Glasgow, Scotland – A group of major military weapons producers organized an international arms fair in Glasgow that included over 50 companies and over 1000 delegates. One of the major sponsors of the Underseas Defense Technology conference is BAE Systems, which produces fighter jets in factories on the Clyde that are sold to the Israeli government to continue their war against the Palestinians. Other sponsors of the event include Leonardo, an Italian weapons corporation that sells weapons to the Turkish government, which are used in their war against the Kurdish people. Some referred to this arms fair as a 'supermarket of death.'
Glasgow, Scotland – The British government led by Teresa May and the Tories (the Conservative Party) has been engaged in a diplomatic war with Russia for the last few weeks. On March 4, Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a chemical nerve agent, resulting in their hospitalization. Skirpal was formerly an intelligence officer for the Russian government, but had betrayed his country when he joined the British intelligence service. Since the incident, the British government has claimed that Russia was behind the poisoning even though no evidence has been found to support this claim.
Glasgow, Scotland – As of March 17, for the last month, lecturers across the United Kingdom have been on strike in response to changes in their pension plans. The employers’ organization, Universities UK (UUK) are attempting to abolish the lecturers’ existing pension plans, which guarantees retirement based on their salary. They want to replace this pension scheme with one that would be determined by the stock market, which is highly unstable and does not guarantee retirement. The University and College Union (UCU) has argued that this new scheme would make lecturers lose over £10,000 a year, and £200,000 by the time of retirement – equivalent to about $280,000.
London, U.K. – When thinking of London, one often thinks of Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, double-decker buses, and fish and chips. We might also think of its fabulous museums, concert halls and cultural life. One thing we might not think of is that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and even Josef Stalin all had an important relationship to the City of London. Across the city, one can find all sorts of interesting places related to the history of Marxism and the workers' movements.
Houston, TX – In late August, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and it caused untold destruction upon the city. Entire neighborhoods were submerged in water, hundreds of people lost their cars to flooding, and there were over three dozen deaths. The city's response was not very good; the well-off middle-class communities received immediate aid, but the working class and predominantly Black and Chicano/Mexicano neighborhoods received little assistance. In Houston's Sunnyside, for example, a predominantly Black neighborhood, there were nearly no FEMA responders and large rescue teams.
Ljubljana, Slovenia – Although socialism ended in Yugoslavia over 25 years ago, the relics of its socialist past can be found across the former republics, in its cities, its architecture, its museum, and its people.
Houston, TX – During the last elections, Hillary Clinton, who used a sort of bourgeois ‘feminism’ to sell reactionary ideas to the public. Since then, there have been a number of films, such as Wonder Woman, that use images of powerful women to promote a pro-war capitalist agenda. Atomic Blonde is the latest of this genre, which stars Charlize Theron as a kind of female James Bond, who fights communist leaders in the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany to help the British Intelligence and the CIA stage their famous 1989 coup d’état.
Houston, TX – In the last six months, there have been a few really good pro-Black films: Moonlight, Get Out, and Sleight. The most recent addition to the list of Black Lives Matter era films is director Benny Boom's All Eyez on Me, a movie that chronicles the life of rapper Tupac Shakur. Unlike some films about famous rappers such as Get Rich or Die Trying (50-Cent) and 8 Mile(Eminem), All Eyez on Me has a strong focus on the political dimension of Tupac's music. It also gives a beautiful portrait of his life and the incredible passion with which he made great hip hop music.
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Houston, TX – Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 4, a racist anti-immigrant law, amidst massive opposition, on May 7. The law gives law enforcement the ability to ask any person who “looks undocumented” for their identification papers when detained. Specifically, the law is designed to attack sanctuary cities, and is therefore tied to Trump's attacks on immigrants. It is very similar to SB1070, which passed in Arizona in 2010. The law will legalize racial profiling and create an environment of terror in the Chicano/Mexicano communities.
