Contributers to this site are in a process of discussion and review of key issues facing today’s revolutionary movement. Published articles identified as “Discussion articles” do not necessarily reflect the agreed position of all participants.
NAZA is an acronym used by the IDF, derived from the Hebrew phrase nezek agavi, meaning “collateral damage”. It refers to calculations made using Artificial Intelligence to discern the number of civilian casualties, i.e. Palestinian lives that will be eviscerated in planned airstrikes.
The 16 demands which were raised at the outset included absolutely nothing about returning the land to the landlords, or the factories to the bourgeois; they were mostly demands for democratic rights and Hungarian sovereignty. There was in fact an explicit demand for a planned economy ‘under the direction of specialists.’5 The protesters who raised these demands on 23 October marched singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and the ‘Internationale.’6
A second-round campaign then emerged from the grassroots, going beyond the official campaign of the Workers’ Party (PT) in an effort to turn the election around. Just a few days later, millions were already in the streets protesting and urging people to vote for Lula.
Japan remains the largest foreign holder of US government debt, with more than $1 trillion in US Treasury securities. If Japan were forced to sell large quantities of Treasuries in order to finance repeated intervention to support the yen, this could put upward pressure on US Treasury yields and increase US borrowing costs. The United States therefore also has an interest in preventing a disorderly yen crisis.
The debates around growth that are taking place currently among climate scientists and in the climate movement are an opportunity to do this and for socialists to deepen our understanding of the climate crisis and point a way forward.
In an era in which attacks on abortion rights for some is paired with barriers to parenthood for others; in which claims of ‘protecting women’ are cynically employed by the same actors who would roll back every feminist victory of the last century; in which mass deportations seem to go hand in hand with attacks on trans rights; it’s vital to unpick exactly why fascist ideology seems bound up with an anti-gender agenda.
These are the frightening results of a world ruled by capitalism, a system hellbent on growth for growth’s sake regardless of the consequences.
In conjunction with Trump’s historical unpopularity, the increased interest in socialism during Trump’s first term was also driven by a broad feeling among workers that the Democrats were failing to fight Trump. This, of course, was true. While the Democrats rhetorically opposed Trump, they continued to largely vote in favor of his agenda.
While signing the agreement with Iran, Trump claimed to have prevented a global depression by avoiding a long-drawn out war. Undoubtedly, if the war which Trump and Netanyahu initiated had escalated, the higher prices for oil, gas, fertilisers and other crucial products that transit the Strait of Hormuz would have done serious damage to the economy. But even now, Trump has succeeded in pushing the world to the edge of a new crisis.
While the far-right and capitalist governments globally have made attacking trans rights a key aspect of their agenda under the guise of protecting women and femininity, this is also combined with a moral panic about falling birth rates resulting in increases in ‘pronatalism’, and attacks on abortion rights.
The hype, coupled with the anaemic performance of other parts of the economy, has made SpaceX and AI in general a magnet for speculative investment. Without SpaceX and the AI sector, US stock markets would already be in decline. This also partly explains the support for SpaceX from the Trump regime, which is relying on these stock market increases to maintain an illusion of prosperity – at a time when hundreds of millions of ordinary people in the US are feeling an acute cost-of-living crisis.
Elites and their political puppets prefer to scapegoat vulnerable Africans, because by doing so, they are able to divert attention from the fact that they are causing this crisis through theft and incompetence. They are bleeding the state’s coffers dry instead of investing in infrastructure and services that will actually ensure a better life for all who live in South Africa.
