Past Posts by Descending Date

Our speaker will discuss the new edition of his book, Palestine, Israel, and U.S. Empire. This is  an essential book for the current moment, providing a sharp analysis of the struggle for Palestine, updated following the events of October 7, 2023. Taking an anti-Zionist perspective on the history of Palestine and Israel, Becker traces the movements of resistance from the division of the Middle East by Western powers and the Zionist settler movement, to the founding of Israel and its role as a watchdog for US interests, and on to present day conflicts and the prospects for a just resolution. This narrative is ...

Advances for the working class in Mexico, lessons from Morena’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election. The presentation will focus on the role that public policies that favored the interests of the working class played in the landslide victory for Morena and its allies that resulted in the election of Mexico's first woman president and supermajority in Congress. The presentation will also look at what we can expect from Sheinbaum's government. What does she mean when she talks about building the "second floor" of Mexico's Fourth Transformation? Finally we will discuss, given the rout of the country's opposition and ...

Greg Godels returns to the Marxist Library to speak on what is the threat of fascism currently in the US and the uses to which that threat is put? Where do the threat(s) of fascism exist in light of the upcoming US presidential election? Our speaker, Greg Godels, grew up in a working-class family in a rural coal mining community. He joined the Communist Party in 1975 and served on the party’s Economics Commission until Vic Perlo's death. He wrote frequently for the Daily World and other party papers as well as Political Affairs and Nature, Society and Thought. Articles ...

Since the election of the late president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, in 2021, Iran has adopted an active pro-east foreign policy and has become a key player, along with China and Russia, in the global struggle of the countries of the South for building a multipolar world. This active redirection of Iran’s foreign policy is considered by the U.S. imperialism as a serious obstacle to its continued domination of the unraveling unipolar world and an existential threat to its closest ally, Israel, in West Asia. With the tragic death of President Raisi and Iran’s foreign minister, Amir-Abdollahian, a new round ...

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic came into being in 1975, after a decade of relentless US bombing. Laos is per capita the most bombed country in the world. 10% of its population were killed directly by US bombs and a similar number left the country. US-financed opium traffickers and terrorist attacks continued up to the end of 20th century. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cut-out, still maintains a presence in Laos. Building socialism in this context was, and is, not an easy task. With close relationships to Vietnam and China, the ruling the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary ...

BJP led by Modi won in 2014 majority in the parliament with 282 seats out of 543. It returned in 2019 with 303 seats, and confidently announced with a subservient mass media projecting its propaganda that it will return with over 370 seats in 2024. It was based on the claim of fast economic growth and the building of a Ram Temple in 2024 where once stood an old Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, one of Hinduism's most sacred places in India; thus fulfilling one of BJP's Hindutva promises. But instead, it lost 63 seats, so BJP is forced to form ...

Matthew Ehret will recall the  Gouzenko Hoax of 1945 that started the Cold War against socialism and tie it to the current anti-Communist psyop propaganda blitzkrieg. Matthew is a journalist and co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow at the American University of Moscow and co-host of The Great Game on Rogue News and Breaking History on Badlands Media. He has authored the book series “The Untold History of Canada”, the four volume “Clash of the Two Americas” and the most recent book “Science Unshackled” ...

On the class structure of AI and the reasons that a productive force appear as a destructive force of capitalism. Machine Learning Algorithms running on Artificial Neural Networks and particularly reinforcement learning were real breakthroughs of 2010s, Generative AI and transformers are of 2020s, all of them developed and spread to various branches. And nowadays they even talk about an "existential risk" created by AI as if capitalism itself was not the real existential risk for centuries. So we should talk about capitalist production process of AI and the class structure of it. Hence, I will first try to analyse ...

Sykes-Picot (May 1916), a secret convention was held during World War-I between Britain and France supported by imperial Russia for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. Mark Albertson, historian, will go through that progression of the April 1914 request by Arab nationalists desiring British assistance with their nationalism in throwing off the Ottoman yoke; the British acquiescing in November 1914 when the Ottomans join the Germans and Austria-Hungary; the Hussein-McMahan Correspondence; the Damascus Protocol; Sykes-Picot Agreement; Balfour Declaration; San Remo ...

Our speaker, Danny Shaw, is among the many voices for Palestine who have been punished for speaking out against genocide. After 18 years of teaching in the Latin American and Latinx Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he was fired last month for his social media posts educating and organizing against the Israeli-U.S. genocide in Gaza. He has been camped out with the hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and staff that make up the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment. We urge you to sign the petition in support of Danny Shaw, who has spoken at the Marxist Library ...

Columbia University students started the movement against the University's connection with the wars, seeking divestment. It is clear to all who have not closed their eyes that a genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza by Israel is ongoing with the support and means to conduct it provided by the US government. The protests have taken the form of encampments on university general outdoor premises. But these peaceful protestors were attacked by police and supporters of Israel, both from inside and some apparently from outside of the campuses, accusing them of violence and of being antisemites, even as Jewish students themselves ...

American labor is deindustrialized, deunionized, fragmented, and pauperized. Its debased condition is a prisoner of its form: that of a commodity, forever cheapening, like all others. Bereft of political leadership, labor instinctively grasps at populist rhetoric, rejecting the neoliberalism and “new world order” of America’s oligarchs. Indignant, the ruling class shames it as “deplorable”, “far-right”, and “Putin’s puppets”. In a culture devoid of class identity, America proffers individual identity as the new religion, as the new “sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world”. Labor, the unifying property of humanity, is submerged beneath the media’s vilification by ...

North Korea has declared that South Korea is no longer an appropriate counterpart for peaceful reunification. Furthermore, it declared South Korea its main enemy. To understand this moment---beyond the demonizing of North Korea---we must understand its causes and effects as well as what we must do for peace in the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. Dae-Han Song joined the peace and reunification movement in 2003 when US bombs fell over Baghdad. He joined the East Bay Korean Americans United for Peace to prevent preemptive attack against North Korea. He has organized for API Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership (AYPAL) ...

It is thirty years since the Rwandan genocide.  The presentation will explain this horrific but poorly understood crime and its aftermath.  One consequence that will be discussed in greater detail is the tight-knit relationship between Rwanda and Israel.  Both countries depend on their victimization narratives to justify what they do in Gaza and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ann Garrison is a journalist who focuses on the countries of the  African Great Lakes Region.  She is a Contributing Editor of the Black Agenda Report, a contributor to Pacifica Radio and many other platforms.  Her previous presentation at ICSS can be found at https://icssmarx.org/us-shoots-itself-in-the-foot-in-africa-again-ann-garrison-sunday-april-16-2023-1030am-pacific-time/ ...

Our speaker, international human rights advocate and lawyer Dan Kovalik, just returned from observing the March 17th presidential elections in Russia. He was in the Kherson Oblast, which experienced terrorist attacks designed to disrupt the election. Dan will report back on the current Ukraine conflict in light of historical developments, in particular the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fight against fascism dating back to WWII, and the missed opportunities for peaceful resolutions in that region; in short, the continuing efforts of the US and its allies to weaken Russia. Dan will also report on his investigations of popular sentiment ...

Campaign for Socialism 2024 Workers in the Socialist campaign of Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia for President & VP will speak about their campaign. Website: votesocialist2024.com/ ...