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Jul 9

The Guatemalan army, under the command of General Efraín Ríos Montt, launched Operation Sofia on 8 July 1982.

Supported by the Reagan administration in Washington, the goal of this brutal counterinsurgency campaign was to “cleanse” indigenous Maya areas of alleged communists.

Alongside a series of other scorched earth missions, Operation Sofia encapsulated what Ríos Montt referred to as a “war without limits.” More than 600 villages were destroyed, thousands of people were massacred, and thousands more were displaced.

Ríos Montt was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in Guatemala City for his role in the attempted extermination of Guatemala's indigenous population. This was the first time a former head of state had been prosecuted for genocide in a national court.

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May 22

President Harry S. Truman signed a bill authorising $400 million of "military and economic assistance" for Greece and Turkey on this day in 1947, inaugurating an age of destabilising US interventions around the globe.

The bill formalised the Truman Doctrine and committed the United States to the Cold War — a war so far-reaching in its implications that some historians described it as a Third World War, which revealed that the US was prepared to use any and every means to defeat communism and the forces of liberation.

The doctrine would “support free peoples,” Truman said in March 1947, “who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” In reality, as Indian historian @vijayprashad notes, “the Truman Doctrine justified the US use of asymmetrical wars and hybrid wars against the process of decolonization.”

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Mar 24

Isabel Perón’s Argentinian government was overthrown by a US-backed coup on this day in 1976, ushering in a bloody dictatorship under which 30,000 people were killed and disappeared.

For the US Ambassador in Argentina, who had already warned Washington of the plotter's plans for “military rule of extended duration and of unprecedented severity”, the coup was "probably the best executed and most civilized coup in Argentine history."

The West German ambassador in Buenos Aires was even more blunt, describing Argentina as a “cornerstone in the expanded transatlantic security framework, a market and source of raw materials, home of many German settlers and German assets.” These reactions foreshadowed US and European support for Argentina’s murderous junta.

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that he believed the junta “will need a little encouragement from us.” However, US support for General Jorge Rafael Videla’s junta went well beyond “a little encouragement”. 48 hours after the junta took power, the US formally recognized the new military government and the International Monetary Fund granted it a previously withheld loan of $127 million.

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Jan 21

Vladimir Ulyanov, known by his pseudonym Lenin, died on this day 100 years ago. Lenin was one of history’s great pathfinders of socialism, a relentless thinker who insisted always on a “concrete analysis of the concrete situation” against the dogmatism and idealism of his peers.

Writing in 1920, Leon Trotsky called Lenin the “first worker” of the transformation of the old world.

“To be able to direct such a revolution, without precedent in the history of peoples,” he wrote, “it is most evidently necessary to have an indissoluble organic connection with the main strength of popular life, a connection which springs from the deepest roots.”

After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917, Lenin made his way back to Russia from exile in Switzerland.

At Petrograd’s Leningradskaya Station, he delivered a historic speech. “The people need peace; the people need bread; the people need land,. And they give you war, hunger, no bread — leave the landlords still on the land…”

This was the language of the cadet seeking respite from war. It was the language of the textile weaver seeking bread for her hungry children. It was the language of the peasant toiling on the land not his own. It would produce the famous rallying cry of the Revolution: Peace! Land! Bread!

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Nov 2, 2023

On this day in 1917, Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued a public statement declaring Britain’s “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and offering its support for what it called a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”.

The statement, known today as the Balfour Declaration, laid the grounds for what was to come.

In the late 19th century, a political and ideologically colonial movement called Zionism emerged in Europe. It sought to create a Jewish national home in Palestine.

The fact that Palestine was already inhabited by Palestinian Jews, Christians, and Muslims living side-by-side was dismissed as a minor stumbling block.

As Theodor Herzl had said, the colonizers would simply force “the penniless (native) population across the frontier.”

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Oct 27, 2023

BREAKING: Amazon announces nearly tripled profits & quarterly revenues of $143 billion.

Amazon can afford to pay a decent wage, clean up its act & pay a fair share of taxes.

Today at the Summit to Make Amazon Pay, we’re coming together to make it so.

makeamazonpay.com/Summit/

“Amazon is a threat to our workers, our communities and our planet.

This is the fight of our time.”

@uniglobalunion's General Secretary @CHoffmanUNI opens the Summit to Make Amazon Pay

"Just like Amazon is everywhere, we too have to be everywhere. Building power from the bottom up to Make Amazon Pay.

"That’s what I’m committed to do."

@zarahsultana tells the Manchester Summit to Make Amazon Pay

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