While tens of thousands across the globe marked the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with support rallies for Ukraine’s fight for self-determination, there were a few disturbing “anti-war” rallies bringing together far-right with Left groups calling for an end to supplying arms to Ukraine.
Russia
Boycott ‘Rage Against the War Machine’
News and Letters Committees is one of many signatories to this statement. More such events are sure to be held, and it is vital to be aware of their reactionary “red-brown” nature.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2023, Part Two
Readers’ Views on: Ukrainian Self-Determination and the Idea of Freedom; N&L for the Study Group; Sharing the Paper; Climate Movements vs. Summits; Unsanitary Prison Conditions; Prison Exploitation; Voices from behind Bars
Why we’re here for Russian dissidents
March 20, 2023Voices from a California solidarity action with Russian dissidents who expressed their opposition to Putin’s war within Russia.
Propping up fascists
March 17, 2023To 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.
Call for Convention, 2023
February 26, 2023Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2023
Readers’ Views: January-February 2023, Part One
January 24, 2023Readers’ Views on: Women’s Struggles for Freedom; Open Season on Lgbtq+ ; Healthcare Workers on Strike; Lois Curtis; Immigrant Solidarity Needed; Putin vs. Ukraine; U.S. Right vs. Ukraine; Water and Humanity’s Future
Essay: Ukrainian self-determination and idea of freedom
Ukrainians’ self-organizing drew in all layers of the population, acting on their passion for independence and freedom from imperial overlords. The new life they have brought to the idea of democracy is deeper than political democracy. Marx’s humanist idea is a future determined by fully realizing that deeper content.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2022, Part One
November 11, 2022Readers’ Views on: Iran: Woman, Life, Freedom; Election Threats and Battles; Women’s Marches and Enemies; Sexist Supreme Court; Ukrainians Fight for Freedom; Para-Transit Disservice; Mike Davis; Labor Struggles, from Amazon…to the Bank.
Editorial: Ukraine makes gains, Putin brandishes nukes
November 6, 2022Putin failed to terrorize Ukraine into submission with massive bombing of civilians and social infrastructure. Ukrainian social solidarity, resilience and massive participation of all layers of the population inspired the world that a people do not have to cave to extortion and terror.
Essay: State-capitalism and the idea of freedom
September 13, 2022Wislanka reviews Lea Ypi’s ‘Free,’ a testimonial of experiencing both “socialism” and then a Western style of life in 1990’s Albania, and relates it to the present moment. The book asks what freedom means and the essay takes it deeper in the new context of wars, fascism, resistance from below and the self-development of the idea of freedom.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2022, Part One
Readers’ Views on Abortion Rights Struggles; Ukraine, Russia and the Left; Marx and Transgender; World Food Crisis; Normalized Domestic Violence, and Ecuador’s Uprising
Will China make war on Taiwan?
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.
Editorial: Ukraine is a beacon against fascism & war
September 9, 2022Ukraine is afraid of losing European supporters after having fought off a Russian invasion for six months in the largest war in Europe since World War II. Ukrainians are also fighting imposed rotten compromises at the expense of Ukrainians! Yes to Ukrainian self-determination and freedom from Russian imperialism!
War is excuse to ravage the climate
July 19, 2022Country after country reacted to the war by increasing oil and gas trade and production. Only movements from below can keep the fossil fuel capitalists from turning the opportunity for a greener, freer future into opposite.
Left Apologetics for Putin
July 17, 2022This appendix to “Society in the Grip of Genocidal Ideology” details Putin’s genocidal ideology and how prominent Left journal “Monthly Review,” its editor John Bellamy Foster, and Noam Chomsky echo Putin’s propaganda in their apologetics for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
War, climate chaos, capitalism, COVID: World food crisis spreads
July 7, 2022With Russia’s war on Ukraine, a food crisis is emerging globally with lightning speed. Capitalism, with its agricultural-industrial system of commodity food production for the world market, is the cause of, and suffers from the consequences of, multiple, linked crises of war, COVID, and climate. There is radical opposition to this perfect storm of capitalist crises.
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.
Where’s the solidarity with Syria?
Free Syria areas have repeatedly demonstrated solidarity with Ukrainians fighting their common enemy, but have had to carry on their fight, for freedom and to avert extermination, without the international support their struggle has deserved.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2022, part one
Readers’ Views on: Abortion Bans vs. Women and Freedom; Anti-War, Pro-Democracy Voices from Russia; Patriarchy Attacked; Putin’s Brutal War
Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance shake up the world
May 15, 2022Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resistance to it are shaking up the world and revealing the ideological pollution of society, including of the Left.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part One
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt
March 16, 2022Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.
Youth in Action: March-April 2022
Students at West Virginia University, Harvard and Stanford, among others, held protests and rallies against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In addition, college students picketed the office of Illinois Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley on March 4 to protest an $8,000 campaign contribution from weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt
March 8, 2022Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.
Down with Putin’s war on Ukraine!
February 27, 2022No to war on Ukraine! The capitalist system in crisis ever veers toward war. Putin is not so much the exception but the embodiment of the ongoing shift in world politics, signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked. The destruction of democracy and the move to the Right, which Putin has aided, helps set the stage for that nightmare.
NO TO WAR: International statement of solidarity launched by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign
February 22, 2022We, socialists, trade unionists, scholars, activists for human rights, social justice and peace, stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine against Russian imperialism.
The international left and labour movement must vigorously oppose Russia’s threats against Ukraine.
We say neither Washington nor Moscow. We oppose the policy and manoeuvrings of the big Western powers and NATO.
But currently [=>]
Editorial: No to Putin’s planned war in Ukraine
January 26, 2022Saber-rattling rhetoric, troop movements, and threats of open warfare have accompanied rounds of diplomatic meetings between Russia, the U.S., NATO, and other European powers over the future of Ukraine. These threats must be opposed, and seen for what they are—anti-working class counter-revolution on a world-historic scale.
Free speech and revolution
December 13, 2021Workers are key in the fight for freedom of speech as is the need for theory grounded in a philosophy of freedom.
World in View: China’s and U.S.’s imperial maneuvers
November 17, 2021The front line of the capitalist-imperialist U.S-China confrontation shifts to the Pacific Ocean, with Taiwan in the crosshairs.
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.
Taliban reconquest shakes alliances, challenges Left
September 12, 2021The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
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.
Afghanistan turmoil shakes world politics, challenges Left
August 21, 2021The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
Queer Notes
July 20, 2021More Russian youth are accepting LGBTQ+ people because for years many have been coming out publicly; the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya is demanding USAID and the UK redirect their aid–which has been funding conversion therapy in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda–to LGBTQ+-run organizations; and two businesses in Tennessee won an injunction against an anti-Trans law.
Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
June 12, 2021In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
Russia threatens Ukraine invasion
May 8, 2021A seven-year-old war in Ukraine–involving Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists, with Russia’s ominous, close presence–recently underwent an escalation. Ukrainians are caught within this developing new Cold War, subject to competing powers, West and East, far away from any genuine self-determination.
World in View: The Syrian Revolution can’t be killed
It has been said, “The Revolution is an idea; you can’t kill an idea.” The thousands who gathered in Idlib city on March 15, the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, lived that truth.
Editorial: Masses resist Burma’s murderous coup
March 11, 2021The people of Burma have taken to the streets daily by the tens of thousands since the army carried out a coup on Feb. 1. This deeper, more human level of opposition is not just to the coup, but the nationalist monks as well as NLD’s positions. A new social solidarity is emerging.
Double scourge of fascism and COVID-19 shakes the world: Vaccine rollout inflames global inequalities
January 30, 2021Vaccine rollout has been mired in poor planning, profit-centered thinking and indifference, with discrimination both within countries and against poor countries. Worldwide, a rat race ensued.
International Women’s Day 2020
March 26, 2020What was new this International Women’s Day was larger marches, greater militancy of women participants, the new places where they took place, and the attacks against them which escalated significantly from previous years.
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.
World in view: In Syria, righteous hours expose evil years
March 17, 2020Free Syrians continue to fight the regime and Russia, and regime supporters keep pressing for genocide. They cannot coexist.
World in View: Putin after Putin?
January 21, 2020Russian President Vladimir Putin is laying the groundwork for his own continued hold on state power.
Protests in Russia
September 2, 2019Report on the increase of large protests and mass unrest in Russia caused by economic conditions, reports of slave labor and the government’s refusal to allow opposition candidates on the ballot for Moscow city council elections.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: China’s youth revolt vs. Mao’s legacy
June 26, 2019This article anticipated the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement in a way that sheds light on today’s realities by tracing the youth and labor revolt in 1980s China as well as the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party’s maneuvers in politics and ideology.
Chicago vigil for Syria, Yemen and Crimea
April 27, 2019Participant report of a Chicago vigil in solidarity with the people of Syria, Yemen, Crimea, and other lands.
Chicago vigil for Syria
March 26, 2019Participant report of a Chicago vigil in solidarity with the Syrian people against Assad.
World in View: Prisoners of Rukban
March 13, 2019In the Rukban camp along the Jordan/Syria border, at least 41,000 displaced Syrians, including women and children, are suffering the ravages of winter weather, hunger, lack of medicine, and the terror of being threatened by the forces of the genocidal Bashar al-Assad regime.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2019, Part 1
March 11, 2019Readers’ Views on: workers strike back, genocide and Facebook, Mauritius victory, Syrian Revolution under fire, “55 Steps,” debating yellow vests, women’s struggles, and why read News & Letters.