RUSSELL DOBULAR—In the end, the arts scene as it exists today and the institutions that support it may have simply become too sclerotic, out of touch, and irrelevant for saving. The future is with activist-artists grown naturally from their communities, using new technologies and platforms to draw attention to concerns and realities that no gatekeeping clique of PMC’s will ever understand or think to explore.
-
-
BILLY BOB—Despite Mearsheimer’s eminent reputation, the tremendous respect which he commands, and his accurate and scathing indictment of Western foreign policy, his framework is surprisingly shallow and lacking in even a basic grasp of “how the world actually works”. Why do I say this and what do I mean? For starters, Mearsheimer is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who seemingly has never even heard of the concept of class. There are innumerable instances throughout history of seemingly inexplicable behavior that the lens of liberalism is incapable of explaining. Only when one adopts the lens of oppositional class interests and class struggle does history even begin to make any sense. The same is true regarding contemporary reality.
-
RAINER SHEA—What it means is that it would be a mistake to embrace pan-leftism just because these protests are having a positive impact. We can’t interpret the successes of the protests as proof that we can ignore the advice Stalin gave, and trust radical liberals (radlibs) to help lead the struggle. Because these radlibs are capable of preventing the struggle from reaching its next stages beyond these first uprisings.
-
EDITOR—Garland and Joti analyse the current historical juncture, essentially but the latest and gravest global structural crisis of capitalism, arguing that helping to stabilise the system now is only to prolong the agony of 99% of humanity, and, equally important, increase the risk of seeing the entire planet go up in nuclear flames as a result of some desperate provocation by the hypocritical oligarchic capitalist elites concentrated in the “collective West”. The “collective West values’ paradigm”—grounded in unipolar supremacism and exploitation— is over. It has reached the end of its political, scientific and economic line. As heroic Russia has finally demonstrated, it lacks the capability to impose its will on other nations by military force. The US and its vassals—as the cases of Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan and other theaters of manufactured conflict and horrendous crimes clearly show—are now completely devoid of moral legitimacy.
-
DEMOCRACY NOW—In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel’s assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Shafik’s visit to Capitol Hill is the latest in a series of hearings on alleged antisemitism at elite U.S. private schools.
