Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
Eugene Walker
Bolsonaro’s fascism threatens Brazilians
December 13, 2018Jair Bolsonaro, elected President of Brazil, is a racist, misogynist, homophobic admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The coming months will tell whether the masses will mount a crucial resistance.
Immigrant caravan born in the USA
December 3, 2018Migrants on the immigrant caravan to the U.S. speak for themselves about why they left their home countries, which have experienced problems due to a history of U.S. imperialism.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 2
September 29, 2018Readers’ Views Part 2 takes up: the needed return to Marx’s Humanism, and Voices from behind prison bars.
Turkey on the brink?
September 27, 2018Under the whip of global capitalism, so-called emerging economies, like Turkey’s, have little real independence, and their masses live under a no-exit sign.
Argentina in crisis
September 20, 2018Argentina has been bouncing this year from one crisis to the next. Today it needs a movement that refuses to separate the slogan “They all must go!” from building an authentically new kind of society.
World in View: What’s next for Nicaragua?
July 24, 2018Nicaragua is in deep crisis. Almost 150 have been killed by government forces, and thousands injured. The Nicaraguan masses will need to create an emancipatory alternative.
World in View: Gaza, Israel and Trump
Since protests began on March 30, at least 135 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli sharpshooters who targeted medical workers and youth.
World in View: Colombia’s election
The election of right-winger Iván Duque is a threat to the peace agreement that ended Colombia’s decades-long war between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla insurgency.
World in View: Reaction and racism in the ‘new’ Europe
Update on the reaction, racism and anti-immigrant and anti-refugee laws growing in Poland, Italy and Hungary.
Turkey’s Erdoğan tightens authoritarian rule
July 21, 2018With his victory in the June 24, 2018, presidential election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consolidated his one-man rule of Turkey’s 80 million-plus population. He had already eliminated the office of prime minister and created a powerful executive presidency.
50 Years later…The 1968 French general strike–its meaning today.
May 5, 2018A participant looks at the 1968 French general strike, filled with potential to transform society, and discusses why it failed and the ramifications of that for today.
Judy Tanzawa (Judy Tristan) 1939-2017
November 12, 2017In Memoriam for Judy Tanzawa who was a radical union organizer, Los Angeles Local Organizer for News and Letters Committees, fighter for human liberation in all its dimensions. .
World in View: When war opens the door to famine
September 3, 2017A general view of the humanitarian crises caused by civil war in South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria.
World in View: Chile abortion rights
Chilean women won a limited but important victory Aug. 21., when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled to legalize abortion in three situations: rape, incest, and when the woman’s life is in danger.
World in View: Venezuela crisis demands a new vision
June 30, 2017Despite difficulties, there are tendencies within the Left in Venezuela and Latin American who are critical of Maduro and trying to work out support of the Venezuelan masses, along with opposition to neoliberalism and U.S. imperialism.
World In View: South Africa protests
May 15, 2017Protesters in South Africa agitate against President Jacob Zuma, the ruling African National Congress, the high unemployment rate and elections, and in support of the poor and workers.
World In View: Venezuela in chaos
During this time of economic, political and societal crisis, including shortages of food and medicine, can Venezuela’s people build a society that is truly human, thus showing the way for the rest of the world?
The view from Mexico
March 23, 2017In Mexico, U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions are close to the number one topic of discussion and have inspired protest marches and rallies.
World In View: Romanian Spring?
March 16, 2017Romanians by the hundreds of thousands took to the streets using theater, poetry, and humor to express demands for change.
World In View: Kashmir resistance
While India has an overwhelming military force occupying Kashmir, a significant part of Kashmir’s population continues to demand independence.
World In View: India’s cash woes
Prime Minister Narendra Modi without warning eliminated the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes that made up 86% of all currency in circulation. Difficulties have been enormous and damage to the economy extreme, especially for poor women.
World In View: South Sudan in crisis
War in South Sudan has placed hundreds of thousands in danger of starvation; tens of thousands are in unsafe refugee camps where women are in constant danger of assault.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part 2
February 2, 2017Readers’ Views on: Practical and Theoretical Intervention; Syria and Humanism; International Crises; and Prisoners Speak.
World in View: Cuban Revolution’s dual heritage
January 30, 2017The 1959 Cuban Revolution represented a great divide in Latin America. But the grave contradictions in its aftermath leave a dual heritage that must be comprehended and overcome if we are to work out a truly emancipatory future for Latin America.
World in View: Brazilians resist return to neoliberalism
Since a neoliberal legislative coup by the Brazilian Congress removed President Rousseff of the Workers’ Party from office, there has been a campaign to reverse many of the social gains implemented during the administrations of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff.
Essay: The masses in Latin America face a duality
November 30, 2016The essay takes a critical look at the “Latin American Pink Tide” (a decade of progressive governments in South America), its limits and contradictions, and poses the question: Is there a way forward that does not substitute statism for the action and thought of the masses?
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 1
November 27, 2016Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
World in View: Colombia agreement raises hopes, questions
September 17, 2016A peace agreement between the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been greeted with hope and skepticism.
Polarization in Brazil
July 14, 2016The impeachment of Brazil’s President Rousseff by right-wing forces in Congress betrays longstanding divisions in Brazil along lines of race and class, but was made possible because Rousseff’s Workers Party tried to demobilize the social forces that had brought it to power, leaving street agitation to Right-wing militants.
World in View: Brazil meltdown opens a door to Right
May 18, 2016Brazil is in a meltdown. President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached and will possibly face trial in May. The upheaval has less to do with stamping out corruption than with an effort to shift power by lawmakers with questionable records themselves.
World in View: Murder in Honduras
Over 1,300 activists from more than 20 countries attended a gathering in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, celebrating the life of murdered Indigenous rights and ecological-social activist Berta Caceres.
World in View: Pope Francis in Mexico: pity and contradiction
March 18, 2016The Pope has a partial, limited critique of certain transgressions of industrial capitalism. In some areas of human rights, the Pope and the Catholic Church as an institution is not only silent, but in opposition.
World In View: Venezuela’s election
January 26, 2016It was a stunning defeat. Where to now for the Venezuelan masses who supported Chavez in power, but many of whom feel disappointed in the post-Chavez period?
Comrades and friends remember Olga
January 25, 2016Remembrances of Olga Domanski by comrades and friends.
Reader’s Views: November-December 2015, Part 2
December 16, 2015readers views, nov dec 2015, part 2
World in View: Deadly war waged on Yemen’s civilians
December 10, 2015Saudi’s seven-month-long campaign of death and human suffering has been abetted by logistical support from the Obama administration. The Houthis they purport to oppose wasted the popular welcome they received entering Sana’a in 2014 by allying with former oppressor, ex-ruler Saleh, and imposing their own brand of narrow sectarian rule.
World in View: Mexico’s ‘La Migra’
Mexico takes millions of dollars from the U.S. to stop Central American immigrants from crossing Mexico’s southern border. Gangs prey on those who make it into Mexico.
World in View: Chile students protest
July 8, 2015Chile’s students once again took to the streets by the tens of thousands to demand fundamental education reform.
World in View: Spanish elections
The indignados emerged victorious in important municipal elections in dozens of cities, large and small, including Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.
World in View: Turkey’s election
In a stunning June 7 election, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a coalition of Kurds and liberals, won 12% of the vote.
World in View: Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015
May 7, 2015The indignados (outraged) of Latin America and the world have lost a human voice of towering creativity. Eduardo Galeano has died.
World in View: Obama meets Castro
Real possibilities for social transformation in Latin America, and with it an end to U.S. domination with iron fist or velvet glove, lie not in the choreographed dance between the U.S. and the Latin American governments, including “Leftist” or progressive ones, inside or outside the “Summit of the Americas.”
World In View: Threats to Rohingya
March 11, 2015Over one million Rohingya, a Muslim people living in Burma (Myanmar), are once again being subjected to threats from the state.
World In View: Africa, oh Africa!
Today’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.
World in View: Cuba-U.S. Relations
February 1, 2015Where do we go from here? The U.S. has certainly not given up bringing down the Castros; only the method is different. The pulls of neoliberal capitalism, the world market, are now the weapons.
World in View: Sri Lanka election
The Tamils have faced a military occupation of their region for almost a decade. The Sinhalese majority (70%) have as well grown restive under Rajapaksa rule. Crime, a drug mafia, nepotism and corruption characterized his rule.
World in View: Zapatistas and the Ayotzinapa rebellion
January 31, 2015More than three months after the forced disappearance of their 43 sons—students of the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero—their fathers and mothers continue their protests. In mid-November the parents arrived in Chiapas to share their pain and outrage with the Zapatista Indigenous communities.
World in View: Rousseff wins Brazil’s runoff election
November 30, 2014Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, barely won a runoff election against the conservative free-marketeer Aécio Neves. With her election to a second term, the Workers’ Party, first under Lula Da Silva and now under Rousseff, has won its fourth consecutive presidential election. While Lula’s first election was greeted with great hope for a sweeping change in Brazil’s developmentalist trajectory, Rousseff’s cliffhanger illustrated the grave disappointment that much of Brazil’s masses felt recently….
Mexico at a new moment of revolt
November 21, 2014Mexico City—Massive protests have swept across Mexico in response to the brutal state-instigated attack against students from the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. On Sept. 26 six people had been murdered outright, and 43 students were “disappeared” and likely assassinated, incinerated and buried in clandestine graves. October and November have been months of rage, led by hundreds of thousands of students….