Over the course of the last month since Juan Guaidó declared himself the president of Venezuela on January 23, the news has been inundated with many often-conflicting headlines about the current political and economic reality in Venezuela. Was there a coup? Is there a humanitarian crisis? What does it mean to protect democracy in the United States’ “backyard”?
George Orwell's relationship to the Left was complicated while he lived, and only grew more so after his death. Always determined to find out what he himself thought, rather than align with a particular party or doctrine, his criticism spared neither enemies nor allies. He both denounced and was denounced by the Communist Party, and he traded public jabs with pacifists and anarchists, remaining all the while a steadfast opponent of capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of totalitarianism.
After an exhaustive study of modern day slavery, the Geneva-based International Labor Organization concluded there are over 40 million people who are victims of slavery, including 25 million in forced labor and 15 million in forced marriages – with at least 71 percent of them comprising women and girls.
If socialism in one country was a pipe dream, so will be the idea of an ecological transition in one country. To make it work, the Green New Deal will have to be internationalized.
Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.
I understand now that what 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg referred to as “a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people” is worse than a drought, flood, or heatwave. It’s not treating climate change like wildfire, and casually burning down the house in the process.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019