Author:“James Petras ”

Introduction: On February 17, 2013, national elections will take place in Ecuador in which incumbent left-center President, Rafael Correa, is likely to win with an absolute majority against opposition candidates covering the political spectrum from Right to Left.

Introduction: The opening long decade of the 21st century (2000-2012) has been a period of repeated and profound economic and social crises, of serial and prolonged wars and declining living standards for the vast majority of Americans. How have people responded to this crisis?

Introduction: The leaders of both major parties, Congress, the White House, the editorial writers, journalists of all the principle newspapers and most academic economists claim that Social Security and Medicare need to be ‘reformed' in order to reduce the “unsustainable” fiscal deficit and avoid the bankruptcy of these social programs.

Introduction: By now we are familiar with imperial states using their military power to attack, destroy and occupy independent countries. Boatloads of important studies have documented how imperial countries have seized and pillaged the resources of mineral-rich and agriculturally productive countries, in consort with multi-national corporations.

Introduction: For the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only' colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers.

Introduction: The headline stories claim that CIA Director General David Petraeus resigned as head of the CIA because of an adulterous relation with his young biographer and that General John Allen, Supreme Commander of US troops in Afghanistan, was under investigation and his promotion to top commander of US troops in Europe was on hold, because, we are told, of his ‘inappropriate' comments in the exchange of e-mails with a civilian female friend.

The world-famous New York Philharmonic can play a “Requiem for the New Atlantis” as more waves inundate lower Manhattan. Meanwhile, the impregnable Wall Street re-locates inland; its move financed by the impoverished upstate municipalities' massive tax write-offs to the billionaires

Introduction: There is ample evidence that the Obama Presidency has pulled the US political spectrum further to the Right. On most domestic and foreign policy issues Obama has embraced extremist positions surpassing his Republican predecessor and in the process devastating what remained of the peace and social movements of the past decade.

Introduction: The successful re-election of President Chavez by a resounding 10% margin winning 20 of the 22 states, with a massive 80% turnout provides his government with a clear and decisive mandate to set the political and economic course of the country over the next six years.

Introduction: Whenever financial swindlers prosper at the expense of investors or a bank jiggers interest rates to bugger their competitors or tax evaders flee fiscal crises or rent gouging petrol monarchies recycle profits or oligarchs pillage economies and drive millions to drink, drugs and destitution they find a suitable secure sanctuary in London.

Introduction: On October 7th, Venezuelan voters will decide whether to support incumbent President Hugo Chavez or opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. The voters will choose between two polar opposite programs and social systems:

Introduction: The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.

Introduction: In late August 2012, President Santos announced that the Colombian regime was opening peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, (FARC), with the aim of ending nearly 50 years of civil war.

Introduction: Iran chaired, hosted and led the recently rejuvenated Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Teheran, attended by delegates from 120 countries, including 31 heads of state and 29 foreign secretaries of state. Even the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, notorious mouthpiece of Washington, felt obligated to address, a forum attended by two-thirds of the member countries of the UN, despite State Department and Israeli objections.

Only 43 days before the Venezuelan presidential election and with President Chavez leading by a persistent margin of 20 percentage points, an explosion and fire at the Amuay refinery killed at least 48 people - half of those were members of the National Guard – and destroyed oil facilities producing 645,000 barrels of oil per day.

Introduction: The principle axis of the class struggle are found in Latin America, Europe and Asia, each following its own trajectory.

Introduction: An examination of the social science scholarship over the past 60 years reveals few, if any, publications discussing ‘the class struggle' in anything but theoretical expositions.

Never in the history of the United States have we witnessed crimes committed on the scale and scope of the present day by both private and state elites.

Introduction: One of the most significant political developments in recent US history has been the virtually unchallenged rise of the police state. Despite the vast expansion of the police powers of the Executive Branch of government, the extraordinary growth of an entire panoply of repressive agencies, with hundreds of thousands of personnel, and enormous public and secret budgets and the vast scope of police state surveillance, including the acknowledged monitoring of over 40 million US citizens and residents, no mass pro-democracy movement has emerged to confront the powers and prerogatives or even protest the investigations of the police state.

Introduction: The United States has experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history: the transformation of a burgeoning welfare state into a rapidly expanding, highly intrusive and deeply entrenched police state, linked to the most developed technological innovations.

Introduction: One of the most striking socio-economic features of the past two decades is the reversal of the previous half-century of welfare legislation in Europe and North America. Unprecedented cuts in social services, severance pay, public employment, pensions, health programs, educational stipends, vacation time, and job security are matched by increases in tuition, regressive taxation, and the age of retirement as well as increased inequalities, job insecurity and workplace speed-up.

Introduction: Greece faces the unenviable choice between accepting the terms of “the Troika” and facing the continuation and deepening of a socio-economic crises, which includes five years of negative growth, over 23% unemployment, an astronomical rise in poverty (from less than 15% to over 40%) and mounting suicides, or a rejection of the “memorandum”, and a likely cut-off of Eurozone funding and capital markets with virtually few reserves to cover salaries, pensions or public services.