Portside

Relatives demand accountability and changes to the way the police interact with Black residents.

The site is nothing new to those who were held there. In June this year the South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka (ITJPSL) launched a 134-page report on on-going human rights violations and past cases in Sri Lanka. Many of those held were either members or were connected to the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Even the most powerful tech companies and entrepreneurs are freely sharing the code underlying their latest technologies. They recognize this will accelerate not only the progress of technology as a whole, but their own progress as well. It’s altruism with self-interest. And it’s how the tech world now works.

The story of the 872 day Nazi siege of Leningrad, the humans who survived it, and the more than one million who died, the story told in Shostakovich’s Seventh symphony, is one of humanity’s greatest and most heroic tales ever. Always Russia’s city of the arts and music, Leningrad is also a city of revolution. Daunted and desperate, the spirit of Leningrad’s residents is really the ultimate determinant of its survival. Shostakovich’s symphony rallied his fellow citizens.

How ConocoPhillips overcame years of resistance from courts, native Alaskans, environmental groups and several federal agencies is the story of how Washington really works.

On December 17, 2014, the U.S. and Cuba announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, and the U.S. abandoned its 55-year effort at regime change through political isolation and economic sanctions. One year later, however, difficult questions regarding relations with Cuba remain unanswered and unaddressed. And how will relations be normalized when what has constituted “normal” for 200 years has been the presumption of U.S. entitlement to impose its will on Cuba?

Each case, in its own way, has demonstrated both the potential of electoral engagement and the limits of democratic control. The left is finally developing the strategic skills to gain office; it has yet to work out how to exercise power in the interests of those who put it there.

In the best cases, unions are taking the urgency of the threats as a motivator--not just to sign up new members, but more importantly, to make members feel the union is theirs, by training more rank-and-file leaders and helping them take on workplace fights.

This paper was presented at "Color Revolution and Cultural Hegemony," the 6th World Socialism Forum in Beijing, China, October 16-7, 2015. "The best defense is an offence. We need to struggle against dictatorship ourselves -- the dictatorship of capital. To really fight against the color revolutions, we need a color revolution -- a color revolution of a different color. A red revolution. Remember that red is the primary color of the rainbow."