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Operation PBSUCCESS: CIA’s ‘Glorious Victory’

In March 1951, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán took office as the President of Guatemala. The landless movement and the Left had fought to elect a president who decided to push through a moderate land reform agenda. Such a project threatened to undercut the land holding of the United Fruit Company, a US conglomerate that strangled this American nation. The CIA got to work. To ‘remove covertly, and without bloodshed if possible, the menace of the present Communist-controlled government in Guatemala’, [...]

The Novel Morona Virus

Long before our lives were disrupted by the novel Coronavirus, there appeared on the scene a much deadlier virus. One that couldn’t be seen with a microscope. Eve Ensler writes in detail about the appearance and spread of this virus. To learn about other strains of this virus, check out Strongmen (LeftWord, 2017). This is the story of what happened in the late time, right before the end time, that later got interrupted and became the new time. In those days there arrived in the land of viol[...]

Empire and the Overpass

Today’s extract, from Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change (LeftWord, 2017), takes a look at how the imperatives of capital and empire can ruin ecosystems. Rafia Zakaria, author and columnist for Dawn (Pakistan), talks about the case of Karachi. The sea has been on the move in Karachi. Over the decades, as the city has burst its seams, it has moved farther and farther away into the distance. If you arrive very early in the morning at the bea[...]

75 Years of the Historic Warli Revolt

[From Ashok Dhawale’s Facebook wall] Exactly 75 years ago, on May 23, 1945, a large convention was held by the Communist Party and the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) at Zari village in the then Umbargaon (now Talasari) tehsil of Thane district in Maharashtra. Over 5,000 Adivasi women and men from Talasari and Dahanu tehsils gathered there. They were addressed by AIKS leaders Shamrao Parulekar and Godavari Parulekar, who gave a clarion call to overthrow the hated feudal system of bonded labour a[...]

The Arab Spring in Yemen

This day in the year 1990, North and South Yemen combined to form the Republic of Yemen. It is commemorated by its citizens as Unity Day. Yesterday, on May 21, the Saudi King Salman sent a cable of congratulations for Unity Day to Yemeni President Hadi, considered one of “Saleh’s Orphans”—Saleh being the de facto autarch that the Arab Spring helped oust. The cable, wishing the President good health and the people security and stability, is a complete travesty considering that the Saudi r[...]