English – Lanka Socialist Forum

16 Jan

All Wars End in Negotiations. So Will the War in Ukraine: The Third Newsletter (2025)

wisidagamage0 CommentsEnglish, Featured

Originally From: https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/the-war-in-ukraine-must-end/ As NATO fails in its attempt to expand into Ukraine, popular support has shifted significantly in favour of a path to peace. 16 January 2025 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Mark Rutte, the current secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is not a poet. He, like other secretary generals of NATO, is a mediocre European politician who has been given the task of holding NATO’s reins for the United States (to be fair to Rutte, he has been the prime minister of the Netherlands for fourteen years,…

16 Jan

Dr Victor Frankenstein Disavows His Monster: The Second Newsletter (2025)

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Originally From: https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/struggles-illuminate-the-path-forward/ Even as the gloomy realities of war and hunger threaten to dull the light of humanity, the red sparkling dance of our struggles illuminates the path forward. 9 January 2025 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Very few humans have had the good fortune to descend into the depths of the world’s oceans. The deepest such place – 11 kilometres below sea level at its deepest point – is the Mariana Trench, which is located just north of the 607 islands of the Federated States of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean…

16 Jan

The Tears of Our Children: The First Newsletter (2025)

wisidagamage0 CommentsEnglish, Featured

Originally From: https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/palestine-gaza-2025/ From Palestine to Sudan, imperialist wars are destroying the lives of innocent children, leaving long-term physical and psychological wounds on those who survive. 2 January 2025 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. A study came out in December that made me cry. Titled Needs Study: Impact of War in Gaza on Children with Vulnerabilities and Families, it was conducted by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management (CTCCM) in Gaza. Written in a clinical style, nothing about the language should have impacted me in the way that it did. But the…

05 Dec

Naomi Klein, disaster capitalism and alternative facts

wisidagamage0 CommentsEconomy, English

Originally From: https://www.blast-info.fr/ Salomé Saqué After Donald Trump's victory, a question haunts many of us: how could so many people elect someone who talks nonsense, lies daily, and yet his supporters don’t seem to hold him accountable for those lies? At its core, these are broader questions : how has conspiracy thinking gained so much ground in recent years? What can be done about those, an ever-growing number, who live in parallel realities? Repeating the facts is no longer enough, so how do we address this? This is one of the questions highlighted by author Naomi Klein. In her latest…

02 Dec

Worker participation in the EU

wisidagamage0 CommentsEnglish, Opinions

Worker participation in the EU Meet the experts behind the new and improved worker-participation.eu website 11 December 2024, 14:00-15:30, Zoom Worker participation in the EU Meet the experts behind the new and improved worker-participation.eu website 11 December 2024, 14:00-15:30, Zoom The ETUI is pleased to present its overhauled worker-participation.eu website. A unique resource for practitioners, academics, policymakers and journalists, the website provides accurate and easily accessible information, data and commentary on the different forms of worker participation and industrial relations across Europe. Informing and consulting workers on changes and developments in the workplace is a fundamental right in the EU. With…

02 Dec

Agrarian Crisis in the Age of Inequality

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Critical Agrarian Studies - Seminar 10 (2024): Discussion with Palagummi Sainath As part of the Critical Agrarian Studies seminar series, the Social Scientists' Association (SSA) is pleased to invite you to its tenth seminar for 2024 titled 'Agrarian Crisis in the Age of Inequality'by Palagummi Sainath on Wednesday, 4th December 2024 from 5.00 pm - 6.30 pm at the SSA Office, No. 380/86, Sarana Road, Colombo 7. Palagummi Sainath is the Founder Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). He was honoured in 2007 with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, “for his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s consciousness, moving…

24 Nov

The New Rulers Of The World

wisidagamage0 CommentsEnglish, Political

Originally From: https://johnpilger.com/the-new-rulers-of-the-world/ An analysis of a new global economy run by government backed multinational companies who are further widening the gulf between the rich and the poor. “A small group of powerful individuals are now richer than most of the population of Africa. Just 200 giant corporations dominate a quarter of the world’s economic activity… The famous brands of almost everything from running shoes to baby clothes are now made in very poor countries with cheap labour, at times bordering on a form of slave labour.” Globalisation had become a topical subject by the time The New Rulers of…

09 Nov

Fears and Hopes in a World of Turmoil

wisidagamage0 CommentsEnglish, Opinions, Political

Originally From: https://lsforum.lankanet.org/is-sri-lanka-experiencing-a-passive-revolution/ 4 November 2024 The liberal order supposedly built since World War II and claims of international promotion of human rights now stand fully exposed with the West’s unconditional support for Israel’s wars and heinous crimes in the Middle East Today, I mark my one hundred and fiftieth Red Notes column. As I started writing this column, I reflected on if and how I should continue on this twice-a-month weekend preoccupation. If it were cricket, at a century and a half, I would have to consider if the pitch is changing and the light is fading, and how…

08 Nov

We Don’t Want Our Islands to Be Used to Kill People: The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2024)

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Originally From: https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/pacific-islands-resistance/ Across the Pacific, Indigenous communities lead a growing wave of sovereignty against ongoing legacies of Western colonialism in the region, from the assault on Māori rights in Aotearoa to the US and French military presence in wider Oceania. 7 November 2024 Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. For the past few weeks I have been on the road in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia at the invitation of groups such as Te Kuaka, Red Ant, and the Communist Party of Australia. Both countries were shaped by British colonialism, marked by the…

07 Nov

Is Sri Lanka experiencing a “passive revolution”?

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Wilfred Silva Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “passive revolution” refers to a process of social, political, or economic change that is driven from above—by the ruling classes or the state—rather than through active and direct popular movements or revolutionary uprisings. Unlike traditional revolutions where the masses take control and overthrow the existing power structure, passive revolutions are characterized by gradual transformations that maintain the basic structure of power while incorporating some changes to accommodate new social or political realities. Key features of Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution include: Top-down Reform: Changes are initiated by elites or the state to prevent revolutionary…