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The US-Turkey standoff in context: Global capitalism and the crisis of hegemony
By Vassilis K. Fouskas and Bülent Gökay
September 3, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Turkey was thrust into a full-blown currency crisis when United States President Donald Trump hoisted tariffs on Turkey’s steel and aluminium exports to the US — the country’s most serious crisis since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power 16 years ago. The Turkish lira lost more than 40% of its value in the first two weeks of August, albeit its most recent humble recovery. The pretext for Trump’s punishing attack on Turkey, the seventeenth largest economy in the world, is the continued detention of the evangelical US Presbyterian missionary Andrew Brunson who was arrested in October 2016 on charges of espionage and accused of involvement in the attempted coup of July that same year.
At first sight, the US-Turkey standoff appears to be a uniquely Turkish problem triggered by a very public confrontation between two leading members of the “ring of autocrats” of the 21st century and worsened by the idiosyncratic and often misguided economic approach of both leaders. This is not the case. One cannot look at the Trump-Erdogan conflict in isolation from the global situation.
US militarism marches on
By Marty Hart-Landsberg
August 11, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Republicans and Democrats like to claim that they are on opposite sides of important issues. Of course, depending on which way the wind blows, they sometimes change sides, like over support for free trade and federal deficits. Tragically, however, there is no division when it comes to militarism.
United States: Other revolving doors
By Don Fitz
July 16, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — It’s more than doors between the US government and the businesses that they supposedly regulate that go round and round. One of the other swinging doors is between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The rise of far-right populism in the world – A ‘morbid symptom’ of our times
By Bulent Gokay
June 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks, in 1930, that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Gramsci was preoccupied with the breakdown and collapse of the liberal order which was the dominant pattern in international affairs after World War I. In particular, when struggling to understand the rise to power of Benito Mussolini, Gramsci used the term, “morbid phenomenon”. For Gramsci, Mussolini was one such morbid symptom. The term “interregnum” was originally used to denote a time-lag separating the death of one royal sovereign from the enthronement of the successor. Interregnum here, as referred by Gramsci, can be understood with a new wider meaning as a period where one arrangement of hegemony is waning, but prior to the full emergence of another.
Trump’s new militarism
During the 2016 US election campaign Donald Trump promised an end to pointless foreign wars and attacked “useless” and massively expensive new military equipment, like the $1.5 trillion Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter. But the Trump presidency has ushered in a new era of militarism, as the United States prepares for high tech, massively violent wars against Russia and China, argues Phil Hearse.
United States: Barre’s hidden history of Italian-American radicalism
February 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Barre, located in central Vermont, not far from the capital, Montpelier, with a population of 8710, was for a time in the early 1900s an internationally known center of Italian-American radicalism.
The city was founded in 1788 as a farming community and was named after Issac Barre, a British politician who supported the American colonies in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. Vermont is known for rocky soil and a cold climate, making farming difficult and many of the first generation of settlers eventually moved away.
Large granite deposits were discovered shortly after the War of 1812 and Barre’s first granite quarry opened in 1813. Vermont’s hilly terrain made transporting granite difficult though and it wasn’t until the Central Vermont Railroad ran a spur into Barre in 1875 that the granite industry took off.
United States: Settler colonialism and the second amendment
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
February 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review — The Anglo-American settlers’ violent break from Britain in the late eighteenth century paralleled their search-and-destroy annihilation of Delaware, Cherokee, Muskogee, Seneca, Mohawk, Shawnee, and Miami, during which they slaughtered families without distinction of age or gender, and expanded the boundaries of the thirteen colonies into unceded Native territories.
Afrin between the claws of the major powers
By Cihad Hammy
February 2, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Region — In an article I wrote a day before the Turkish state's invasion of Afrin, I intended to scrutinize the underlying ideological structures of the Turkish ruling party (AKP) and the driving force behind the invasion of Afrin. This article will focus more on the role of major powers, mainly US and Russia, in the recent invasion of Afrin and the stances held by the Assad regime and Iran.
United States: Greitens scandal - looking beneath the surface
By Don Fitz
January 17, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — When I shook hands with Eric Greitens following the 2016 debate for Missouri Governor, none of us on the Green team imagined that, a year before, he had tied a woman up, blindfolded her, undressed her, photographed her and warned that he would release the photo if she ever said what happened. The story made local and US news on January 11, 2018 when the now-Governor Greitens followed his “State of the State” address with an admission that he had had an affair, that he and his wife had come to terms with it, and they wanted to get on with their lives.
He failed to mention whether the “affair” included bondage and sexual blackmail. During and following Donald Trump's ascendency to the White House, there had been a year of non-stop sex scandals in the US and a story had to be beyond the pale to make the headlines in early 2018. The Missouri governor's scandal hit that mark.
Why North Korea developed nuclear bombs
By Park Jae-seong (Planning Committee Member, ISC), translated by Dae-Han Song (Chief Editor, The [su:p]
December 3, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Strategy Center — The North Korean nuclear conflict started in 1990. Few people are aware that before taking out its nuclear card, North Korea had approached the United States in earnest. As Communism crumbled and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations with North Korea’s southern counterpart, the country’s leaders couldn’t help but feel insecure. In an attempt to gain political recognition as an independent state, North Korea signed a basic North-South agreement, a denuclearization agreement (preventing the development of nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula) and even joined the United Nations, all by 1991.
United States: Where any white police officer can kill any Black man at any time…
… And the police officer will not go to jail.
By Don Fitz
September 23, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — This is what has sparked protests by thousands of people in St. Louis since September 15.
In 2011, St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley fired five to seven shots at Anthony Lamar Smith, killing him. Stockley claimed that Smith was selling drugs, chased him at high speed and shot him to defend himself. The story was briefly reported as another drug deal gone bad and that it was just incidental that the police officer was white and the victim was black.
John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, eighty years on
Reviewed by Barry Healy
Of Mice and Men
By John Steinbeck
Penguin, 1993 (first published 1937), $8.95
September 23, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — This year marks the 80th anniversary of Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. At less than 200 pages it carries enormous force as a mythic account of alienation under US capitalism.
United States: Trump’s war on immigrants
By Justin Akers Chacón
September 11, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — At the press conference to announce his run for President in 2016, Donald Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “drug dealers, criminals, rapists” who must be stopped by “building a wall.” Since taking office, Trump has continued to reiterate that message through policy initiatives designed to further degrade the quality of life for undocumented workers and their families. The overtly racist targeting of migrant and immigrant people by Trump has excited the far-right, and emboldened their efforts to organise and mobilise on a national scale, and terrorise working class communities of colour.
BRICS Xiamen Summit: Capitalist ‘deglobalisation’ could crack the bloc even if internal geopolitical strife eases
By Patrick Bond
August 31, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa summit in Xiamen from September 3-5 is already inscribed with high tension thanks to Sino-Indian border conflicts. But regardless of a welcome new peace deal, centrifugal forces within the fast-whirling world economy threaten to divide the BRICS. South Africa, which plays host to the BRICS in 2018, is already a victim of these trends – even as President Jacob Zuma continues to use the bloc as a primary crutch in his so-called “anti-imperialist” (talk-left walk-right) political survival kit.
Estados Unidos: Sanders y los Demócratas
[Original in English here.]
Por Barry Sheppard
12 de agosto de 2017 — Viento Sur — En junio, Bernie Sanders escribió un artículo en la sección “toma de posición” del New York Times titulada “How Democrats Can Stop Loosing” (Cómo los demócratas podrían dejar de perder, 13/06/2017).
En dicho artículo escribía: “En 2016, el Partido Demócrata perdió la presidencia frente a un candidato que es, quizás, el menos popular en la historia estadounidense. Los Demócratas perdieron también el Senado y la Cámara en favor de los Republicanos, cuyo programa extremista está muy alejado de las orientaciones de la mayor parte de los estadounidenses en el plano político. Ahora los Republicanos controlan casi las dos terceras partes de los puestos de gobernador y han ganado cerca de 1000 escaños en diferentes legislativos de los Estados durante los nueve últimos años. En 24 Estados, los Demócratas no tienen casi ninguna influencia."
United States: Successful convention moves Democratic Socialists of America to left
By Dan La Botz
August 10, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from New Politics — The socialist movement in the United States took a big step forward this past weekend as almost 700 delegates representing over 25,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) met at the organization’sbiennial national convention in Chicago. This convention, the first since DSA more than tripled in size following last year’s election, brought together delegates from all of the country’s major cities and many towns large and small.Most were new members who had joined in the last year either came out of the Bernie Sanders campaign or joined in reaction to the frightening prospect of the Donald Trump presidency. The convention cohered the hundreds of new members into a national organization in what was virtually a re-founding of the DSA. It gave them the experience of beginning to run their own organization, and the delegates adopted constitutional changes and policy resolutions that moved the organization to the left.
The need for a new US foreign policy towards North Korea
By Marty Hart-Landsberg
June 13, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Reports from the Economic Front — US-North Korean relations remain very tense, although the threat of a new Korean War has thankfully receded. Still the US government remains determined to tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and continues to plan for a military strike aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear infrastructure. And the North for its part has made it clear that it would respond to any attack with its own strikes against US bases in the region and even the US itself.
This is not good, but it is important to realize that what is happening is not new. The US began conducting war games with South Korean forces in 1976 and it was not long before those included simulated nuclear attacks against the North, and that was before North Korea had nuclear weapons. In 1994, President Bill Clinton was close to launching a military attack on North Korea with the aim of destroying its nuclear facilities. In 2002, President Bush talked about seizing North Korean ships as part of a blockade of the country, which is an act of war. In 2013, the US conducted war games which involved planning for preemptive attacks on North Korean military targets and “decapitation” of the North Korean leadership and even a first strike nuclear attack.
Letter from North America: NAFTA redux and on steroids
By Ernie Tate
April 27, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Unity with the author's permission — The new Trump administration has made NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, a major issue in its relations with its two neighbours. Recently, Trump has threatened to tear it up. With his standard nationalist demagogy, he claims “previous bad trade deals”, have cost the United States many jobs as a result of American manufacturers moving plants off-shore. He is now in the process of triggering the required ninety day notification period, telling Canada and Mexico the new administration is prepared to bully its way to a new and more favourable arrangement for itself.
Who actually subverts democracy?
By Charles Pierce
March 22, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Since December 9 last year, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made its allegations to U.S. Congressional leaders, ranking politicians of both major parties have gone on a concerted rant against Russia for allegedly subverting American “democracy”. The specific allegations are: (1) that Russian state operatives hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC); (2) that Russia then used WikiLeaks as an intermediary to make public internal DNC emails which would embarrass the DNC and hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign; (3) that Russia’s objective was to help Donald Trump win the Presidency; and (4) that Russia’s intervention changed the outcome of the Presidential election. For reasons given below: (1) and (2) are possible but unproven, (3) is unlikely, and (4) is fantasy.
Meanwhile, the major U.S. news media outlets have reported the story with a persistent evasion of highly relevant facts including the U.S. government’s many subversions of elections in other countries.
A Letter from North America #3 – Our migrant crisis
March 18, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Unity — This is the third of Ernie Tate’s letters to Left Unity detailing and analysing the struggles against Trump as they emerge on the other side of the pond. Ernie is a lifelong revolutionary who emigrated to Canada from Northern Ireland as a young man. He was one of the most important activists of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the 1960s and has recently produced a two volume memoir, “Revolutionary Activism of the 1950s and 1960s”.
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A by-product of present toxic atmosphere in the United States against immigrants and refugees has been a sharp increase in this country in recent weeks in the number of asylum seekers walking across the Canadian border, often placing themselves and their families in harm’s way from our extremely harsh winter. It’s also a consequence it should be noted, of the military interventions by the American empire in the Arab and African world — now greatly destabilized because of it, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union. And like everywhere else, reactionary forces here are attempting to exploit it to stoke up anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment.
