“Bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, it is more fully developed, and has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination.”—V. I. Lenin (born 150 years ago), What Is to Be Done?
The covid-19 pandemic will result in a “savage recession” around the world “that will eventually present significant merger and acquisition opportunities . . .”—Albert Manifold, CEO of the building materials giant CRH. No bail-outs there, just buyouts and hostile takeovers.
“. . . We have ended up with political systems that offer a choice between one party that supports a brutal, unrestrained version of neoliberalism and another party that supports a marginally less brutal, slightly mitigated version of neoliberalism.”—Jonathan Cook, Counterpunch
“We have an educated, informed, responsible, compassionate and disciplined people . . . In addition to these strengths, we have the training of more than sixty years of a long journey of resistance in the tough wars of all kinds that they have imposed on us . . . Be strong, Cuba. We will live, and we will overcome!”—Miguel Díaz-Canel, president of Cuba
“The big crisis of our times is [that] our minds are being managed to give power to illusion.”—Vandana Shiva, environmental activist, on the sham “renewable energy” sector
“The only thing worse than knowing that the planet is on the edge of extinction is discovering that we’ve put our hope for survival in illusions.”—Planet of the Humans (2019), environmental documentary written and directed by Jeff Gibbs
“I believe the most terrible pandemic facing humankind is the use of force, the threat of the use of force, of wars promoted by the great powers, and in particular by the United States of America.”—Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua
“Karl Marx has been buried so many times that his resuscitation threatens to become an everyday occurrence.”—Ernesto Estevez Rams, Granma International
“This isn’t Afghanistan. This isn’t Vietnam. This isn’t a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”—James Jeffrey, US “special representative for Syria engagement”
“I note that while Mr Coveney has expressed support for solidarity in a general sense in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic he has not gone further and demanded an end to the sanctions, as Antonio Guterres and Pope Francis have urged.”—Letter from the CPI to the minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney
“There will be in the next generation or so a method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak. Producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”—Aldous Huxley, from a speech for the Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
