At a Zoom meeting after Yves Engler’s candidacy for the Canadian NDP’s leadership was blocked, somebody said: “In a lot of ways, this campaign is about to begin”. This proved to be very true! Information on Yves’ campaign can be found here and here. The campaign’s core and jewel is its platform meant to build [...]
Each day, I reluctantly but inevitably log into my social media accounts to post essays, share important news articles, and generally check out the overall vibe of the country. More often than not, what I see online dovetails with my day-to-day social experiences with the public. The conversations, topics, and ways in which people discuss [...]
This year and every year, we are reminded that the great liberation of Black people on Juneteenth 1865 is a call towards more life, wider commitment, and deeper freedom. In the shadow of Callais and on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the United States, we must honor the best of what our ancestors [...]
I sunk the saved fingers of turmeric root into the tub of soil back in Winter. I waited weeks—as always. No growth. After more weeks a light dusting of white mold ghosts spots on the soil surface above the hidden root—as sometimes happens. No growth. I imagine the mold signifies rotting turmeric root below. I [...]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing perhaps the most precarious moment of his political career. He knows it. His allies know it. And his rivals—both within his coalition and across Israel’s political spectrum—are preparing to capitalize on his growing weakness. Former Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who also served as deputy prime minister between [...]
Back in the early 1970s, for a book titled What Is To Be Undone, I looked from deep within the Sixties but at a moment near its end, at the New Left movements of those times. I sought to discern flaws that needed to be transcended. I wondered was our mindset—our theory, strategy, and tactics—and were [...]
In the southern Iranian city of Minab, where the heat rises from the earth in shimmering waves and the reality of imperialism lingers in every port and military installation, a missile struck a school on 28 February 2026. The strike killed 156 people, notably 120 schoolchildren, which the Iranian government immediately called a ‘blatant crime.’ [...]
Last week’s SpaceX IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, despite the fact that the company has lost tens of billions of dollars since it was founded almost 25 years ago. Shares of the company climbed steadily after markets closed on Friday, pushing its market cap to $2.2 trillion. The public conversation about Musk’s [...]
These are insecure times. My relatives in Tehran are bracing for bombs to fall again. Fighter planes screamed through the skies here in Athens a few weeks back — it was an airshow, technically, but it didn’t feel like one.  War talk is on TV panels every night; algorithms serve images of conflict straight to [...]
In the early 1970s, in a book titled What Is To Be Undone, I took a look at the New Left movements of those times. Had our Sixties theory, strategy, tactics, methods, feelings, and choices been sufficient to our revolutionary aims? Coming out of the Sixties did we take a wrong turn that has hindered [...]
In peripheral capitalist formations, women are not merely a gendered or social category. They occupy a structural position at the intersection of capitalist accumulation, state formation, and global geopolitical hierarchies. In this sense, they function as one of the primary sites onto which the costs of systemic crisis are displaced. Their condition is shaped by [...]
May Day, 2024, was a day of celebration for over 3,500 graduate student research and teaching assistants at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn): we had just won our National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election in a landslide and formed the largest new private sector union in Philadelphia in over half a century. By October, we [...]
Like most of America’s wars in West Asia, the current joint U.S.-Israel attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran is about securing control over the region’s energy resources and preserving oil currency policies; practices that have fueled its expansive economy since the end of the Second World War.    Ultimately, this conflict, which has sent shockwaves [...]
“While technological successes are celebrated, the social fabric is progressively eroded, as if by a silent virus.” — Pope Leo XIV The artificial intelligence industry likes to refer to its massive “hyperscale” data centres as “campuses.” That’s complete bullshit. A data centre hosts no students, no laughter and no libraries. The poet William Blake would have [...]
On May 1, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing additional sanctions on Cuba. Trump said, “We will be taking it (Cuba) over almost immediately.” These continued threats follow the Trump administration’s April 14th directive to the Pentagon to “ramp up preparations for possible military action against Cuba. In response to Trump’s threats to [...]
One of the more troubling and counterproductive phenomena taking place in today’s digital landscape is the rise of the online pundit. On the right, we have figures such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. On the left, Hasan Piker and Jimmy Dore. And countless others. Yet none of these figures represents an organized segment of [...]
When Mel Mandy gave birth to her first child twenty-five years ago, the doctor told her off for smoking while pregnant. Her boy had been born with underdeveloped lungs, a common condition in the newborns of smokers. But Mandy had never smoked a cigarette in her life. The problem was where she lived.  Mandy is [...]
Tourism workers in Southern California just won a historic battle for the highest minimum wage in the nation—a perfect counterpoint to the Republican-led tax bill that rewards billionaires at the expense of low-income Medicaid recipients. The union-backed campaign is a powerful lesson in creative, proactive, and long-term mobilizing for economic justice. Southern California’s tourism industry [...]
The climate crisis is worsening many of the economic and social inequalities already faced by women and girls, making it harder to access health care, education, employment, and other necessities. Women in rural communities are especially vulnerable because many depend directly on agriculture and natural resources to support their families. As extreme weather events become [...]
Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo since the Eisenhower administration, although it was President John F. Kennedy who implemented a comprehensive embargo on all trade with Cuba. And while every subsequent administration has tried since to cause pain and suffering to the Cuban people for its support of a revolutionary government, it is [...]
From teachers to the mothers searching for the forcibly disappeared, Mexico will be holding numerous, massive protests against the 2026 Men’s World Cup as it kicks off in Mexico City on Thursday. This follows hundreds of protests and actions held over the past months as FIFA and governments prioritize tourists and corporations over urgent local [...]
I was recently surveying my computer’s contents and I came across the text of a book I had written over a half century ago. It was published in 1974 by a small progressive publisher named for its founder, Porter Sargent, located in Boston Mass. I turned, I think, 25 when I was writing it. Its [...]
“Defining Trumpism, defeating Trump” is based on talks given by Paul Le Blanc in Potsdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Mannheim, during a May speaking tour in Germany. It is appearing simultaneously on LINKS and Communis. I will begin this presentation with a brief overview of the global context. I will then offer some comments about the Donald Trump phenomenon [...]
Introduction: A Tradition That Forgot Itself I write these essays not as an enemy of the left but as someone who believes it has lost the thread of its own best tradition. That tradition is the democratic socialism of Eduard Bernstein, who tied the classless society to the ballot rather than the barricade, and of Michael Harrington, [...]
BROOKHAVEN, N.Y.—The crowd grew restless at Brookhaven Town Hall on Long Island as residents voiced their concerns about groundwater contamination from a nearby landfill that has spread beneath parts of their community. At the meeting in late March, speakers criticizing the landfill’s operations were met with applause and shouts of support from the audience. Monique [...]
Imagine a future in which everyone enjoys high levels of wellbeing; where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world in which the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from just 2% today to 30%; a world where we consume enough, but [...]
In 1895, Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary that the penniless population of Palestine must be “spirited across the border,” discreetly and circumspectly. In 1948, that vision became policy. With the Nakba, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, their land absorbed by the newly declared state of Israel. In 1967 came the Naksa. In 1978, [...]
I am writing this text with the Americas and Europe in mind, but the phenomena I analyze apply, with modifications, to other regions of the world. We are on the brink of a new world war, facing imminent ecological collapse, witnessing the end of international law, and the end of the distinction between democracy and [...]
For those unfamiliar with the intricate machinery of Israeli politics, the unanimous 110-0 vote to dissolve the Knesset on May 20 appears to be an earth-shattering event. On the surface, it looks as if the days of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition of far-right extremists are numbered. The reality, however, is far more [...]
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has for the moment turned international attention away from Gaza as Israel moves from high- to low-intensity genocide. The genocide may be the horrific culmination of 75-plus years of Zionist settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid, but in order to make sense of it we must analyze the radical transformations that [...]
California Governor Jerry Brown was an eloquent early spokesperson for the urgent necessity of responding to climate change during his first two terms in office from 1975 to 1983, for which he was widely ridiculed. But it was during his third and fourth terms in office from 2011 to 2019 that he secured his legacy as one of [...]
More than 15 years ago, the Supreme Court removed limits on corporate political spending in its notorious Citizens United decision, ushering in an era of unprecedented influence by moneyed interests. As a result, a small group of ultrawealthy donors have skewed the political system to their advantage — and today, social scientists link the growing [...]
The images that have emerged from Gaza reveal the anatomy of a desolate landscape that defies human comprehension. Nothing can prepare the conscience for the sheer suffocating scale of a seemingly endless treeless terrain overwhelmed with millions of tons of concrete and rebar. There is a distinct agonizing geometry to the destruction of buildings folded [...]
Last week, the Cuban Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) announced a major health breakthrough with VAXIRA, a vaccine treatment for lung cancer. This is a remarkable achievement, made only more impressive by the fact that this is Cuba’s second lung cancer vaccine. The vaccine stops the progression of cancer by developing the patient’s immune system [...]
The evidence for rapid human-caused climate change keeps piling up, yet the world continues to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases amid a political backlash against the struggle for a future free of fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, which means humans are continuing to make the climate crisis worse. Global average temperatures [...]
When I arrive at the new headquarters for Eon Huntley’s socialist campaign for state assembly, a small crew is hard at work painting the space, a storefront on a lively block of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Avenue. The window is festooned with the candidate’s commitments: signs promoting universal health care, rent controls, and “ICE out of NYC.” When [...]
Not long ago, I received a request for short answers to some questions meant to prod discussion in a reading group about the book No Bosses. I sent back answers and don’t know what became of them. Perhaps they will be more generally useful. The “back story” is that for some weeks I had been [...]
“A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best . . . A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only [...]
President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBBA) into law on July 4, 2025. The law rolls back many parts of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act by ending tax credits for wind and solar energy, removing incentives for electric vehicles and home energy efficiency, and increasing support for fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and traditional [...]
Review of The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own: How Working People Can Build Independent Political Power by Les Leopold (J. P. Zenger Books, 2026) In 1992, West Virginia was one of the country’s “bluest” states, while Democratic victory in Connecticut — today very much one of the bluest — was hardly assured. This [...]
Last November, Hrag Balian and Emily Chu were in a group chat on the secure messaging app Signal to monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the San Gabriel Valley. Someone sent a message asking if anyone knew about a data center proposal in Monterey Park. No one did, so Balian and Chu, a [...]
The real division in western politics is between the pathological centre and challenge on the so-called “far” left and right — meaning political forces reasonably enough challenging the centre’s mass death project. Of course, the far right is based upon a con — its core spaces are dominated by the same billionaire-funded mass death agenda [...]
The treatment of the flotilla activists by Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was shocking only to those who continue to clothe colonial violence in the soft language of security. There is now a mountain of evidence before humanity: Gaza has become not merely a place under siege but a geography of calculated despair, where starvation [...]
On March 25, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act. In his speech introducing the law at a press conference, Sanders explained the thinking behind the proposal, which would put a stop to the construction of new data centers until federal regulations are in place. “Today we are announcing legislation to impose a moratorium on [...]
Last Monday, a 58-year-old woman was stabbed to death in one of the displaced persons’ shelters in southern Gaza City. A few hours later, Gaza police arrested the victim’s nephew. The motive for the killing was a financial dispute. The day before, a 22-year-old woman was murdered in central Gaza City. Her husband was arrested. [...]
Why has the US right since the 1970s been more effective than the left at grassroots community organizing? Part of the answer is that our side has no events with bouncy castles. We have a lot to learn from the Waldoboro Republicans’ recent “Great American Picnic” in Maine: For children, there will be a “Bouncy House” as [...]
Eighty years ago, an organization named CARE—which stands for Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere—responded to worldwide hunger in the aftermath of World War II by sending millions of packages of food. This post commemorates that effort. A diverse group of researchers and policy advocates met recently at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University [...]
On May 24, Iran rejected President Trump’s latest fake peace deal, confirming that he had misrepresented what Iran had agreed to and that the two sides are still very far apart, on nuclear enrichment, on control of the Strait of Hormuz, on peace in Palestine and Lebanon, and on lifting US sanctions, paying war reparations and Iran’s [...]
Imagine you have considerable background as a progressive or revolutionary activist. You are a good communicator about war and peace, fascist trends, class, race, and gender injustices. You also know global warming, ecological crises, and the causes of each.  You are invited to speak to a large auditorium of people. Which of the following audiences [...]
On Memorial Day, it is my family’s practice to remember and honor all those who have died in war — including but not limited to those who have served in our country’s military. This broader act of memorialization is both truer to the history of Memorial Day, and more responsive to the moral imperative that [...]