Privately owned Canadian TV network CTV and its corporate parent Bell Media abruptly fired long-time news anchor Lisa LaFlamme. The reason? She let her hair go grey.
Canada
Women Worldwide: September-October 2022
September 24, 2022Women Worldwide on Pope’s apology to Indigenous peoples in Canada; Sudan rolling back rights women had won over the past two years; the conviction of Aydin Coban in Canada for sextortion, and Spain passing the “only yes means yes law”.
Women Worldwide: July-August 2022
July 21, 2022No Birth Behind Bars “feed-in” in London; Cross-Border Network of Mexico and U.S. abortion rights groups formed; Montreal protest of the prostitution common at Grand Prix auto race; study finds women less likely to receive credit for their scientific work.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2022, Part One
July 12, 2022Readers’ Views on: Supreme Court’s Attack on Women’s Freedom; Abortion, Healthcare and Women’s Movement; Abortion Unseparated from All Freedom Struggles; Gay Pride: Whose Bodies? Ours!; Colonizers Past and Present; Let Them Eat Rockets; Oppression of Homeless; Only 14 More Mass Shootings!; Church, State and Football
Readers’ Views: May-June 2022, part one
May 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Abortion Bans vs. Women and Freedom; Anti-War, Pro-Democracy Voices from Russia; Patriarchy Attacked; Putin’s Brutal War
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part One
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Convoy misrepresents Canadians
Critical view by a Canadian on the Canadian “Freedom Truckers” convoys, comparing how gently the truckers were treated by the authorities compared to how brutally First Nation people defending their land are treated today and how badly people were treated during the “October Crisis” of 1970 in Québec.
Editorial: Sham trucker convoys
The “Freedom Convoy” in Canada was part and parcel of the white Christian nationalism that is a marker of today’s fascism, and not a working-class movement of truck drivers.
Canadian convoy fuels fascism, not freedom
February 11, 2022Despite 90% of Canadian truckers being vaccinated, organizers counted on a couple hundred semis to mask the fascist movements and money propelling this “freedom convoy.” The mask came off quickly, as participants paraded Nazi and Confederate flags, and even TRUMP 2024 banners, while others desecrated national memorials.
Queer Notes: November-December 2021
November 19, 2021Trans people in Puerto Rico; a counter-protest led by Rainbow Coalition, protector of Trans children in Canada; and a protest at Chicago’s Benet Academy against the firing of soccer coach Amanda Kammes.
Women Worldwide: September-October 2021
September 12, 2021Women Indigenous leaders in Canada; forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada; organic farming collective Green Girls in Gaza; dangers of prenatal sex selection.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2021, part one
July 2, 2021Readers’ Views on: What Is Socialism?; What Is Marxist-Humanism?; Nuclear Socialism?; Nuclear Capitalism; Flat Earth Society; Indigenous Genocide; Indigenous Liberation; Racism Takes its Toll; Rape Culture; Coming Out in Sports; Colonialism and Liberation
Women Worldwide: May-June 2021
May 8, 2021Five Canadian feminist activists released The Care Economy Statement proclaiming that caregiving is a societal responsibility; through February, thousands of feminists demonstrated across France in support of “Julie,” a 25-year-old woman who when younger was raped over 100 times by 20 firemen; in memoriam for Nawal El Sadaawi, an Egyptian radical feminist, Marxist, writer and activist; and the Illinois Prison Project launched the Women and Survivors Project.
Women worldwide, January-February 2021
February 2, 2021Lenn Keller, a Black Lesbian feminist activist, historian, and documentary photographer, remembered; women sue MindGeek/Pornhub and pressure credit card companies; Chile women win demand for half the seats in constitutional convention; women win reinstatement in First Nation bands in Canada.
Women worldwide, July-August 2020
July 1, 2020Nigerians protest rape and violence against teenage girls; Feminist Coalition Feministe statement on Nova Scotia mass killings; Texas Equal Access Fund sues anti-abortion group for defamation; NatCen Social Research finds girls between 16-34 from the poorest backgrounds more likely to harm themselves; a rally demands action on the year-old proposals by Canadian inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
II. The true pandemic war
April 29, 2020Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.
Pandemic as battlefield
March 30, 2020The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is a battle over how society will change, mirroring the battle over how to confront and adapt to the climate and extinction crisis. Strikes are erupting across the world.
Women worldwide, March-April 2020
March 8, 2020Women worldwide column on Wet’suwet’en women fighting Coastal GasLink Pipeline; the Murang’a County Women savings and credit cooperative in Kenya; artist Jimini Hignett; dress codes for women in Japan; and Indian women demonstrating against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new racist citizenship law.
News and Letters Committees Call for Convention 2020
March 2, 2020POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
Canada after the 2019 election
January 21, 2020Canada’s federal election showed class issues had come to the fore.
Women Worldwide, November-December 2019
November 17, 2019Laws against abortion and sex outside of marriage in Morocco; violence against women in South Africa; Ontario’s Provincial Police will no longer release the genders of crime suspects and victims, and abortion laws in Mexico.
Women Worldwide, November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Women Worldwide column on a rape trial in Cork, Ireland; the women student movement Pinjratod or “Break the Cages” in India; and forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Trump helps Harley-Davidson kill jobs
July 25, 2018Harley-Davidson workers found that Trump’s corporate tax cuts made it easier for the company to plan to shutter the Kansas City plant. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum gave Harley-Davidson an incentive to move more jobs to a new plant in Thailand.
Women Worldwide, November-December 2017
November 15, 2017Women Worldwide Column on: the Black Women’s March on Washington; Meltem Cumbul in Turkey refusing to shake the hand of a director who supported right-wing President Erdogan; and a class-action lawsuit against coerced sterilization procedures in Canada against indigenous women.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1
November 12, 2017Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1
September 5, 2017Readers’ Views: facing far right’s threat; don’t scapegoat; Canadian strike; Transgender troops; women’s liberation; homeless in Los Angeles; defend dissidents; why read N&L.
Fighting back against the rise of neo-Nazi hate
August 28, 2017In-person reports of demonstrations in Chicago, Memphis, Oregon, Los Angeles and Halifax in Canada in solidarity with activists in Charlottesville, Va., fighting against neo-fascism and demanding to take down Confederate statues. .
III. U.S. forces of revolt as reason; philosophy as force of revolution
May 17, 2017The unprecedented Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration revealed the blossoming of a universal movement with many particulars, from women’s demand to control their own bodies, to Black Lives Matter, to the struggle at Standing Rock.
Women take the lead against world retrogression
March 8, 2017An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part I
January 31, 2017Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 1
September 14, 2016Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
July 3, 2016The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and climate chaos fueled by capitalism’s drive for production for the sake of production.
Youth in Action, Nov.-Dec. 2015
December 15, 2015McGill Univ. tent city for fossil fuel disinvestment; New Delhi College of Art protest; Westmount High School student picket supports teachers; Beirut “You Stink!” protests
Canada’s election: a sense of uncertainty
December 11, 2015Uncertainty in Canada after its federal election.
Readers’ Views, Sept.-Oct. 2015, Part 2
August 31, 2015Readers’ thoughts on “Dialectics of Philosophy and of Forces of Revolution”; “Free Mumia!”; “Federico Arcos, 1920-2015”; and a section of “Voices from Behind the Bars.”
Winds of change from Alberta?
July 3, 2015Analysis of the New Democratic Party victory and the election of Rachel Notley as Premier in the May 5 Alberta, Canada, provincial election. It is critically important that we use this time well.
Things fall apart
May 6, 2015In 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.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2014, Part 1
November 23, 2014From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Readers’ Views, Part 1
WOMEN FIGHT RAPE, HARASSMENT AND ABUSE
When I voted, many posters reminded folks that within 100 feet of the polling place you may not “interrupt” a person, nor “harass” nor even speak about your political views. [=>]
Youth in action, July-August 2014
July 8, 2014ISIPE; Ché Café; Lindsey Stocker; Australian students protest fee increases.
WOMAN AS REASON: Isla Vista murders fueled by misogyny
July 5, 2014When you are despised for who you are, as those murdered by Elliot Rodger were—and women are not the only ones on a list that includes any differently sexed person, immigrants and all minorities but especially Blacks, people with disabilities, and that’s only in the U.S.—then a revolution has to be more than an economic change, it even has to be more than “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.” Revolution has to be so deep and total that all human relationships are transformed. To do so, it must be total from the start…
Québec election the ‘dirtiest campaign’
May 22, 2014The results of the Québec Election on April 7 are a disaster that may have implications for all of North America.
Women Worldwide, May-June 2014
May 16, 2014Women’s Memorial March in Canada, and Save Wiyabi Project; premiere of docudrama film “¡PODER!” on girls in Concepcion Chiquirichapa, Guatemala; Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s “Stop Telling Me to Smile” project.
Capitalism’s political and economic degeneracy
May 7, 2014Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2014-2015. III. Capitalism’s political and economic degeneracy. A. Karl Marx haunts capitalism’s stagnation. B. The race toward climate chaos.
‘Say NO to KXL!’
March 20, 2014Chicago–“Say NO to KXL!” was the message of 100 protesters outside the local State Department offices on the bitter cold night of Feb. 3, demanding that President Obama reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry extra-dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. It was one of 283 actions across the U.S. and Canada organized in three days after the State Department released its fake environmental report on the pipeline–a report crafted by cronies of TransCanada, Keystone’s owner, with the imprimatur of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Call for News and Letters Committees Convention, 2014
March 11, 2014News and Letters Committees has posted its
OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2014-2015
February 23, 2014
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The sharpness of revolution and counter-revolution contending now, while the prolonged global capitalist economic crisis refuses to end, cries out for a philosophical [=>]
Handicap This! Nov.-Dec. 2013
December 8, 2013Bus discrimination in Leeds, England; school sit-in in Pennsylvania; Russia “psychiatric” repression; Montreal voting rights
Movements confront climate change
November 28, 2013Occupations of planned fracking sites in Canada and Romania showed the intensification of struggles against the damage fossil fuel exploitation is inflicting. The urgency of stopping the headlong rush to extract and burn fossil fuel was underscored by the latest comprehensive report from the International Panel on Climate Change.
Canada’s First Nations against fracking
November 21, 2013Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) attacked men and women of the Mi’kmaq and Elsipogtog First Nation for blocking a New Brunswick highway in protest of Southwestern Energy doing seismic testing to determine whether local shale gas deposits merit fracking.
‘This is Canada’
October 9, 2013Why did the Huffington Post print a piece of pure hate speech against Quebecers, and why are some Canadian leaders promoting its views?
Lac Mégantic: capitalism’s train wreck
September 13, 2013On July 6, around 1:15 AM, an unattended 74-car freight train filled with crude oil derailed and exploded in the center of the town of Lac Mégantic, Québec. This catastrophe was avoidable with even the slightest attention to safety, and is a result of cutting corners to save money, and the lack of anyone in charge taking responsibility for any aspect of the negligence, including those in the government.