On June 18, 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected progressive president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz. It marked the first known coup in Latin America successfully executed by the US Central Intelligence Agency, which was founded in 1947.
The US-backed dictator Ubico had been unseated by the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944 and the president of Guatemala immediately prior to Árbenz, Juan José Arévalo, was no stranger to coup attempts either, having survived 25 of them during his four-year term.¹ Arévalo was the country’s first democratically elected president. …
On Friday, June 11, the fourth monthly US/Canada Hands Off Venezuela picket action drew together diplomats, activists and labor organizers from Canada and Venezuela for a discussion about the economic blockade of Venezuela and a protest of the criminal coercive measures imposed by the US and its ally Canada.
The virtual event featured presentations by Alison Bodine, Coordinator of the Fire This Time Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and author of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Venezuela; Carol Delgado, Venezuela’s former ambassador to Ecuador; Dimitri Lascaris of Canada’s Green Party, Don Foreman of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and Radhika Desai, Professor…
On June 16, 1976, the Soweto Uprising began in Soweto Township, Johannesburg, South Africa. Three days of students strikes and widespread demonstrations brought international attention to the injustices of white supremacist rule.
The 1976 Uprising was partly a visceral popular reaction to the oppression and dispossession of the colonial system and the apartheid one that followed it, but the Uprising was also the result of a strengthening of organized resistance movements within South Africa: the Black Consciousness Movement, the political work of the banned ANC (of Nelson Mandela) and PAC (Pan-African Congress) parties, and particularly the South African Students Organisation.
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The US oligarchy became wealthy by exploiting the labor and natural resources of peoples and lands across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In our millennium, Venezuela’s assets were seized by an empire in decline. As its economy continues to weaken, the US lashes out with increasingly desperate policies of economic “sanctions” against those that try to break out of its orbit. In the process, it drives its enemies together.
“Ironically, America’s attempt to isolate other countries is turning into an attempt to isolate itself,” said economist Michael Hudson recently. One of the best-known economists in the US, Hudson wrote the…
On May 3, 1945, The London Times reported on a speech in which it was claimed that a purported “iron curtain” would descend around the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Behind this supposed curtain, horrible atrocities would allegedly take place. This speech was made by acting Nazi Chancellor Lutz von Krosigk on May 2. Von Krosigk assumed this position following Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945.
At this time the Nazis were facing defeat. On May 2, the Soviet Red Army defeated the Nazi fascist warmongers in the battle for Berlin, taking the capital city at tremendous costs to both…
By Steve Lalla and Saheli Chowdhury
Víctor Dreke, legendary commander of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, called for those defending the Revolution today to recognize that the battlefield of the 21st century is the media.
The comments were made at a conference held on Thursday, April 22, commemorating the 60-year anniversary of the Bay of Pigs — Playa Girón to the Spanish-speaking world. Comandante Dreke, now retired at age 84, spoke alongside author, historian, and journalist Tariq Ali; Cuba’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Bárbara Montalvo Álvarez; and National Secretary of Great Britain’s Cuba Solidarity Campaign, Bernard Regan.
“It is…
“For progressives and anti-imperialists all over the world, the mention of the Bay of Pigs — known in the Spanish-speaking world as Playa Girón — evokes joy and celebration,” wrote Carmelo Ruiz. “The United States, an empire accustomed to imposing itself even in the farthest corners of the world, could not prevail and enforce its will on an island country 90 miles away from its shores. The empire could be defeated after all.”¹
In mid-April, 1961, the island nation of Cuba repelled a US military invasion at Playa Girón and captured over 1,200 invaders. Cuba’s victory, in self-defense, was a…
Don Davies, lawyer and member of Canada’s national parliament, confirmed that unilateral coercive measures (UCM) imposed on Venezuela by the US and its allies, including Canada, are “illegal as well as immoral.”
Davies characterized the sanctions as a violation of international law. He also attested that “regime” change was the apparent goal of the unilateral coercive measures, in contravention of the United Nations’ legal framework.
“These unilateral ‘sanctions’ are not grounded firmly in international law,” said Davies. “I think these ‘sanctions’ are actually illegal as well as immoral, and frankly an affront to anyone who truly does believe in a…
On April 9, 1948, Colombian Liberal politician, movement leader, and social activist Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala was murdered in the capital city of Bogotá. His killing changed the country’s history forever.
During the 1940s the charismatic orator and lawyer had steered the Liberal party towards socialism. Gaitán was leading the presidential race at the time, and likely would have become Colombia’s first left-leaning president. Instead, Gaitán was shot three times in the head in broad daylight, and it would take ten years and the interregnum of a military dictatorship for Colombia’s Liberal Party to regain the presidency. …
“The word ‘socialism’ sounds very scary to many people,” said Canadian political economist Radhika Desai in a recent interview. “Because of the propaganda against the idea of socialism, we’ve been made to fear socialism,” she added.
Desai is a professor with the Department of Political Studies at University of Manitoba, and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group. She has written or edited numerous books including, most recently, Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, published in 2020 by Manchester University Press.
In the interview, broadcast on Jacob Pollack’s PropaGanada Show, Desai scrutinized four familiar criticisms of socialism: that it leads to…
