Global Left Midweek - March 16, 2022
- Without a Left Alternative, the Right Wins
- The Split in the Peace Movement
- Remembering Aijaz Ahmad
- Guatemalan Women vs Sexist Laws
- UK Activists Stop Deportation Flights
- Workers’ Party in Turkey
- More on the War
- Haitian Garment Workers Strike
- Socialization in Germany
- Amilcar Cabral’s Cultural Vision
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Without a Left Alternative, the Right Wins
Tamás Krausz and Attila Antal / transform! Europe (Vienna)
The anti-capitalist left, no matter in which country, must start from the interests of the people in geopolitical matters, from the need to put a stop to the economic and territorial re-division of the world, because that means war, and we want peace. So, the fundamental question is not which great power you are on the side of.
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The Split in the Peace Movement
Richard Swift / Canadian Dimension (Winnipeg)
What we desperately need is an unheard level of international cooperation and an end to geopolitics as usual. In the end, it doesn’t matter which geopolitical rabbit hole we choose, we won’t be able to escape drowning in the tsunami of climate collapse.
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Remembering Aijaz Ahmad
Vijay Prashad / Peoples Dispatch (New Delhi)
When Marxism was under attack, Aijaz was one of the few thinkers who produced a sophisticated account not of its relevance, but of its necessity. In Theory was a book that taught an entire generation about how to think about and write theory. It was from this book, and in essays published by Monthly Review, that Aijaz mounted an important defense of the Marxist tradition.
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Guatemalan Women vs Sexist Laws
Dánae Vílchez / NACLA Report (New York)
Dozens of feminist groups commemorated International Women’s Day with demonstrations across the country, as well as a farmers’ market and a music festival in Guatemala City. Protests in the capital’s streets continued on 9 March, and several groups are calling for more demonstrations against the law and the ‘pro-life’ declaration in days to come.
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How UK Activists Stopped Deportation Flights
Sophie K Rosa / Novara Media (London)
Campaigners trying to end airline TUI’s involvement in deportation charter flights announced their victory earlier this month. Following a little over a year of organising by the StopTUI campaign, TUI has not run a deportation flight in over six months.
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Workers’ Party in Turkey
Suat Alper Orhan and Dogukan Demircioglu / Jacobin (New York)
For decades, military repression and oligarchic control have kept the Left on the margins of Turkish public life. But the recently created Workers’ Party of Turkey has brought the far left back into parliament for the first time in half a century.
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More on the War
The Stakes for Democracy John Feffer / Foreign Policy in Focus (Washington DC)
Arbitrary Resistance of Average Ukrainians Sabato Angieri / il manifesto Global (Rome)
At Ground Level Oksana Dutchak / LeftEast
Antiwar Protests Across Eastern Europe Gemma Perry / Daily Mail (London)
A People’s Solidarity Needed Shaun Matsheza, Nick Buxton, Denys Gorbach and Denis Pilash / Transnational Institute (Amsterdam)
Beijing’s Headache Jan Turowski / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
Debate: The Role of NATO Steve Ellner / Links (Sydney)
Debate: The Global South and the War Taras Bilous / The Commons (Kyiv)
Putin Attacks Independent Media John Nichols / The Nation (New York)
Myanmar and the Invasion Mong Palatino / Global Voices (Amsterdam)
Norwegian Rødt Party Alberte Bekkhus and Chris Dite / Jacobin
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Haitian Garment Workers Strike
Frances Madeson / The Real News (Baltimore)
In February, the unions joined the workers in the execution of a number of strategic, multi-day strikes to force the issue of wage theft. Strikers returned to the streets again on February 23, but this time they were met with lethal state violence meant to terrorize them back to their sewing machines at any price.
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Socialization in Germany
Mario Candeias, Alex Demirović, Barbara Fried, Rhonda Koch, Thomas Sablowski, Eva Völpel and Moritz Warnke / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
Socialization aims for comprehensive access for the many to the conditions of satisfying their own needs. Not only as property, but also the democratic reorganization of production and reproduction. Such a planned economy would have to be built from the bottom up in council structures so that society would not fragment into two parts, whereby one plans and decides for the other.
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Amilcar Cabral’s Cultural Vision
Billy Anania / Roar (Amsterdam)
Cabral advocated for a socialism rooted in African culture. Art was key to Cabral’s understanding of shared struggle across the diaspora, providing an early foundation for the anti-colonial theory he developed with the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC).