Past Posts by Descending Date

US President Donald Trump's policies, including shutting down NED and USAID, have engendered discussion about whether he intends to restrain U.S. imperialism or is simply adopting new approaches to US empire in an era of crisis. Discussion with Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute ...

Sarah Junkin Woodard comes to us from Nicaragua, representing the work of the Jubilee House Community, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit she helped form in 1979.  Working with and on behalf of the poor in North Carolina for the first decade, the last 30 years have been spent in Nicaragua, with the project name of the Center for Development in Central America. The JHC-CDCA continues to respond to local needs, seeking resources to help the poor accomplish what they see as their priorities, particularly in the areas of sustainable economic development, organic agriculture, health care, and education. The JHC-CDCA is supported by grassroots donations, making it uniquely flexible in responding to climate crises, ...

Professor Rasmus will connect the dots between the Trump-Zelensky minerals deal, why the US wants out of Ukraine war and NATO, why DOGE proposes $2T cuts in foreign aid & domestic US spending. Reason: US empire’s maintenance cost is no longer affordable as currently structured and US elites are in process of restructuring it to reduce the cost and to prepare for future competition with BRICS and confrontation with China. Dr. Jack Rasmus, Ph.D Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College in California. He is the author and producer of the numerous books, including The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic ...

Sun., March 2, 2025, 10:30 am-12:30 pm PSTLatin America Resists Trump – Deportations, Drugs, and Economic WarfareSpeaker: John Perry   The main difference between Donald Trump and his predecessors is that the current CEO of the empire better exposes naked imperialism. With an ever more aggressive and virulent projection of hegemony, the Yankees view problems such as migration and drug trafficking as simply coming from the south, ignoring some of the underlying made-in-the-USA causes. To reverse that narrative, our speaker will provide a view from the south and how resistance is building in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Nicaragua-based John ...

Sun., February 23, 2025, 10:30 am-12:30 pm Pacific TimeUkraine War End Game?Speaker: Allan Miller and Slava Jalili Events are unfolding rapidly as we approach November 24th, the third anniversary of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Our speakers, Allan Miller and Slava Jalili, will provide important background information on the war, and an analysis of these current events. Allan Miller is a member of the ICSS Program Committee. Slava Jalili is a US-based anti-Banderist Ukrainian-American with friends and family in Ukraine ...

Sun., February 16, 2025, 10:30 am-12:30 pm PSTSyria Report-backSpeaker: Dan Kovalik Our speaker, international human rights advocate and lawyer Dan Kovalik just returned from Syria, once a beautiful country and the cradle of civilization. He visited so that we could speak out for people there who can’t speak out because they fear violent repression. Dan will report back on the current situation in light of historical developments. The new de facto government was in large part brought to power by the US and other foreign entities and does not have a mandate or right to rule. Multiculturalism has been destroyed ...

The ceasefire in Gaza after 15 months of the genocidal Israeli war upon the Palestinian people, backed, armed and funded by the major imperialist powers -- particularly the United States -- has revealed many truths, including the failure of the Israeli regime to achieve its goals and the persistence, steadfastness and strength of the Palestinian resistance. The resistance in Palestine is currently presiding over a prisoner exchange process that is also liberating a significant number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, while Israel is escalating its attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. As half a million Palestinians in Gaza ...

Forecasts are favorable for Venezuela’s quarter-century-old Bolivarian Revolution. Initiated by Hugo Chávez and seamlessly carried forward by Nicolás Maduro, it is threatened by an increasingly aggressive Yankee hegemon. Venezuela’s regional role will be pivotal with key left-leaning presidents in Brazil and Colombia up for reelection in the next two years. Our speaker, Roger D. Harris, accompanied the January 10 presidential election in Venezuela and the concurrent antifascist conference. He will report back on what happened there as well as on Washington’s campaign to delegitimize the country’s Bolivarian Revolution with the ultimate aim of regime change. Roger is on the executive ...

The U.S. has for decades had a strongly enforced two-party system. While there are differences, they both support US imperialist domination of the world — militarily and economically — and have earned their description as "two parties of War and Wall Street." This presentation will focus on the opportunities and hurdles of creating an anti-imperialist political party that can serve as the electoral arm of the movement. Butch Ware sees five areas which need to be addressed and developed with the goal of winning power to change the United States’ direction: vertical integration, culture, fundraising, team-building and demographics. Butch Ware ...

Sunday Morning at the Marxist ForumSun., January 19, 2025: 10:30 am-12:30 pm PSTCompatible Left in Service of ImperialismSpeaker: Stansfield Smith The CIA helped to build and subsidize a “compatible left” in the 1940-1960s to help counter the Communist bloc and associated organizations. This anti-communist compatible left still exists today, giving backhanded defense of US imperialism’s endless wars. They harshly criticize the same nations the US seeks to overthrow and cover up US covert operations and economic warfare against these countries; e.g., Qaddafi’s Libya, Assad’s Syria, Iran, Chavistas in Venezuela, Sandinistas in Nicaragua. They condemn Russia or China (or both) as ...

The Middle East is in another turmoil as borders, governments, and alliances change daily, sometimes even in hours.  Unable to solve its crisis, imperialism attacks all previously drawn borders, gobbling up even the most benign or harmless enclaves, marching to its targets: Iran, Russia, and ultimately, China.  While Turkey is trying to grapple with rising workers, women, and people's resistance to its traditional fascism and unprecedented corruption, an unyielding Kurdish challenge creates insurmountable cracks in its structure.  Changing policy and tactics daily, contradicting the position it held only a few hours ago, flip-flopping continuously, Turkey is trying to navigate uncharted ...

Modern war is a product of imperialism and cannot be eliminated without destroying imperialism. The most important thing is the policy that the parties that led to that war were pursuing and will pursue after the end of the war. We are not opposed to all wars. There are just and unjust wars. We support just wars like the war against imperialism by the oppressed nations, the wars of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, the wars of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the wars of socialist countries against imperialist countries. Revisionist distortions on the question of war and the role ...

Israel’s criminal violations of international law in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and other parts of West Asia has increased the possibility of a full-fledged regional war, which can easily escalate into a global, possibly nuclear, confrontation. The U.S. is not in any way restraining the Zionist’s escalation of the war and the continuation of genocide. The imperialist project and the Zionist project are one and the same. Without active U.S. diplomatic, financial, and military support, Zionist Israel would not have been able to commit such crimes. The ever-increasing U.S.-Israel military attacks on the regional resistance movement is based on the awareness ...

Rick Sterling will provide an update and analysis of recent events in Syria. Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the SF Bay Area. He has written many articles about Syria, travelled there five times, and has contacts on the ground ...

Speaker: Basudev Nag Chowdhury, People's Brigade Bangladesh has observed a students-led mass-upsurge to overthrow the Hasina government replacing it with an interim government led by Md. Yunus as the Chief Adviser, although unrest is still going on. In quick succession, Sri Lanka has experienced the electoral power capture by the communist party JVP. Pakistan is exhibiting similar unrest since the arrest of its ex-president Imran Khan. The Indian state is still managing the people’s grievances although unprecedented sparks of protests are being observed such as in Bengal. In the talk at ICSS, Com. BNC will try to explain the general characteristics ...

What constitutes (1) Imperialism and Fascism in our time at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century? (2) How is imperialism different today than in 1916 when Lenin penned his famous booklet? (3) How is Fascism today different than in 1935 and before when Dimitrov, Palme Dutt & Trotsky wrote to define it. What to call the new forms of fascism? (4) How have the wrong interpretations of fascism developed and where has it led Marxism? (5) What do the phenomenon of MAGA on one hand and Identity Politics of Liberalism represent today? (6) How to identify ...