Author: icsswpadmin

Sunday May 30 – Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform – Stephen Gowans

Sunday May 30 – Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform – Stephen Gowans

Posted by | May 30, 2021 | |

One US military leader has called Israel “the intelligence equivalent of five CIAs.” An Israeli cabinet minister likens his country to “the equivalent of a dozen US aircraft carriers,” while the Jerusalem Post defines Israel as the executive of a “superior Western military force that” protects “America’s interests in the region.” Arab leaders have called Israel “a club the United States uses against the Arabs,” and “a poisoned dagger implanted in the heart of the Arab nation.”

In his latest book, Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East, Stephen Gowans challenges the specious argument that Israel controls US foreign policy, tracing the development of the self-declared Jewish state, from its chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y81miqY6jD8onception in the ideas of Theodore Herzl, to its birth as a European colony, through its efforts to suppress regional liberation movements, to its emergence as an extension of the Pentagon, integrated into the US empire as a pro-imperialist Sparta of the Middle East.

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ICSS 20210523 – The Significance of the Alabama Amazon Union Struggle: Building Solidarity in a Time of Transformation for the Working Class

ICSS 20210523 – The Significance of the Alabama Amazon Union Struggle: Building Solidarity in a Time of Transformation for the Working Class

Posted by | May 23, 2021 | |

Our discussion of this important topic will be led by Judy Greenspan, a member of the Peace and Freedom Party, the Bay Area Chapter of Workers World Party, and the San Francisco Bay Area local organizing committee to support Alabama Amazon workers.
Recommended background reading: WWP message on May Day 2020 is Organize! By Larry Holmes
https://www.workers.org/2020/05/48257/

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ICSS 20210516 – Biden’s Foreign Policy: Hope or Horror – ROGER HARRIS

ICSS 20210516 – Biden’s Foreign Policy: Hope or Horror – ROGER HARRIS

Posted by | May 16, 2021 | |

Biden’s Foreign Policy – Hope or Horror?

Sun., May 16, 2021: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm PDT

Biden bellicosely proclaimed, “American is back,” in his major foreign policy priorities speech, reaffirming the bipartisan consensus of regime change, forever wars, and the NATO alliance.

Republican neo-cons now shelter in the Democrat’s big tent, today’s party of war. Regardless of  the changing of the guard in Washington, the Biden’s policies will follow his predecessor, but will more effectively target official enemies such as Venezuela and Iran and will double down on Russia and China.

The US empire is the main beneficiary, proponent, and enforcer of a global political economy that increasingly is seen as failing to meet people’s needs. Class disparities during an economic recession, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, are ever more evident in the US and internationally leading to an impending crisis of legitimacy.

Our speaker is Roger D. Harris, a member of the ICSS program committee. He is active with the human rights organization, the Task Force on the Americas, and is on the executive committee of the US Peace Council. His political writings may be found at Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Mint Press News, Popular Resistance, and the Orinoco Tribune. Roger recently wrote:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/joe-biden-tells-the-world-america-is-back-not-that-it-
ever-really-went-anywhere/275704/

Also recommended is Alan MacLeod, “Humanitarian Imperialism: How corporate media sell regime change, intervention and war to progressive audiences”:

https://fair.org/home/humanitarian-imperialism/

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ICSS 20210509 – Theory of Revolution – Mehmet Bayram

ICSS 20210509 – Theory of Revolution – Mehmet Bayram

Posted by | May 9, 2021 | |

ICSS 20210509 THEORY OF REVOLUTION – MEHMET BAYRAM
SUN, MAY 9, 2021: 10:30 AM TO 12:30 PM PACIFIC

The recent events call us to revisit Historical Materialism to understand what is happening.  The COVID-19 Pandemic, the re-emergence of the cold-war racing towards a real war, the Minneapolis murders by the police, the US police force becoming the third largest army in the world, the Amazon workers’ organizing efforts, the struggle of the health care workers, the Indian Farmers’ Strike, the failure of the world capitalist system to deal with a simple and preventable disease, and to allow millions of people to die from it shows the world, as we know it, is bubbling and boiling.  “A Change is gonna’ come,” for sure, but why, how, when, or where?  Where are the “Locomotives of History,” the revolutions, as Marx called them?
As the saying goes, there is no revolutionary action without a revolutionary theory. 
We will not offer solutions or chart a path to revolution in this session.  However, we will visit Historical Materialism and see why revolutions are a way of life, a natural phenomenon, a natural way for anything, including human societies, to evolve and change.  When, how, or do the dialectically consequential evolutionary and revolutionary stages of development merge into one?  We will discuss the assertion of the inevitability of revolutions, the development, needed conditions, the necessary organizations for societal change and revolutions.  The possibility of change without violence, a peaceful transition, will be discussed alongside what constitutes a revolution.  We may even talk about what happens if a change does not occur in the current human societies.
Our speaker will be Mehmet Bayram of the ICSS group is an activist, journalist, photographer, videographer, and translator.  His writings, news articles, and commentaries could be found in https://Sendika.org, or in English, https://sendika.org/kategori/english/, a progressive site that survived for more than 20 years, even after the Turkish government shut it down 62 times.

 

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