#2ndDayofRage4Syria in Chicago

January 30, 2018

On the Second Day of Rage for Syria, Chicago, like several cities across the world, held a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Syria fighting for freedom and against their genocidal ruler, Bashar al-Assad.

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Iranian workers, youth reach for new radical beginnings

January 28, 2018

The recent uprisings in Iran start where the 2009 revolt left off. This analysis focuses on the rebellious working-class youth as well as the interconnections to the Arab Spring, Vladimir Putin’s interference, Donald Trump’s racist agenda, and the philosophic-historic significance of the Bosnian and Syrian struggles against genocide.

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Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements

September 2, 2017

A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .

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V. Lies, facts and ground

May 17, 2017

The administration’s war against truth and reason, such as climate change denial, calls for more than fact-checking. What is needed is to establish a totally opposite ground, that of liberation.

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IV. International crises

The people’s revolutionary struggles form the ground for approaching developments including Trump’s attack on a Syrian military base. The human-to-human communication found in places like Kafranbel has been a form of theory in itself. The deadliest weapon of mass destruction in the Syrian conflict has been the lie that there is “no good alternative” to Assad, echoing the bourgeoisie’s “no alternative” to capitalism. The state of Europe today illustrates the central importance of revolutionary solidarity.

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World in View: French elections

May 15, 2017

France’s national elections will head to a run-off between fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and liberal bourgeois centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party.

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Trump won’t smash Assad’s genocidal regime—support the Syrian Revolution!

April 9, 2017

Assad’s chemical attack on civilians reveals the lie the world has been living. Trump’s limited counterstrike was a response to the unprecedented mass opposition to him, not an abandonment of his counter-revolutionary agenda. It is crucial to take the living freedom struggles in Syria and globally as our basis, to oppose the lie that “there is no alternative,” and to clarify what we are for, not just against.

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Editorial: Freedom and terror define Syria

Editorial taking up the present situation in Syria where the smoke of destroyed East Aleppo, of ravaged Free Idlib, East Ghouta, Wadi Barada, and other revolutionary communities raises Trump’s fascist banner. While President Obama is no friend to the Syrian Revolution, Trump delivered: surrender or death.

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Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt

January 23, 2017

The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.

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Where to now for the Middle East?

November 30, 2016

A look at the situation in the Middle East in light of Donald Trump’s election that takes up Syria, Yemen and the arming by the U.S. of varying forces–some of whom are fighting each other.

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Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?

September 7, 2016

Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.

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The Syrian Revolution continues

July 14, 2016

The author is reminded of Arab poet Al-Ma’arri as the inspiring Syrian revolutionaries in Maarat al-Numaan keep up their struggle for freedom against the Assad regime, despite the world ignoring them .

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Workshop Talks: Bleak future if no labor solidarity

July 3, 2016

Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.

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Britain’s hate-driven referendum a victory for the Far Right

June 26, 2016

With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.

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Mass Killing in Florida is a Measure of Society’s Dehumanization

June 14, 2016

We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”

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World in View: ‘Panama’ tip of iceberg

The leak of 11.5 million confidential documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca gives a view into ruling class life. These “Panama Papers” are both a look at illegal machinations, and an insight into capitalist society’s actual power relations.

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World in View: Refugee crisis measures world’s inhumanity

April 29, 2016

At 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.

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The need for new beginnings in thought and in action

April 25, 2016

Contents: Introduction; I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.; II. The worldwide war against women; III. Chinese labor in revolt; IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa; V. Toward organizational new beginnings. The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we print the Marxist-Humanist Draft Perspectives in the pages of the paper of News and Letters Committees. It is an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.

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Editorial: The Syrian Revolution continues

March 8, 2016

On the challenges facing the Syrian Revolution, the lie of the current ceasefire, the forces lined up against the Revolution including Russia and Iran, and the insufficiencies of much of the international Left when it comes to supporting a genuine revolution and comprehending revolution in permanence.

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Editorial: Putin’s retrogressionism

December 10, 2015

Putin found a formula: to participate in genocide while claiming to be fighting “terrorism.” This says everything about the nature of his retrogressive rule, and about the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Europe

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Russia aims to crush internal dissent

October 18, 2015

The situation in Russia is getting worse. The hysteria of propaganda against “external and internal enemies” is escalating, as well as pressure on opposition and civil society in general. All opposition rallies in the center of Moscow are now forbidden; organizers of Boris Nemtsov’s murder are protected by the state (while everybody knows that [=>]

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Counter-revolution in Middle East shows crisis of humanity

August 28, 2015

From the signing of a nuclear weapons agreement by the U.S. and Iran, to the ongoing war in Syria including the roles of Turkey and of the Left, this wide-ranging article delves into the Middle East situation with an emphasis on the forces fighting for genuine freedom and a multi-ethnic society.

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World in View: Death in Yarmouk

May 7, 2015

The world’s attention was once more belatedly drawn to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, by the invasion by IS/Daesh terrorists, facilitated by another fundamentalist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra.

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Things fall apart

May 6, 2015

In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.

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