A critical update after the collapse of the five-month “truce” between Ethiopian government troops and the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. Even before the ceasefire breakdown, the specter of mass starvation loomed over the people of Tigray.
Africa
World in View: Sierra Leone protests
A view of the Aug. 10 protest in Freetown, Sierra Leone, its causes and its immediate aftermath
Monkeypox, inequality and imperialism
September 13, 2022Prisoner Easley discusses how capitalist imperialism worsens the monkeypox epidemic and other crises.
War is excuse to ravage the climate
July 19, 2022Country after country reacted to the war by increasing oil and gas trade and production. Only movements from below can keep the fossil fuel capitalists from turning the opportunity for a greener, freer future into opposite.
War, climate chaos, capitalism, COVID: World food crisis spreads
July 7, 2022With Russia’s war on Ukraine, a food crisis is emerging globally with lightning speed. Capitalism, with its agricultural-industrial system of commodity food production for the world market, is the cause of, and suffers from the consequences of, multiple, linked crises of war, COVID, and climate. There is radical opposition to this perfect storm of capitalist crises.
Editorial: Climate report: revolution or disaster
May 18, 2022The battle over the latest UN report on climate change laid bare the stark alternative between business as usual and the forces fighting for social transformation to stave off catastrophe. Protesting scientists called for “climate revolution.”
Review of: ‘They didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties’ by Lisa Levenstein
September 22, 2021Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
World in View: Africa in the crosshairs of world imperialism
May 8, 2021The capitalist world remains in a deep crisis and now faces a crossroads. U.S., Chinese, and European imperialism all have aging populations and mounting debt . They need to find new sources of labor and natural resources to plunder. Africa, with the youngest population of any major region and abundant mineral wealth, is a target.
Support Maâti Monjib, who is on hunger strike!
March 15, 2021Support political prisoner Maâti Monjib in Morocco, on hunger strike since March 4!
Ethiopia civil war fears
November 29, 2020Armed conflict broke out in Ethiopia, two years in the making. It remains to be seen whether it will become a full-blown civil war, and possibly engulf other countries of the region.
All power to the Sudanese revolutionaries!
June 27, 2019The Sudanese Revolution demonstrated its depth, maturity and resilience as masses once again took to the streets following the June 3 massacre of protesters in Khartoum.
Sudan: Call to Action
June 13, 2019Call to Action in solidarity with Sudan’s revolution
Revolution in Sudan Under Attack!
June 3, 2019This is a video from our comrade Mohammed Elnaiem who is on the ground in Sudan.
Posted by Mohammed Elnaiem on Sunday, June 2, 2019
World in View: The genius of the Sudanese revolution
May 6, 2019The brilliant Sudanese revolution is another in a line of rebellions against reactionary rule.
Capitalism’s failures, and the struggles against it
December 26, 2018We post this Dec. 24, 2018, commentary by Mohammed Elnaiem as a discussion article which begins: “On these holidays, we mourn for the Kurds in Syria who hopelessly fear an upcoming Turkish invasion, we mourn for the yellow vests in France who rise up in an empire built on colonial wealth but which continues to make destitute its working and unemployed poor…”
World in View: U.S. military in Africa
November 16, 2017At least 358 civilians were killed and over 400 wounded in a truck bombing by al-Shabaab in Mogadishu, Somalia, Oct. 14, 2017.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
World In View: Zimbabwe succession
July 16, 2016President Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since the overthrow of white minority rule in 1980. The succession is now being contested by factions of the ruling ZANU-PF party.
World in View: Refugee crisis measures world’s inhumanity
April 29, 2016At the crux of the world refugee crisis is a demand for new human relations. The will to deny any responsibility for centuries of exploitation of Latin America and Africa is at the root of inhuman attitudes toward refugees, and it becomes an opening for the most reactionary politicians.
Oil: bad both ways
March 12, 2016People’s suffering, no matter the price of oil, demonstrates capitalism’s inherent deep ties with climate change and economic destruction.
Defend Maati Monjib
December 15, 2015Moroccan professor on hunger strike in protest of suppression of rights of journalists
LGBTQ gains in Africa
September 3, 2015A roundup of progressive legislation and legal victories involving LGBTQ people in Mozambique, Kenya, Botswana, and Zambia.
Refugees risk death fleeing war, terror and climate chaos
June 28, 2015Worldwide, the refugee crisis is unprecedented and is fueled by war, terrorism and climate change. The worldwide response is paltry with country after country turning away or deporting frantic and desperate people in search of a safe haven.
World in View: New Kenya massacre
May 7, 2015In a day-long orgy of murder on April 2, four al-Shabaab terrorists invaded the campus of Garissa University College and killed 143 students.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation
April 30, 2015The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.
Celebrating 60 years: Marx spoke to 1975 economic crisis
In celebrating the first 60 years of News and Letters Committees, we reprint excerpts from the Draft Perspectives for 1975-76 by Raya Dunayevskaya, the first printed in News & Letters.
THE MOVEMENT KNOWS, of course, that the class enemy is at home, within each country. It knows full well that each existing state power is weighted down with fear of revolution. And it does not fail to appreciate that, no matter how deep the intra-imperialist rivalries, capitalist class solidarity holds tightest and strongest against its own people.
World In View: Africa, oh Africa!
March 11, 2015Today’s African tragedies compel one to return to the great promise, and then great tragedy and betrayal, of the African Revolutions that emerged after World War II.
Readers’ Views, January-February 2015, Part 1
January 30, 2015From Ferguson to Staten Island; Revolutionary Rojava; Youth Protest; Violence Against Women; Detroit Solidarity; Paris March; Recalling Mary Jo
World in View: Burkinabe revolution
November 30, 2014Some are calling this Burkina Faso’s Revolution 2.0, referring back to Thomas Sankara’s 1983-1987 rule.
New Spanish Translation of American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard
November 25, 2014Contradicciones históricas en la civilización de los Estados Unidos. Las masas afroamericanas como vanguardia: New Spanish Translation of American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2014, Part 2
November 23, 2014From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Readers’ Views, Part 2
PHILOSOPHY, ACTIVITY, ORGANIZATION AND SOCIALISM
I appreciate how Dunayevskaya relates Hegel’s Absolutes with the concrete tasks of building a revolutionary organization. History is the process of becoming. Hegel said that Being and Nothing are abstractions, whereas [=>]
Queer Notes, September-October 2014
August 31, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Dee Perkins
With the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, going nowhere, President Obama signed an executive order July 21 prohibiting such discrimination by federal contractors, which employ some 28 million workers, and, further, [=>]
Same-sex marriage
May 20, 2014Roundup on advances and resistance on same-sex marriage in churches and states.
Massacres continue in Central African Republic
May 14, 2014Violence continues in the Central African Republic. French troops are present, but not heavily involved in peacekeeping. The French were never in CAR for humanitarian reasons, but to protect investments, something that has become less pressing for them with the closure of their once-profitable Areva uranium mine.
Queer Notes, March-April 2014
April 2, 2014CeCe McDonald; Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act; Global Day of Action called by Solidarity Alliance in Nigeria.
For Nelson Mandela
March 4, 2014“For Nelson Mandela,” a poem by Paul Knopf.
Social crisis in Central African Republic
February 14, 2014Violence between Christian majority and Muslim minority communities has torn the social fabric of the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries. Over 1,000 people have been killed since Michel Djotodia seized power in March 2013. Reciprocal massacres have led many observers to see a real possibility of a Rwanda-type genocide.
January-February 2014 News & Letters online
February 4, 2014The January-February issue of News & Letters is online. Rampant U.S. surveillance slouches toward totalitarianism; Tahrir three years later; Charles Denby, worker-editor; Syrian revolution ‘brought us together’; Communization theory’s missing link: dialectical mediation; what happens after; Language and death in Juárez; Let RNs give care; …
Queer Notes, Nov.-Dec. 2013
November 30, 2013Queer Notes: Discrimination in Russia; Intersex in Germany; no prison for rape in Iowa; transition surgery in Iran; Lembembe murdered in Cameroon.
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) and his legacy
May 16, 2013Achebe made a great statement of responsibility toward the future. His questions are only more significant because they resonate beyond the Africa of newly-won independence to a world struggling with the meaning of history and revolution.
Ex-Pope Benedict’s reactionary career
March 27, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
Ex-Pope Benedict’s reactionary career
Pope Benedict XVI’s sudden resignation announcement on Feb. 11 took the world by surprise. It is the first time in almost 600 years that a Pope has decided to quit. He has announced that he will continue to live in the Vatican, bearing the title “Pope emeritus,” and [=>]
France in Mali
February 11, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
The long-simmering situation has exploded. French troops have begun attacking fundamentalist militias in northern Mali. It remains to be seen how effective French and African forces will be against the militias. Certainly many people want to be rid of the al-Qaeda-linked groups that have attacked women, destroyed historic Sufi Muslim [=>]
Mali on the brink
December 5, 2012The deep contradictions Mali has been experiencing are about to become even more intense. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has agreed to send several thousand troops to join Malian troops in an operation to take back the northern part of Mali. The area has been primarily under fundamentalist, al-Qaeda-linked, Islamic rebel control [=>]
Queer Notes, September-October 2012
October 10, 2012by Suzanne Rose
Yaounde, Cameroon—Human rights leaders from Africa united to denounce “Gay Hate Day,” which took place on Aug. 21 in Cameroon, and the ongoing arrests of people suspected of being Gay. The Archbishop of Yaounde contributed to this homophobic backlash calling homosexuality “shameful” and “an affront to the family, enemy of women and [=>]
Solidarity with South Africa’s miners
October 2, 2012Photo by David M’Oto for News & Letters
Oakland, Calif.—On Aug. 24, 100 activists converged on Oscar Grant Plaza to express solidarity with the South African miners’ struggle in Marikana and outrage over the police slaughter of 34 striking workers at Lonmin Platinum Mine there. Signs read: “This Was Not An Aberration” and “Capitalism [=>]
Two Sudans in crisis
April 5, 2012World in View
Since South Sudan gained its independence in July 2011, multiple conflicts erupted between the two Sudans and within each country. Enormous human suffering resulted, with hundreds if not thousands of deaths, rapes, forced displacement and increasing hunger.
A central thread of the conflict is the struggle over oil. South Sudan has most of the [=>]
January-February 2012 issue of News & Letters now available on the web
January 29, 2012Lead
Protests began in September in Wukan, a village of 20,000 people in Guangdong province on the South China Sea, against seizure of more than 100 acres of Wukan’s common land to be sold to those with insider ties to the village Communist Party leadership. Village authorities escalated the conflict by identifying protest leaders and hauling [=>]
Climate change: Durban’s emptiness echoes Copenhagen’s disaster
December 7, 2011As yet another UN conference on climate change dissolves into meaninglessness (no surprise there), a barrage of news underscores the urgency of the problems that are being given little more than lip service. Examples:
New perils seen to even modest warming
Hotter, drier, meaner: Trends point to a planet increasingly hostile to agriculture
Carbon dioxide emissions show record [=>]
Wangari Maathai
November 30, 2011Wangari Maathai
“By planting trees, my colleagues in this grassroots movement and I planted ideas. The ideas, like the trees, grew.” —Wangari Maathai (1940-2011)
Dr. Wangari Maathai never forgot the power of ideas or individuals in grassroots movements. In her memoir, Unbowed, she wrote, “A tree…tells us that in order to aspire we [=>]
World in View: Malawi crackdown
September 20, 2011by Gerry Emmett
Protests against deteriorating economic conditions, fuel shortages and government repression were met with brutal force by authorities in Malawi on June 20-21. Police fired on large crowds in a number of cities, attacking with tear gas, and forcing protest leaders into hiding. At least 19 people were killed in two days of clashes [=>]