While in Mexico last week as part of a labor union delegation from the United States to meet with Canadian and Mexican union officials, I was given this book by a professor of history and design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) She is also a labor and political activist, and, in fact, one of the book’s authors. Written in Spanish and difficult to acquire outside of Mexico, it is doubtful that you will ever buy and read it; still I wanted to share my impressions because I think it gives us some insight into how people on the Mexican left who consider themselves to be radicals, leftists or socialist are explaining their support for the campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO) for president. And it becomes the occasion here for a discussion of the state of Mexican politics on the left at this moment only a few months from the national presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial elections.
Atzmon’s Mistaken "Identity"
22 March 2012, byGilad Atzmon is one hell of a jazz musician, justly counted among the best global practitioners of the art of bop and post-bop. In fact, the dual status of modern jazz as both a pinnacle of African-American artistry and a world music is illustrated by the fact that international musicians like Atzmon have mastered it — and he could probably write a fine book on that subject.
The Politics of Integrity versus the Politics of Celebrity
22 March 2012, byIn the elections to the Scottish Parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won 6 seats. By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of the left wing of Labour, and a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over. By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000, and the party failed to regain any of the 6 seats it had lost in 2007. The single biggest factor in the SSP’s electoral demise was almost certainly the civil war and split that followed the scandal surrounding the SSP’s former convenor, Tommy Sheridan. In this well-written and often gripping book, Alan McCombes – the SSP’s former Press and Policy Co-ordinator – gives the inside story of the events surrounding the Sheridan scandal and the split in the party.
Arab and Arab American Feminist Narratives
7 March 2012, byNearly ten years in the making, Arab and Arab American Feminisms gathers activists, artists and academics to give voice to the most rapidly changing and complex issues in the Arab world. It builds upon the work of Joe Kadi’s Food for Our Grandmothers and Evelyn Shakir’s Bint Arab, two pioneering Arab feminist anthologies.
Chicano Art vs. Censorship
7 March 2012, byAlthough past controversies about artworks that incorporated sacred icons with perceived profane elements — such as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) and Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), referred to as “Dung Virgin” — are often cited as early examples of artistic culture wars, Chicana feminist artists have experienced protests, verbal attacks and even death threats for their reimaginings of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe since the 1970s
Why Marx was right
7 March 2012, by“So you’re for the revolutionary Marxist overthrow of parliamentary democracy then”. This was the question flung by presenter Andrew Neil in a discussion on the BBC’s Daily Politics Show at Right to Work campaigner and SWP member Michael Bradley following a successful protest against the British government’s punitive work experience programme. He fielded this and other questions pretty well although his direct comparison between the Egyptian events and Britain was less effective.
Rosa Luxemburg: in the storm of struggle
2 January 2012, byThe letters of Rosa Luxemburg is the first instalment of a valuable ongoing endeavor to publish all her collected works in English; it makes available a wealth of letters, including many that were not previously available in English.
Lenin Reconsidered
3 November 2011, byFew historical figures on the international revolutionary left have been the subject of as much historical myth-making as Lenin. Born V.I. Ulyanov in 1870, the son of a liberal Tsarist educational official, Lenin (the pseudonym he adopted in the 1890s) became a central leader of the Russian socialist movement, in particular its Bolshevik (majority) wing. The Bolsheviks not only led the world’s first successful workers revolution in 1917, but launched the revolutionary Communist International in 1919.
The 33-Day War: Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon & its Consequences
1 September 2011, byGilbert Achar, Michel Warschawski
Paradigm Publishers (pb) 978-1-59451-409-8 $16.96 €11.40
Achar and Warschawski teamed up following the events of October 2006 to assess the causes and consequences of Israel’s very own “Vietnam”. The book dissects the strategic and political background behind Israel’s actions and the effects on Lebanon’s own population.
Achar, who lived in Lebanon for many years before moving to France, is a regular contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique.
Warschawski (…)
The Socialist Workers Party After the 1960s
9 July 2011, byTHE SOCIALIST WORKERS (SWP), now a curious sidebar in the history of radicalism, is a linear descendant of the political movement initiated in the United States by pro-Bolshevik followers of Leon Trotsky on the eve of the Great Depression.For 45 years, until the mid-1970s, the movement associated with the SWP was at the crossroads of the Far Left.
