Reader’s Views on Women vs. Reaction; Women and Philosophy; Syria and Humanity; Support Trans Children!; Animals and Us; Repression vs. Justice; Why Read “N&L”; Voices from Behind the Bars
Syria
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.
Northwest Indiana demands “No Ban! No Wall!”
March 21, 2017Syrians, Mexicans and Iranians were among the 100 who gathered in East Chicago, Indiana, to demand–under the banner of No Ban! No Wall!–the end of Trump’s demonization of immigrants in his effort to gain support from some white workers.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
World In View: In 2017 ‘The world is a Syrian issue’
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.
Reader’s Views: March-April 2017, Part 2
March 16, 2017Readers’ Views on Hegel’s dialectic and today’s retrogression; Why read N&L?; La Raza unida; Education and freedom; Racism in Burma and U.S.; Voices from behind the bars
Women take the lead against world retrogression
March 8, 2017An 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.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part 2
February 2, 2017Readers’ Views on: Practical and Theoretical Intervention; Syria and Humanism; International Crises; and Prisoners Speak.
Woman as Reason: Syrian women as force and revolutionary Reason
January 26, 2017Women’s Liberationist Terry Moon writes about the revolutionary force and reason of Syrian women including those in Raqqa fighting ISIS, in East Aleppo fighting Bashar al-Assad, in Salamiya and Daraya–documenting the forms they chose to fight for freedom.
Workshop Talks: Roots of Trumpism in swamps of history
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.
Editorial: Freedom and terror define Syria
Editorial taking up the present situation in Syria where the smoke of destroyed East Aleppo, of ravaged Free Idlib, East Ghouta, Wadi Barada, and other revolutionary communities raises Trump’s fascist banner. While President Obama is no friend to the Syrian Revolution, Trump delivered: surrender or death.
Democracy in the streets votes Trump out!
January 23, 2017Reports 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.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
Where to now for the Middle East?
November 30, 2016A 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.
Cry ‘Free Syria!’
November 27, 2016First hand account of Chicago demonstration on the International Day of Solidarity with Aleppo on Oct. 1, 2016.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 1
Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
Lead-Editorial: No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 26, 2016Trump’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.
No to Trump! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 12, 2016Trump’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.
World in View: Syrian Revolution: humanity on trial
September 17, 2016As 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.”
Chicago air show opposed
September 14, 2016Chicago anti-war activists protest the annual Air and Water Show’s message that war planes and war are cool, simultaneously educating the public on the wars the U.S. is involved in.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nigeria: a retreat, not a victory
September 11, 2016Raya Dunayevskaya gives a revolutionary history of the war for independence of Biafra from Nigeria while commenting on Conor Cruise O’Brien’s article published in the New York Review of Books, Dec. 21, 1968.
Help keep News & Letters going and growing
September 7, 2016An appeal for funds to help keep the paper, News & Letters, going and growing; and to help us expand our subscriptions to prisoners.
Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?
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.
Fascism rising from Russia to India, from the U.S. to the Philippines
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
World In View: Jo Cox (1974-2016)
July 16, 2016On June 16, Labour Party Member of Parliament Jo Cox was murdered by a neo-Nazi. Cox was murdered for opposing the rising reactionary tendency in European politics.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 2
July 14, 2016Readers’ Views on Needed New Beginnings in Philosophy and Revolution; Making One Year Count; Subjugated Knowledge; Free Syria/May Day; and Voices From Behind the Bars.
The Syrian Revolution continues
The author is reminded of Arab poet Al-Ma’arri as the inspiring Syrian revolutionaries in Maarat al-Numaan keep up their struggle for freedom against the Assad regime, despite the world ignoring them .
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 1
July 7, 2016Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
Britain’s hate-driven referendum a victory for the Far Right
June 26, 2016With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
Mass Killing in Florida is a Measure of Society’s Dehumanization
June 14, 2016We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”
Save Aleppo! May Day Solidarity with Free Syrians
May 18, 2016Participant report of Chicago May Day demonstration in solidarity with the Syrian Revolution.
World in View: ‘Panama’ tip of iceberg
The leak of 11.5 million confidential documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca gives a view into ruling class life. These “Panama Papers” are both a look at illegal machinations, and an insight into capitalist society’s actual power relations.
IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa
May 13, 2016Part 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.
II. The worldwide war against women
May 7, 2016Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
World in View: Refugee crisis measures world’s inhumanity
April 29, 2016At 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.
The need for new beginnings in thought and in action
April 25, 2016Contents: 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.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
Hospitals, children bombed: war zone care a nightmare
March 18, 2016A Yemeni doctor pleads for help for the tragic and hopeless circumstances of many wounded from the Yemeni Civil War in a Taiz hospital, and the U.S. is called upon to have a grassroots movement to support military pilots who would resist what are clearly illegal bombings of foreign hospitals and healthcare and rescue workers.
World in View: For a Free Syria!
In Chicago on Feb. 21, members of the Syrian community and activists demonstrated in opposition to Russian and Syrian regime bombing.
Editorial: The Syrian Revolution continues
March 8, 2016On 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.
Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics
Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.
Russian imperialism’s genocidal attack on Syria aims to destroy the revolution
March 3, 2016Russian 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.
Call for Convention 2016
February 28, 2016Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2016-2017
Witnessing revolution in Rojava
January 26, 2016Eyewitness report of a trip to Rojava in Syria in mid-2015.
World In View: Paris massacre heralds more reaction
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.
World in View: Ruqia Hassan’s dignity
The Syrian Revolution has brought forward a generation of citizen journalists who risk everything to report the truth, like the late Ruqia Hassan.
Workshop Talks: Urgency of solidarity
January 25, 2016Workers often ignore borders to solidarize with fellow humans. Solidarity needed now against atrocities against Syrian civilians and in support of Larycia Hawkins risking tenure to stand with Muslims under attack.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2016, Part 1
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2015, Part 1
December 16, 2015readers views nov dec 2015 part 1