International Women’s Day 2021 — Statement by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2021

On the occasion of the 2021 International Women’s Day on March 8th, the Secretariat of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) issued the following statement:

Women’s equal rights in health and safety at work and in society

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the oldest trade union international representing 105 million workers in 133 countries on the five continents, offers a warm internationalist greeting to the working woman, the female trade unionist, the female militant of each country and continent on this International Working Women’s Day, March 8, 2021.

The class trade union movement has always stood alongside the just demands of the women of the working class; it has been the one which turned the claims of women into claims of its own; the one which fought by implementing in its ranks the true equality between the male worker and the female worker. In fact, thousands of working women have offered the most valuable thing they possessed, their own lives, to the cause of the true emancipation of the whole society from the chains of capitalist exploitation; the emancipation of both working men and women. The WFTU is proud of its women martyrs, offered by its affiliates to the struggle for a more just society.

A New Hope for China’s Endangered Animals

BIODIVERSITY IN CHINA

Kyle Obermann

SupChina | February 17, 2021

Image provided by the Beijing-based NGO Shanshui Conservation Center

Two weeks ago, a mysterious post by a Chinese conservationist froze my finger mid-WeChat swipe.

“At last,” the post began, “I hope in the years to come, they can downgrade or drop out from the list once more.”

A tiny thumbnail of a wolf stared out from a linked article: “Wolves and leopards elevated to Class II, six civet species Class I!”

Prisons Prime Testing Ground for Dehumanizing Hi-Tech “Advances”

CAPITALISM’S DEATHPITS 

Raul Diego

MintPress News | February 19, 2021

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is coming under fire again from Democratic lawmakers, as well as from the American Postal Workers Union, who are calling for President Joe Biden to pave the way for DeJoy’s removal after the Trump-appointee announced higher mailing fees and logistical changes that could further slow down mail. The US Postal Service (USPS) has already suffered a more than 50% drop in on-time arrivals for first-class mail deliveries, according to the service’s own data.

Communist Alphaeus Hunton Drew Together Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist, Anti-Colonial Struggles

HISTORY 

People’s World | February 19, 2021

Left: Alphaeus Hunton addresses 4,000 people at Abyssinian Baptist Church to open a South Africa famine relief campaign in 1946. Paul Robeson is seated behind him. | Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Center top: Hunton picketing the South African consulate during the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, 1952. | Schomburg Center; Center bottom: Pamphlet by Hunton, 1950. | CPUSA Archives; Right: Hunton demonstrating in support of the pan-African struggle in 1952. | Pan-African News Wire 2nd photo: Hunton-DW-Feb15

People’s World is happy to reprint below an article from the Feb. 15, 1945 issue of the Daily Worker by W. Alphaeus Hunton, then the educational director of the Council on African Affairs (CAA).

Hunton, considered “one of the most neglected African American intellectuals” in U.S. history, partly due to his membership in the Communist Party USA, worked closely with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois domestically and internationally. Through the CAA, he helped to build a transatlantic alliance that fostered solidarity between African Americans fighting for equality and Africans fighting for liberation against colonial subjugation and oppression.

In the column below, written during “Negro History Week,” Hunton highlights internationalism as a key strategy African Americans and Africans have deployed repeatedly against slavery and white supremacy, as well as colonialism abroad. He also merges the World War II Allied fight against fascism with the fight against racism and colonialism, and notes that African Americans and colonial peoples have an opportunity—with the war nearing its end—to push the Allied powers to fulfill the promises made as part of their war-time alliance, through, for example, the Atlantic Charter.

Next week, People’s World will reprint another column by Hunton, as well as a brief sketch of his life and work by Tony Pecinovsky, who is completing a book about Hunton to be published later this year titled The Cancer of Colonialism: W. Alphaeus Hunton, Black Liberation, and the Daily Worker, 1944-1946.

“Today’s Guest Column: Crimea Conference Heightens Role of Negro History Week,” Daily Worker, February 15, 1945.

By Alphaeus Hunton

It is Market, and There are Children Also

CAPITALISM 

A Journal of People report

Market is miraculous. Market is great. So, allow market to play its role. Such goes mainstream saying.

A look shows market’s miracle, its power.

Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai wrote in The New York Times (“Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery”, January 1, 2021): “The central, befuddling economic reality of the United States at the close of 2020 is that everything is terrible in the world, while everything is wonderful in the financial markets.”

Western Intervention in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings: Political Containment, Neoliberalism, and Imperial Legacies

EVENT 

Online Workshop, February 23-25, 2021

University of Oxford, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Middle East Centre

Convenors: SPF Fellows Susann Kassem and Shun Watanabe

Generously sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation

Tuesday, February 23, 9-10:15 am GMT

Junko Chano (Sasakawa Peace Foundation) and Eugene Rogan (University of Oxford) Opening remarks
Susann Kassem (University of Oxford) and Shun Watanabe (Kyoto University) Introductory comments
Benjamin Schütze (Arnold Bergstraesser Institute Freiburg) Managing and controlling popular discontent: External ‘democracy promotion’ interventions in Jordan
Shun Watanabe (Kyoto University) Politics of reform as a new ruling formula in neoliberal Jordan: the case of decentralisation

Wednesday, February 24, 4-5:15 pm GMT

Jacob Mundy (Colgate University) Why is the ‘everywhere war’ mostly in the Middle East and North Africa?
Kiri Santer (University of Bern) Governance assemblages in cooperative deterrence: the case of the Libyan Coast Guard
Negar Razavi (Northwestern University) Syria still haunts me: The moral-affective politics of Washington’s ‘non-intervention’ interventions in the Arab world

Thursday, February 25, 4-5:15 pm GMT

Corinna Mullin (CUNY/ New School) Disciplining revolt: ‘Counter-terror’ as (neo)colonial intervention in post-uprising Tunisia
Catherine Herrold (Indiana University) Negotiating Western intervention: NGOs, foreign aid, and civil society in post-uprising Egypt
Susann Kassem (University of Oxford) Concluding remarks

Secret and Not So Secret Intentions

IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION IN CUBA

Rolando Pérez Betancourt

Granma | February 11, 2021

The history of humanity is full of hidden agendas and secret intentions.

Some would like to keep theirs secret, but, like the tiger crouching on a full moon night, cannot prevent their stripes from showing in the undergrowth.

Before his indecorous exit, Trump did Cuban counterrevolutionaries the favor of putting Cuba on his list of state sponsors of terrorism, another measure among the 200-plus his administration adopted with the intention of opening a hole in the map and sinking us to the bottom of the ocean.

Birth of the Digital Oligarchy: The Trump Ban and the Social Media Ruse

BIG TECH RULE

Raul Diego

MintPress News | January 15, 2021

On January 6, as the events unfolding at the U.S. Capitol were discussed on Twitter, the barrage of opinions predictably accumulated on one side of the political spectrum. Outrage over what mainstream pundits characterized as the desecration of the symbols of democracy and similar bleeding heart liberal rhetoric was far more prevalent than the opposing camp’s tendency to side with the so-called “insurrectionists” or tweets in support of the made-for-social media putsch.

Protests Over Economic Decline Continue For Third Day In Tunisia; Hundreds Arrested

PROTEST IN TUNISIA 

Peoples Dispatch | January 19, 2021

(Photo: Middle East Online)

Popular protests across Tunisia over the deteriorating economic situation continued for the third straight day on Monday January 18. Government authorities responded by arresting over 600 protesters for alleged acts of looting, vandalism, damage to public and private property and other violent acts, multiple news reports stated. Tunisian security forces have reportedly resorted to violent methods to break up and suppress the protests. Several human rights organizations issued statements of condemnation, urging the authorities to exercise restraint, especially when dealing with the majority of peaceful and unarmed protesters.