A brief history of the Italian Biennio Rosso (two red years) and the mass factory occupations of 1920 where half a million workers ran their workplaces for themselves. The reformist unions then negotiated an end to the conflicts, clearing the path for the fascist reaction – the Biennio Nero (two black years) of 1921-22. After… Read More 1918-1921: The Italian factory occupations and Biennio Rosso (Two Red Years)
First posted July 21, 2016 During the early hours of 18 July 1936, General Francisco Franco declared a state of war and his opposition to the Second Spanish Republic. In undermining the Republican government’s ability to keep order, the ensuing coup d’état precipitated unprecedented open violence. Thus began the Spanish Civil War. From April 1939… Read More Julián Casanova: The Spanish Civil War, 80 years after
Cherien Dabis’s drama, spanning nearly 75 years in one Palestinian family, is a heart-wrenching, if sometimes blunt, portrait of displacement… The framing for this Arabic-language family saga, spanning from 1948 to the near-present, evinces the film’s primary modes – lived-in, propulsive, multifaceted drama with a fraught, ardent sense of place, and heart-on-its-sleeve, direct plea for… Read More All That’s Left of You review – deeply moving epic of Palestinian intergenerational trauma
An excerpt from Adman Madman by Rupangi Sharma and Prahlad Kakar NB: Prahlad and I go back sixty-three years, so he is among the few l can classify as chaddi dost. I first saw him in knickers and hairy legs when his mum, a friend of my parents, brought him to the Sainik School Kunjpura… Read More Memoir: Prahlad Kakar and Dilip Simeon: A Friendship in the Shadow of the Naxals
The ceasefire deal clinched on Wednesday may end the latest episode of mass slaughter in Gaza, but it won’t halt the structural genocide of Palestinians Muhannad Ayyash The ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel is, first and foremost, a welcome relief for the Palestinians in Gaza who are suffering from a most brutal and horrific… Read More Can a ceasefire end settler colonial genocide?
January 18, 2009: Ceasefire after Operation Cast Lead had killed about 1400 Palestinians, destroyed 46,000 homes and left 100,000 homeless. Just before Barack Obama’s inauguration. Norman Finkelstein on the “ceasefire agreement” between Israel and Gaza A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza January 18, 2025: Ceasefire after the IDF has killed at least 46,913… Read More Norman Finkelstein on the “ceasefire agreement” between Israel and Gaza / A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza
Morgan Foy Before the election of President Woodrow Wilson, Black Americans worked at all levels of the federal government. But when Wilson assumed office in 1913, he mandated that the federal workforce be segregated by race—leading to the reduction of Black civil service workers’ income, increasing the significant income gap between Black and white workers,… Read More How Woodrow Wilson’s racist policies eroded the Black civil service
The Biden administration has repeatedly undermined international institutions and law to shield Israel. This will come back to haunt them Mohamad Bazzi Donald Trump wants to revive American imperialism. For weeks, the president-elect has threatened to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, possibly by military force. And he promised supporters that he would pressure Canada, through economic warfare,… Read More Biden has paved the way for Trump’s egregious flouting of international rules
Fascism in power in the 1930s brought the world to genocidal war. But memories have faded, as has the stigma attached to the far-right – and that’s dangerous… Democracy under capitalism has always been heavily curtailed by corporate interests and plutocrats who have enjoyed far greater power than the average voter. When capitalism falls into… Read More Young people are abandoning democracy for dictators. I can understand their despair
How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold: Tale of a Redemption Philipp Felsch, translated by Daniel Bowles Reviewed by Morten Høi Jensen In 1935, the Russian-born philosopher Dimitry Gawronsky wondered how it could be that Nietzsche was held to be “the pioneer, the ideological founder of the Third Reich” at the same time that he… Read More Operation Nietzsche
After the truth-shower 