Left Politics

Winning isn’t enough. The Left must prepare to govern

Every Time we Laugh at Trump, It’s a ‘Tiny Revolution’

By Linda Kiernan | (The Conversation) | – – The power of laughter is something of a theme in Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s humourless response to Barack Obama’s jibes at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011 allegedly steeled his reserve to run for president in the first place; the New York Times recently asked […]

Arab Spring

Women as a force for Democracy in Repressive Egypt

contributors

Anwar Mhajne and Crystal M Whetstone | The Conversation | – – Democracies in sub-Saharan and North Africa have regressed in recent years. Ethnic and religious minorities, political opposition, women and the LGBT community still struggle for equal rights and the right not to experience violence. Activists throughout Africa, many of them women, are working […]

Donald Trump

The Trump Presidency: How to Further Enrich the Masters of the Universe (Chomsky)

contributors

By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – [This interview has been excerpted from Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, the new book by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian to be published this December.] David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered […]

Bernie Sanders

Bannon must go, but after that, Protesters should listen to Bernie

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Steve Bannon ran, and is still likely pulling the strings at, Breitbart, the “Stormfront” in a business suit with a skinny tie. Bannon once characterized it as enabling what he called the “alt right,” by which he meant a slightly more presentable version of the skinheads, […]

Books

Novelist Arundhati Roy and her mission to inspire in the ‘Ministry of Utmost Happiness’

contributors

By Ali Kazimi | (The Conversation) | – – Anjula Gogia, the activist bookseller from Another Story Bookshop in Toronto, had patiently nudged me over a few weeks to introduce and host Arundhati Roy on stage when she read from her new book, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Roy would, in turn, acknowledge and thank […]

Donald Trump

Resistance is Fertile

contributors

Frida Berrigan | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – In the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s 1984 soared onto bestseller lists, as did Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which also hit TV screens in a storm of publicity. Zombies, fascists, and predators of every sort are now […]

Civil Rights

What can today’s Activists learn from the Summer of Love and the New Left?

contributors

Ira Chernus | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – It’s the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. What better place to celebrate than that fabled era’s epicenter, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where the DeYoung Museum has mounted a dazzling exhibition, chock full of rock music, light shows, posters, and fashions from the mind-bending […]

Kurds

Have Syria’s Kurds invented a Democratic Neo-Socialism?

contributors

Dmitry Petrov | (OpenDemocracy.net) | – – In an effort to get through to the Syrian Kurdish autonomous region, I met kindred spirits and found out more about the political and cultural landscape of Iraqi Kurdistan. Sulaymaniyah’s Market Square. Image courtesy of the author.Tossing about on a broken bed in a cheap hostel in the […]