If I'm throwing words together, should I study and read socialist theory?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7518419

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24300

Statement from the Labor Party (Emek Partisi) of Turkey | Jan. 20, 2026 | Translated from Turkish– The Kurdish People must decide their own destiny, the siege must end! The Kurdish forces, who for years have been fighting to stop the... Read More ›

The Kurdish People must decide their own destiny, the siege must end!

The Kurdish forces, who for years have been fighting to stop the atrocities of ISIS in Syria, a key country in the Middle East, have been continuously and progressively cornered and strangled ever since the rise to power of the Al-Shaara regime which is a remnant of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The agreement of March 10th, signed between the PYD (Democratic Union Party, active in the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria, also known as North-East Syria or Rojava) and the Al-Shaara regime, which was allowed to “mature” until the new year, has increasingly been used as a sword against the Kurds.

Starting from the beginning of 2026, Syrian military forces, along with gangs from the civil-war era and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army forces (of the Al-Shaara regime), have begun attacking residential areas of Aleppo, expelling Kurds from two neighborhoods and, advancing from Raqqa, have encircled Rojava. The objective of these attacks are to destroy and drown in blood the Kurdish self administrative system formed in Rojava in 2012 and to crush the Kurdish resistance. The elimination of Rojava is one of the greatest ambition of the Erdoğan regime as well, which has launched the so-called “Turkey free from terrorism” campaign domestically. Turkey is now imposing its will on the Kurdish people in Syria (to “get rid of Rojava”) in order to further advance its strategy of becoming a regional power, while engaging in so-called shuttle diplomacy between the United States and the Al-Assad regime.

The attacks on and siege of Rojava, which the state and capitalist controlled media are portraying as a victory for Erdoğan, demonstrate a recurring pattern of betrayal against the Kurds. Behind this lies a sell-out agreement, emerging as local and international powers gradually reshape the region through negotiations and force on the ground.

ISIS forces, now aligned with the US to dismantle Rojava’s status; US imperialism, which continues to cooperate with ISIS by claiming to fight it; the Turkish government, which encourages armed gangs and declares Al-Shaara a brother; and reactionary Middle Eastern dictatorships are all descending upon Rojava together. And the appointed colonial governor, and American billionaire, Tom Barrack, is busy coordinating this united front.

From The Red Phoenix via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7496501

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23756

Mamdani may appear to occupy the office, but the office actually occupies him.

There is a seduction in the story of Zohran Mamdani. The insurgent from Queens. The son of an African exile, an anti-colonial academic, a Freedom Rider participant father, and a South Asian Golden Globe-winning cinematic royalty. A hunger striker for taxi drivers. A face of the "new" New York—brown, Muslim, diasporic, fluent in solidarity, in TikTok, and in that tender performance of Left political hope that allows American liberalism to feel clever rather than culpable.

"Once-in-a-generation political talent," as Mehdi Hasan called him. A democratic socialist for the city that invented derivatives and foreclosure. A rent-freeze prophet in the kingdom of landlords. A soft-spoken radical for a metropolis that still mistakes moderation for modernity.

Mamdani's campaign and his victory should have been beautiful.

Mamdani's candidacy is not merely a question of charisma, policy, or diasporic pride. It is a test of whether insurgency can survive within institutions designed precisely to prevent it. It asks whether one can bend the arc of history inside a party whose nefarious genius lies in its ability to absorb dissent rather than confront it. It stages, once again, the familiar American drama: how radical language becomes managerial grammar the moment power peers back and says, enter, but only if you behave.

It is a structural inquiry into how the Democratic Party functions as a containment architecture—a velvet noose that dresses obedience as participation. It is about how the socialist idiom, once spoken within the frame of its liberal, or "democratic" compromise, mutates into a rhetoric of affordability and inclusion, stripped of its capacity to defeat capitalist antagonism.

The Mamdani phenomenon reveals a pattern already visible in the trajectories of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: the progressive who enters the political arena to rupture the machine only to end up adopting the party line and circulating to manufacture their mass of consent for compromise. The story is not betrayal in the colloquial sense, but betrayal in the historical one—it is the betrayal of possibility inherent to liberal hegemony's architecture of containment.

Read more via Scalawag: Zohran Mamdani and the Sorcery of Soft Rebellion.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7430766

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22243

After the Great Depression, a wave of industrial unionism breathed new life into the labor movement and the U.S. working class. Faced with a severe economic downturn, unemployment, and poverty, workers across the country began waging militant strikes for union recognition and better conditions.

At the center of this class battle was Teamsters Local 574. Led by Trotskyists from the Communist League of America — Carl Skoglund, the Dunne brothers, and Farrell Dobbs — the Teamsters emerged as militant leaders willing to fight the iron grip of the bosses. Having organized a successful three-day strike of coal yard drivers in February 1934, Teamsters then organized transportation workers across Minneapolis. By April, Local 574 had grown to represent thousands.

Community and Self-Organization, Against the Bosses

In response to this powerful movement, the bosses mobilized a private army of spies and thugs to destroy the working-class organizations. Local labor leaders prepared their forces for a larger confrontation with the employers. When trucking companies refused to recognize the union, 6,000 workers answered the call to go on strike on May 15.

Over the next two months, workers waged bloody battles against the bosses, the police, and the National Guard. At every moment, the capitalists and their protectors were met with militant working-class resistance. Local 574 elected a strike committee, published a daily strike bulletin, and held mass meetings to keep all the workers well informed.

Behind these thousands of organized workers stood the working class of Minneapolis. Skoglund and the Dunne brothers had enlisted allies in the unemployed councils, other unions, and diverse community organizations including farmers. The leaders of the strike fostered the self-organization of workers, even in terms of their own defense. They set up a Women’s Auxiliary which helped organize a food pantry for the strikers and their families, marched on City Hall, and even fought with clubs in hand on the picket lines when it came to it. Workers organized rapid response patrols of cars and trucks that stopped trucks full of scabs, also known as “flying pickets.” At every moment, the broadest working-class alliance was achieved.

On May 21 and 22 — the Battle of Deputies Run — the striking Teamsters, as well as thousands of other working-class people organized behind them, faced off with the bosses and their hired thugs. Faced with the formidable force of organized workers, many fled. The strike entered its final phase after the events of Bloody Friday on July 20, when the police opened fire into a crowd of picketers while escorting scab trucks. Two workers were killed, almost 70 injured, and key leaders arrested.

The funerals of John Belar and Henry Ness drew a crowd of up to 100,000 people. Other unions began to strike in sympathy, as well, or offered financial support. Ultimately, the strikers held strong and forced the employers to give in to their main demands, including the “inside” warehouse workers.

Lessons for the Working Class Today

The strike in Minneapolis was one of three major strikes that shook the labor movement in 1934. Yet, this “Teamster rebellion” was likely the most advanced expression of working-class militancy and solidarity. The success in Minneapolis would help inspire a whole generation of workers who formed the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). In just a couple of years, sit-down strikes and other bold tactics would be key to organizing auto, steel, rubber, and other industries.

Over eight decades later, the experience of the Minneapolis Teamsters remains more relevant than ever as a new generation of workers are looking to fight back. By learning from the past, workers of all industries can face the present and prepare for the future.

Now, in the face of ICE’s terror and the imperialist attacks on Venezuela, is the time to rekindle the spirit of ’34.

Today, working people in Minnesota are shutting it all down to demand ICE out of our communities and justice for Renee Nicole Good. Unions must mobilize, as they did in 1934, to harness the power of organized labor and go on strike.

ICE out for good! Solidarity forever!

The post Revolutionary Teamsters: Remembering the 1934 Minneapolis General Strike appeared first on Left Voice.

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Kathmandu, January 19, 2026: Various communist and left parties organized a rally and mass meeting...

The post Nepal: RCPN And Other Left Parties Stage Election Boycott Rally In Kathmandu Valley appeared first on REDSPARK.

Kathmandu, January 19, 2026: Various communist and left parties organized a rally and mass meeting in the Kathmandu Valley today, boycotting the upcoming elections and demanding an independent people’s government and a people’s constitution.

The rally, led by the Central Joint Struggle Committee and supported by the Scientific Socialist Communist Party, Revolutionary Communist Party of Nepal, CPN (Bahumat), CPN (Janapakshya), Nepal Communist Party Socialist Communist Party, and other groups, began from Sundhara and concluded at Shantibatika, where it turned into a mass gathering.

Participants expressed dissatisfaction with the current political system and called for the protection of a people-oriented constitution. They also demanded the safeguarding of democratic rights, stating that the existing system has failed to address public concerns.

The organizers reiterated their stance of rejecting the electoral process and urged citizens to support their movement for systemic political change.

A little reminder that I consider myself as a market socialist who supports socialist pluralism (I think like-minded socialist parties should work cooperative in an united front and also compete in elections) with the vanguard party leading the front as the main social institution, as well as redistribution of wealth from the rich snobs to everyone else through UBI and Georgism and such, all in the transitional "socialist dictatorship of the proletariat" stage between capitalism and communism"

Is there anything contradictory about that, is it revisionist, and should I really study Marxist theory?

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Cm1flEzem0Q&lc=UgxYwnRlTRQQ7ER7hnp4AaABAg.AS0RN8YeymQAS4cVZao96L

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7353358

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20251

John M. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Colorado– President Donald Trump is threatening to use both military and economic power to take control over Greenland. This is an outrageous insult to the Greenlandic people, the Inuit, and their right, defended by international law, to self-determination and to determine their own future. This insult has caused their righteous anger.

Greenland harbors immense mineral wealth, including rare earth elements (REEs) like neodymium and dysprosium—critical for batteries, wind turbines, and military tech—along with zinc, lead, gold, iron ore, copper, diamonds, and uranium. Potential offshore oil and gas reserves, estimated at 30 billion barrels by the USGS, add to its allure even though Greenland halted new exploration licenses in 2021 over climate concerns. Global warming, driven by capitalist exploitation, accelerates ice melt at 30 million tonnes per hour, exposing buried deposits for exploitation and opening Arctic shipping routes like the Northwest Passage. This eases extraction and transport, ironically fueling the very climate crisis that reveals these riches. Emissions from mining would further amplify warming, threatening Greenland’s ecosystems, coastal communities, and global sea levels— a vicious cycle where imperialism profits from the complete destruction of the environment. Read More ›

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I firmly believe that:

1. the people should seize the means of production from the rich bourgeois snobs, but the means of production should be under a planned market economy.
2. There'd still be competition and advertising, but the latter would be very very regulated.
3. There'd still be both private and public companies (in addition to worker-owned cooperatives and collectives), but forming monopolies would be disencouraged.
4. Through a land value tax, all private property would be put in check.
5. All citizens will be ensured the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through welfare.
6. All money would be redistributed to the people in a form of a dividend of $1150 per month.
7. A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat shouldn't be focused on just one party. The Communist Party would act as the main social institution, but would allow a coalition (or front) of like-minded but competitive socialist parties.
8. The parties would go hand-in-hand with the industrial unions; the state is only temporary. The people should be entitled to the fruits of their labor and other stuff, but when it comes to organizing and such, they obviously CAN'T do it alone. The government is clearly crushing people's liberties, and it's time that the proletariat runs the show.
9. Oh, and oppressive police forces like ICE wouldn't get their grubby little hands on the proletariat because at the end of the day we all have to be armed in case some police force decides to stifle people's liberties and rights.
10. The socialist spectrum should be allowed to listen to each other's views (whether Marxist-Leninist or full-fledged libertarian socialist).

I consider myself as a market socialist because of this. What do you think?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7342860

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19857

As soon as Donald Trump had finished kidnapping the president of Venezuela, he once again set his sights on Greenland. Trump advisor and fascist ghoul Stephen Miller said on TV that the island should “obviously … be part of the United States.” Channeling Hitler, Miller continued: “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Bourgeois Europe was shocked by Trump’s “unbridled imperialism,” in the words of Spiegel magazine. The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK, and Denmark put out a joint statement: “Greenland belongs to its people,” they recited. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide.”

But why is it for Denmark to decide, even before Greenland? Miller has a point when he asks: “By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?”

Imperialism

Imperialist powers want Greenland as climate change opens up the Arctic to shipping and mining. They don’t even feign interest in the well-being of the indigenous people of Kalaallit Nunaat. Danish colonialism has been particularly brutal, ripping hundreds of babies away from their mothers, while sterilizing thousands of women without their consent. U.S colonialism would be no less devastating, turning the island into a staging ground for World War III.

A supposed leftist like Chris Cutrone, the founder of the odious Platypus Society, claims that the imperialist conquest of Greenland would be a continuation of the American revolution. But the peoples of Puerto Rico or Guam can say whether the U.S. today represents a democratic alternative to European colonialism.

If the U.S. army were to invade Greenland to seize its resources, that would be pure barbarism—but the Danish “claim” is based on violent conquest several centuries earlier. No one has any democratic mandate. Miller stated very openly that Greenland has just 30,000 inhabitants (in reality, 57,000) and he doesn’t care what they think. But EU policy has just as little interest in self-determination.

While EU leaders say Greenland belongs to its people—and to Denmark, apparently—France still denies self-determination to the Kanak people of New Caledonia. Spanish imperialism clings on to Ceuta and Melilla. The UK keeps a navy base on the Malvinas Islands. etc.

The European statement talks about “sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders”—but these principles didn’t stop NATO from attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. Denmark’s imperialist military participated in all these crimes.

“Territorial integrity” didn’t apply when the EU backed independence for Kosovo or South Sudan. Many European governments recognize Palestine—but have done nothing at all to defend that state’s sovereignty.

Fellow Imperialists

Trying to appease Trump, Danish politicians are emphasizing they are fellow imperialists. “We’re Already on Your Side,” one social democrat screamed in the direction of the White House. They also want to use Greenland for military buildup, to control the Arctic, and to extract rare earths.

The European Union likes to present itself as a bastion of liberal values and international law. Yet as they continue to support the genocide in Gaza, they are showing the whole world that the “rules-based international order” is, at most, window dressing to cover up their own imperialist interests. Despite all the propaganda about the dangers of Russia and China, NATO remains one of the deadliest organization in the history of humanity.

The only people who should decide on Greenland’s fate are its indigenous population. In the age of growing inner-imperialist tensions, only socialists are defending such an elementary democratic right. Anyone serious about democracy and self-determination needs to call for the break up of NATO and the end of imperialism.

The post Greenland Doesn’t Belong to Denmark Either appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7329898

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19560

Below we republish a statement from Workers’ Union of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company regarding the current wave of protests throughout Iran. This statement was first published in Socialist Worker.

Workers’ Union of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company statement

While declaring solidarity with the popular struggles against poverty, unemployment, discrimination and oppression, we explicitly declare our opposition to any return to a past dominated by inequality, corruption and injustice.

We believe that true liberation is only possible through the conscious and organised leadership and participation of the working class and oppressed people, not through the reproduction of old and authoritarian forms of power. In the meantime, workers, teachers, retirees, nurses, students, women and especially young people, despite widespread repression, arrests, dismissals and livelihood pressures, continue to be at the forefront of these struggles.

The Workers’ Union of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company emphasizes the need to continue independent, conscious and organized protests.

We have said many times and we repeat it again—the path to the liberation of workers and toilers does not lie in the path of a leader carved from above the people, nor in reliance on foreign powers, nor through factions within the government.

Rather, it lies in the path of unity, solidarity, and the creation of independent organizations in the workplace and on a national level. We must not allow ourselves to be victims of the power games and interests of the ruling classes once again.

The Syndicate also strongly condemns any propaganda, justification, or support for military intervention by foreign governments, including the United States and Israel. Such interventions not only lead to the destruction of civil society and the killing of people, but also provide another excuse for the continuation of violence and repression by the government.

Past experiences have shown that Western domineering governments do not place the slightest value on the freedom, livelihood, and rights of the Iranian people.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees and emphasize the need to identify and prosecute those who ordered and perpetrated the killing of people.

Long live freedom, equality and class solidarity.

The post “Workers Must Lead Fight for Liberation, Not Authoritarian Forms of Power or Foreign States”: Statement from Workers in Iran appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7300110

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18879

Last week, the Trump administration launched a blatant neocolonial offensive in Venezuela, kidnapping its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and declaring that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela in order to plunder its oil resources.

This imperialist aggression abroad has been matched by brutal repression at home. This week, ICE agents shot and killed Renée Nicole Good while she was observing an ICE raid and later driving away from the scene. She is the ninth person ICE has shot since September 2025.

These events are not isolated; they are two faces of the same imperialist beast. The racism and chauvinism that have Trump treating Latin America as a playground for U.S. profits are the same forces militarizing our streets. Trump’s agenda relies on terrorizing immigrant neighbors and criminalizing dissent—whether it targets another country or an activist standing up for their community here at home.

Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to paint immigrants as violent criminals and criminalize those who defend them, the real reign of terror is being carried out by ICE and federal forces that have militarized our cities. Immigrants have not made our cities unsafe; Trump’s racist and xenophobic assault on their rights and existence has.

This weekend, from Minneapolis to New York City to Los Angeles and beyond, over 1,000 actions and demonstrations have been called in major cities against Trump’s attacks—both his aggression toward Venezuela and ICE’s presence in our streets.

Thousands are beginning to recognize that the same imperialist regime attacking working people abroad is attacking us here at home. It is urgent that we unite workers and oppressed people across borders to defeat this offensive.

Since Trump’s attacks last weekend, some unions and locals have already rejected U.S. imperialist interventions and issued calls to mobilize. United Auto Workers Local 4811 (UAW 4811), which represents nearly 50,000 workers at the University of California, released a statement critical of Trump’s attacks on Venezuela. In New York City, unions such as PSC-CUNY, UAW Region 9A, UAW Local 2110 (LAAS), and Laborers’ International Union Local 79, among others, are joining Sunday’s mobilizations. The rest of the labor movement has to follow suit.

Workers and the labor movement have a special role to play in denouncing Trump’s increasing authoritarianism that threatens the working class and oppressed across borders. Trump said only “own morality” and his “own mind” can stop his agenda, but we know that isn’t the case; as we saw with the general strikes in Italy against the genocide in Gaza, even the threat of workers shutting it down against imperialism is powerful enough to check the capitalist powers’ impunity.

Building such a force in the heart of imperialism — with workers, students, and the masses in the United States denouncing the role of their own government at home and abroad, and organizing to fight back — is essential to advancing the struggle against imperialism and the Far Right across the globe and within the United States.

The mobilizations this weekend are a powerful show of solidarity with immigrant communities and strengthen the struggle of people in countries threatened by U.S. imperialism. We must mobilize with all our forces to demand ICE out of our cities and U.S. imperialism out of Venezuela and all of Latin America. As Left Voice, we join these mobilizations independently of both Republicans and Democrats, and hold no illusions in Congress or the institutions of the imperialist state.

At the same time, we act independently of Maduro’s government, which — through authoritarianism and austerity — has undermined the capacity of the Venezuelan working class to resist the current imperialist offensive.

Our perspective is one of class independence and internationalism, grounded in the power of the working class in the United States, Latin America, and beyond — the only force capable of defeating imperialism.

**U.S. out of Venezuela and all of Latin America!****Abolish ICE!****Free Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores!**Down with the Donroe Doctrine!

Across the Americas, Mobilize and Strike for Venezuela and Latin America!

If you’re in New York City, join the Left Voice contingent at the No Wars, No Kings, No ICE protest on Sunday, January 11. We will meet at 12:30 p.m. at the intersection of E 60th street & 5th Ave.

The post All Out Against ICE, Trump, and U.S. Imperialism appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7303537

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18933

Since Wednesday, Minnesotans have been flooding the streets of South Minneapolis where their neighbor was shot and killed during an ICE raid. They have spent early mornings and late nights at the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE agents deploy each morning and return each night. They have spent their midnight hours protesting outside of the hotels that house the ICE agents terrorizing their communities. As the work week came to a close, protests grew even larger.

We landed in Minneapolis on Friday night, arriving at the downtown hotel where ICE agents stay. Hundreds of people lined the streets all around the building, carting drum kits, noise makers, trumpets, whistles, and even fireworks to make as much noise as possible. The message was, quite literally, loud and clear: ICE agents terrorize Minneapolis, so Minneapolis will give them no peace. Even as temperatures dipped below freezing and snow started falling, our numbers only grew. Folks in nearby apartment buildings, bars, and restaurants came out to join the march. The noise created was so deafening, protestors passed out earplugs to one another. The fury of the crowd was aimed not only at the ICE agents who kidnap and kill their community members, but at the Trump administration who deployed them. ICE has been in Minneapolis for months, but two thousand additional agents were sent by Trump last week with special instructions to target the large Somali community of the Twin Cities.

Fed up, protestors brought signs reading “Trump is the real terrorist” and “Trump: end the war on immigrants!” One protestor, a school therapist, shared her reason for joining the march: “The children I work with are traumatized. They are traumatized by this administration and they are traumatized by the whole political system. We as school workers have an obligation not to be neutral in this situation. I will do everything in my power to bring about change for the students I work with.”

At 9:30, police ordered protestors to stop and disperse, declaring the protest an unlawful assembly. By 10pm, police had begun making arrests, ultimately detaining thirty protestors.

The next morning, in frigid five-degree weather, protestors rallied once again, trudging through heavy snow and across slick, icy sidewalks to convene at Powderhorn Park, just blocks from where Renee Nicole Good was killed. This same park was the site of countless protests, rallies, and community meetings during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—George Floyd was murdered in the very same neighborhood five and a half years earlier. By the time we arrived at 1pm, thousands of people had gathered in the park and filled the surrounding streets. A contingent of teachers from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers marched together, carrying a banner which read, “Education not deportation.” One elementary school teacher spoke with Left Voice, saying, “I’m tired. I’m mad. I want them gone—I want ICE out of my city. I want my kids to feel safe again. Enough is enough, I have to be out here, I can’t stay silent.”

Another teacher working in a Title 1 school in South Minneapolis expressed that she was furious with the Trump administration, but also with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey for his complicity: “I need people to understand that Mayor Frey is not on our side, he’s the reason that our neighbors live on the streets, he destroys encampments and defunds community resources. He has been doing only the bare minimum, there’s so much more he could be doing to protect our communities and protect our schools and he won’t do it.”

Also represented in the crowd were contingents from left groups across the city, including Socialist Alternative, with signs like “Abolish ICE, fund our schools” and “Democrats won’t save us.” The Twin Cities chapter of the Revolutionary Communists of America organized a contingent whose signs read “Minnesota AFL-CIO: Call a general strike!” Also showing out in huge numbers were the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement—a group that fights for climate justice and against authoritarianism, and the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump. Beyond the organizations present, thousands of individuals joined the march, bringing signs like “My parents fought for my rights, now I will fight for theirs,” and “Indigenous people for immigrant rights.” The march, from beginning to end, stretched nearly three miles, covering streets throughout South Minneapolis. City bus drivers, folks in cars driving by, and workers in local business waved and clapped, shouting their support and calling out, “Fuck ICE.”

As we write, protestors continue to fill the Minneapolis streets, both at Powderhorn Park and at the Whipple Federal Building.

The last two days in Minneapolis have seen huge showings of fury against ICE and the Trump administration and solidarity with immigrants in the U.S. As ICE continues to reign terror on cities across the nation, this movement must massify, connecting the struggle against ICE at home with the struggle against imperialist intervention in Venezuela abroad.

Minneapolis has been the eye of the storm before, inspiring one of the largest social movements in history in 2020–we must continue to organize together to create a fighting movement once again, both in the Twin Cities and beyond.

The post No Peace for ICE: Minneapolis Protests Trump’s War on Immigrants and Repression appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/61310940

With the ICE shootings happening in the US (including the tragic death of a lady in Minneapolis named Renee), do you think we need more self-defense (or community defense organizing) classes now more than ever (and fast)?

I got banned from posting on Lemmy.ml, so I post this to the Beehaw Socialism community.

Invidious link: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=M7fx3e3rilA

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7274210

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17988

Below we publish the transcript of a speech by Myriam Bregman, a socialist congressional deputy and former presidential candidate in Argentina. Bregman is a member of the Partido de Los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS), which is Left Voice’s sister organization. As a socialist elected, Bregman called for a general strike across Latin America, and internationally organized mobilized led by workers as the way to defeat Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and broader imperialist threats against Latin America. We’ve also published a video of the speech below:

Good afternoon, comrades. Today we have to be here in front of the U.S. Embassy again to denounce a very serious event: The direct military interference of the United States in Venezuela with the kidnapping of President Maduro.

You know that we have always been left-wing opponents of the Venezuelan regime, of Maduro’s regime, but in no way does that prevent us from seeing what is happening today. Trump, as rarely in history, has been explicit. He said he was coming for oil, he said he wanted to lead the country directly. He didn’t use arguments like in other times, like they used in Iraq, masquerading as the defense of democracy or human rights. He thinks he is unpunishable. He thinks he’s all-powerful. That is why the task ahead of us is very important.

Throughout all of Latin America it is important, but for our country even more so, because our country has a colonial occupation in Malvinas. We have to unite this fight with the cry, “English of the Malvinas.” For us this is a vital thing. It’s part of our people’s history.

We are not alone in this fight. We have to unite for an international day. All the peoples of Latin America, with the working class at the head, can build a general strike in each of our countries. Unite continentally and start standing up to Trump. We will not stop him with speeches. Some believe that by tweeting they are going to stop Trump. We have to take to the street. Everyone must be there.

We have to join together the United States’s own working class, with those young people from the United States themselves who say “No Kings, we don’t want authoritarian figures like Trump,” with the youth that has come out both under the Democratic government and under Trump to say, “NO” to genocide in Palestine. Those are our allies.

And with that, we have to seek the strength to combat this U.S. policy. We don’t want to be told that we can’t. We don’t want to be told that we don’t have the power. We must revive our anti-imperialist values. We must rebuild the anti-colonial consciousness because they have done a lot of damage to our country. A lot of damage, coming to the U.S. embassy to toast with the ambassador, having a few drinks with the ambassador. What drinks?! What embassy?! We have to reject this!

It is my pride to have been the only presidential candidate who in 2023 told the ambassador that we would not meet with him, that the Left Front would not kneel before him! We must not surrender with neither drinks nor champagne. We are not here for meetings with ambassadors. We are here to confront them in the street and to tell them, “Yankees out of Latin America! English out of Malvinas!

We will fight them with all our strength! Thank you very much comrades. Let’s build that international solidarity, that unity of the working class, to fight for the anti-imperialist consciousness, because it is not given that the U.S. has already won everything. If we join together we can stop it, and we can tell them “Yankees go home!”

The post “It Is Not Given That the U.S. Has Already Won”: Argentine Socialist Congresswoman Calls for Resistance to Trump’s Attack On Venezuela appeared first on Left Voice.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7274479

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17933

In a message of solidarity with the people of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution in response to new threats from US imperialism, the International Relations Section of the Central Committee of the KKE stated the following:

“The KKE categorically condemns the latest provocative threats by US imperialism against the people of Cuba and other peoples, emboldened by the imperialist intervention in Venezuela.

Our Party expresses its solidarity with the people and the Communist Party of Cuba, and extends its heartfelt condolences for the 32 Cuban fighters who lost their lives to the fire of the US military machine during the attack in Venezuela.

The people and the Communist Party of Cuba, drawing on their revolutionary legacy, will resist subversive actions and all forms of hardship arising from the escalation of imperialist aggression in Latin America and Caribbean.

Hands off Cuba and its people!”

 

Mensaje de solidaridad del KKE al pueblo cubano y a la Revolución Cubana contra las nuevas amenazas del imperialismo estadounidense

El KKE condena enérgicamente las nuevas amenazas agresivas que lanza el imperialismo estadounidense contra el pueblo cubano y otros pueblos, en un acto de descaro tras la intervención imperialista en Venezuela.

Nuestro partido expresa su solidaridad con el pueblo y el Partido Comunista de Cuba, así como su más sentido pésame por los 32 combatientes cubanos que perdieron la vida a causa de los disparos de la maquinaria militar estadounidense durante el ataque a Venezuela.

El pueblo y el Partido Comunista de Cuba, basándose en su legado revolucionario, combatirán las acciones subversivas y todo tipo de dificultades generadas por la escalada de agresividad imperialista en la región de América Latina y el Caribe.

¡Manos fuera de Cuba y de su pueblo!

Sección de Relaciones internacionales del CC del KKE

inter.kke.gr

From In Defense of Communism via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7266468

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17626

In this article, I examine the motivations for Trump’s attack in the context of a new cold war with China. The forceful removal of Maduro should be interpreted as the first step in implementing Trump’s National Security Strategy, which calls for a regroupment of military forces to the Western Hemisphere, at the same time pointing to a renewed push for domination in the region, as well as a recognition of its limits as world hegemon. A more aggressive policy toward Latin America will face resistance from within the United States and from the region’s social movements, labor, and left organizations.

Motivations

It should be obvious to anyone by now that the main reason for the military invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro–and, by doing so, the decapitatation of the Venezuelan government–has nothing to do with combatting drug trafficking. Not only is this story hard to believe when Trump is, at the same time, pardoning scores of people serving time for drug-trafficking, like former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. But also, as Trump himself noted in the public conference after the military operation, access to Venezuela’s oil reserves alongside its mineral deposits are at the center of U.S. motivations to overthrow Maduro.

Venezuela’s oil reserves, amounting to 300 billion barrels are today the largest in the world. Furthermore, this is heavy crude oil, not the less dense shale oil produced through fracking, which the US has more than enough of. This highly viscose oil can be used to make diesel, asphalt, and other petroleum derivatives that shale oil is not suitable for. Furthermore, American refineries in the Gulf Coast and in the midwest were built decades ago to process heavy crude oil. These refineries need at least a certain percentage of heavy crude to operate efficiently, reason why the U.S. currently imports some 3-6 millions of barrels of crude oil a day. Venezuela’s oil will no doubt represent a boon for U.S. refineries, although some questions remain about the feasibility of reviving the countries oil infrastructure. In order to secure the massive investment needed to maximize oil extraction, U.S. capital will require stability.

Yet there is another reason why Venezuela was in American empire’s crosshairs, and it also has to do with its oil. In 2023, China bought almost 70% of the oil Venezuela exported. Even though this represents only around 5% of China’s oil imports, with enough investment from the Asian country, daily production could increase exponentially. Venezuela’s oil exports to China are only a measure of the Asian giant’s rapidly growing influence in Latin America. China has become the top trading partner for South America (the second one after the U.S. for Latin America as a whole). Furthermore, Chinese investment, and particularly its focus on energy sources and infrastructure has probably sounded an alarm in Washington DC.

Chinese state companies operate large swaths of the electric and distribution grid in South American countries, more than half of Chile’s grid, the whole area of Lima, Peru, and an area covering 60 million people in Brazil. A similar trend can be observed with key natural resources, such as lithium or cobalt. With the decapitation of the Venezuelan regime, the Trump administration drew a line in the sand for China’s penetration in Latin America. It is at the same time reclaiming territorial dominance over the continent, securing access to valuable natural resources, some of which have regained importance with the AI-race and the battle with China for technological supremacy, sending a message to the rest of Latin America with the warning: we will not tolerate a government that does not align with American interests.

Making Sense of the Overthrow of Maduro

The violent ouster (and kidnapping) of Nicolás Maduro is an obvious escalation in U.S.’s hostility against rival national leaders. It is a flagrant violation of international law and the UN charter as well as an obvious infringement of Venezuela’s sovereignty. To find a similar example of a unilateral use of force against U.S. opponents in Latin America, we have to go back more than 30 years to invasion of Panama by George H.W. Bush in 1989.

How to interpret this shift in foreign policy? On the one hand, it signals a leap in the level of military action the US is willing to use to discipline governments that challenge US dominance in Latin America (or who have drifted too far into China’s sphere of influence). The swift operation alone sends a signal to other countries and national leaders in the region trying to chart a path of certain independence from the U.S.

The document on National Security Strategy published by the White House in November lays out a new roadmap in foreign policy, to bring a “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere” and away from other regions that are less pressing today. In other words, the U.S. is partially retreating from the world scene to regroup forces and strengthen its presence in the Western hemisphere. It is an implicit recognition of the waning power of the U.S. in an increasingly multi-polar world. Greg Grandin has observed that the U.S. has retrenched to Latin America twice during the twentieth century, after overstretching its forces globally: once in 1930 during the great depression, and the second time in the 1970s, after its defeat in Vietnam.

Lastly, news reports about the military operation mention an “inside” contact in Maduro’s circle of confidence. In fact, the relative ease with which the US whisked Maduro away, in a blitz operation with almost no casualties, seems to signal that a growing number of high-ranking officials were ready to let Maduro go, at least some of them openly collaborating with the U.S., as reported in different media.

Ripples

The violent ouster of Maduro is an alert for all Latin America. It sends a message to other rival governments in the region, such as Petro’s in Colombia, Sheinbaum’s in Mexico, or Lula’s in Brazil. If the message was not clear enough, we can always count on Trump to say the quite part loud, explicitly pointing to Colombia and Cuba as possible next targets. A larger U.S. presence in Latin America will mean more repression of its people, an increase in the plunder of natural resources, and a political agenda that will seek to take away social rights and cut social spending, deteriorating people’s lives for the benefit of foreign corporations.

The total disregard of international law undermines U.S. legitimacy and puts into question the whole post-WW2 international order. If the claims that the U.S. wages war on countries all over the world in defense of freedom and democracy were already hard to believe before this event, it is now untenable even as a rhetorical device. The assault on Latin America’s sovereignty, social rights, and natural resources will no doubt unleash a renewed anti-American sentiment across the region. As Brian Winter warns, Trump’s new incursion in Latin America can “[plant] the seeds of an anti-American backlash that could outlive the current administration.”

What Now?

The main question today, after taking out Maduro, is how will the U.S. guarantee that the new leader enacts more U.S.-friendly policies? Although Trump said not to fear a ground operation, it is clear that this would be deeply unpopular in the US, including among the MAGA base, who overwhelming rejects having the U.S. involved in another “forever war”. As Marjorie Taylor Greene put it, “this is the same Washington playbook that we’re so sick and tired of, that doesn’t serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives.”

Venezuela is a vast territory with 30 million people, twice as large as Iraq. And however unpopular the regime has become in the past decade or so, there is a deep sentiment of empowerment and sovereignty among much of its population. A ground operation could easily become a quagmire for the Trump administration. Even though Trump said the administration is not afraid of “boots on the ground”, a military occupation of Venezuela has high chances of going awry.

The obvious choice for replacing Maduro, from Trump’s perspective, was opposition leader María Corina Machado. Trump’s decision not to force the transition of power to her seems puzzling. But Machado is, in fact, a polarizing figure, who doesn’t have an overwhelming support in Venezuela.

So, the plan relies on the willingness of the high commands of Madurismo to forsake their –at least in rhetoric – anti-imperialist program, and work with Trump, open the country for American oil companies, stop shipping oil to China. How feasible is this? Well, at this point we know that there has been some level of collusion between at least some of Maduro’s high commands and the Trump administration: someone helped strike the blow. Maybe even Delcy Rodriguez, or her brother Jorge, who had been an interlocutor of the US government over the past few years. But these are only speculations. In any case, the insurmountable pressure the US government put on the Venezuelan government through the deployment of warships and the repeated bombing of boats off the country’s coast must have made the option of giving up Maduro to preserve Chavismo easier to digest.

The writing was on the wall, Maduro was on the way out. Yet a complete selling out to the US would face at least two obstacles: on the one hand, it would require a unified armed forces behind this plan, a split among high or mid-rank military commands would elicit a blood-bath, a fratricidal war, in which the US would become embroiled and would no doubt make more bloody. Second: it will inevitably unleash resistance among working-class people. Delcy Rodriguez gave a relatively combative speech against the U.S., demanding the release of Nicolás Maduro. But very quickly her tone changed, including profuse calls for peace and an explicit “invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperation agenda, aimed at a joined development, within the framework of international law…”. It may well be that, as Angel Arias proposes, the transition out of Maduro’s regime will be led by a Chavista government with an American gun to its head.

Take Action

The response from most Latin American governments has ranged from a tepid condemnation to outright celebratory. Yet US’s agenda in Latin America will face opposition, if not from the bourgeoisie and their politicians, from working-class people and their organizations. There have been mobilizations in virtually every country in Latin America since Saturday. And even though the ghastly popularity of the Maduro regime made it easier for people in Latin America to support a U.S. intervention, we can expect widespread rejection to further attacks. Resistance to U.S. imperialism, honed throughout the 20th century, is part of Latin Americans’ collective memory.

It was not due to self-restraint that the United States refrained from deploying a more direct colonial rule in the region–it was a response to opposition to U.S. encroachment in many forms: revolutions, boycotts, national liberation movements, and in some cases, bourgeois nationalist political projects. As early as the 1910s, the Mexican revolution expropriated American capital and fended off U.S. military threats, setting limits to American expansionism southward. Almost fifty years later, decades of plunder and oppression sparked in the small nation-island off the coast of Florida the most spectacular revolution of the continent in modern times. The Cuban Revolution started as a national liberation movement against the United States, and it was only after a massive capital strike, boycotts and capital flight that the Castro leadership decided to expropriate the domestic and foreign bourgeoisie’s assets.

The neoliberal period, beginning with the coup against Salvador Allende in 1973 opened a period of free-trade, privatizations, and austerity policies recommended by Washington-led International Financial Institutions (primarily, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These policies succeeded in their aims of dismantling social safety net, weakening labor movements, and further commodifying people’s lives. But it also sowed the seeds of a powerful backlash against neoliberalism that swept the region in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mass mobilizations took to the streets, fought back against the police, took part in roadblocks and lootings, and toppled governments in several countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

Organized labor in Argentina, despite its bureaucratic character, called for six general strikes in 2001 alone. Indigenous organizations occupied Quito for months before the US-friendly government of Jamil Mahuad. Working masses won a long-drawn conflict against the privatization of the water–recommended by the World Bank–in Cochabamba in 2000. Only 3 years later, the militant proletariat of Bolivia, alongside Indigenous and peasant organizations, rose up to oppose the sale of gas to the U.S. with such strength and determination that not only the government had to backtrack, but also neoliberal president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada had to resign.

More recently, several countries have seen mass mobilizations against their governments, including Chile, Perú, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia. This gymnastic of protest and mobilization have hone a vanguard of struggle. The working class, social movements, and resistance in Latin America will no doubt pose a big challenge to US renewed military presence in the region. In a political conjuncture where U.S. imperialism seems all-powerful, it is important to keep these opposition forces in mind. The main task for revolutionaries in Latin America is to unite these efforts, to build a revolutionary organization that could wage these fights throughout the region, coordinate the resistance, and act as a gravitational pole for all those willing to fight U.S. imperialism.

Social movements for women’s rights, for the environment, intellectuals, student organizations, indigenous movements, organized labor, can all united under the leadership of a transnational working-class organization. As leader of the PTS in Argentina, Emilio Albamonte, comments, “How powerless would the enormous American mercenary army–armed to the teeth with high technology–be against the force of hundreds of millions of poor people led by the proletariat?”

There is an important role to play for us in the U.S. The tasks for progressives, left, anti-imperialist, and simply all pro-democracy individuals and organizations in the US is to undermine the empire’s capacity to wage a war of colonization against Latin American peoples. In fact, building a strong, working-class opposition within the empire will be key for the victory of resistance movements in Latin America. For this we can build from the experience and activist networks of the powerful pro-Palestine movement.

We must denounce the intervention in Venezuela and demand the immediate release of Nicolás Maduro. This does not mean lending any support to him or the Chavista/Maduro regime, but simply demanding to respect the sovereignty of Venezuela and its people. We must mobilize, protest, disrupt, join all demonstrations to repudiate the attack. We must demand our unions to take a clear stance against U.S. imperialism, and to not only issue statements but also call to actions in repudiation of the attack on Venezuela. True international solidarity demands from us to raise hell at home, throw sand in the gears of U.S. imperialism, create enough havoc that would push the government to curb its imperialist advance.

The post What’s Next for Venezuela and What Can You Do About It? appeared first on Left Voice.

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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf