Afghanistan

ON JANUARY 30, 2007, Platypus hosted its first public forum, “Imperialism: What is it – Why should we be Against it?” The panel consisted of Adam Turl of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Kevin Anderson of the Marxist-Humanist group News and Letters, Nick Kreitman of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Danny Postel of Open Democracy, and Chris Cutrone of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of this event; the full video can be found online at the above link. [Read More]

_Panel held on December 6, 2009, at the University of Chicago. Co-sponsored by the International House Global Voices Program._ Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Rubina Jamil President, Working Women Organization; and Chair, All Pakistan Trade Union Federation Atiya Khan Platypus Affiliated Society; and PhD candidate in History at the University of Chicago Introduced and moderated by Spencer A. Leonard, Platypus Affiliated Society; Editor-in-Chief, The Platypus Review; and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, University of Chicago [Read More]

ON APRIL 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive separation of theory and practice over the course of the 20th century: 2001 (Spencer A. Leonard), 1968 (Atiya Khan), 1933 (Richard Rubin), and 1917 (Chris Cutrone). The following is an edited transcript of the 2001 presentation by Spencer A. [Read More]

This article has been reprinted in Mainstream Weekly. Deep historical precedents HOWEVER SINCERE ITS BACKERS or belligerent its enemies, the “War on Terror” is not and cannot become anti-Islamist. This is not because, as some think, there is no Islamist or Taliban-style fascism on the receiving end of America’s War on Terror. Far from it. The reason is that the prosecutors of the war are only half committed to the selective elimination of certain religious reactionaries. [Read More]

THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW was conducted as an email exchange between Andony Melathopoulos and Terry Glavin in December 2008. Terry Glavin is a Canadian journalist, an outspoken critic of the anti-war movement’s call to withdrawal foreign troops from Afghanistan and a founder of the Afghanistan Canada Solidarity Committee (afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org). Andony Melathopoulos: You just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and have been busy writing about your experience in the Canadian news media and, most recently, in an online piece in Democratiya (”Afghanistan: A Choice of Comrades,” Winter (15), 2008). [Read More]

However difficult the task of grasping and confronting global capital might be, it is crucially important that a global internationalism be recovered and reformulated… The Left should be very careful about constituting a form of politics that, from the standpoint of human emancipation, would be questionable, at the very best, however many people it may rouse. —Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness” (2006) A moderated panel discussion and audience Q & A on issues of global capital, imperialism and war, possibilities for progressive political opposition, and the problems and tasks for the Left in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world raised by the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. [Read More]