Author: icsswpadmin

One year into the War in Ukraine, the world has been redivided into two progressively decoupling camps, threatening a New Cold War. Meanwhile each camp is being drawn more tightly together. While the war began suddenly on February 24, 2022, its preconditions were a long time in the making. Was it really unprovoked as is relentlessly claimed? While this is one of a number of globally-televised wars, how is the Ukraine War different from the others? Whose interests does it serve? Dr. Sharat G. Lin examines the root causes of conflict, how peace can be brought about, and how the war is forging a new world order.

Our speaker, Dr. Sharat G. Lin, is with Human Agenda, the San José Peace & Justice Center, and the Initiative for Equality. He writes and lectures on global political economy, labor migration, and public health.

In 1876, Engels complained about “that idealistic world outlook which, especially since the fall of the world of antiquity, has dominated men’s minds. It still rules them to such a degree that even the most materialistic natural scientists of the Darwinian school are still unable to form any clear idea of the origin of man, because under this ideological influence they do not recognise the part that has been played therein by labour.” This situation remains true today, nearly a century and a half later, as prominent bourgeois institutions entertain us with vivid videos of the latest fossil finds in Africa and elsewhere without ever mentioning the role of labor in the lives of the people who left these remains.

This talk, by Professor Eugene E Ruyle, will discuss Engels contribution noting that the spectacular fossil finds since Engels’ death of the twentieth century have confirmed Engels brilliant insight that: “First comes labour, after it, and then side by side with it, articulate speech – these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which for all its similarity to the former is far larger and more perfect.” Ruyle will also discuss why bourgeois anthropology has neglected the work of Marx and Engels, in spite of their obvious importance.

Our speaker, Eugene E Ruyle, is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cal State Long Beach, a working class university. He earned his PhD in 1971 and has published numerous articles, including “Labor, People, Culture: A Labor Theory of Human Origins” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology Vol 20, 1976. He currently lives in Oakland, CA where he is affiliated with the ICSS@NPML. He is also President of the East Bay Chapter of Veterans For Peace.

Open Discussion on the State of the Movement Against the War in Ukraine

The recent Rage Against the War Machine demonstration in Washington DC exposed deep divisions within our movement. Open Mic! Bring your thoughts about this. We encourage and will allow five to ten minutes for you to present your ideas for discussion. Some questions to consider:

(1) What are the political, economic, and military factors that led to this war?

(2) Who are the main forces in the antiwar movement – what is their class character and what are their political demands?

(3) How to build the antiwar movement? Why is there so much support in the US and so little opposition to the war? What happened to the antiwar movement – why did it split over the Rage Against the War demonstration, and how can we revive and build it? Who should socialists unite with to do so, and how?

In February 1971, racial tension surrounding school desegregation in Wilmington, North Carolina, culminated in four days of violence and skirmishes between white vigilantes and black residents. The turmoil resulted in two deaths, six injuries, more than $500,000 in property damage, and the firebombing of a white-owned corner grocery store, before the National Guard restored an uneasy peace. Despite glaring irregularities in the subsequent trial, ten young persons were convicted of arson and conspiracy and then sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison. They became known internationally as the Wilmington Ten.

This lecture addresses three general questions: What occurred in Wilmington in 1971 that climaxed in civil unrest and acts of violence? Why were ten individuals, most of them high school students, framed for crimes emanating from those disturbances? And how did a movement develop to deliver them justice, what was the significance of that movement for our understanding of the African American freedom struggle, and how might such an understanding inform thought and actions today to build an equal society?

Speaker:
Kenneth Janken – Kenny to his friends –  is an American historian and professor of African American studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1991. His research focuses on 20th-century African American history, and his most recent book is The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (2015), which won the Clarendon Award from the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society for outstanding book on that region.

Turkiye (the new and improved name replacing Turkey) is in a nosedive toward a total collapse. This is an expected route of all neo-colonial countries dependent on imperialism.
A new section of capitalists is using the NATO Gladio criminals to implement a narco-state to keep the economy alive in Turkiye. Privatization and marketization of every aspect of life have come to a total failure. Unprecedented Corruption at every level, bribery, theft, eco-destruction, gang rule, and the rise of deadly attacks, especially on women, shows the limits of a market economy in a dependent, neo-colonial country.
Turkiye is in dire need of funds to make it to the next day. Each day passing in Turkiye is funded and provided by its Muslim, fascist regional countries while imperialism sucks the life out of people every day. Workers and the people pay for these “favors” with hunger, misery, and working below slave wages. In the new world with its budding multi-polar centers, Erdogan is trying to find a new ally in Russia. However, its loyalty to NATO and western imperialism poses unsurpassable challenges.
We will discuss whether Turkiye has any chance of survival by following the 100 years of the capitalist route. The tasks and obligations of the left before and after the May-June elections will shed a light on everyday living in the country.

Turkiye (the new and improved name replacing Turkey) is in a nosedive toward a total collapse.  This is an expected route of all neo-colonial countries dependent on imperialism.
   A new section of capitalists is using the NATO Gladio criminals to implement a narco-state to keep the economy alive in Turkiye.  Privatization and marketization of every aspect of life have come to a total failure. Unprecedented Corruption at every level, bribery, theft, eco-destruction, gang rule, and the rise of deadly attacks, especially on women, shows the limits of a market economy in a dependent, neo-colonial country.
   Turkiye is in dire need of funds to make it to the next day.  Each day passing in Turkiye is funded and provided by its Muslim, fascist regional countries while imperialism sucks the life out of people every day.  Workers and the people pay for these “favors” with hunger, misery, and working below slave wages.  In the new world with its budding multi-polar centers, Erdogan is trying to find a new ally in Russia.  However, its loyalty to NATO and western imperialism poses unsurpassable challenges.
   We will discuss whether Turkiye has any chance of survival by following the 100 years of the capitalist route.  The tasks and obligations of the left before and after the May-June elections will shed a light on everyday living in the country.

Journalist Mehmet Bayram recently returned from a long trip to Turkey.

Yusuf Gürsey who is originally from Istanbul, Turkey, and is currently living in New Haven, CT. He is a member of the CPUSA, as well as a member of the US Peace Council in Connecticut, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Marxist Education centered in Cambridge, MA