The ReBirth of Marxism: Haunting the Future

National University of Ireland Maynooth, 4 – 5 May 2018
Call for papers

In his play Marx in Soho, Howard Zinn has Marx ask “Don’t you wonder why it is necessary to proclaim me dead, again and again?”

May 5, 2018 will be Marx’s 200th anniversary – one among many anniversaries which remind us of Marx and Engels’ long-lasting impact on the modern world. As we send this out, we are sandwiched between the 150th anniversary of Capital and the 100th of what Gramsci called a “Revolution against Capital” in Russia. Our conference includes the May Day bank holiday, celebrated by the traditional labour movement – but it also marks the 50th anniversary of the start of “May 1968” in Paris, while “Ireland’s 1968” is sometimes dated to the violent suppression of a civil rights demonstration in Derry, five months later.
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank begin their annual meetings which run between October 13th and 15th. read full story / add a comment

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) releases its biannual report on global economic stability and presents new indicators it says can help predict financial crisis. read full story / add a comment

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, President Trump called for Puerto Rico's debt to be wiped out. read full story / add a comment

As President Trump visits Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, island religious leaders are calling for aid, debt relief and measures to end child poverty. The statement is issued by San Juan's Catholic Archbishop, Roberto González Nieves, St. Thomas' Catholic Bishop Herbert A. Bevard and Evangelical Bible Society Head Reverend Heriberto Martínez. read full story / add a comment

This is a repost from Thierry Meyssan site and it discusses how the US military-intelligence industrial complex has co-opted the far Left, largely unrealized to themselves in the fight for US imperialism. The story of Kobane and Rojava got a surprising amount of coverage in the mainstream and that in itself is often a red flag because they don't give publicity for nothing unless there is a propaganda reason for it. While maybe a surprise to some, the US via it's pawns like Saudi Arabia and up to recently Turkey, were and are the main backers of ISIS in all it's forms, from support, logistics, weapons, oil-purchase, it is all part of a greater goal to destroy Syria, and use the Kurds to carve out their own state and in the process to give the US a bridgehead to attack Iran, break up Iraq, and permanently cripple Syria. The US will also ensure that if the Kurds manage to form their own state, they will setup it up to Balkanize it and leave it in a permanent state of war so they can play the old divide and conquer game. Over the previous decades the US has previously backed and then dropped the support for the Kurds many time and betrayed them. So while the Kurds may well deserve their own state, these things do not occur in a vaccum.

When the Russians were invited by Syria to support it in crushing ISIS in 2014 and so far they have gone along way and block the US's plan A for Syria, they came up with plan B to use the Kurds to achieve the goal. There is no doubt that there was and is a pre-existing left leaning movement within the Kurds and even with Anarchist tendencies or elements to it but it just seemed all too good to be true and the immense resources and budgets of US imperalism and it's NATO allies, has the means to control the show as outlined in Meyssan's article read full story / add a comment

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) joins other religious and development groups in their call for ‎debt relief for hurricane-battered Caribbean islands. read full story / add a comment

Caribbean islands recovering from Hurricane Irma, now confront Hurricane Maria. read full story / add a comment

On behalf of Caribbean Catholic Bishops, Bishop Gabriel Malzaire called for islands dealing with Hurricane Irma to receive debt relief. read full story / add a comment

As Hurricane Irma heads to the US coast, a religious development group is calling for debt payments to be suspended until Antigua and Barbuda and other severely impacted Caribbean nations recover from the storm. read full story / add a comment

This article appeared as a guest article on the Saker Blog and is reproduced here to help draw attention to this issue.

August has been a month for exposing how the “Empire” works at the social media level, inside the activist communities and, in this case, through the social media movements aimed at defending Syria. Western governments have outlaid millions for this purpose and countless allied agencies are involved across various languages and media, from actual military personnel managing multiple fake characters [1], to other programs targeting online socio-political activism, even to the extent of online publications being created and “discovered” that appear as belonging to ISIS [2]. read full story / add a comment

My dear Irish friends,
Let me introduce the English version of my e-book The Stone Portals devoted to the study of prehistoric Stone artefacts, the first two Chapters (http://www.astrotheos.com/EPage_Portal_HOME.htm) of which I have just posted at my site www.astrotheos.com.
I appeal to you in connection with the fact that much of the material presented in Chapter 2 is devoted to the reconstruction of the prehistoric solar calendar of the Celts, the key days of which are reflected in the festivals (Samhain et al.), and in correlation with the astronomical alignments of the Passage Mounds, and before all – of the Mound of the Hostages, which I analyzed numerically for all the data that I had.
I would not be distracting your attention if the results obtained in relation to precise determining the exact days of these festivals on the alignments of the mounds would not coincide with the same values determined by the astronomical alignment of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, and a number of other stone artefacts as well.
From my point of view, the results obtained could contribute not only to a more complete disclosure of the properties of these passage mounds and the ancient culture of the Celts in general, but also to that that in scientific, administrative, and esoteric circles, much more attention was paid to preserving and study of these remarkable objects.

Good luck,
Prof. Sergey Smelyakov, Doctor of math, PhD
Kharkov
astrotheos@yahoo.com
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Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Corporate Transparency Act. read full story / add a comment

Puerto Rico religious leaders are urging Congress to reduce child poverty on the island by granting equal access to US health care funding and child tax benefits.‎
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This demonstration today is to call for a BOYCOTT of goods from China and to appeal to the Ireland-Chinese Business Association to condemn all barbarity to dogs including Irish Greyhounds in China.We ask them to speak out on behalf of the tortured souls who are not protected by any Chinese legislation as none exists.We need their help to support change.This cannot be ignored any longer by businesses trying to entice Irish-Chinese trade links. Stop turning a blind eye to unacceptable practices that have been exposed. Many Irish people are horrified by how dogs are treated.

Many Ex- Racing dogs have been shipped from Ireland to China, a country where dogs are routinely being boiled alive. The Irish Government have stood idly by as the IGB condone the export of ex- racing dogs. Many of the Irish dogs are ultimately at risk of being boiled alive in China for the meat trade. The Chinese don't care, the Irish Government don't care, The IGB couldnt care less either or they would not be allowing this.

We urge a boycott of all travel to China and ask the Irish people to shun all Chinese goods and services until this injustice is stopped.

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Ahead of President Trump's first G20 meeting in Germany this weekend, Mozambique released an audit exposing violations of the country's laws to secure now-defaulted loans. read full story / add a comment

The European Parliament is set to vote on landmark corporate transparency rules known as "country-by-country" reporting. read full story / add a comment

Two recent studies have once again drawn attention to the unprecedented crackdown – even by Turkish standards based on previous episodes of severe State repression – on academics and intellectual freedom in post coup Turkey. read full story / add a comment

Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Peter King (R-NY) heralded the House introduction of the Corporate Transparency Act at a press conference at the House Triangle. The bill aims to prevent shell companies from hiding corrupt and criminal activity. ‎ read full story / add a comment

June, 2017: Firat News Agency (Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê) covered one of the first legal cases to result from the Turkish military’s sieges of Kurdish Cizre in September 2015 and December 2015-February 2016. read full story / add a comment