women
Adam Hanieh on Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood, the military and the continuing revolution
Thousands of Egyptian protesters cross the Kasr al-Nile bridge to attend a rally in Cairo on January 27, 2012, to demand democratic change, a year after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
[For more analysis and discussion on Egypt, click HERE.]
By Adam Hanieh
August 12, 2012 -- Socialist Resistance -- Eighteen months after mass protests and strikes ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak from power, the basic aspirations that drove Egypt’s uprising remain largely unfulfilled. The vast majority of the population has seen little substantive improvement in living conditions. Political decision making continues to be dominated by a military junta closely tied to the United States.
Thomas Sankara: Revolution and the emancipation of women
"The revolution and women’s liberation go together.
Mauritius: Victory in struggle for decriminalisation of abortion
By Lindsey Collen
July 20, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Victories, even partial, are rare in these times. The revolutionary socialist party LALIT ("Lalit" means "struggle" in Kreol) would like to share with you an important development in the class struggle and struggle for women’s emancipation in Mauritius. LALIT is the only political party in Mauritius that has, over the decades, campaigned for abortion decriminalisation, and finally last month parliament passed a new abortion law to replace the 1838 total ban on any abortion. Everyone in the country knows that this is a LALIT struggle, as our stand on abortion decriminalisation had often been used “against” us. So, it is like getting accumulated “support”.
This victory comes less than a year after another victory accredited to LALIT: the introduction into schools of the mother tongues, Kreol and Bhojpuri, for the very first time in 2012.
Royal Society’s tunnel vision on population and poverty
People and the Planet
Royal Society Science Policy Centre Report
April 2012
Review by Ian Angus
May 23, 2012 -- Climate and Capitalism, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the Ian Angus' permission -- The radical ecologist Murray Bookchin once compared populationism to a phoenix, the mythical bird that periodically burns up and is reborn from its own ashes. No matter how often the “too many people” argument is refuted, it always returns, making the same claim that people are breeding too much and consuming too much, devouring the Earth like a plague of locusts.[1]
Afghanistan: Amnesty International lauds war and occupation as 'progress' for women
The bitter reality for Afghan women: an address by Malalai Joya.
By Tim Anderson
May 20, 2012 -- Stop the War Coalition, Sydney -- Amnesty International has muddied the waters over the occupation of Afghanistan with its latest campaign urging NATO to “keep the progress going” on women’s rights. The campaign was aimed at a NATO summit in Chicago and drew on one of the few remaining arguments for continued military occupation of that war-ravaged country.
The idea that a military occupation would somehow help Afghan women was promoted by Laura Bush, wife of the former US president who ordered the October 2001 invasion. It is an argument that been rejected by the Afghan women’s group, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and by activist and former Afghan MP Malalai Joya (see video above). They say that the NATO occupation has simply added a third enemy, on top of the Taliban and the NATO-backed warlords.
Malalai Joya: Foreign troops must leave Afghanistan
March 25, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Malalai Joya, a former MP and one of Afghanistan’s best-known democratic leaders, recently survived the sixth attempt on her life. Taliban gunmen attacked her office at 3 am on March 10, wounding two of her guards. In an exclusive interview, she told Green Left Weekly/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal’s Pip Hinman that “such terrorist acts will never stop my fight for freedom, democracy and justice”.
Joya will visit Australia in April to speak at the Marxism 2012 conference in Melbourne and a Stop the War Coalition public meeting in Sydney on April 11.
* * *
Malaysian socialists on IWD: For women's liberation, equality and freedom
By Nazreen Nizam, PSM women's desk coordinator
Unity statement by women in the Philippines
Washington threatens reprisals against Nicaragua’s voters
Nicaraguans celebrate the re-election of Daniel Ortega as president.
John Riddell interviews Felipe Stuart Cournoyer
February 2, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, also available at http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/. First published in Axis of Logic -- In a fit of petulant anger, the US government lashed out on January 25 against the outcome of Nicaragua’s recent presidential election. To understand the context of the US threats, I talked to Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, a Nicaraguan citizen and member of Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).[1]
* * *
John Riddell: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Nicaragua’s November 6, 2011, election “marked a setback to democracy in Nicaragua and undermined the ability of Nicaraguans to hold their government accountable”, but offered no particulars. What has roused Washington’s ire?