World Socialist Movement

River Silence

7th January 2020

40,000 indigenous people have been forced off their land along the Xingu River in order to build a dam. Who gives a damn?

War with Iran? Teetering on the brink

4th January 2020

Strictly speaking, the United States is already at war with Iran. By the rules of international law, the drone attack that killed General Soleimani and other high-ranking figures was an act of war. Iran will now retaliate against an American asset. How long can this crazy game of tit for tat go on without triggering […]

Fire on 9th Street

29th December 2019

A lethal fire at an apartment block in a poor neighborhood of Las Vegas was in the news recently. An accident or a predictable result of the business of letting housing accommodation for profit?

Homelessness in North America

3rd April 2020

Canada and the United States are supposedly among the world’s wealthiest countries. Yet many people in those countries are homeless, while at the same time many homes are left empty.

Nativism: Covert Racism

24th January 2020

There are prominent politicians around the world who propagate a fallacious theory on immigration and, when extremists embrace such ideas, those politicians wash their hands of any culpability. The fear of immigrants is magnified by lies and language. Fear of migrants brings in votes for politicians. Politicians feed on the fear. Fear of migrants brings […]

Fascism: Avoiding Anachronism

1st January 2020

Anti-Fascism and Fascism What is fascism? Or, more pertinently, what was fascism, since the ideology and movement of that name developed in the specific historical conditions of the period between the last century’s two world wars. The word itself originated in Italy as the name given itself by an ultra-nationalist group opposed both to parliamentary […]

Neo-Liberalism: Old Religion Repackaged

8th December 2019

It’s not neo-liberalism that’s to blame – it’s capitalism In Marx’s day the doctrine that the government should not interfere in the operation of the capitalist economy was known as ‘Manchesterism’ after the city in the north of England where capitalist industry was then most developed and whose capitalists wanted to be free to pursue […]

China: Points for Perfection

8th December 2019

Credit and Control in China One consequence of new technology has been a vast increase in the extent of surveillance of people, whether by the state or private companies. CCTV, facial recognition, tracking the use of debit and credit cards, having access to phone records, cookies and other ways of recording a person’s use of […]

“They’re killing us like dogs” — a massacre in Bolivia and a plea for help

22nd November 2019

The latest report from Bolivia speaks of strikes by workers and killings by the new authorities. From the Common Dreams website. I am writing from Bolivia just days after witnessing the November 19 military massacre at the Senkata gas plant in the indigenous city of El Alto and the tear-gassing of a peaceful funeral procession […]

Bolivia – Morales comes up against capitalism

17th November 2019

For many, the years following Evo Morales’s 2005 election in Bolivia were marked by jubilation and hope. For Bolivia’s indigenous people, support for Morales appeared to be paying off. The poverty rate dropped from 59.9 percent in 2006 to 36.4 percent. Access for indigenous communities to electricity, sewerage and water service all grew. Morales presided over […]

The nuclear threat: resetting the doomsday clock

3rd November 2019

On the morning of 13 January 2018 a message was broadcast by the emergency alert system over television, radio and mobile phones to the people of Hawaii. The message stated that there was an incoming ballistic missile threat and advised residents to seek shelter, ending with: ‘this is not a drill.’ It seems the Hawaiian […]

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