Category: Civil Liberties/Repression

Call for Solidarity with Uprisings in the Middle East & North Africa

This is a critical moment in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2019, uprisings have emerged in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. All have opposed authoritarianism, neoliberalism, poverty, corruption, religious fundamentalism and sectarianism. Women have been active participants . . .

Read more ›

“Letter Against US Imperialism” Damages Left by Supporting Iranian Regime Against a Popular Uprising

A “Letter Against U.S. Imperialism” has been circulating in leftist circles. It views the protests in Iran in a reductionist manner and unequivocally rejects them.
The Letter has been signed globally by well-known leftist organizations, activists and academics including Vijay Prashad, . . .

Read more ›

Book Review: Paradoxical Politics of Protest in China

Teresa Wright, Popular Protest in China, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2018
and
Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Teresa Wright’s concise but comprehensive overview, Popular Protest in China, has only become more relevant in the . . .

Read more ›

Stand by the Protesters in Iran!

“We are protesting against problems in the whole system in general. We reached a crisis where we noticed that the system cannot handle it anymore.”
— a protester in Chile.
Our world is on fire. Not only forests but also cities are . . .

Read more ›

The Politics of Citizenship Registration in India from the Perspective of a Bengali Refugee

Human beings have been repeatedly subjected to mass displacement and migration due to war, strife and conflict originating on the grounds of religion, race or ethnicity. If a “sneak peak” is taken into the pages of documented human history of . . .

Read more ›

Warren’s Plan to Address White Nationalism is an Expression of Neoliberalism: We Can Do Better

Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren released her plan to address white nationalism as part of her Democratic primary campaign. The recent spate of terror attacks accompanied by a manifesto or video expressing commitment to . . .

Read more ›

Unrest in West Papua

Resistance to the Indonesian government continues in West Papua, and it has a history.
Shortly after declaring independence in 1961, following the departure of the Dutch (who controlled the region), West Papua was invaded by Indonesian forces—Indonesia felt as though the . . .

Read more ›

Bolivia: Evo’s Fall, the Fascist Right, and the Power of Memory

After nearly 14 years in power, the government of Evo Morales fell in a little less than a month, due to allegations of fraud and the desire to remain in power. Previously, Morales was a campesino leader, but this time . . .

Read more ›

Idlib Resists

Over the past few days a popular uprising has broken out across Idlib against the hardline Islamist group HTS (formerly Al-Qaeda linked Nusra) which is militarily dominant in much of the province.
The recent uprising began when HTS increased Zakaat (taxes) on a . . .

Read more ›

Will Evo’s resignation lead to Pinochet or resistance?

The coup d’état against Bolivian president Evo Morales has generated the kind of anguish that great defeats of revolutionary struggles evoke: Allende’s fall, Che’s death in combat, defeat in the Spanish Civil War. “Criticism is no passion of the head, . . .

Read more ›

The Lebanese Intifada

Most news sources are construing or minimizing the Lebanon uprising by claiming it’s only due to a monthly Whatsapp fee, but it is much much more than that. Systemic issues are being raised, sectarian divides are falling, and the wall . . .

Read more ›

The Anti-Migrant International

In early December of 2017 the Trump Administration officially withdrew the United States from the UN Global Pact on Migration, claiming the 2016 accord “undermine[s] the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.” . . .

Read more ›

Solidarity with Iraq Popular Protests: Statement from Alliance of MENA Socialists

The demands for social justice and economic redistribution against the neoliberal destructive policies cannot be dissociated from the opposition to the sectarian political system. The overwhelming majority of protesters continue to denounce the Islamization and sectarianization of social and political life.

Declaration of Solidarity With the Kurds and People in Resistance in Northern Syria

In response to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria, decided by the President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and in anticipation of the impending military attack of the free people in Rojava that this deal enables, . . .

Read more ›

Support Rojava Against the Erdogan-Trump Unholy Alliance to Crush the Kurds!

On October 9, Turkish armed forces began bombarding Rojava, the autonomous self-governing Kurdish enclave in northern Syria and are poised to cross over with ground troops as well. This attempt to wipe Rojava off the map is the product of . . .

Read more ›

The Class Struggle and the Yellow Vests: Where Are We Headed?

We have never seen so many upheavals in so few years in France.
Society has been turned completely upside down in a way that is totally unprecedented. The social programs won after the Second World War have been savaged and democratic . . .

Read more ›

Palestinians in Israel at the Polls

Who could have missed Ayman Odeh’s eloquent op-ed piece in the New York Times, where he rightly asserted that “Arab-Palestinian citizens have chosen to reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his politics of fear and hate, and the inequality and division . . .

Read more ›

An Open Letter to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

In Resolution 62 of the Atlanta Convention of DSA you asserted your support for the Cuban government and condemned the U.S. policy of economic sanctions on that country.
I who write to you, a Cuban formed in the struggle by trying . . .

Read more ›

How Should the U.S. Left Think about China?

Editors’ note: This is the second of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.
[Interview with the author on Democracy Now.]
On the U.S. left, China is treated for the most part as an afterthought, an . . .

Read more ›

Why Hindu Nationalists are Intensifying the Occupation of Kashmir

The irony of India celebrating its 72nd year of national independence as it orchestrates a coup and military lock-down on the occupied territory of Kashmir was apparently lost on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi used the occasion of an annual . . .

Read more ›

“We’re All Hong Kongers Now”

Ecosocialists must stand in support of the millions of democracy protesters in Hong Kong and call on American trade unions and the left to join us. The Chinese Communist Party is on a suicide mission to destroy planet Earth in . . .

Read more ›

Top