal challenge from its victims. ... read full story / add a comment

Benjamin Netanyahu’s bad day Thursday got off to the worst possible start: before the Israeli general prosecutor Avichai Mandelblit officially called for the indictment of the Israeli Prime Minister for corruption, the UN accused him of much more serious crimes. He stood accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which, according to the UN, Israel has been shamefully perpetrating in the Gaza Strip over the past year. ... read full story / add a comment

Very few South Africans are aware that currently in the north and eastern parts of Syria (Rojava) a revolution as progressive, profound and potentially as far reaching as any in history is taking place. There, an alternative system to the state, capitalism and patriarchy is being built and it holds the potential to inspire the struggle for a better, more egalitarian Middle East and indeed world.

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It’s the changing nature of class and capital that’s caused this split – and should shape the Left’s response to it. But discussing class meaningfully is the last media taboo. ... read full story / add a comment

Palabras sobre el momento y a vuelapluma. ... read full story / add a comment

KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 97-98, February 2019 [Double issue] has just been posted on our site. ... read full story / add a comment

Hace cuarenta años el ejército soviético entró en Afganistán. Aquel diciembre de 1979 hacia ya cinco meses que el Presidente Carter y su consejero de seguridad, el fanático antiruso de origen polaco Zbigniew Brzezinski, habían iniciado, con sus amigos saudíes, una multimillonaria ayuda para fomentar, financiar y armar un integrismo sunita en Afganistán. Los celebres muyaidines, “luchadores por la libertad”. ... read full story / add a comment

In the midst of the U.S. Civil War (1861 – 1865), as somewhere between half a million to three quarters of a million bodies lay dead from bullets and disease, Emanuel Leutze completed a painting titled Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way for the U.S. Capitol. The painting celebrated empire as central to American history. Included in the final draft of the painting was a free black man, subordinate to the leadership of the white men forging the path of empire across the continent; supposedly saved from slavery with their leadership.1 Of course, as W.E.B. Du Bois famously discussed, central to the Civil War was the “general strike of the slaves”; their resistance was key to abolition. Regardless, Leutze’s painting was one representative of the broader trend, going back to the initial creation of an independent American government, in which so-called democracy and freedom were felt through the vision of empire. ... read full story / add a comment