When in 1917, the IWD was first observed in Leningrad, women workers of Petrograd had organized a mass of 50,000, comprising their fellow male comrades in demanding for “bread, peace and land” and to end the imperialistic world war.

Our social conditioning has manifested in our misplaced patriotic duties to refuse authority to a woman not on grounds of political differences, but solely because she is a ‘foreigner’, despite having been more of an Indian than the countless NRIs whose funds we have voluntarily solicited to fuel hatred in the subcontinent.

Seeger always took his communism seriously and he wrote about capitalistic contradictions, but carefully employing a language that was truly accessible to the workers, to the “bottom” uneducated and semi-literate section of society who he remained connected with, all his life.

Saswat Pattanayak's tribute to Amiri Baraka.

Aam Aadmi Party is the New Right - a nationalist party aimed at dislodging Congress and weakening the Left - using a milder, a more acceptable version of BJP politics…

While the Snowden episode raises the alarm bells on privacy, Saswat Pattanayak questions whether the state clamping on freedom is anything new. Was it better in the past? If yes, for whom was it better? Is it good now, then for whom is it good?

What is essential is to recognize what I.F. Stone used to say: that, all governments lie. All administrations resort to lies. That, international diplomacy is nothing but a systematization of lies. What is crucial is to acknowledge that individual freedom is always going to be limited so long as a state exists. That, it is not just the communist and overtly authoritarian regimes which manipulate individual rights to free speech and privacy, but the western liberal democracies have also always done so.

The truth is royal family is not an embarrassment. It is a criminal institution. It is not a laughing matter. It is a despicable agency. It’s members are not saints. They are hooligans. It’s legacy is not of a cultural pride. It is one of racist supremacism. Royal positions are not ceremonious figureheads. They are active displays of colonial machismo.

One could argue that capitalism transcending all barriers and uniting us in our greed is supposed to be a good thing. After all, until this stage is reached, there would be no way to successfully combat its ills so that a higher stage of human development can be aspired for.

Very first official recognition of March 8th in the world was made in Soviet Union due to the efforts of Alexandra Kollontai, who went on to become the world’s first female ambassador.

Many progressives have questioned why Delhi, why now and why the middle class? Isn’t the middle class, after all, the biggest perpetrator of violence against women? The answer is perhaps a tad simplistic – culturally enslaved by the corporate media, the bourgeois elements in Indian society usually wake up only to the “breaking news” and “shocking news”. And therefore the concerns are genuine – that the middle class might even disappear from the map of activism as soon as the media cease coverages of this specific “event”.

It is necessary to understand that the protests against rape in Delhi have two basic components – one that cries out for death penalty or stricter punishment, and another that demands equality of women. While the former is an endorsement of feudalism and a reinforced belief in the status quo, the latter is an unqualified call for socialism.

The good liberals never cease to amaze. They want the wars abroad, but they don’t want the wars at home. They want other children to die, just not theirs. They want to be able to buy the guns themselves, just not allow the rest.

Einstein was opposed to a separate Jewish state, opposed to a partition of Palestine, opposed even to an establishment of a Jewish government-in-exile, considered the Jewish underground movement a “disaster” and supported a bi-national self-government in Palestine with both Arabs and the Jews ruled with the consent of the Arabs.

Last election, it was a black woman of tremendous strength and courage who was victimized by racist attacks in the Congress – Cynthia McKinney – who decided to quit the Democrats and contested on the Green Party ticket to pose a serious threat to Barack Obama.

Hurricane Sandy is all about politics. It is more about politics than Hurricane Katrina was. This is the week of reelection for the Democratic Czar and his liberal cronies who have constantly manipulated the media headlines to suppress the truths about their wrongdoings…

The truth is Nobel Peace Prize legacies have little to do with recognizing peace among peoples and nations, and they have nothing to offer of value promoting disarmament. Ending of any war has never been an idealism associated with the Prize.

This year as the elections unfold, majority of Americans will continue to be fooled by the democratic virtues once again. And Malcolm X will brim with relevance with his words warning the democratically bemused.

Majority of the masses continue to remain hungry for change; and it has nothing to do with the White House.

Should we ever go back in time to live the past dreams for social equality when we can make giant leaps into a concrete future of individual liberties? The challenge is not merely philosophical.