Patrick Bond’s piece “Mandela: Was he pushed or did he jump?,” posted At Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, graphically describes the catastrophic transition from South African apartheid to today’s neoliberalism – a sobering cautionary tale for all fighting for radical democratic change today – in Greece, in the U.S., in the Middle East, and beyond. Even though the neoliberal pressures are enormous, we all need to think about strategic alternatives.
Place: Africa
Lovely Bones: Reflections on the Legacy of Nelson Mandela
The question of where Mandela would be laid to rest was finally resolved in June, months before he passed away on December 5, 2013.
South Africa: The Marikana Massacre and the New Wave of Workers’ Struggle
An Interview with Mazibuko Jara of the South African Democratic Left Front
I’m here with Mazibuko Jara. Mazibuko is from the Democratic Left Front of South Africa. He was spokesperson for the South African Communist Party and the deputy secretary for the Young Communist League, back a decade and more ago. He is one of the co-founders of Amandla magazine and the Democratic Left Front, and they’ve been extremely active in the support for the Marikana miners and for South African farmworkers, and elsewhere. We’ll talk about this and more in this interview. Today is Sunday, Dec 2, 2012.
Mali: A Neo-Colonial Operation Disguised as an Anti-Terrorist Intervention*
Translated by Dan La Botz
In mid-January of this year France invaded Mali, a former French colony that sits in the middle of what was once the enormous French empire in Africa that stretched from Algeria to the Congo and from the Ivory Coast to the Sudan. The French government argued that its invasion of its former colony was an anti-terrorist and humanitarian intervention to prevent radical Salafist Muslims from taking the capital of Bamako and succeeding in taking control of the country.
South Africa–The Marikana Massacre and the New Wave of Workers’ Struggle
An Interview with Mazibuko Jara of the South African Democratic Left Front
[This article will be appearing in the summer 2013 issue of New Politics.]
The Rosa Choir, South Africa
Our correspondent and contributor in South Africa, Andre Marais, sent us the link to this recording of the Rosa Choir, a diverse group that sings in traditional songs in Afrikaans, Xhosa and English.
Occupy Nigeria: ‘When the Cup is Full’
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." – Abraham Lincoln
The Movement for Justice and Equality in Mauritania
New Politics interviews an MJEM activist in the United States
New-York Historical Society Sinks to a New Low with a Black-Tie Gala for Henry Kissinger
[Reprinted from the History News Network.]
Talking about race and Haiti
Though these two pieces about education, one about the terrible way the US is destroying any possibilities for a real system of public education in Haiti, the other reasons the author is NOT talking about race, do not make this connection, they point to the fact that education in the US has to be seen in the context of international policy, and in particular US imperialism, in which racism is pro
Solidarity With Zimbabwean Political Prisoners
[The following appeal has been endorsed by New Politics as well as The Nation, The Progressive, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, among others.]
Six people in Zimbabwe are now imprisoned on charges of treason for organizing a meeting to discuss the mass movements in Tunisia and Egypt. For this “crime” they face a possible death sentence. They have been tortured and are now in solitary confinement.
review
Marx and the non-Western World
This truly path-breaking book goes against the grain of the conventional wisdom which reduces Marx to an Eurocentric and economistic thinker; as Douglas Kellner comments, Kevin Anderson shows that Marx “is the sophisticated and original theorist of history some might not have ever expected him to be.” Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including his journalistic work written for the New York Daily Tribune as well as unpublished material on non-European societies, it brings to the fore a global theorist whose soci
Support for Tunisia's democratic revolution
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) has issued an informative and politically important statement about events in Tunisia.
Darfur: The World's Most Famous Humanitarian Disaster
The emergence of Darfur as a cause célèbre in the West has been one of the more notable propaganda achievements in recent memory. Though the Darfur region of Sudan has been the scene of great human suffering, a death toll of perhaps 300,000 and a population of displaced persons numbering well over 2 million qualifies Darfur as serious but — regrettably — hardly unique for the scale of its violence in the first decade of the 21st century.
Zimbabwe and Rhode Island: The new exemplar for labor
“Unions are killing the economy” says Henry Blodget at the Business Insider. He gleefully applauds the firing of every teacher in a Rhode Island school for their arrogance. How dare workers, teachers especially, think they have a voice in their working conditions or salaries? How uppity of teachers to sneer at the bosses’ absolutist control of the workplace. Let’s recall that Henry Blodget was indicated for insider trading.
Dennis Brutus
Dennis Brutus – celebrated poet, anti-apartheid fighter and lifelong socialist – died last week. As a student activist at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-2000s, I was privileged to know Dennis in the short time before he departed for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he spent his last years. Throughout the world and for a long time to come, Dennis’ outstanding contributions to peace and justice struggles will be recounted.
Cultural relativism
Are all cultures are equally valid and commendable? asks Peter Tatchell. I just received an email describing speeches Peter Tatchell has delivered on this subject. ( You can follow him with twitter at http://twitter.com/PeterTatchell or Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/cj9y6s ).
Multiculturalism vs. human rights?
Multiculturalism vs. human rights?
Defending multiculturalism but warning against its excesses
Multiculturalism has many positive benefits. It defends the right to the different, which is a very important and precious human right, especially for those people whose difference has historically resulted in social marginalization and exclusion: including women, black, disabled and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
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