Democratic Left Roundup

Steve Hendrix, Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington, was crucial to the movement

for hundreds of civil rights veterans, Aug. 28 will also always be Bayard’s Day, the crowning achievement of one of the movement’s most effective, and unconventional, activists.

Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes & Ronald Radosh “Childs at Play: The FBI's Cold War triumph”

A piece from the Weekly Standard won't often make a my recommended list, but here three expert scholars analyze new revelations from  declassified FBI files about the CPUSA. In the 1950s and 1960s, the FBI had informers in the very highest echelon of the American Communist Party. 

Paul Berman, "Do Ideas Matter: From September 11 to the Arab Spring.

An interesting analysis, but no discussion of independent workers' movements in the Arab Spring.

Sacha Ismail, Atrocities by the Libyan rebels? Some consistency, please!

The reality is that those using the facts of racism and atrocities by the Libyan rebels to justify their hostility to the Libyan revolution are generally not too concerned about the records of those they support. Repression and atrocities of all sorts can be justified or ignored if they fit into the “anti-imperialist” world schema. It is perfectly possible, of course, to raise issues such as racism among the Libyan rebels in good faith - as this article attempts to do. But they are being highlighted by pro-Qaddafi "anti-imperialists" primarily because of the rebels' alliance with NATO, and in order to whitewash Qaddafi.

Jake Blumgart, 4 ways government policy favors the rich and keeps the rest of us poor

James Bloodworth, CUBA: A Paradise of Sexual Tourism 

Since the early years of the Cuban revolution, the government claimed as one of its shining achievements the elimination of prostitution. In reality of course, it lingered on; but through the provision of job opportunities and training for former prostitutes, the revolution did go a substantial way to eliminating the sex trade relative to its documented abundance during the pre-revolutionary era.

Spending time in Cuba in 2011, one cannot but be alarmed by the frequency one notices young Cubans, often no more than 14 or 15 years old, fraternising with European and Canadian tourists of a certain age. Disturbingly, this hustling or "jineterismo" of foreigners often camouflages a more basic sex-for-cash transaction.

Juan Cole on 10 myths about the Libyan War 

Angelo Lopez ,Non-Marxist Critiques of the Capitalist System