The war on Iran and the Venezuela coup are part of Trump’s attempt to reorganize the world order and grasp for absolute power. In countering this tumble toward world war, can we build a movement that is not only against Trump and capitalism, but keeps developing the fullness of what we are for?
The horrendous realities in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Rio de Janeiro and Venezuela are connected. Several of the world’s powers are implicated. The global capitalist system allows mass murder, rape and genocide to become “normalized.”
News and Letters Committees’ response to the call for solidarity messages to the 63rd International Antiwar Assembly held yearly in Japan.
Takes up: A UN Women report about women-led and women’s rights organizations in humanitarian crisis zones; an ongoing epidemic of hundreds of domestic violence cases, including eight femicides, in Nova Scotia, Canada; and UK modernizing its voyeurism laws to keep up with abuses of advances in technology.
What kind of new world order is Trump heading for? Forced annexation of territories (as in Russia’s war on Ukraine), genocide (as in Israel’s war on Gaza), and neocolonialism (as in the Democratic Republic of Congo) are crucial parts of it. The word “multipolar” cannot hide its imperialist nature.
Trump’s return is a manifestation of capitalism’s tendency toward fascism when destabilized by systemic crises. The questioning of the foundations of this decaying society is linked to a search for an alternative. We have a responsibility to help the movement set its direction by working at the concrete projection of a liberatory banner.
In its latest incursion into Europe, the Trump administration ranted against European liberalism, calling it the greatest threat to Europe, “the threat from within.”It not only campaigned for far-right parties but demanded their elevation to power. Trumpism aims to remake the world under the domination of new forms of fascism.
Trump’s intention to rule indefinitely must be blocked. His plans would worsen living and working conditions. The new bureaucracy of MAGA loyalists would be used to crush resistance. Resorting to the electoral system is a necessary defense, but it cannot be separated from joining and building movements whose challenge to the system goes beyond electoral politics.
Part III of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up Putin’s war on Ukraine and its connection with fascism worldwide, especially seen on Israel’s war on Gaza, the ongoing genocide in Sudan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s religious chauvinism.
Part IV of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes on the retrogression in Left thought, especially on the questions of Israel’s war on Gaza and Putin’s war on Ukraine.
The solidarity of revolutionaries with Ukraine, from vigils to material support, helps the defense against Russia’s invasion continue. Oppose the Putin/Trump/Republican blocking of aid! With international support, including enough weapons, Ukrainians may be spared the need to fight alone.
Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2024
Scientists and climate movements highlighted the urgent need to take real climate action. Opposed are fossil fuel industries and their nation-states, who dominated COP28 and guaranteed its emptiness. The path forward can be built on the movements from below, posing liberation from capitalist exploitation and the release of full human development.
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.
Message in solidarity with the annual international antiwar assembly
The climate crisis is already disrupting billions of lives. Yet the economic and political powers are more concerned with eliminating safeguards for workers and pushing more fossil fuels. It is no time to despair. It is a time of crisis that opens the door to a revolutionary transformation of society.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has shaken up world politics, sharpened the divide in the Left and nurtured Red-Brown alliances. That Putin’s genocidal but threadbare ideology could have such an impact reflects the Left’s philosophical disorientation. It is necessary to listen to the voices and actions within Ukraine for social transformation toward freedom.
It is an atrocity that Bashar al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League Summit on May 19. This is one more attempt to bury the Syrian Revolution, which has heard its obituary pronounced again and again since the first mass demonstrations of Arab Spring, March 15, 2011.
After Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma) on May 14, the National Unity Group representing civilian opposition and armed resistance reported 200 Rohingya Muslims had been killed as the storm hit with 130-mile-per-hour winds.
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.
A Burmese woman activist speaks about the war against civilians by the Tatmadaw and the need for solidarity.
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 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
Voices from a California solidarity action with Russian dissidents who expressed their opposition to Putin’s war within Russia.
To 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 of News and Letters Committees, 2023
Readers’ 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
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.
Canada’s Conservative Party and Alberta province’s United Conservative Party have both chosen racist, anti-immigrant leaders, moving Canada to the Right.
Readers’ 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.
Excerpts of the appeal from the Executive Committee for the 60th International Antiwar Assembly, together with the message of solidarity sent to the Assembly from News and Letters Committees. Against Putin’s war and for revolutionary new beginnings!
Putin 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.
Readers’ Views on Abortion Rights Struggles; Ukraine, Russia and the Left; Marx and Transgender; World Food Crisis; Normalized Domestic Violence, and Ecuador’s Uprising
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.
Ukraine 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!
The difficulties people with disabilities are experiencing in Ukraine as it is being attacked by Russia; the newly formed Marion County (Oregon) Advisory Group will help the disability community connect with emergency management during emergencies; and the Australian Disability Enterprises refused to raise their sub-minimum wage for disabled workers.
Excerpts from the June 3, 2022, statement by La Via Campesina, “Stop the food crisis! Build food sovereignty NOW!” and a link to the full statement.
Country 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.
This 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.
With 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.
Genocidal ideology, which was manifested differently in the Buffalo mass shooting and in Putin’s war on Ukraine, has spread throughout our society, pervading the Right but also polluting the Left. How to fight this retrogression in all its forms?
Review of ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,’ states that it missed a great chance to be political in a meaningful way. Writer Katy Brand left out the hard part, creating characters who live in a safe world that doesn’t exist. You can’t comprehend prostitution, sex work and sex workers without talking about capitalism and how it alienates and destroys human relationships.
LGBTQ+ Ukrainians are reacting in a variety of ways to the Russian invasion. Some are fleeing, others have enlisted or been drafted to fight; and others are staying to help their country in other ways.
Like 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.
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 on: Abortion Bans vs. Women and Freedom; Anti-War, Pro-Democracy Voices from Russia; Patriarchy Attacked; Putin’s Brutal War
Russia’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.
Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.
Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.
Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
