Takes up: the documentary ‘Old Lesbians’; the Taliban’s law granting authority to arrest anyone violating its 35 articles, which especially oppress women; 19 Afghan women arriving in Scotland to complete their medical degrees; and the National Assembly in The Gambia voting for female genital mutilation to remain illegal.
Takes up: Protest in Brazil against a bill that equates abortion after 22 weeks with homicide; the 4th World Congress for the Abolition of Prostitution in Montreal; women outdo fundamentalists in Turkey’s local elections; and the cancellation of a state-sponsored mass wedding of 100 orphaned girls and young women in Nigeria.
La guerra de Israel contra las masas en Gaza alcanzó proporciones genocidas. ¿Cuándo podrán los palestinos regresar a los lugares donde vivieron y podrán reconstruir? Su autodeterminación debe comenzar con sus ideas y aspiraciones.
Israel’s war against the masses in Gaza reached genocidal proportions. When will Palestinians be able to return to the places where they lived, and will they be able to rebuild? Self-determination must begin with their ideas and aspirations.
Many thanks to the translator and publisher of the Farsi translation of our “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”!
جنگ اسراییل و حملهی حماس؛ محرک سیر قهقرایی / فرانکلین دمیتریف / ترجمهی ناصر برین
Luis M. Saenz writing in ‘Trasversales’ argues this is not a war between Israel and Hamas, but a brutal operation by the Netanyahu government against the population of Gaza. Any vision leaving no Palestinians, or no Israelis, in historical Palestine is reactionary. Solidarity with the Palestinian population—which is not solidarity with Hamas—is a duty.
La guerra genocida de Israel sobre Gaza, así como los atroces ataques de Hamás que la provocaron, están llevando al mundo en una dirección reaccionaria y exponiendo la inhumanidad de los poderes dominantes, así como el retroceso de buena parte de la izquierda (Traducción al español del artículo “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”).
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and the horrendous Hamas attacks that sparked it, are driving the world in a reactionary direction and exposing the inhumanity of the ruling powers—as well as the retrogression of much of the Left.
In the weeks before the anniversary of Jina Mahsa Amini’s murder, the Iranian regime hardened its repression. None fear revolution more than it. But the people of Iran are letting the world know what they are fighting for on “the day after” the revolution. Their demands, if met, would transform Iran into one of the freest, most humane countries in the world.
The crucial question after the military coup in Niger is what will it mean for Niger’s 25 million plus people? What is their attitude to the present moment? This is the difficult question which few seem interested in exploring.
Takes on: Lebanese woman-led media platform “Khateera”; a fine in Chihuahua, Mexico, for singing lyrics in live performances that sexually objectify or promote violence towards women, and the deaths of Dr. Susan Love and Sinéad O’Connor.
Takes up: New ultraconservative members to the board of trustees of New College of Florida, once known for its Queer-friendly progressive education; transphobia increasing in Pakistan; and Pride marches across the Philippines during Pride Month 2023.
A critical note on the post-Arab Spring Tunisia, which has gone back to one-man rule.
Call to solidarity for the release of Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, imprisoned for “blasphemy.”
Movement du Nid’s fake escort service raises awareness of violence against women; Argentinian feminist collective Ni Una Menos organized the first regionwide Latin American march against femicide; Russia’s new law reduces first-time domestic violence assaults to civil offenses; huge outcry of Arab-Israeli women against fundamentalist Muslims’ claims that 19-year-old Arab-Israeli Lian Zaher Nasser deserved to be murdered for celebrating a Christian holiday with men where alcohol was served.
A view of what the failed coup in Turkey has wrought, including mass arrests of teachers, trade unionists, doctors, medical personnel, and others as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, makes a grab for total power.
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.
The explosive advances of the army of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), crossing from Syria into northern and central Iraq, have brought deeper miseries to the Iraqi people who might have expected they had already endured the worst, including the effects of U.S. imperialist policy. Atrocities from mass shootings and beheadings to systematic kidnapping and rapes of women—that the world and U.S. foreign policy ignored when IS carried them out against anti-Assad revolutionaries in Syria—in Iraq no longer remained hidden.
Participant report on a New York teach-in on “Syria in the Context of the Arab Uprisings.”
Three years ago, the Egyptian Revolution was fighting for its life in Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights, the women and men of the Square faced off against President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and thugs. In the end Mubarak was forced to follow Tunisia’s President-for-life, Ben Ali, into retirement and shame. The light of freedom spread–Square to Square, occupation to occupation. It was a historic turning point.
It was this global struggle that the military coup that ousted Morsi, and led to the massacre of over 800 of his supporters, was meant to stop short. Now, revolution continues, and the freedom idea lives, but the old world has tried hard to destroy it. Egypt’s newest new Constitution, passed Jan. 15 under the military rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, evokes only faint echoes of Tahrir. As artist Hanaa Safwat said, “The referendum is stained in innocent people’s blood. It has been built on the dead bodies of 800 people in Rabaa al-Adawiya.”
In a horrific attack on the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Somalia-based Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab killed at least 68 men, women and children. The group claimed this atrocity was a reprisal for Kenyan troops being in Somalia.
On Aug. 21 the genocidal regime of Bashar al-Assad murdered over a thousand civilians, mostly women and children, with sarin gas in the Damascus suburbs of Eastern Ghouta. It committed this crime in full view of the world—images of hundreds of murdered children, still in pajamas, laid out in temporary morgues, shocked viewers across the world.
Since April 2011 the world has looked on as over 115,000 Syrians have been killed, and over 7.2 million have been made refugees. When Assad’s regime resorted to illegal chemical weapons, it seemed to many that this would change. It seemed that the images of so many murdered innocents might compel some action.
Women Worldwide: Turkey anti-fundamentalist demonstrations; Egypt sexual violence; California in vitro fertilization; Saudi Arabia segregation.
The mass protests in Turkey, the presidential election in Iran and, above all, the continuing struggle for the Syrian revolution express the depth of today’s social crisis. These crises are interpenetrated and inseparable. The stakes are high.
Tunisia, Syria and Egypt show the determination of the masses to continue their revolutions in the face of vicious counter-revolution.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION REMAINS ON TRIAL
American Civilization on Trial (ACOT) is not “Black history.” Rather, Blacks play such an enormous role in the U.S. that their history that is in ACOT is a history of America.
Octogenarian
Midwest
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The movie Django Unchained could have been an ad for the NRA’s position on the current [=>]
A new South Asian edition of Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 until Today by Raya Dunayevskaya has been published in India.
South Asian readers can order it from Aakar Books, http://aakarbooks. com/, 28-E, Pocket-IV, Mayur Vihar Phase-I, Delhi-110 091, India. Phone: 91-11-2279-5505. Telefax: 91-11-2279- 5641. Email:aakarbooks@gmail.com.
Franklin Dmitryev
Chicago
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In Mexico, there has come to light a [=>]
by Artemis
In July, Cairo, Egypt, launched a new TV channel called Maria employing only niqab-clad women. The employees use the rhetoric of empowerment, stating this is a response to discrimination in hiring women who wear the fundamentalist garments covering all but the eyes. However, the channel’s owner, Abu Islam Abdallah, stated he founded it [=>]
by Artemis
In May, delegations of Japanese officials came to Palisades Park, N.J., where more than half the community is of Korean descent, to request the removal of a memorial to the Korean “comfort women.” They shockingly claimed that the more than 200 women, who were forced to be sex slaves for the Japanese military [=>]
by Gerry Emmett
Reportedly backed by French and U.S. air strikes, Kenyan troops entered south Somalia to attack positions of the Islamist al-Shabaab militia which controls much of the region. Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces and allied militias have also taken part. They aim to attack Kismayu, a coastal city controlled by al-Shabaab. Kenya [=>]
by Terry Moon
The racist U.S. Right has used the specter of terrorism in attacking Muslim religious law, Sharia, as a way to build and deepen fear of all Muslims and forward their reactionary agenda of racism against all minorities, sexism, and anti-immigrationism. Genuine feminist organizations like the decades-old Women Living Under Muslim Laws and the [=>]
Setting the historic record straight in response to the attack of the “Marxist-Humanist Tendency” on News and Letters Committees.
