Participant report: the San Francisco May Day demonstration addressed labor organizing, bread and butter issues, and political repression in Iran and Turkey.
Iran
What tyrants fear the most: revolution
May 19, 2022Like repression in Iran, the war against Ukraine is, more than anything else, understandable on the basis of fear of revolution and the overthrow of the existing order.
World in View: Will Yemenis survive the proxy war?
After seven years of war in Yemen, the UN estimates that almost 400,000 people, primarily civilians, have died, 60% from hunger and disease, with children being 70% of the deaths. The war has become a proxy for the Saudi Arabia-Iran Middle East conflict.
Solidarity with Soheil Arabi and his mother
November 18, 2021Call to solidarity for the release of Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, imprisoned for “blasphemy.”
Daraa and Free Syria
September 22, 2021In Daraa, the birthplace of the Syrian Revolution, resistance has continued. Fifty Syrian revolutionaries and their families were forced to leave the city to join other revolutionaries in the Free Syrian enclave in the country’s northwest.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2021
September 21, 2021Readers’ Views on: Solidarity with Palestinians; Attacks on Democracy; Iranian Revolt; Musicians’ Labor; Damage to Homeless; Covid-19 Killers; Trump and Taliban; Far Right in Portland; Critical Race Theory; Prisoners under Fire; Voices from Behind Bars; Only the Dialectic Can Save Us
World in View: Central Asia reconfigures imperialism
September 9, 2021The continuing struggle for Afghanistan is not about “tribalism,” or the past—it is an up-to-date product of world capitalism. It is about state power and wealth. This is true whether we consider the remaining influence of Ghani’s Islamic State, which did raise the educational level, and sometimes status, of women; or the continuing threat of Daesh, with its “Caliphate’s” appeal to disturbed and nihilistic urban youth; or the prospect of rule by the Taliban’s Emirate with new diplomatic recognition from China, Russia, and Iran.
Solidarity with Palestinians needed as state powers scheme
July 1, 2021The brief, dirty war that broke out May 10-21 between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist group ruling Gaza had many reactionary consequences.
Queer Notes: July-August 2021
June 29, 2021Iranians protesting “honor killing” of Gay man Alireza Fazeli Monfared; students at Pendleton Heights High School in Indiana protest administration’s demand that Pride flags be removed from classrooms; nonbinary genderqueer Tryfan Morys Eibhlyn Llwyd, fighter for Gay liberation and the end of racism, died at age 70.
World in View: Iran: assassination, imperialism, ‘conspiracy’
January 30, 2021Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated as his car convoy passed through the town of Absard on Nov. 27. No suspect was apprehended. Speculation fell on Israel, the U.S., and Iranian oppositionists.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: What is philosophy? What is revolution?
November 27, 2020This Political-Philosophic Letter of Raya Dunayevskaya speaks to the need to return to philosophical roots at times of deep crisis, including addressing the question of how to maintain independence when fighting counter-revolution.
Editorial: Yemen: A voice that must be heard
August 28, 2020The regional war devastating Yemen is a counter-revolution against its Arab Spring revolution and its humanism.
Revolution in Permanence in Syria, After the Uprisings
March 22, 2020Review-essay (longer version) on the book ‘Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience’ by Joseph Daher. With a combination of ruthless criticism and consistent solidarity, the author situates the Assad regime and Syria’s three counter-revolutions into a broader trend of global neoliberalism.
Editorial: Trump after impeachment
March 8, 2020In the aftermath of Trump’s impeachment trial, impunity and purges rage while checks and balances failed. Armed with a philosophy of freedom, the opposition to Trump and to the capitalist system that spawned him would give Trump the challenge that fellow politicians could not.
Editorial: The death of counter-revolutionary Qassem Soleimani
January 21, 2020The death of counter-revolutionary Qassem Soleimani, together with Donald Trump’s war moves, illuminate this changed world.
Iran workers jailed
September 1, 2019Abbas Goya denounces the incarceration of Esmaeil Bakhshi, leading figure of the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory strike, along with Ali Nejati and worker-journalist Sepideh Gholyan and the editors of Gaam, a pro-worker paper in Iran.
Women worldwide, September-October 2019
August 31, 2019Feminists in Iran call on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to resign; huge demonstrations against police rapes in Mexico; removal of the “Girl of Peace Statue” in Japan; and the trial of Canan Kaftancioğlu, the Istanbul chief of the secularist Republican People’s Party.
Trump plays with fire in his ‘golden era’
June 26, 2019Donald Trump’s threats to Iran analyzed in light of his use of capitalism’s lifeblood commodity, oil, and the continuity and discontinuity of U.S. imperialism.
Freedom has to mean we control our own bodies
May 30, 2019“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: May-June 2019
May 6, 2019Readers’ 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.
World in View: The genius of the Sudanese revolution
The brilliant Sudanese revolution is another in a line of rebellions against reactionary rule.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2019
February 25, 2019Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
World in View: Yemen torn by poverty, imperialism
January 28, 2019Yemen’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.
Essay: How dead thought failed Syrian revolution’s living history
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 remember
December 14, 2018Iranians gathered in Santa Monica in remembrance of the victims of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979-1989 regime.
Iran strike solidarity
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.
Yemen peace talks
Yemeni civil society organizations have released a statement that should become the basis for peace negotiations.
World in View, November-December 2018: Counter-revolution redefines EU, OPEC
December 11, 2018In 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.
Discussion article: The Left’s response to Syrian genocide
October 7, 2018A U.S. activist in Syria solidarity criticizes the broad Left’s failure to practice revolutionary solidarity and outlines the dangerous political consequences.
Editorial: Stop the coming slaughter in Idlib!
September 17, 2018News & 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.
Idlib: Syria’s 21st century concentration camp
September 10, 2018Syria’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.
Editorial: Trump-Kim ‘peace’ threatens masses
July 18, 2018Marxist-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. .
World In View: Iran’s working class speaks from prison
May 9, 2018The 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.
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We 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.
II. Spreading revolt opens new doors
May 3, 2018We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
Only revolt grows in Iran’s deserts
May 1, 2018Iran’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.
World in View: Syria and International solidarity
March 12, 2018As 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, March-April 2018, Part 1
March 11, 2018Readers’ Views on Women’s Marches; Iran in Revolt; Around the Globe; Race and Freedom; Queer Oppression; Why Read N&L?
Iranian women represent ‘bread and freedom’
March 8, 2018An 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.
Call for Convention 2018
February 25, 2018OFFICIAL 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 [=>]
Iranian women embody the resistance
February 8, 2018It 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.
World in View: Another brutal winter of war in Yemen
February 2, 2018Yemenis face another winter of war, hunger, disease, and the brunt of Saudi and Iranian imperial rivalry. Over half the population urgently needs humanitarian assistance.
Iranian workers, youth reach for new radical beginnings
January 28, 2018The 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.
World in View: Kurdistan setback
November 16, 2017A shaken President Masoud Barzani was forced to resign Nov. 1 as the independence referendum he promoted in Iraqi Kurdistan blew up in his face.
Venezuela, ‘Chavismo’ in total crisis—which way out?
August 8, 2017As 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: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ 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?
Editorial: Imperial carve-up of Syria?
June 30, 2017The 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. .
World in View: Saudi threat to Qatar
Qatar isn’t Yemen, and the Saudis won’t attack it. Qatar will not accept the Saudi demands.
Trump won’t smash Assad’s genocidal regime—support the Syrian Revolution!
April 9, 2017Assad’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.
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: Florida students rally
March 23, 2017Florida 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.