Cyclone spotlights disasters in Burma, China

June 5, 2023

After Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma) on May 14, the National Unity Group representing civilian opposition and armed resistance reported 200 Rohingya Muslims had been killed as the storm hit with 130-mile-per-hour winds.

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Propping up fascists

March 17, 2023

To avoid Russia’s outright defeat in its brutal war against Ukrainians, the alliance of nations–Russia, Iran, and China, now with North Korea–that for 12 years has united to suppress the Syrian Revolution for freedom and dignity seems to be firming up again.

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Will China make war on Taiwan?

September 13, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan provoked controversy. Times may have changed since Nixon met Mao but then as now, look to internal reasons in both nations for their foreign policy stances.

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Beijing sham Olympic opening ceremony

March 19, 2022

Critical view of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony, with its rhetorical message echoing the pre-Cultural Revolution campaign to “let 100 flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend.”

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World in View: Iron fist at Olympics

March 16, 2022

It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.

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Free Hong Kong rally

July 4, 2021

Activists from Hong Kong along with emigres from Tibet and the China mainland joined supporters of freedom for Myanmar and Thailand in Chicago, Ill., on June 12 to mark two years since millions filled the streets to protest a threatened extradition law.

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China out of Burma, support revolution!

June 29, 2021

China’s dictatorship insists we stay out of other countries’ affairs, yet they are the main backers of the coup regime in Myanmar and of other authoritarian states. Today there is no such thing as non-interventionism—the only question is whether intervention will take the form of solidarity with the oppressed or support for the oppressors.

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China’s deadly role in Myanmar must stop!

June 16, 2021

China’s dictatorship insists we stay out of other countries’ affairs, yet they are the main backers of the coup regime in Myanmar and of other authoritarian states. Today there is no such thing as non-interventionism—the only question is whether intervention will take the form of solidarity with the oppressed or support for the oppressors.

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Hong Kong arrests

March 11, 2021

Massive marches in Hong Kong that continued until COVID-19 crowd restrictions and the National Security Law , combined with more violent arrests, drove protests underground.

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Youth in Action: November-December 2020

November 27, 2020

Youth and others in several places in Nigeria protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) who rape, extort, and otherwise abuse youth; residential advisors at several big name universities are striking over COVID-19 related issues; and students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University creatively used hundreds of padlocks hanging on a bridge to spell: “Save the 12,” referring to 12 Hong Kong youth abducted from a boat who are now being held in mainland China.

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Hong Kong: Year two of revolt

July 1, 2020

Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong defied a ban on demonstrations to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Thousands came out to oppose the Beijing government’s intention to impose a National Security Law directly on Hong Kong.

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COVID-19: A world-historic threat

March 7, 2020

Gerry Emmett analyzes the meaning of the current coronavirus pandemic from the point of view of what Karl Marx called humanity’s metabolism with nature, which formed the basis of his critique of capitalism.

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Rebellion in Hong Kong spreads

January 21, 2020

New Year’s Day, a million people took to the streets in Hong Kong despite police repression. Marchers called for Hong Kong to “resist tyranny, join a union.”

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Hong Kong defiance

November 4, 2019

Bob McGuire describes the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, triggered five months ago against a colonialist extradition bill to mainland China.

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Hong Kong masses fight rulers’ grab for power

August 31, 2019

An account of the development of the Hong Kong protests to block a proposed extradition bill, which could send residents of Hong Kong to face pre-determined injustice before Beijing courts, tracing them back to the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre.

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Trump and unrest confront China

January 31, 2017

Just weeks after Donald Trump claimed his Electoral College victory, he put the spotlight on U.S.-China relations by taking a call from Taiwan’s President, creating the possibility that the U.S. might abandon the “one China” policy.

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Youth In Action: September-October 2016

September 17, 2016

A look at youth activism including factory workers protest the murder of child laborer Sagar Barman; women’s skateboard team Las Brujas finds creative ways to fight male domination in the sport of skateboarding; Helena High School students supporting Kaitlyn Juvik in her right to choose not to wear a bra; and activists who protested two years ago in Hong Kong for freer elections are sentenced and vow to continue the struggle.

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South China Sea dispute

June 29, 2015

The exchange of threats between China and the U.S. over specks of land and submerged reefs in the South China Sea has heated up as China has expanded its ambitious campaign of dredging, land reclamation, garrisoning troops and erecting military facilities in the Spratly Islands.

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From Turkey to USA, women as force & reason fight inhumanity

March 5, 2015

Another savage sexual assault and murder—this time in Turkey—brought forth thousands of demonstrators, mostly women, throughout the country and beyond. Özgecan Aslan was a student taking a bus home. Worldwide, women are not only railing against sexism and challenging men to change what is often deadly behavior and when not deadly, deeply oppressive; they are as well explicitly extending their critique to the state itself.

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Hong Kong youth confront class rule

November 22, 2014

Hundreds of people in Hong Kong marched to People’s Republic of China government offices on Nov. 9 to demand direct negotiations with the government of China and to oppose sham democratic elections planned for 2017. Marchers began from encampments of thousands of protesters who had been maintaining blockades of major thoroughfares for more than six weeks….

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Tiananmen Square Massacre 25 years later

July 8, 2014

From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters

Crowds filled Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on June 4 to remember the massacre in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago. Under Hong Kong’s separate administration they bore witness to the two-month-long mass movement of students and workers that spread to city after city across China, and [=>]

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July-August 2011 Queer Notes

August 21, 2011

by Elise

Students at Mona Shores High School in Muskegon, Mich., won gender-neutral proms. After Oak Reed, a Transgender boy, was nominated prom King and school administrators threw out the ballots saying Reed is technically a girl, students protested by creating a Facebook page, “Oak is my king,” and passed out petitions.

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The International [=>]

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