The political legacy of Fidel Castro
Castro’s legacy cannot be evaluated solely through the prism of Cuba, but must take into account the impact of his politics internationally and, above all, in Latin America.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken
Bill Van Auken is the Latin American editor of the World Socialist Web Site and a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. He has written and lectured on the history of the Trotskyist movement in Latin America, and has written extensively against the operations of US imperialism around the world.
Lectures on the history of the Fourth International
It is now nearly three decades since the deliberate liquidation of the Soviet Union by the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy and the launching of the First Persian Gulf War, which began in January 1991.
The five years between Trotsky’s call for the Fourth International in 1933 and the holding of a founding conference in 1938 were marked by a continuous struggle against a wide range of centrist political organizations active during this period, particularly in Europe, many of which professed sympathy with Trotsky’s perspective and some of which declared themselves for the Fourth International.
The essential theoretical issues that arose in the struggle over these two opposed perspectives were not only fought out by Trotsky against the Stalinist bureaucracy in the latter half of the 1920s, but have reemerged as the subject of repeated struggles within the Fourth International itself.
The fight for revolutionary leadership in Latin America
Did the political strategy advanced by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara provide a new road to socialism or did it turn out, as the ICFI warned 35 years ago, to be a blind alley and a trap for the working class?
Cuba conference tailors Trotsky to the politics of bourgeois nationalism
A collection of pseudo-lefts and Pabloite revisionists was invited to Havana to suppress the revolutionary content of Trotskyism.
Bill Van Auken•
The reactionary role of national opportunist politics in Latin America
WSWS rejects invitation to conference of political bankrupts in Buenos Aires
The conference in Buenos Aires has been called to found “a new left” with “no strings attached and no constraints of any ‘holy scriptures.’”
Bill Van Auken•
Nationalism or socialism in Latin America
A reply to a supporter of Chavez
The kind of “alternative” that is envisioned here is one that is imposed from above, not arising from the politically independent movement of the working class itself, striving to establish its own organs of power.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
The struggle against war and reaction is posed with the greatest urgency by the mounting threat of a direct US military intervention in Venezuela.
The struggle against war and reaction is posed with the greatest urgency by the mounting threat of a direct US military intervention in Venezuela.
In its celebration of May Day, the ICFI reaffirms its determination to fight to unite the workers of North, Central and South America in struggle against their common enemies—US imperialism and the capitalist system.
Palestine and the fight for the United Socialist States of the Middle East
Trump’s Middle East deal and the dead end of bourgeois nationalism
The so-called “peace” agreements between Israel and two Arab monarchies signed on the White House lawn Tuesday are only the latest in the long record of betrayals of the Palestinian people.
Bill Van Auken•
Israel rolls out the welcome mat for Europe’s neo-fascists
Netanyahu’s hailing of Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Salvini as a “great friend of Israel” demonstrates the affinity between the Zionist state and neo-fascism.
Bill Van Auken•
Mass murder in Gaza
The shooting dead of at least 60 unarmed protesters in Gaza, along with the wounding of over 2,700 more, is a war crime for which all involved bear collective and personal responsibility.
Bill Van Auken•
The slaughter in Gaza and the crisis of Israel on its 70th anniversary
The number of unarmed demonstrators murdered by Israeli army snipers firing into Gaza has risen to at least 40, with another 5,000 wounded, 1,600 by live ammunition.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
US imperialism
75 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The anniversary’s significance has never been greater. Behind the backs of the people of the United States and the world, US imperialism is steadily building up a massive nuclear arsenal and pursuing a doctrine of aggressive nuclear war.
Bill Van Auken•
The COVID-19 pandemic and global imperialist war
For all of the vapid talk about us all being in it together, the US ruling class views the pandemic as an instrument of war.
Bill Van Auken•
Eighty years since the outbreak of World War II
The official ceremony marking the most barbaric event in world history is a celebration of the kind of militarism and right-wing nationalism that accompanied its outbreak.
Bill Van Auken•
The social crisis and the global eruption of US imperialism
Washington’s brazen and reckless military threats and provocations on a world scale are driven by deep-going social and political crises within the US itself.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
US assassinates top Iranian general as 4,000 troops readied for Iraq intervention
The umbrella group for Iraq’s Shia militias reported Friday morning that a US-targeted assassination at Baghdad airport killed Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani.
Bill Van Auken•
Washington escalates “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran
More than a year after re-imposing a punishing sanctions regime, and no closer to achieving regime change, the US is adopting increasingly reckless measures.
Bill Van Auken•
Trump’s aborted strikes on Iran: Ten minutes to World War III
Trump’s’ assertion that the US war machine was on the brink of attacking Iran remains the case, with the White House set to use any incident, real or manufactured, to pull the trigger.
Bill Van Auken•
No to war against Iran!
The threat of all-out war in the Middle East is greater than at any time since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and the potential consequences are far graver.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
The Democrats support the “Forever War”
The Democratic Party’s saber-rattling response to the Syrian fiasco helps Trump fraudulently posture as an opponent of war.
Bill Van Auken•
Washington revives Syria chemical weapons propaganda as pretext for war
The threat of a new US attack on Syria follows a report exposing the last chemical weapons incident attributed to the Syrian government as a staged provocation.
Bill Van Auken•
A new “left” appeal for imperialist intervention in Syria
The “open letter” was clearly addressed to Washington and its allies, demanding the escalation of their use of armed force against the war-ravaged country.
Bill Van Auken•
Syria’s alleged gas attack: An imperialist provocation
The events in Syria’s Idlib province have all the earmarks of a US intelligence provocation designed to provide the pretext for a new military intervention in the Middle East.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Gaza, Ukraine and US preparations for urban warfare
The Pentagon is embracing the doctrine that the next major US military interventions will most likely be against the populations of major urban centers.
Bill Van Auken•
The New York Times and Flight MH17
The Times, which presents the responsibility of rebels in eastern Ukraine for downing the airliner as fact, has not reported on the incident for more than a month.
Bill Van Auken•
The International Socialist Organization and the Ukraine crisis
The ISO has responded to the events in Ukraine like a State Department-funded NGO tasked with providing a “left” cover for US imperialist policy.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Libya’s descent into civil war: The bitter fruit of the pseudo-left's pro-imperialism
The escalating civil war in Libya has served as one more demonstration of the criminal role played by the pseudo-left proponents of “humanitarian” imperialist intervention.
Bill Van Auken•
Who is responsible for the catastrophes in the Middle East?
The destruction wrought by US imperialism in Iraq, Libya and Syria is an indictment not merely of a set of policies, but of an entire corrupt, predatory social order.
Bill Van Auken•
The “liberation” of Libya
Libya’s NATO-backed National Transitional Council is set to announce the supposed completion of the country’s “liberation” this weekend following the gruesome lynching of former ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Bill Van Auken•
An open letter to Professor Juan Cole: A reply to a slander
The World Socialist Web Site demands that Professor Cole retract his slanderous claim that the WSWS supports a massacre in Libya.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
The “Afghanistan papers”: The criminality and disaster of a war based upon lies
The documents published by the Washington Post constitute a damning indictment of both major parties as well as the media for lying to the American people for two decades.
Bill Van Auken•
New York Times admission of Afghanistan fiasco provokes “human rights imperialist” backlash
The Times editorial supporting a US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a self-damning indictment of the entire “war on terror,” which the newspaper supported for the better part of two decades.
Bill Van Auken•
Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the catastrophe in Afghanistan, dead at 89
“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe?” the former national security adviser said of the CIA alliance with Al Qaeda.
Bill Van Auken•
Afghanistan peace talks and the debacle of the war on terror
Whether Washington withdraws US troops remains to be seen; what is certain is that Afghanistan is viewed through the prism of preparations for far wider wars.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
The killing of bin Laden and the “war on terror”
Washington and the corporate media have used the killing of Osama bin Laden to launch a strident celebration of US militarism. What is missing from speeches and commentary, however, is any serious assessment of the decade-old “global war on terror.”
Bill Van Auken•
Obama signs his last Pentagon budget: A legacy of war and reaction
The Democratic president’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act ensures that the infamous prison at Guantanamo will be handed over intact to Donald Trump.
Bill Van Auken•
Obama’s Cuba speech: “Democratic” veneer for US capitalist invasion
While the president’s speech extolled “human rights,” his aides listed the US dollar and corporate power as Washington’s principal concerns.
Bill Van Auken•
Richard Nixon as Obama’s role model
The proposal that the Obama administration model its policy in Afghanistan on Nixon’s strategy in Vietnam is a prescription for unspeakable new war crimes.
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
Bill Van Auken•
The Iraq War ten years on: A turning point for US imperialism
This was a war of staggering criminality in both its planning and execution. It was a premeditated act of aggression launched on the basis of lies.
Bill Van Auken and David North•
The US war and occupation of Iraq—the murder of a society
US operations in Iraq have amounted to sociocide—the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society.
Bill Van Auken•
On the eve of the 2006 midterm election
US faces stepped-up war abroad, social conflict at home
The following is the speech delivered by Bill Van Auken, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US Senate from New York, at a public meeting held in New York City on Sunday, November 5.
Bill Van Auken, Socialist Equality candidate for US Senate from New York•
Message to US troops by SEP candidate for US Senate from New York
For an immediate end to the Iraq occupation, bring the troops home now!
The following statement was recorded by the Socialist Equality Party candidate for US Senate from New York Bill Van Auken for the Department of Defense Information Center. Established under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the center carries personal audio messages from candidates for federal office and for governor from each state directed to military personnel stationed overseas and other US citizens residing abroad.
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Bill Van Auken (SEP presidential candidate)•
Bill Van Auken•
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