Centre for Social Justice -» Community

Nov 29, 2025 - Aren’t We Clever! Alas, Israel Is Too Clever by Half

By Larry Haiven

Living in the UK in the 1980s, we encountered a particularly British phrase we had hardly heard before: "Too clever by half." The Cambridge Dictionary definition is "too confident in one's intelligence, often in an irritating way that annoys others or leads to problems." Others have defined it as "irritating and manipulating, rather than actually very clever." We and other Jews understood that epithet as antisemitic. Not exclusively against Jews, it was also employed to demean South Asians, East Asians, and West Asians (Arabs) who had "risen above their rank" as well, especially as those groups entered the higher echelons of the colonial metropolis, capped by the Prime Ministership of Rishi Sunak, of South Asian ancestry.

Source: The Bullet No. 3229

Nov 27, 2025 - Huge Costs to Workers and the Environment

By Benjamin Selwyn

Early in his second presidency, Donald Trump's imposition of tariffs was met with widespread scepticism. Critics warned of economic decline and a global backlash. Yet the current landscape for the United States paints a more complex picture. Less than a year into his second term in office, the White House claims that Trump is bringing manufacturing back to the US. It also proclaims that Trump has secured trillions of dollars of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2025 alone. Other voices, however, estimate that these commitments will amount to just a fraction of that.

Source: The Bullet No. 3228

Nov 25, 2025 - Lessons from the Zapatistas

The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is proud to host Lia Pinheiro Barbosa and Peter Rosset for the online launch of their new book Lessons from the Zapatistas: From Armed Insurgency to People's Autonomy (Fernwood Publishing).

Lessons from the Zapatistas is essential reading for anyone interested in liberation, democracy and radical social transformation. It tells the story of the Zapatista insurgency, including the contemporary breadth and depth of their territorial autonomy, tracing how an Indigenous uprising burst forth from southern Mexico's Lacandon Jungle to stage the 21st century's first and most electrifying example of autonomy in action.

Source: LeftStreamed

Nov 22, 2025 - Labour’s Climate Fight Requires Public Ownership

By Vinnie Collins

Zohran Mamdani's historic victory in New York's Democratic Party primary for mayor in June 2025 and victory in the general election on November 4th has provided a dose of hope to a Left seeking a path forward amid a dire political landscape. His campaign succeeded by offering real solutions to working-class concerns - including on climate policy and its connection to New Yorkers' material conditions.

Source: The Bullet No. 3227

Nov 21, 2025 - What We Forgot About Socialism

By Kristen R. Ghodsee

Twenty years ago in November of 2005, Duke University Press published my first book: The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Produced in the wake of socialism's global collapse and the riot of Western triumphalism that ensued, I deployed both qualitative and quantitative methods to advance a simple, but unpopular, argument: for most people in the former Soviet bloc, capitalism sucked.

Source: The Bullet No. 3226