Alex Lo is one of my favorite journalists; he writes for one of my favorite non-left newspapers, “The South China Morning Post.” This morning he wrote a piece, which while merely stating the obvious, does so with remarkable clarity and understated eloquence. The title of his article: “The United States is once again selective in caring about rights.” He opens[Read More…]
Let me begin by saying that whenever people rise up against the powers that be, which in modern times are primarily capitalist and liberal democratic, it reflects well on the people: it bespeaks their courage, their social sense of self, their feelings of unity and of power and hence the actual power of their unity. Without question, the resistance of[Read More…]
The first article I confronted when I opened my email this morning was F. William Enghdahl’s short but extremely informative piece in “Global Research” titled “China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium”. In it he elaborates in far greater detail the point also brought out by Vijay Prashad in his article, “After Evo, the Lithium Question Looms Large in Bolivia”[Read More…]
It is a very good question that Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies pose in their recent Countercurrents article – “Why aren’t Americans rising up like the people of Chile and Lebanon?” It is a good question and they give several very good answers to it; answers the people of America and the people of the world need to[Read More…]
Evo Morales spoke the truth when he explained the reason for his fall as leader of his country – it was for no other reason than because he was a socialist who sought to socialize the resources of his country and serve the interests of his people at the expense of the profits of international capitalist corporations. From the time[Read More…]
Pt. 4: We Have Nothing to Fear but Capitalism Itself Like a world that rides on the slow and bumpy back of The Turtle, The M.I.T Report on the Work of the Future balances precariously on the four legs of four assumptions. The first of these, as I have discussed in the first part of this article, is that that[Read More…]
Our drive to satisfy our need for food and water has stoked the physical and social evolution of our species; it has driven us to wander, labor, innovate. The avoidance of hunger and thirst has been the bedrock upon which great human communities have been erected and cooperative actions taken up. The need for food and water have also driven[Read More…]
(Pt. 3: Education, Impoverishment and Inequality) The MIT Fall Report (https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2019-09/WorkoftheFuture_Report_Shaping_Technology_and_Institutions.pdfviews education from two perspectives as regards the condition of the working class in America. The first is as the primary factor which bifurcates the working people into an “elite” component which earns good wages and enjoys a good life, and a much poorer segment which labors but earns little. [Read More…]
(Pt. 2: The Repercussions of the Destruction of Organized Labor in America) Like the aftereffects of a nuclear bomb, repercussions from the decimation of organized labor in The United States, would spread across the land. While undeniably, the development of technology defines the conditions of the working class and revolutionizes society as a whole, equally undeniable is the fact that[Read More…]
(Pt. 1 – The Crushing of Organized Labor) Beginning with the statement that “Technological change has been reshaping human life and work for centuries”, The MIT report goes on to present a cogent analysis of the state of the American working class from the multifaceted perspectives of race, gender, educational levels, demographics and geography. However, however true its initial assumption,[Read More…]
I think that the greatest sin the powers that be, whatever and whoever those powers are or have been, have committed is the destruction of human potential. I believe that each of us is born with our own self defining potentials. In positive and supporting environments, these potentials can be realized. In negative and destructive environments, these potentials are unrealizable[Read More…]
How the West Distorted Communist Political Victories in the Recent Russian Elections The legitimacy of any democratic system is reflected in the percentage of people who turn out to vote. By this standard, the recent elections to the Moscow Parliament were relatively “illegitimate” with only 21.8% of eligible voters participating. Yet despite this low level of participation, Moscow Mayor Sergei[Read More…]
Marx’s dialectical materialist philosophy rests on the axiom that humans have needs and desires the satisfaction of which exist outside themselves. Thus, humans must ‘go over’ into an “other” to find self satisfaction.. That “other” is on the one hand, nature, and on the other hand, others of their species. Because, according to Marx, man is by nature a social[Read More…]
There is a fact about Hemingway that few people know, and that is that for most of his life he was surveilled by the FBI. As people have come to realize, that surveillance, along with other factors such as injuries to his head, years of heavy drinking, and his feeling that he had “lost it” as a writer,contributed to the[Read More…]
It was my birthday and I was both sad and glad for myself. I had lived a long life, filled with difficulties of every kind one can imagine. I had spent a good portion of it struggling to survive in the face of poverty and want. I had struggled to raise three children, mostly alone, in the midst of that[Read More…]
I am taking a long Sunday walk when I come upon them handing out leaflets in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken, in Perovo, the region of Moscow in which I reside. There are four or five of them altogether: young teenagers or those in their early twenties – handing out leaflets. They try to hand me one, and I, assuming[Read More…]
I use a simple formula, perhaps too simple, to teach my students the different categories of philosophical thinking. It is difficult to explain without a visual, but I will try. To begin with there are the two polar opposite ways of thinking, the Metaphysical and the Materialist, or, if one prefers, the Religious and the Scientific. The Metaphysical seeks explanations[Read More…]
I have yet to find the time to sit down and write a thorough response to Dan Corjescu’s last piece “On the Metaphysics of Revolution”, which was, to my mind, a gross misinterpretation of Socrates in particular, and on the evolution of revolutionary thought in philosophy in general. However, on the appearance of this, his second piece, I promised myself[Read More…]
Karl Marx’s words are resilient – history is indeed “the history of class struggles.” Not solely, because history has also been marked by gender, race, and religious struggles; but class struggles have and do shape the world we live in today. Not to see the events occurring in the world through the lens of historical class conflict between the bourgeoisie[Read More…]
Our struggle to survive hasbeen a relentless drive towards self-destruction. Sigmund Freud identified two basic human impulses: Eros, the drive to survive and reproduce, and Thanatos, the drive towards death and destruction. However, dialectically speaking, these are not two separate and opposing forces, but a unity of polar opposites which grow out of the same expenditure of energies, exist in[Read More…]
They came in the season of white nights, when the sun never fully sets and so the night over Moscow is never truly black, but instead glows as if it were sheened in magnesium, or better yet, like a scaled salmon’s scale lessside. They came early, before the sun, before blue took its turn, before the people of Lazo Street[Read More…]
What Will Happen When Threats Are Met with Reason, When Cruelty is Met by Kindness, When the Call for Humanity Confronts the Reality of Inhumanity?How Will Trump Respond to Mexican President Lopez Obrador’s Letter? We very often speak of “speaking truth to power.” It is both a powerful and a dangerous thing to do. Julian Assange is suffering both physically[Read More…]
In the May 16th edition of Countercurrents, I argued that the United States was not going to go to war with Iran. I cited several reasons why it would not. First was the revolution in the technology of military weapons such that troops can be struck with smaller, more efficient weapons that could be launched across great distances. In this[Read More…]
Your eyes are the mystery you have willed them to be. From a distance, they are a breeze Bearing the scent of sandalwood, of ginger, Salty sea lather roasting in an oriental sun. When viewed directly, One sees the colors of a spice market Haloed in blue. Your lips were formed in Russian forests, Kept moist by the same[Read More…]
David Dodwell writing in today’s (5/27/2019) South China Morning Post states that “Increasingly, the Trump administration’s trade war is not about tariffs but about keeping China in its place, regardless of the costs to US companies and consumers – and the world.” Of course, what he is saying is, on the one hand, true in so far as it goes,[Read More…]
(A response to Dr. Lubna Sarwath’s “Abhorrence for Wastefulness and Exhortation for Moderation inThe Qur’an”) As any thoughtful person understands, and as every Pagan knows, the destruction of our world is our destruction and our self-destruction, which is not just sad or wrong, but is a Mortal Sin, A Sin of the First Order committed Against the Gods who are[Read More…]
Defiance is not revolution. Revolution is what Lenin made, what the Founding Fathers of America made; what Mao made, what Ho Chi Minh made, and Fidel, and never forget Che, how he hungered for it, lived and died for it. No, defiance is a prelude to revolution, it is what comes just before independence, it is what teenagers who have[Read More…]
The study of soybeans brings home the fact that everything is internally related. We can never fully understand any one thing, even something as humble as the soybean, without being drawn beyond it to the study of other things, and ultimately to the study of the totality in which they partake. The Dialectic of Soy in the Human body: Soybeans[Read More…]
Many journalists are wringing their hands over the possibility of America waging war with Iran just as many did over the possibility of a U.S. invasion in Venezuela. A decade ago, both might have been real possibilities, two decades ago they would have been absolute certainties, but not today. Why? Because there are forces in the world acting to keep[Read More…]
Trump’s statement on May 2nd that trade wars “were good and easy to win.” reflected yet another dimension of what he does not know or understand – the nature and history of trade wars. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-tariffs-trade-wars-are-good-and-easy-to-win-2018-03-02. The history of trade wars teaches us that no one wins these wars, save perhaps for those who are not involved in them /https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/business/tariff-trump-trade-wars.html For[Read More…]
Donald Trump is a great believer in the use of force to change things. Regretfully, he does not understand either the nature of force or of change. The nature of force is explained by Newton’s third law of motion which states that as forces exist in pairs, as one exerts force on the other, the second object in turn exerts[Read More…]
Donald Trump may be remembered for many reasons, but not the least of which will be that he was the first American political figure to proclaim before his people and the world that the America of his time was a nation in decline. In choosing as his campaign slogan “Make American Great Again” he was clearly stating that America, while[Read More…]
If there were an adjective that would describe my personality for most of my life it would be “intense”. My old grandmother who raised me dealt with it by letting me explode out the door with the dog and cat in the morning, and then sitting or standing nearby watching me as I ran across the fields and through the[Read More…]
My Tai Chi teacher, Katya, and I sometimes speak about teaching. She is a patient person, as we both agree one must be if one is to teach. However, she holds as her pedagogical first principle that student and teacher can never be “friends”. Much as I dislike the idea of not being her friend, I understand her point. There[Read More…]
In time its caws roused me from my ritual morning immersions: sipping coffee, lacing words together, drawing them like fingers Across the surfaces of life, Yet remaining untouched. How long it cried out for my attention Before I walked to the window to confront it, I do not know, but I knew it was me it had called. [Read More…]
It takes a lot of courage to be who and what you are when who or what you are contradicts the values of your society. Thus, even under the best of circumstances it takes a lot of courage to be out and gay. No matter what laws may exist on the books to protect your rights, there are narrow minded,[Read More…]
One can say that America’s pythonic grip on the sovereign nation of Venezuela is motivated by a desire to possess its oil or its gold, but that statement would only be partially true. America wants to destroy Venezuela because it has been for some time a socialist country. The annihilation of socialists and socialism is the sine qua non[Read More…]
The 21st Century may well mark the end of capitalism as we know it. The groundwork for the revolutionary transformation of the social and economic relations of the capitalist mode of production are already in place and include, but are not limited to, the following: the transformation from a production based to a knowledge and information based mode of production,[Read More…]
It was not a confused snow; Large flakes bobbing and drifting on meek drafts, Uncertain where to land. Nor was it a helpless snow, Each flake driven to its end By a commanding wind. Neither was it a diamond crystal snow, Each particulate sparkling in the light, As it blasted the skin like sand shot by its cruel wind. It[Read More…]
We, the readers of Countercurrents, are very well-informed people, perhaps more well informed than the readers of any other newspaper in the world. Since the situation in Venezuela has become apparent, scholar after scholar, journalist after journalist, commentator after commentator has come forward to provide information on what is going on there. America’s actions in Venezuela have been put in[Read More…]
A Poem After Martin Niemoller’s First They Came for the Communists. When they went to South Korea to slaughter Communists, they were ordered to “kill em all” . They did what they were told And slaughtered helpless innocents at No Gun Ri. I was too young to know or care. My indifference was clearly forgivable By the time they[Read More…]
I open Countercurrents (No easy task here in Russia where it is blocked) and I am filled with joy at the number of articles that appear day after day on the situation in Venezuela. They show just how important the situation there is to people on the left; how important it is to those who cry out against injustice, against[Read More…]
It has been said that the laws of physics apply in the economic realm. However, it would be more precise to say that the same basic laws govern all dynamic systems. One of the newer “laws” emerges from chaos theory. Put as simply as possible, it states that in dynamic systems, such as weather patterns or water flow (or human[Read More…]
As Putin famously put it, the “breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the century.” http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7632057/ns/world_news/t/putin-soviet-collapse-genuine-tragedy/#.XEtKxlwzY2w . It did indeed, seem as though the breakup of the USSR left the United States, “the last man standing” and thus, the sole hegemon of the world. As expressed by its foreign policy, it believed at that point, it[Read More…]
As the snow lands soft on my face,
The memory suffices.
The gray becomes bearable,
and I find myself satisfied.
I am always delighted to read another piece by Gail Tverberg. Her articles are consistently highly informative, and the information she presents to us is without exception well documented, clear, and concise. Her work flows from and is the extension of that of Donella and Dennis Meadows as expounded in their book The Limits of Growth, which can be downloaded from[Read More…]
Back in November I wrote an article for Countercurrents about how The People’s Republic of China, a Socialist (as defined by its own constitution) country, has turned on its own citizens because they are Marxists. On the 6th of this month I wrote (https://countercurrents.org/2019/01/06/considerations-on-chandra-muzaffars-the-uighur-question-a-civil-society-solution/) about China’s attempt to “reeducate” the Muslim Uighur minority so that they were no longer religious. [Read More…]
I am fond of telling my great grand children that when and where I grew up, there were no mobile phones (in fact, we had no phone at all), there were no computers, and for a long time, there wasn’t even a radio because neither my grandparents or I spoke English. I was born in America, but English was my[Read More…]
The relationship The People’s Republic of China’s to the Muslim Uighur people who live within its borders and are is best understood when it is viewed from more universal contexts. The first of these would be the universal context of the political relationship between states and religion in general. This allows for a classification of such relationships. A second context[Read More…]
In the time of hopelessness and fear, of dark days; days of hunger, days of despair known as the Depression, a Perseus came to protect the people of America from the Greedy Gorgons and Monied Monsters. He was an aristocrat, coming from one of America’s most ancient and noble families, connected by birth or marriage to eleven presidents, to famous[Read More…]
When a child, she ran the mountains with the dogs. The only voice she heard were those of the toothless old woman, The old man, frail as a robin’s bone, dry coughing, dry coughing. No boxes spoke to her, no images existed that were not there and then. Mystery lived in every unopened bud; she shelled okra So its secrets[Read More…]
The title of this essay is a slightly modified version of the title Let Truth be the Prejudice, the book that W. Eugene Smith intended to publish as his way of making the world face up to the reality of “the greed, the stupidity, and the intolerances” that he witnessed and documented in his photographs. As the New Year approaches, each of us,[Read More…]
If we compare the economic thought of Romer and Nordhaus, the two men who shared the 2018 Noble Prize for Economics, and that of Karl Marx, in terms of their conceptions of man, nature and technology, we are better able to understand the differences between capitalist and communist economic theory. One of the factors determining the decision to award the[Read More…]
As if by magic, the fierce political unrest in France appeared suddenly and unexpectedly before the eyes of the world. Of course, it did not appear completely and evenly, but in brief and scattered images, as if a strobe light had been focused upon the people in yellow vests raging through the streets of Paris and then other cities in[Read More…]
In response to Robert Delaney’s 12/11 column in The South China Morning Post Robert Delaney, wrote an article today in his column in entitled “In the Huawei, Patrick Ho and Chinese spy cases, Trump sees only bargaining chips for his trade war” It is a column which both states the obvious and bemoans it; the obvious being that, as I[Read More…]
When we look beyond his most offensive personal traits, which are in themselves the products and natural reflection of capitalist character structure: narcissism, bullying, tantrumped tweets, adolescent name calling, the dismissal of all those who do not support him, and the denigration and objectification not only of women, but of other human beings in general, we are able to see[Read More…]
In Russia no less than in America, in Moscow no less than in New York, people are obsessed with keeping “fit”. When I see people running off to their “fitness clubs” I think of my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather was a coal miner. He had been a coal miner since he was fourteen years old and his body reflected[Read More…]
There is a code that underlies all creation. It is not something hidden from us, but rather, like the purloined letter, something we do not notice because it is too obvious. On any brisk fall day, we see but do not see the creation code that openly operates before our eyes, as our minds engage a subliminal process of comparing[Read More…]
A snake will begin to consume itself under two circumstances – first, when mistakes its tail for prey, and second, when under conditions of extreme stress, it attempts reptilian suicide. The People’s Republic of China, that great repository of Maoist/Marxist ideology, is today consuming its ideological tail for both reasons. Any discussion of modern-day China must begin with the question[Read More…]
Dear Comrade Dr. Pravat Ranjan Sethi, Thank you for your most knowledgeable reflections on revolutionary theory and practice. I enjoyed them and benefited from them, as I am sure many others did as well. I would like to respond by putting a slightly different perspective on the subject. First, revolutionary thought is always “dialectical” because the dialectic is inherently[Read More…]
I skim like a gull across the dark sea of sleep. I cannot settle. When I finally do, I dream that my teacher has come to visit me. I sit across the table from him, put my hand over his, look intently in his eyes, and tell him that I have written an equation. I watch to see his response. [Read More…]
Marches are the supreme symbolic subsumation of the ego. Individuals do not march, only unified groups of people sharing a common mass identity march. Soldiers, who qua soldiers, have had their individualities destroyed and been taught to obey unquestioned and unquestionable orders, move as one. The very uniform movement their uniformed bodies, the sight and sound of their precision –[Read More…]
A response to Saral Sakar’s “ From Marxist Socialism to Eco-Socialism — Turning Points of a Personal Journey Through a Theory of Socialism.” Dear Comrade, I want you to know that you are not alone; that anyone who has taken the long walk with and through Marx has at times felt like there was something “missing” some “not quite right”[Read More…]
I have been writing a series on how America and Americans interfered in Russian at all levels of Russian society to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. First of all, they sent American economic advisors to Russia to implement “shock therapy” policies which rapidly transformed The Soviet Union from a communist to a capitalist country, giving rise to[Read More…]
Communism in the Soviet Union did not, as anti-communist propaganda would have us believe, fail because it was inhumane, impracticalor unworkable. It failed because it was not allowed to grow in a world dominated by American capitalism. It was assaulted from without by American armed forces, and from within by spies and agents provocateurs. It existed under the constant threat[Read More…]
PT 2 – The Gentlemen From Harvard Russia has been invaded, but it has never been conquered. When the Mongols invaded her Ivan responded first by becoming their agent and collecting tribute from the other princes, then later by refusing to pay them their tribute and finally by uniting the princes against the invaders. The Nazis tried, but they faced[Read More…]
There is a great wailing arising and much wringing of hands going on in the United States over the assertion that Russia interfered inour last electionto ensure that Donald Trump and not Hilary Clinton was elected president. This is sheer hypocrisy. The fact of the matter is that American presidents, universities, economic and political advisers, government institutions and banks worked[Read More…]
When I first came to Russia, the key political event of the moment was the “war” over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two independent provinces in Georgia. The response of the American media to the situation was, quite unsurprisingly, to accuse Russia of instigating the “war” by invading Georgia. The people of Russia were furious over what was a blatant lie,[Read More…]
Although I usually spend at least an hour every day reading the news, it has been years since I have held a newspaper in my hands. But my son-in-law Emile, and his father, my friend Henry LaFargue, like to sit and “read the newspapers.” They are stacked up on the kitchen table: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,[Read More…]
I come awake to the rattle snake sound of the cicadas, nuanced, orchestrated, ebbing and flowing on the air; the buzz of lawnmowers, the swish of tires puckering up from the tarmac.The dog barking in the yard completes the suburban symphony that plays daily in the well to do communities of Northern New Jersey. I have been here two weeks,[Read More…]
It is not the case that we can live long in places without them becoming part of us and we becoming part of them. I am not here talking about countries or cities, but the quarters in which we live and to which we return daily to satisfy our most basic needs. Our spaces shape our thoughts and feelings, and[Read More…]
After Helsinki, where Putin and Trump exposed their personal relationship to the world, in a perfect exemplification of the dialectic, Trump returned to feel the wrath of his people, and Putin to feel the pride of his. Yet the dialectic is no simple polarity, no either or. Alongside the rage that spewed forth from so many (see below), the voices[Read More…]
It should come as no surprise to me, but it does, that after decades of studying the thinking of the ancient Greeks, I have begun to think like them. In saying this I am not merely speaking of their philosophy but also in reference to their religious beliefs, which, no less than their philosophy, set great insights about Being before[Read More…]
A flicker of fear passes through me this morning when I read the lead article in The Moscow Times titled “Foreigners in Russia are Panicking Over New Migration Rules”(https://themoscowtimes.com/news/foreigners-in-russia-are-panicking-over-new-migration-rules-62130). Panic indeed. It has never been easy or cheap to stay in Russia legally. To begin with, one must apply for, but not necessarily obtain, a visa. One can be denied[Read More…]
Sooner or later- sooner if they are rude and later if they are polite enough to wait until we have developed a relationship that would allow them to ask a personal question, Russians will inevitably ask “Why are you here?” Some in a tone of suspicion or contempt, will ask me as if they were throwing down a gauntlet The[Read More…]
They are the sources of the paced slivers of sound played across seasons, sounds I awaken to, sounds that inform my days, Their sounds, although varying in tone and intensity, are always paced, steady, sure. This summer morning it is the soft swish of small tree branches, cut and tied to a wooden pole. There has been a storm in[Read More…]
If James Joyce’s The Dubliners are stories about people who cannot escape their unhappiness, and Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools is about those who believe that they will find happiness when they arrive at their destinations, this story is about immigrants to Russia who once believed that when they arrived here they would find love, money or adventure. Instead,[Read More…]
An article by Neil Irwin in the New York Times posted on June 12, 2018, carries the provocative title: “If the Robots Come for Our Jobs, What Should the Government Do? This question proceeds from two primary assumptions which should not be accepted at face value. The first is that the “Robots” will come for our jobs, which is to[Read More…]
You know things are bad when you confront the blurry image of Robert De Niro on the front page of Revolution Newspaper, that proud electronic banner of the Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A. It gets worse when you read the accompanying blurb – “Robert De Niro came on stage at the Tonys on Sunday night and said: “I’m going to say[Read More…]
Without my glasses the trees outside the window are misconceived mosaics. No young breezes have come to play among them, nor has the west wind come to make them dance. It is only the residual droplets of water that create motion and a semblance of sound. The birds are quiet. It is a distinctly cold morning in Moscow. It is[Read More…]
Yesterday I wrote about the fact that the suicide rate in America had gone up twenty five percent over the course of the last sixteen years, and then drew out some capitalist social relations which could explain this drastic increase. First and foremost is the psychopathology of capitalism itself which tells people they are independent individuals and as such, must[Read More…]
Those who cherish justice throw their bodies against the armies of injustice. Those who love freedom die fighting for it. Those who hate oppression are willing to rise up against it. Those whose lives have some higher meaning beyond their own person, love life in a way that only poets can express. Even those of us who fight for bread,[Read More…]
Like Oedipus I was never able to escape my fate. In principle, if not in actuality, I was orphaned before I was born: a father dead from the war, a mother lost to desire and chance. My grandmother came to save me when I was less than two weeks old. The first thing she did the morning after she returned[Read More…]
I am from New York City, and what that means is that I know a good pastrami sandwich when I see, or more properly, taste one. For those of you who do not know what pastrami is, let me give you a quick course in Jewish cuisine.According to David Sax, author of “Save the Deli,” pastrami is not actually a[Read More…]
It is late spring in Moscow, and the day is exquisite. I sit on my balcony and drink my coffee and watch a mischievous breeze run through the trees. It brushes against them, makes them bob and sway like off balance dancers. When it scuttles away, the branches slide back into the sun, hold still, and the space we share[Read More…]
There is something in the white trunked birches of Russia that dumbs my mind and irritates my flesh. Every May, their leaves, still small and weak from just being born into the world, provoke me to exhaustion and the coughing and sneezing begins. This 11th spring of my Moscow years, is the worst, and the congestion becomes a bronchitis which[Read More…]
While the specifics of human character structure vary across time and from place to place, there are certain human characteristics which seem to arise out of primordial human needs and/or instincts. One of these characteristics is our propensity to conceive and tell stories. By stories I make no distinction between folk tales, legends, myths or religious fantasies. From my perspective,[Read More…]
An American Babushka in Moscow: A Miracle in the State of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. – four socialists backed by the Democratic Socialists of America win primary seats. I am exhilarated today, not because it is a beautiful day in Moscow, nor because of anything Putin has done, but because of what has happened in the State of Pennsylvania. Not one, not[Read More…]
As we have seen, theideontologicaldelusion of exclusionary oneness that forms the ideological superstructure of capitalist social relations forcedearly liberal democratic theorists to create an imaginaryindependent and antisocial individual who initially exists in a state of nature. This individual only goes against his essential antisocial nature and enters into society out of rational self -interest embodied in the fear of death.[Read More…]
Chapter 1. Part 2 The psychopathology of capitalism is, as I have proposed above, rooted in the delusion that there exists anabstract, exclusionary “one” or “I”. This delusion negates the existence of an “inclusionary One” or a larger temporal/spatial natural and social whole of which the “individual” is but a particular moment and manifestation. That is to say, it is[Read More…]
There is news, there is old news, and there is history. Gale and Null’s article is old news on the verge of becoming history. Moreover, it is full of unsubstantiated grandiose pronouncements and distortions of all kinds. To begin with the title itself is deceptive. Is Wikipedia a new venue in and through which Communists are identified and persecuted?? Are[Read More…]
When I first came to Russia I was thrilled by any artifact of the Soviet Union, by every Red Star I saw atop a building, by every hammer and sickle bas relief. The statues of Marx across from the Bolshoi, of Engles standing tall in the small park across from Kropotkinskaya Metro sent shivers up my spine. But I will[Read More…]
While there are many approaches to it, there is only one truth: that the world is One and thus that all is internally related. The genius of Einstein is that he expressed and established this as the physical truth of the universe by negating Newton’s profound misconception of the world as separate and isolated units coexisting in an ether which[Read More…]
Back in the day, ten years ago when I first set foot in Moscow, when the Moscow Metro was the home of the Minotaur from which I felt myself lucky to escape each day; when the Russian language was tumultuous; when I could not ask for what I wanted and needed, when the sophisticated splendor of the city sent me[Read More…]
Chapter 1. Part 2 The psychopathology of capitalism is, as I have proposed above, rooted in the delusion that there exists anabstract, exclusionary “one” or “I”. This delusion negates the existence of an “inclusionary One” or a larger temporal/spatial natural and social whole of which the “individual” is but a particular moment and manifestation. That is to say, it is[Read More…]
I don’t know how or why I ever got an invitation to come and teach in Moscow. I was hesitant to come: after all I was teaching at two small colleges near my home, I had a large family who lived close to me, and a lot of friends. I was comfortable right where I was. But as one of[Read More…]
The psychopathology of capitalism arises from the delusionthat there exists an exclusionary “one” rather than an inclusionary One. This delusion is both a product of the historical development of capitalism and, as contemporary physics shows us, the natural result of the internal relationship between the structure of reality and ourselves as observers of that reality. Yet, even though it is[Read More…]
Perhaps the first signs of his bravery were the fights he fought against bigger, tougher boys in the courtyard of the St. Petersburg building where he grew up. He fought not only for himself, but also to protect other boys; one could say that even back then, he fought for justice. Then there was the incident at Dresden when an[Read More…]
Monogamy and growing old produce the same results. Sleeping with the same person over and over again takes the razor sharp blade of passion and dulls it flat. So too, living in the world, truly living in it and not just in one small cell of it, reduces the sharp peaks of our emotions, rounds them out into dull stones[Read More…]
If Asifa were the first, the last or the only girl child to be tortured, raped, murdered, discarded like garbage, perhaps the callous that has formed around my life would not exist, and I could weep. But she is not, and I do not want to weep but to make revolution against the patriarchy. If Asifa were the first, the[Read More…]
Into the night he releases his wordless poem, rhythmic and perfectly metered; then pauses to consider it before a new trope of sound rises with the steam from his mouth. This cold winter, this Moscow night, loneliness, or some ancient ache for belonging is our common inspiration. But I am the lesser poet, in need of words to beg[Read More…]
The term dialectic as it is used here is a way of looking at the world that corresponds to the actual structure of the world itself without regard to whether that word is holographic or material. Put in more philosophical terms, it is an epistemological assumption about the ontological structure of being. Hegel will write a book about it called[Read More…]
The West points its finger at Russia, Russia points its finger at the West. As for us, we do not really know who did it or why. We know nothing beyond what we are told, and we can be sure that the details are being kept hidden from us. So, faced with the mystery of who poisoned the Skripals and[Read More…]
Of course, one never knows the degree to which what one sees is distorted by “subjectivness”; the extent to which one projects oneself upon the screen of existence. But it does seem to me that Moscow, from Tverskaya Boulevard to the streets of KitayGorod, to the familiar paths of Perovo Park, a great stillness has descended upon the people. A[Read More…]
Alienation as Disembodiment: considerations on Edward Curtin’s Disembodied Americans and the Crucifixion of the World. I am not writing to criticize Curtin’s piece because to my mind there is nothing to criticize; it is a well written, interesting and insightful piece. I am only writing to address his primary question which, as I see it, is why are so many[Read More…]
I find two things that catch my eye this morning. One is an article in the Moscow Times, a liberal English language newspaper written for Moscow expats, the other, a website sent to me by my friend, Alexey Vasilyev. They are of interest to me because they deal with what might be called the “Putin Generation” – those young[Read More…]
Life in Russia, for the average person, is lived “close to the bone.” Closer and closer to the bone as the economy suffers under the relentless attacks of the capitalist world. Well, there is no profundity in that statement I think to myself. On the one hand, what is true of Russia is true of the whole world, The vast[Read More…]
Three things have occurred simultaneously to bring joy to the hearts of the Babushki of Perovo on this Sunday morning: the sun is shining brilliantly, the fierce cold of the past months has subsided, and the paths are clean enough to walk. We emerge from our apartments to walk and sit in the sun in Perovski Park. My bones and[Read More…]
Frontline has done a series on Vladimir Putin, called The Putin Files. They are available on Youtube and are well worth the watch. In them, a variety of “experts on Putin”, ranging from people who worked with him in Russia, such asGlebPavlovsky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp84TerPgyI&t=4487s) who helped him with the PR for his first campaign for president, through John Bannon, former head[Read More…]
Heraclitus, the brilliant Presocratic philosopher, is remembered for having said “You cannot step into the same river twice,” to which one of his contemporaries responded, “you cannot even step into the same river once.” The doctrine of change or “flux”is, in the mind of Heraclitus, logically tied to two other important concepts. The first of these is the concept of[Read More…]
Those first days in Moscow,
they were the enemy:
their gray down gathering in corners
like the frail remains of long dead cicadas.
their dropping scarring the glass,
melding with black soot.
It is all about the Russian election now: the world press, the Russian press is filled with articles about the upcoming elections. Of course, the position of the West, which views Putin as Public Enemy #1, focuses on the fact that except for a brief hiatus when his friend Medvedev served as Prime Minister, Putin has led Russia since 2000. [Read More…]
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel drove home the point that one thing does not replace another, just like that, plain and simple. Rather, that which has been is carried forward, moved from one level to another in an ongoing evolutionary process. So it is with the Soviet Union; it is not[Read More…]
I read with some interest a piece on CNN today https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/14/europe/russia-us-election-compare-intl/index.html, which compared the “happiness” of people living in Russia and America in regards to factors such as wages, housing, the status of women, etc. While I would like to address all the factors, I cannot do so without writing a small book. However, I would like to address[Read More…]
Hunger in Africa has its roots in a History of Colonialism and Neo-colonialism 
The Climate March: Magnificent and Misdirected 
Imagining a Progressive Pentagon 
“Lost Voices of Fentanyl” Rally at the White House 
Indian Government Must First Evict Dalai Lama & his Followers before Admonishing Canada for Separatist Activities 
Peasant-rebels: lineages of insurgency 
Mission to Free Assange: Australian Parliamentarians in Washington 
Bayer-ICAR Collaboration Raises Serious Concerns Regarding Indian Farm Policy 
Place of Minorities as Allotted by Savarkar, Golwalkar and Upadhyaya 
What is in the name? Attempt to stop the usage of ‘India’ by the Government 
Poona Pact: A Reappraisal 
Hate Speech Inside Parliament: Reaching a New Low 
Criminal Justice And Freedom of Speech 
75,000 Climate Protesters Marched In New York With Demand To End Fossil Fuels 
On the Dark Side of the Moon.. 
Avoiding the War on Terror would have saved over 10 million lives at home and abroad 
The Angertainer Steps Down: Rupert Murdoch’s Non-Retirement 
Climate Emergency Update, September 2023 
My appeal to Meta’s Oversight Board: Palestinian political and resistance organizations & individuals are not “terrorists” as classified by Israel 
Artificial Intelligence: Profit Versus Freedom 
How Can We Understand the Passage of Time? 
Pre- and Post-Soviet Language Policy in the East-Baltic States 
Breadcrumb 
Three Indian Movies win TIFF 2023 Awards 
Ukrainian president holds crisis talks in Washington amid failure of “spring offensive” 
Zelensky Faces Difficult Time In Washington D.C. 
Stumbling Towards Old Age And Looking for Someone to Lean On 
Tolstoy’s Dilemma 
Ukraine Peace Activists Protest During Zelensky White House Visit 
“Our world is becoming unhinged”: Antonio Guterres 
How Chances of Direct War between the USA and Russia Are Increasing 
G20 Biofuel Alliance threatens Food security 
Thousands Of Auto Workers Strike In Three U.S. Plants, Face Financial Hardship 
Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission, NACC: Mainstream Media Lying 
In The Name of Decolonization 
Is This the End of French Neo-Colonialism in Africa? 
Tel Aviv’s Losing Brands: Israeli ‘Coup’ and the Death of False Democracy 
Tackling Global Emergencies – UN International Day of Peace 
The Futility of Feudalistic Democracy Bayer over-riding Bhartiya Krishi 
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
