Elections turn the tide in Ecuador and Haiti, and reports from Russia, Vietnam, India, and Google workers of the world!
There is “no great chasm between East and West. . . . Russians share the same daily concerns about standards of living and their children’s futures as do most people the world over.
His meeting with Vladimir Putin revealed the US leader to be a one-man threat to global peace and security
In January Russia banned “The Death of Stalin". This may have been the first time in post-Soviet history a movie that had already been granted permission to screen was pulled from theatres by order of the government. What made the film so dangerous?
Veteran Russian communist Dr. Slava Tetekin noted that Putin has been in power now for 18 years -- longer than Brezhnev had been. During that time he has presided over rising inequality and the destruction of Russia's industrial economy. This makes it all the more important to redevelop working-class mobilisation and to ensure that the current reawakening of enthusiasm for the October Revolution is converted into a wider political movement for socialism.
Donald Trump's embrace of Russia and Vladimir Putin and that country's interference with our election could drag democracy to an early grave.
Progressives who treat anti-Russia propaganda spin as fact, in order to weaken Trump, are encouraging a kind of McCarthyism. Of all the good reasons to “delegitimate” Trump, alleged Kremlin intervention in the election should rank low. Focus should instead be on his greed, pathological lying, enthusiasm for oligarchy, bigotry, environmental destruction, racism, misogyny, economic injustice, voter suppression and rampant conflicts of interest.
So Obama wants al-Assad to stand down as a prerequisite for effective US action against Daesh in Syria (a few air sorties and even fewer air strikes are ineffectual). Putin thinks al-Assad is key to defeating Daesh and that everyone should ally with Damascus. Putin is blind to the ways that al-Assad and his military brutality is prolonging the civil war. Backing his genocidal policies will just perpetuate that war.
The crisis shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
I think we now have seen the descent of a new Cold War divide – this time not in Berlin but on Russia’s borders. Can it end there? I mean it’s already fateful – can it not get worse? I think it depends on whether the West now rises to leadership and gives Putin the guarantees he needs to back off. Now, in America there’s a different view – that he has to back off first. But that’s where we stand. -- Steven Cohen
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