While immigrants suffer as winter settles in North America, the new year arrived without a Congressional bargain on immigration. Republicans not only demand harshly restrictive immigration measures but want to make Biden look bad by blocking accomplishments.
In October, the Pakistani government announced mass deportations for all migrants without papers by Nov. 1, mostly aimed at Afghans and causing great hardship. It decided on this mass expulsion mostly because of the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
U.S. President Joe Biden simultaneously put in place a proposal different from Donald Trump’s Title 42 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum hearing appointment. Biden used another of Trump’s laws: to require refugees to prove that they sought asylum in the first country they encountered. In both proposals human rights are trampled.
People are robbing banks in Lebanon as the only way to get to their own money. The economy has experienced a meltdown. Years of war, sectarian violence, and rampant corruption have led to extreme poverty for Lebanon’s citizens and thousands of Middle East refugees there.
Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Neither the coronavirus nor the ongoing climate changes are merely “acts of nature.” Rather both have emerged at this moment because humanity is grounded—entrapped—in the economic-social-political system(s) of capital/capitalism. It is the behemoth that we must examine: the monster we must free ourselves from.
Solidarity is needed with Central Americans seeking refuge and targeted by criminal policies of the Trump administration, with Mexico’s president knuckling under to Trump’s pressure.
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.
A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
Racist and homophobic politicians have moved from the fringes to contend for state power in Brazil. Fabricio Alvarado in Costa Rica and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a further step down an anti-human path.
Through a view of his childhood as ethnic Chinese in Burma, Htun Lin takes up the plight of the Rohingya and the betrayal of democratic ideals by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Far Right racist parties have continued to make inroads into mainstream politics. 40,000 people marched in Austria against the new governing coalition of the anti-immigrant Austrian People’s Party and the neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
Since 2012 Australia has held around 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers in brutal detention camps. Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Uighurs, Rohingya and Kurds, thrown together, have been subjected to stress, violence, and rape.
Recollection of voices from the April 13, 2017, Day of Action for Syria, in which the Women’s March movement came together with supporters of the Syrian people.
An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
Breaking news: participant report of New York protests against Trump’s anti-immigrant actions.
Htun Lin’s Workshop Talks column takes up his experience as a refugee from Burma to the U.S. and today’s plight of the Rohingya, who are experiencing ethnic cleansing at the hands of the state and Buddhist nationalists in Burma today.
Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Buddy Bell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence tells of their recent 150-mile walk across the state of Illinois on the issues of indefinite detention, solitary confinement and the racist U.S. prison system.
Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.
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.
At the crux of the world refugee crisis is a demand for new human relations. The will to deny any responsibility for centuries of exploitation of Latin America and Africa is at the root of inhuman attitudes toward refugees, and it becomes an opening for the most reactionary politicians.
Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
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
Readers’ thoughts on “Srebrenica, Bosnia, 1995; Europe and the World, 2015”; “Struggles against Racism”; “After Cecil, People Are Next”; “Teachers and Children”; “Workers, Customers Pay.”
Although the Greek masses reject the austerity program imposed on them by the European institutions, Syriza inexorably took a path to capitulation because it is rooted in the search for state power rather than the power of mass self-activity.
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.
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.
From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Dee Perkins
With the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, going nowhere, President Obama signed an executive order July 21 prohibiting such discrimination by federal contractors, which employ some 28 million workers, and, further, [=>]
Vigil for Rights of Persons with Disabilities bill in India; 6.5 million refugees with disabilities; Iraq camp for Syrian refugees with disabilities; Georgia: marginalization of children with disabilities.
Tens of thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel Aviv calling for “Freedom!” for the refugees detained in a Negev desert facility under Israel’s new anti-immigrant laws.
by Gerry Emmett
Last year, Switzerland was disgraced by an election campaign that demonized its Muslim inhabitants. Ironically, most Swiss Muslims have been refugees from genocide and persecution in Bosnia and Kosova.
Now the Federal Commission Against Racism has accused some Swiss communes (municipalities) of introducing forms of apartheid against asylum seekers, many from Nigeria, Eritrea [=>]
