Although there were many stories from around the world we looked at -- from Syria to Ukraine to Sudan and on -- the grinding, genocidal apocalyptic slaughter in Gaza remained a central focus of the year.
2024 on The Left Chapter saw a great number of interesting news, opinion and history with stories from around the world.
Here we look back at some of our most popular and important highlights.
January:
By Nat Bocking
In 1994 while looking for something else in the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) I found an uncatalogued, uncaptioned photo of a man and a woman in front of a 'socialist' bookshop. You can look up the photo as VPL 16847. I showed the librarians but we couldn't identify the location, the only clue in the photo was the number 530 above the door and it was presumed to be taken in one of the logging towns. Nevertheless the VPL were quite excited by this discovery as they had hardly any photographic record of Vancouver's socialist history and they duly catalogued the negative but the subjects and location were listed as 'unknown'. I made some prints* of it and I kept one in the hall.
By Richard D. Wolff
In 1863, the Russian social critic, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, published a novel entitled “What Is to Be Done?” Its story revolves around a central heroine, Vera Pavlovna, and her four dreams. It brilliantly intertwines her personal life and the social turmoil of Russia’s transition at the time from feudalism to capitalism. Chernyshevsky, a revolutionary imprisoned by the Czarist government, wrote a novel that was nothing less than a pioneering work of socialist feminism. In it, he also passionately appealed for an urban, industrial economy based on worker cooperatives, a modern and transformed version of Russia’s earlier agrarian communes. An appreciative Lenin entitled one of his most important political pamphlets, published in 1902, “What Is to Be Done?”
Also notable: A Compelling Theory to Explain a Key Trait of Modern Humans, In Gaza, the West Is Enabling the Most Transparent Genocide in Human History and Remembering John Pilger, a Friend to Palestinians and All Oppressed Nations
February:
By Shaan Sood
The Progress Pride Flag was never intended to fly over the corpses of dead Palestinians. Like many queer young people today, I have watched with paralyzing anger as the symbol of our liberation waves atop armed Israeli killing machines and our existence is commodified as justification for Israel's imperial violence. Israel has no right to wave any flag over the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Yet, for that flag to be colored with a rainbow is illustrative of the settler state's incorrect, dangerous rationale for carrying out its ongoing genocide.
By Shaun Narine, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, St. Thomas University (Canada)
Over the past few years, some western commentators have proclaimed the “decline of China.” They argue China’s economy is failing, its youth are alienated and unemployed, it abuses human rights and represses its people and its demographic decline means that China will never rise to surpass western power.
Also notable: US Attacks on the ICJ Are a Declaration of Empire, The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians, The murder of 6 year old Hind symbolizes the horrific reality of Israel's genocide in Gaza, Sperm Whales Have Culture Too: Strong Evidence That Clans, Culture, and Dialects Are Not Unique to Humans, and The Evolution of the Human Pair Bond
March:
By Vijay Prashad
A group of young people in Paris are enjoying a drink in a café on an unseasonably warm evening. The conversation drifts into politics, but—as one young woman says—“Let’s not talk about France.” The others nod their assent. They focus on the U.S. presidential election, a slight bit of Gallic arrogance at play as they mock the near certainty that the main candidates will be President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Biden is 81 years old and Trump is 77. A Special Counsel in the United States has called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory,” hardly the words required to inspire confidence in the president. Trying to defend himself, Biden made the kind of gaffe that is fodder for online memes and affirmed the report that he tried to undermine: he called President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt the “president of Mexico.” No new evidence is required, meanwhile, to mock the candidacy of Trump. “Is this the best that the United States can offer?” asks Claudine, a young student at a prestigious Parisian college.
By Audra Diptée, Associate Professor, History, Carleton University
In 2011, the world learned of the secret British policy called Operation Legacy that was implemented in the 1950s. The goal of this policy was to remove incriminating documents from former colonies in the months before each one became politically independent.
Also notable: The Adaptive Value of Teenagers: How Peer Learning Contributes to Primate Success, Empire Decline and Costly Delusions, Debt Forgiveness in the Bronze Age, Here’s Why You Can’t Afford an Electric Car, Europe Sleepwalks Through Its Own Dilemmas and Corporate Profiteering Destroyed the Baltimore Bridge
April:
April 4 marks the 75th anniversary of the formation of the imperialist war alliance NATO. NATO was explicitly formed as a counter-revolutionary bulwark against socialism and the USSR and to serve the interests of capital, the United States and all its quisling allies in Europe. Since the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union, far from disbanding or keeping promises of non-expansion, the NATO war alliance has aggressively and provocatively expanded to the borders of Russia and using the war in Ukraine as an excuse, the ruling circles in Finland and Sweden have repudiated decades of neutrality to join.
Here we share statements from communist parties in Austria, Turkey, Spain and the UK about this anniversary.
By Donald A. Smith
Despite the CIA's valiant efforts, many of the facts about what happened in Ukraine are available to the public. It's quite amazing that—so soon after the ignoble end to the disastrous 20-year war in Afghanistan—mainstream media, Congress, and most of the public have been so easily bamboozled by government propaganda into supporting yet another disastrous, avoidable war. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people; displaced millions of people from their homes; devastated Ukrainian infrastructure; greatly increased military budgets in Europe, the U.S., and Russia (money sorely needed for climate mitigation and other urgent exigencies); increased inflation and shortages worldwide; and increased the risk of World War III and nuclear annihilation. Moreover, it's a war that Russia is now winning—a fact that increases the risk of escalation.
Also notable: In Memoriam of SCTV Satire Icon, Joe Flaherty, The Unremarkable Death of Migrants in the Sahara Desert, How Elite Infighting Made the Magna Carta, The Myth That India’s Freedom Was Won Nonviolently Is Holding Back Progress, The Decline of Extreme Poverty, Sudan: One Year of War, Property and Debt in Ancient Rome, From Namibia to Gaza With Love and What Does Play Tell Us About Human Evolution?
May:
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
Palestinians and allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.
By Mary Katherine Newman, PhD candidate, University of Oxford
Club Deportivo Palestino, a football team, play in a uniform of white, green and red. Their stadium flies Palestinian flags and their social sports club boasts an open-air pool in the shape of pre-1948 Palestine. But this football team does not play in Palestine, or even the Middle East. Better known as Palestino, they actually play in Chile’s top football league, the Primera División de Chile.
Also notable: Seeing Red: Our Ancient Relationship With Ocher and the Color of Cognition, 'Barbaric': Whistleblowers Further Expose Israel's Torture of Detained Palestinians, The character of capitalism and Arsenal of Genocide: The American Weapons Destroying Gaza
June:
By Reinhard Lauterbach, Junge Welt, translated from the German by Helmut-Harry Loewen
There are only warm words at the so-called recovery conference for Ukraine in Berlin. But there are cold interests behind them. US Senator Lindsey Graham has recently repeated an argument that German agitators such as Roderich Kiesewetter [leading Christian Democrat parliamentarian and former Bundeswehr officer] have already put forward. Support for Ukraine is necessary to secure its rich reserves of raw materials for the West. According to Graham, he does not want “Russia to share these resources with China.” Moreover, Western support did not have to be granted as a subsidy; Ukraine could pledge the raw materials in question as collateral for future loans. What would then remain of its ‘independence’ is clear.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favor of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations. The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world.
Also notable: Communists in India call election a "people's verdict" and "setback for BJP" while decrying lack of fairness, US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad's Murder of Banana Workers, The Major Obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is the United States, Facing a Surge in Wildfires, the U.S. Government Turned to Native Wisdom and Advanced Archaeology, and The Gaza Project Exposes Israel's 'Chilling Pattern' of Killing Journalists
July:
By Michael Laxer
In a deeply cynical move, Manitoba NDP premier Wab Kinew is calling for Canada to fast track the US and NATO warmongering demands that Canada spend at least two per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on its war budget. He is making this call not primarily due to his support for the military per se, but because he thinks that Canada's "failure" to meet this commitment is harming its relations and therefore trade prospects with the United States.
By Danaka Katovich
There’s no mention of their duty to the people in the oath of office that members of Congress take. It says they will support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Maybe, in some regard defending the Constitution would mean doing their job: representing the people that elected them. But the architect of the genocide against the Palestinian people walked in and out of the “people’s house” to a standing ovation. He was given more time with our lawmakers than any of us will ever get in our lifetime, and he used it to insist he was a good man that was commanding a moral army—insisting they have not killed anyone who did not deserve to have their life ended in the blink of an eye.
Also notable: Little Free Library’s Not-So-Little Commitment to Getting the Word Out, On Rutte: New secretary general of NATO the "main imperialist military alliance" -- New Communist Party of the Netherlands, NATO’s Endgame Appears to Be Nuclear War, Online ‘misogynist radicalisation’: Here’s what parents of boys should know, Tariffs Don’t Protect Jobs. Don’t Be Fooled., On the life and passing of Comrade Nguyen Phu Trong, NATO Accelerates Its Conflict With China, and The Venezuelan People Stay With the Bolivarian Revolution
August:
By Richard D. Wolff
Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was. Indeed, it is much more accurate to say that capitalism and democracy are opposites. To see why, you have only to look at capitalism as a production system where employees enter into a relationship with employers, where a few people are the boss, and most people simply work doing what they are told to do. That relationship is not democratic; it is autocratic.
By Richard D. Wolff
As the French economist Thomas Piketty most recently exposed, capitalism, across time and space, has always tended to produce ever-greater economic inequality. Oxfam, a global charity, reported that 2022’s 10 richest men together had six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people on earth. The lack of democracy inside workplaces or enterprises is both a cause and an effect of capitalism’s unequal distribution of income and wealth.
Also notable: Comrade To Lam elected as General Secretary of Communist Party of Vietnam, Looking at AMLO's radical new housing plan for Mexico, The US People Must Stand up Against an Unwinnable War With China, China denounces US imperialist National Endowment for Democracy for "carrying out subversion, infiltration and sabotage across the world", How to Decolonize Our Battle Against Climate Change and Why Poverty Reduction Under Capitalism Is a Myth
September:
By Vijay Prashad
You must drive up a hill to get to Birzeit University, which is just outside Ramallah (West Bank, Occupied Palestine Territory or OPT). It is a beautiful campus, established in 1924 as a school for girls by the remarkable Nabiha Nasir, 1891-1951, and then converted in 1975 into a university. I spent an afternoon talking with students there about their classes and their ambitions, most of them fiercely committed to both their academic work and their political hope for a free Palestine.
By Max Lane
September 15 marked the third anniversary of the announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, the UK, the U.S.) agreement. The purpose of this agreement is for Australia to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and the U.S. This increases interoperability with U.S. forces that are projecting their power in the region along the Chinese coast. Furthermore, Australia is participating in the QUAD and SQUAD, “[i]nformal Alliances in the Indo-Pacific.” The city of Darwin in northern Australia has been opened up for the U.S. forces, including planes carrying nuclear weapons. In addition, Australia has long housed bases for U.S. spy satellite systems.
Also notable: A brown tide of sargassum is causing havoc in Barbados, The Decline of the U.S. Empire: Where Is It Taking Us All?, How Corporate News Has Tried to Numb Americans to the Horrors in Gaza, The Surprising Ways Inventions and Ideas Spread in Ancient Prehistory, and We Need Public Education to Help Us Address the Challenges We Face, But It’s Under Threat
October:
By Basav Sen
This year’s hurricane season has been devastating.
Hurricane Helene left a trail of wreckage across the Southeast and Appalachia, where over 230 people have died so far. Barely two weeks later, Milton slammed into Florida, killing dozens more, destroying homes, and leaving over a million people without power. Insurers are predicting that losses from Milton could reach $60 billion.
Everyone suffers in a disaster, but the most vulnerable suffer the most. And our government’s warped priorities can often make that worse.
An interview with Susann Witt-Stahl (ed.), ‘Der Bandera-Komplex: Der ukrainische Faschismus – Geschichte, Funktion, Netzwerke’ (November 2024: 352 pages) by Arnold Schölzel in the German Junge Welt, 19 Oct 2024.
Also notable: Highlander Research and Education Center Brings Old-School Expertise to Present-Day Issues, When Children Are Murdered, What Is There to Celebrate?, Not Just Its Neighbors, Israel Makes War on the Entire World, How the Built Environment Is Damaging Children’s Connection to Nature and 'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege
November:
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime change operations, and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions). Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.
A The Left Chapter Editorial.
In the end it was not even close. The overtly fascistic and authoritarian Donald Trump easily defeated Kamala Harris, the Hail Mary last ditch attempt by the Democrats to avert defeat after the disastrous Joe Biden.
Also Notable: The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying the World—We Urgently Need to Support Local Food Economies, Western media and politicians portray Amsterdam soccer violence in one-sided, inaccurate way, Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power Sweeps General Election, The 17th Chess Olympiad, Havana 1966, Book Review: Family Ties: How a Ukrainian Nazi and a living witness link Canada to Ukraine today, Bandera faction in the Kiev parliament wants to push through its policy of maximum escalation of war in Ukraine and Why Do the Israelis Bomb Palestinian Homes in the Middle of the Night?
December:
By Michael Laxer
In a grotesque, wildly disproportionate move that is so indicative and symbolic of life in the neo-liberal, iron fist austerity city that is Toronto, the city's transit authority, the TTC, has decided to deploy plainclothes fare inspectors to intimidate and harass its riders.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace.
Also notable: The Communist Manifesto (Dr. Seuss Style), Against the imperialist war alliance NATO – Stop NATO's war policy: Joint Communist Statement, Not as Simple as 1, 2, 3: Humanity Has a Surprisingly Diverse Understanding of Numbers, The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning, On the Occasion of the Glorious December Revolution Anniversary: Sudanese CP, The Ukrainization of Georgia and A Palestinian's Year in Review: Genocide in Gaza
***
A Happy Red New Year to all our friends and Comrades! Here is to a Revolutionary 2025!
Solidarity with Palestine!
Comments