Against the Current

Teamster vs. Trump striker at the Marathon Petroleum refinery near Detroit last October. Photo: Jim West

The following discussion is part of a longer analysis published in Social Policy (Spring 2025), “From L4B to TAT. Challenging Union Political Endorsements Takes Rank-&-File Action,” which includes an account of the Labor for Bernie initiatives in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election campaigns. Steve Early worked for nearly 30 years as an International Union representative for the Communication Workers of America and helped co-found....

THE INDIAN ARMED Forces have launched “Operation Sindoor,” which has carried out strikes in as many as nine places spread over three cities in Pakistan occupied Kashmir and Punjab province. A counter-strike by Pakistan, also to be condemned, has led to lives lost in Poonch.

All this is an extremely worrisome development, though not entirely....

Flag-lowering ceremony at Wahgha/Attar border, looking from Pakistani side Photo: Kamran Ali CC BY-SA 3.0

ON THE MORNING of 7th May, when I answered my doorbell and went outside looking for who rang, my neighbor loudly asked me to turn off all my lights. This command signaled to me that we are living in a moment of war. Living near the Wahgha border, we heard a deafening noise around 8.30 am, followed by a blast. An Indian Harop drone, made by Israel, struck a close by military installation....

Map of the Civil War in Sudan, updated April 16, 2025. Pink controlled by Sudanese Armed Forces, green by Rapid Support Forces, yellow by Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North (al-Hilu) and brown by Sudan Liberation Movement (al-Nur) Elijah Pepe, CC BY-SA 4.0

Two years have passed since the war broke out in Sudan between the two sides of the military regime that the country inherited from the infamous Omar al-Bashir. While the situation in Sudan does not get even a tenth of the global media attention that the ongoing Zionist genocidal war in Gaza receives, the scale of the human catastrophe there is equally horrific. The death toll from the military-on-military war is estimated at more than 150,000, while the number of displaced people stands at approximately 13 million, and the number of those threatened with severe famine reaches 44 million — a record number that makes the war....

“The problem of the 21st century is not only with conservatism. Over recent decades and especially in recent years, there is rampant confusion of all political spheres: left, center and right. But widespread loss of basic conservatism stands out. It underwrites the white-supremacist and Christian nationalist transformation of the Republican party since the 1960s and most actively since the 1980s.”

Flashback to Trump 1.0 "conservatism" or Christian nationalism?

[In this commentary, historian Harvey J. Graff looks at the loss of meaning of what used to be called “conservatism,” and the real-world consequences. --The Editors]

ON APRIL 9, 2025, my day began with these daily news headlines.

First in the Washington Post: “How conservatives are using Columbia as a ‘test case’ to enforce Trump’s agenda: The Ivy League university so far is the only school to see federal funding canceled, but it is hardly the only target of....

A month after sectarian violence erupted on Syria's coast, the Syrian state has yet to recognise the importance of transitional justice, says Joseph Daher.

The euphoria that followed the fall of Assad’s regime in December 2024 has largely dissipated after the large-scale massacres of Alawite civilians in coastal areas, carried out in early March 2025 by armed forces within the newly formed Syrian army....

THIS STATEMENT BY the Socialist Project (Canada) was published before Donald Trump's April 2, 2025 announcement of global tariffs, precipitating a two-day plunge of more than 3500 points on the U.S. Dow-Jones stock market and threatening to trigger a world economic recession, or worse....

WE ARE SPEAKING only for ourselves in this article.

The UAW leadership should reverse its declaration of support for Trump on tariffs and protectionism, and should stand on international labor solidarity in organizing for a labor party and a general strike.

The UAW’s statement on March 4, 2025 on relations with Trump and tariffs should be read in full. It is copied at the end of this article.

The UAW’s statement is right to reject “free trade.” “Free trade” is the...

International Women's Day demonstration against sexual violence on March 8, 2025 in Lviv, Ukraine.

The predatory policies of the newly elected U.S. president make it impossible to establish a lasting peace for Ukrainians. Ukraine’s refusal to sign the mineral extraction agreement, designed to serve the interests of American capital, demonstrates the country’s determination to avoid colonial dependence. This opens the door to exploring a more equitable model of relations between Ukraine and the states of Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world under the banner of resistance to imperialist domination. However, if the current approach persists, Ukraine risks facing an imminent reduction or even a complete halt of military aid from the United States....

Boris Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year prison term in Russia.

THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY FOREIGN AGENT BORIS YULIEVICH KAGARLITSKY, OR CONCERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF FOREIGN AGENT BORIS YULIEVICH KAGARLITSKY.*

A NEW U.S. Administration is always a global-level event. The world anticipated George W. Bush’s arrival at the White House with fears that came to be confirmed, while Barack Obama’s election brought hopes that didn’t pay off. But this is for the first time ever that the new boss of the Oval office is seen with such perplexity and confusion. No one quite knows what to expect of Trump’s presidency. But that’s rather natural, because he doesn’t know it himself.

A NEW U.S. Administration is always a global-level event....

Donald Trump caricature by Donkey Hotey CC-BY-2.0

DONALD TRUMP’S SECOND victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections, with more social and legislative power and experience than his first presidency from 2017 to 2021, is a political milestone that has shaken the world because of what the arrival of such a reactionary, toxic and malignant character to the White House in Washington represents for the world -- and specifically....

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
written & directed by Jane Schoenbrun
produced and distributed by A24

"THE OLD WORLD is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters," observed Antonio Gramsci (according to a 2010 translation by Slavoj Zizek).

Monster movies -- or more broadly, horror films -- are having a moment, and writer-director Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is a horror film about, among other things, the meanings of horror media. It riffs on 1990s genre TV and the value of fan communities, nostalgia and changes in entertainment media, the perils of entertainment as escape, and the pain and promise of times of transition....

WOMEN START QUEUEING at 6AM at the courthouse in Mazan, France so they can support Gisèle Pelicot at the open trial she requested. This rape case has caught international attention because it so perfectly illustrates how many men feel they are entitled to women’s bodies. This continuous outpouring of support demonstrates the determination of women to publicize and end the dehumanization women face the world over.--The Editors....