“Woman as Reason” columnist Terry Moon writes about the state of abortion rights in the U.S. in light of the draconian attacks against it and relates women’s struggle to control their bodies to the thingification of women, the poor response of the U.S. left, Karl Marx’s devastating critique of capitalism, and what revolution must come to mean.
Readers’ Views on: Socialism and a philosophy of revolution; Sudan in revolt; Iran vs. Iranians; Flint, Mich., play captures voices; Notre-Dame and fracking on native land; gun control debate; labor strikes; debate on fascism; Trump and DeVos; and voices from behind bars.
The brilliant Sudanese revolution is another in a line of rebellions against reactionary rule.
Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
Yemen’s civil society organizations, representing the revolutionary hopes of 2011, have presented humane terms for a peace agreement. The state powers and non-state actors dependent upon them have their own ideas.
The Syrian Revolution has been the physical and intellectual battlefield that defines our time. As early as 2012 it was clear that what happened in Syria would determine the next stage of world history.
Iranians gathered in Santa Monica in remembrance of the victims of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979-1989 regime.
Workers at Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane in Iran have been on strike for most of November. This is the latest of their walkouts this year over unpaid wages.
Yemeni civil society organizations have released a statement that should become the basis for peace negotiations.
In OPEC powers’ participation in the counter-revolutionary attacks on the revolutions in Syria and Yemen, and in the anti-immigrant reactionary reshaping of European politics, we see the next stage of bourgeois politics taking shape.
A U.S. activist in Syria solidarity criticizes the broad Left’s failure to practice revolutionary solidarity and outlines the dangerous political consequences.
News & Letters editorial taking up how in Syria, attacks are intensifying upon the three million Syrians, mostly civilians, trapped in Idlib province and how so many in the Left have failed them.
Syria’s Idlib province faces imminent slaughter by Russia, Iran, and Assad regime forces, which have already made it into the model of the 21st century concentration camp. We call upon all of humanity to oppose this and to demand protection for these millions whose only “crime” was to fight for freedom against a fascist regime.
Marxist-Humanist analysis of the Trump-Kim summit and G7 summit shows Trump is not charting a path to world peace but rather toward a more openly brutal world order. .
The pretenses of Iran’s greedy and murderous ruling class continue to be exposed by political prisoners like Esmail Abdi, teachers’ union activist, and Narges Mohammadi, engineer and women’s rights proponent.
We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
Iran’s planned ecological self-destruction has brought poverty, displacement and mass unemployment and mass revolt to local populations as the regime reduces mighty rivers to trickles by diverting water to be used by the oil industry.
As this is being written, Russian and Assad regime war planes continue to pound the working-class communities of East Ghouta. Every idea of human solidarity, every faith or philosophy, is being tested.
Readers’ Views on Women’s Marches; Iran in Revolt; Around the Globe; Race and Freedom; Queer Oppression; Why Read N&L?
An Iranian woman gives her view that the most recent wave of protests in Iran was preceded by a brave act of a woman in Tehran taking off her hijab in a very public way. Ever since Iran’s Revolution was usurped by Islamic clerics, women have been at the heart of every movement.
OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2018-2019
February 25, 2018
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The deeply ingrained rape culture, already widely known but often hushed up, has been exposed in the broadest way yet by the #MeToo movement. How deep and total is the needed uprooting [=>]
It is no accident that the most recent wave of protests in Iran was preceded by a brave act of a woman in Tehran taking off her hijab in a very public way. Ever since Iran’s Revolution was usurped by Islamic clerics, women have been at the heart of every movement.
Yemenis face another winter of war, hunger, disease, and the brunt of Saudi and Iranian imperial rivalry. Over half the population urgently needs humanitarian assistance.
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.
A shaken President Masoud Barzani was forced to resign Nov. 1 as the independence referendum he promoted in Iraqi Kurdistan blew up in his face.
As Venezuela’s social crisis deepens, the contradictions always present in Chavismo are coming to a head. A look at the Bolivarian Constitution, Chavismo’s relationship to the Arab Spring, and its dependence on high oil prices and a top leader illuminate the crisis.
Readers’ 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?
The maneuvering of imperial powers to carve up Syria amid the regime’s ongoing bloodbath reveals the logic that results when the masses are not allowed their self-activity. .
Qatar isn’t Yemen, and the Saudis won’t attack it. Qatar will not accept the Saudi demands.
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.
Florida college students rally for immigrants, against U.S. President Donald Trump’s first immigrant ban and against the University of South Florida’s support for companies that harm the environment or support the military.
March 2017 marks the sixth anniversary of the Syrian Revolution. Syrian revolutionaries have articulated a necessary step in organizing outside and beyond the aims of state powers.
Participant report of a 500-strong student rally at the University of South Florida in Tampa in support of immigrants and calling for divestment from companies whose products harm the environment or which produce weapons and supplies for the military.
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.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
From the September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters
Art by Paul Tanzawa
Women have been fighting for our freedom for centuries and yet we are still raped, beaten, enslaved–treated as less than human. We will never be free under capitalism, which has only made women’s lives worse and now threatens our existence [=>]
As the big powers push toward their desired “settlement” in Syria, the world is witnessing the most vicious war crimes and there are calls to end the dehumanization that allows this genocide to become accepted as “inevitable.”
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.
Participant report of Chicago May Day demonstration in solidarity with the Syrian Revolution.
Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
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.
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.
Russian airstrikes create havoc in Syria, embodying a philosophy of unfreedom. Revolutionary unity in Syria isn’t just a tactical issue, but a philosophic question, on the revolution’s ground of freedom and dignity, needing philosophic as well as material solidarity.
The fascist terror attacks in Paris herald further reaction. Syria and its tortured twin, Iraq, have become the umbilical cord connecting ISIS to the bourgeois imperialism that is its model.
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
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.
Syrian revolutionary Yassin al-Haj Saleh summarized the role that the Iranian government and spoke of the responsibility of revolutionaries to criticize their own government’s imperialism.
Worldwide, 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.