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Activism And Vision: An Interview With Michael Albert

May 26, 2016 Michael Albert, www.roarmag.org ,
By Michael Albert for ROAR Magazine - I was radicalized in the 1960s. I happened to be attending MIT at the time, which is primarily a scientific-technical school. I was there to study physics. The war in Vietnam was raging. The Civil Rights movement was in full gear and concern about these trumped what I was doing at university. Had it not been for these movements, I would have focused on my “career.” Instead, I became politically involved with stopping the war and pursuing campus changes, though my activism quickly branched-out to other topics, and eventually to media projects and answering the question, “What do we want?”

Spanish Leftists Announce Major New Coalition Ahead Of Election

May 24, 2016 Staff, www.telesurtv.net , ,
By Staff of Tele Sur - Spain's anti-austerity party Podemos and older left-wing party Izquierda Unida, or United Left, announced Monday that they have reached a preliminary agreement to run on a joint platform before a general election on June 26. In a statement read to the press, party representatives said the alliance aimed to "recover the country" in favor of the "working classes and social majorities."

The “Afterbern”: What’s Next For The American Left?

May 23, 2016 Salar Mohandesi, www.viewpointmag.com , ,
By Salar Mohandesi for Viewpoint Magazine - One of the most significant political stories of the year is the meteoric rise of a little-known, seventy-four year old, self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" senator from the small state of Vermont. Although he may win many of the remaining contests, it seems extremely unlikely that Bernie Sanders will clinch the Democratic nomination. Nevertheless, his bid for the presidency has dramatically, perhaps irreversibly, changed the political landscape in this country.

The Afterbern: What’s Next For The American Left?

May 17, 2016 Salar Mohandesi, www.roarmag.org , ,
By Salar Mohandesi for ROAR Magazine - One of the most significant political stories of the year is the meteoric rise of a little-known, 74-year-old, self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” senator from the small state of Vermont. Although he may win many of the remaining contests, it seems extremely unlikely that Bernie Sanders will clinch the Democratic nomination. Nevertheless, his bid for the presidency has dramatically, perhaps irreversibly, changed the political landscape in this country.

“Yes We Can!” From Spain To Britain To America, Revitalized Left Is Emerging

April 27, 2016 Derek Royden, www.occupy.com ,
By Derek Royden for Occupy - It took most American news media many months to realize that there was an actual contest shaping up in the Democratic primaries. The preferred candidate of party elites, Hillary Clinton, faced a strong challenge from the left in the form of long serving Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders. In fairness, the lack of coverage was in part due to the ever more bizarre clown show being led by Donald Trump on the Republican side. But it also points to built-in biases in the way the corporate media covers leftwing movements and ideas.

Towards A New Anti-Capitalist Politics

March 8, 2016 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org , ,
Jerome Roos for ROAR Magazine - Humanity finds itself at an inflexion point. On the one hand, global capitalism is producing and aggravating a series of existential crises that may well undermine the very preconditions for a dignified human life—or any form of human life—on this planet. On the other, the only political force that could possibly do something to counter this inexorable drive towards catastrophe—the international left—has long since been run into the ground by a four-decade neoliberal offensive, leaving its social base fragmented and atomized, its organizational structures in tatters.

Why India’s Leading University Is Under Siege

February 19, 2016 Vijay Prashad, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Vijay Prashad for Counter Punch - Indian political culture sits atop a fine edged blade. Pushing down on it is the Extreme Right, whose political wing – the BJP – is currently in power. Intolerance is the order of the day. India’s celebrated Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen recently said, “India is being turned intolerant. We have been too tolerant with the intolerance. This has to end.” In the marrow of the Extreme Right is a demand for discipline enforced by violence. Anyone who strays from the authority of its world-view – Hindutva – is either anti-national or a terrorist.

Can The New Left Govern Europe?

February 19, 2016 Conn Hallinan, www.fpif.org , ,
By Conn Hallinan for Foreign Policy In Focus - Over the past year, left and center-left parties have taken control of two European countries and hold the balance of power in a third. Elections in Greece, Portugal, and Spain saw right-wing parties take a beating and tens of millions of voters reject the economic austerity policies of the European Union. But what can these left parties accomplish? Can they really roll back regressive taxes and restore funding for education, health care, and social services? Can they bypass austerity programs to jumpstart economies weighted down by staggering jobless numbers? Or are they trapped in a game with loaded dice and marked cards?

The Case For Radical Modernity

February 5, 2016 Jeremy Gilbert, www.redpepper.org.uk , ,
By Jeremy Gilbert for Red Pepper - If we look back at points in history where the left has achieved real political success, we can see that socialists have always had to identify the problems that capitalism is creating at any given moment, and respond to them by using new technologies, new forms of government and new types of self-organisation in order to achieve their objectives. The period of the socialist left’s greatest success – the mid-20th century – was also when it most wholeheartedly embraced what were then the cutting-edge sciences of manufacturing, communication and management.

Resurgence Of The World Left?

October 3, 2015 Staff, www.iwallerstein.com ,
By Staff for Immanuel Wellerstein - The sweeping triumph on September 24 of Jeremy Corbyn to be the leader of Great Britain’s Labour Party was stunning and totally unexpected. He entered the race with barely enough support to be put on the ballot. He ran on an uncompromisingly left platform. And then, standing against three more conventional candidates, he won 59.5% of the vote in an election that had an unusually high turnout of 76 percent. Immediately, the pundits and the press opined that his leadership and platform guaranteed that the Conservative Party would win the next election. Is this so sure? Or does Corbyn’s performance indicate a resurgence of the left? And if it does, is this true only of Great Britain?

Corbyn Exposed The ‘Left’ Media In The UK

September 22, 2015 Jonathan Cook, www.jonathan-cook.net , , ,
By Jonathan Cook - The reality is that Corbyn poses a very serious challenge to supposedly liberal-left media like the Guardian and the Observer, which is why they hoped to ensure his candidacy was still-born and why, now he is leader, they are caught in a terrible dilemma. While the Guardian and Observer market themselves as caring about justice and equality, but do nothing to bring them about apart from promoting tinkering with the present, hugely unjust, global neoliberal order, Corbyn’s rhetoric suggests that the apple cart needs upending. If it achieves nothing else, Corbyn’s campaign has highlighted a truth about the existing British political system: that, at least since the time of Tony Blair, the country’s two major parliamentary parties have been equally committed to upholding neoliberalism.

Ecuador: Behind Indigenous Uprising Against Correa

September 16, 2015 Federico Fuentes, www.greenleft.org.au , ,
By Federico Fuentes in Green Left - Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa is facing the most important challenge yet to his self-styled “Citizens' Revolution”. A range of indigenous groups, trade unions and leftist parties mobilised across the country on August 13. Their long list of demands included calls for land reform, opposition to mining, support for bilingual education and the shelving of the government’s proposed water and labour laws. In Quito, the “Indigenous Uprising” — as protest organisers dubbed it — lasted nine days, with organisers vowing to return this month. These were just the latest in a series of mobilisations starting almost a year ago. Late last year, trade unions organised two national protests against changes to the labour law proposed by the Correa government, which expanded social security to cover “housewives” and strengthened job security.

Growing Anti-Austerity Anger Driving Britain’s Youth To The Left

August 15, 2015 Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead, www.occupy.com , ,
By Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead in Occupy - Recently, Britain's less politically vocal under 25s, whose penchant to not vote has long been the bane of politicians, are gathering political momentum and emerging as a potent voice of opposition to the government. The most immediate cause of this movement is the 2015 U.K. Budget, which will be remembered most for leaving the nation’s most vulnerable behind. With no coalition to stifle the Conservatives' painful austerity agenda, the newly-elected Tory government last month let rip into the welfare state, slashing benefits and targeting not only the sick and the poor – but more injudiciously, the young. In their election campaign, Conservatives talked about making Britain a more optimistic place for youngsters, but the Chancellor’s Budget was a particularly vicious attack on that demographic.

Greek Bailout Goes To Servicing The Debt

August 13, 2015 Interview of Dimitri Lascaris Sharmini Peries, www.therealnews.com , , , ,
Interview of Dimitri Lascaris by Sharmini Peries in The Real News - Well, the headline is that a deal has been struck for Greece to borrow on top of its mountain of debt, which everyone now acknowledges is unsustainable, a further 86 billion euros in new loans over three years. Virtually all of which I think one can reasonably anticipate is going to be used to service the existing debt of Greece. So this is very much an extension of the five-year long exercise of extend and pretend that the Syriza government criticized so vehemently before coming to power.Underneath that headline, the next point of importance which I think the government is stressing and they're going to characterize and they have begun to characterize as a victory of sorts is the primary budget surplus targets which have emerged. They actually are significantly lower than those that everyone anticipated would be incorporated into the agreement based upon the deal that was struck in broad strokes on July 13 in Brussels.

Alexis Tsipras: Latest So-Called ‘Leftist’ To Sell-Out To The Bankers

July 16, 2015 Neil Clark, www.rt.com , , , ,
By Neil Clark in RT - For the so-called 'radical leftist' from Greece is only the latest in a long line of ‘radicals’ and 'leftists' to betray the people who had voted for them and cave into the demands of imperialist international finance capital. The only surprising thing about Alexis Tsipras' capitulation to the troika is that anyone should be surprised by it. In Britain, we had our own version of the Greek ‘crisis’ in 1931. And like today, it was a politician nominally of the ‘left,’ the Labour Party leader Ramsay Macdonald, who eventually sided with the bankers against ordinary working people. A ‘banker-led coup’ occurred that replaced the democratically elected Labour government with a new capital-approved National Government, which moved to introduce steep cuts in public spending and slashed unemployment pay.
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