After seven years of war in Yemen, the UN estimates that almost 400,000 people, primarily civilians, have died, 60% from hunger and disease, with children being 70% of the deaths. The war has become a proxy for the Saudi Arabia-Iran Middle East conflict.
El Salvador: President Bukele’s response to a spike in gang violence was to arrest 18,000 people, mostly youth, and suspend civil liberties.
Peru: a state of emergency was declared at the Cuajone copper mine, where nearby residents shut down the mine’s water supply, demanding compensation and a share of future profits.
A massive citizens’ revolt is taking place in Sri Lanka. It is focused against the authoritarian President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family members, who occupy many government posts. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have taken to the streets in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the President leave.
Ever since Tunisian President Kais Saied suspended parliament in July 2021, followed in March 2022 by the dissolution of parliament, Tunisia has been in turmoil. Masses in the street protest the lack of jobs and a shortage of basic food items, especially bread for lack of wheat, massive corruption with black markets and Saied’s single-handed decision-making.
The military junta is detaining 10,000 political prisoners while at the same time there is a growing resistance movement. Tens of thousands of youth from the cities have left for the countryside to join the hundreds of civilian militias across Myanmar, organized loosely into what are called the People’s Defense Forces.
More than four months after the military coup in Sudan last October destroyed the transition to civil rule, dozens of resistance committees continue to launch demonstrations, marches and protest meetings, issue manifestos, and hold assemblies to debate how to defeat military rule
It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.
A new federal law renders binding arbitration clauses in contracts void in cases of sexual assault and harassment. Women’s rights activists and national organizations worked for five years to get legislation introduced to stop the practice. This year it passed by a wide margin in February, and took effect March 3.
The first woman president elected in Honduras, Xiomara Castro, took office after a 12-year rule by the corrupt, conservative National Party. Will she focus her attention on the powerful grassroots movement which brought her to the presidency allowing its actions to be a determining new beginning for Honduras?
The International Monetary Fund, which is supposed to lend money to struggling nations in time of need, ends up just like any private capital money-grubbing bank: charging extra fees for the “privilege” of getting a large loan.
Congo’s joining the East African Community epitomizes the plans being made over the heads of the African masses. The contradictions between the people, local capitalists and other power brokers, and world imperialism will intensify as these developments go forward. In effect, the elites would like to create a mechanism for mediating social contradictions in the wake of Sudan’s revolution.
The guilty verdicts in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial don’t end the Jeffrey Epstein story. Prosecutors conducted it to reveal as little as possible about their network and associates—as if “settling family business”—but much has been learned.
French President Macron’s calculated use of fascist language marked a new low. He may have felt it necessary in response to the racist, anti-immigrant campaign of Eric Zemmour.
The concrete difficulties of the Sudanese Revolution, which since Oct. 25 has been facing a coup by the state-capitalist militarists who control much of the economy, can be seen in the blockade of Port Sudan.
A remembering of philosopher Aramesh Dustdar (1931-2021), an important critic of the retrogression of the Iranian Revolution.
Emmett connects the ever-growing surveillance state as part of contemporary capitalism, with the “scientific” expression of the worst kind of nihilism and anti-humanity as expressed in Sebastien Bohler’s book “The Human Bug.”
The front line of the capitalist-imperialist U.S-China confrontation shifts to the Pacific Ocean, with Taiwan in the crosshairs.
In 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.
The ruling class response to the pandemic was to lie, obfuscate, and manipulate the public in its own interest. The possibility that COVID-19 may have been a lab leak illustrates how capitalism can turn our deepest insights into our own nature towards our own destruction.
For many, the rhythms of Bunny Wailer’s 1976 Blackheart Man album sounded like the beating heart of a heartless world. Spark lit from embers of a fallen empire, the influence of reggae and Black consciousness remains one of the great moments in popular culture.
A letter to the French government warned of civil war. Signed by 25 retired generals and about 1,000 service personnel, it claimed that the nation’s “civilizational values” are threatened by immigrants , Islamism, “anti-racism” and attacks on the police and military.
Youth revolt broke out in Tunisia after police brutalized a 15-year-old. This year over 2,000 youths have been arrested in protests, many having been beaten and some tortured.
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.
A second wave of COVID-19 is devastating India. Each day over 300,000 new cases are reported, and over 3,000 people die. In the midst of this, the farmers’ protests continue as thousands remain camped outside Delhi. The Modi government has accused the camps of being “super-spreader” events, while farmers say the government is using the pandemic to demobilize its opponents.
The capitalist world remains in a deep crisis and now faces a crossroads. U.S., Chinese, and European imperialism all have aging populations and mounting debt . They need to find new sources of labor and natural resources to plunder. Africa, with the youngest population of any major region and abundant mineral wealth, is a target.
A wildfire that broke out April 18, 2021, forced the evacuation of the University of Cape Town, South Africa’s campus and destroyed a major part of the library. The Jagger Reading Room housed thousands of historic African films, letters, and manuscripts, many relating to the anti-apartheid struggle. Also lost were thousands of indigenous artworks and over 85,000 books.
An estimated 250 million Indian farmers have been on strike since last September in opposition to a series of new laws, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated as his car convoy passed through the town of Absard on Nov. 27. No suspect was apprehended. Speculation fell on Israel, the U.S., and Iranian oppositionists.
There is danger of neo-fascist parties gaining or taking control in several European countries including Germany, France, The Netherlands and Italy.
Thousands have died—including an undetermined number of civilians—and tens of thousands become refugees in the current conflict between Ethiopia’s central government and the regional government of Tigray. The central government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is being aided in its war by the Eritrean regime of long-time dictator Isaias Afwerki.
The European Union has once more proved its feckless inability to halt the destruction of democracy by Hungary and Poland, who caused a crisis by vetoing the EU budget, needed to fund the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery plan.
In early November, terrorists linked to the “Islamic State,” beheaded up to 50 villagers, men and boys, in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado. They are looking to exploit extensive energy resources, along with mineral wealth. High unemployment helps fuel the insurgency.
President Alexander Lukashenko, “Europe’s last dictator,” has ruled Belarus for 26 years. His time may be up, as hundreds of thousands of protesters have filled the streets of the capital, Minsk.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time on record all sections of the world economy are expected to contract in 2020.
One of the great originals, poet ruth weiss touched many bases, expressing the underlying humanism of a generation of great artists.
Residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities–0.6% of the population–have made up an estimated 43% of U.S. deaths from COVID-19. In any other situation these numbers would raise the specter of genocide.
The lie of a Syrian “renaissance” has disappeared and discontent manifested even in regime-controlled areas. Assad blames U.S. sanctions, but the problem isn’t sanctions. It’s genocide.
Two flashpoints in Asia between North and South Korea and between India and China erupted in threats and deadly clashes.
The great Tunisian-Jewish French writer Albert Memmi passed away May 20. Memmi’s complex identity registered the tensions of his century.
Free Syrians continue to fight the regime and Russia, and regime supporters keep pressing for genocide. They cannot coexist.
Every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic can be expected to highlight the class nature of society. The more important thing to remember is human solidarity.
With Brexit, the rise of the far right, Macron’s vacuous French nationalism, and Sinn Fein’s victory in Irish elections, the “idea of Europe” is under great strain.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa plans to cut the wages of public sector workers. He has come to represent the contradictions of post-apartheid society.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is laying the groundwork for his own continued hold on state power.
The Dec. 12 general elections in Britain were a victory for world reaction, reinforcing the racist 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
Massive protests in India met the Citizenship Amendment Act, which introduces religious qualifications for immigrants to become citizens and excludes Muslims.
If there are any two realities that absolutely compel human solidarity, it is the two that are manifest in Syria today—revolution, the human struggle for freedom against oppression—and genocide, the absolute negation of humanity.
Trump’s Oct. 23 speech on Syria lays out his counter-revolutionary vision of a changed world including his intention to reorient the U.S.’s PYD allies in line with world capitalism.
Gerry Emmett denounces the assassination of U.S. human rights lawyer Rachelle Bergeron and its connection with human trafficking from the Pacific to U.S.
An overview of the 11 days of massive resistance in Ecuador.
