Leftnews.org is a collection of daily news and views from the political left-wing found around the web.

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UNICEF reports that every minute a child is pushed into hunger in fifteen countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. Although exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, food price inflation and growing global hunger are systemic problems with deep, decades-old roots. Projections show that by the end of the 21st century, only 14% of nations will be self-sufficient in terms of food production. This bleak forecast demands that we radically transform the world food system.

Patrick Cockburn | Kurds are suffering the greatest collateral damage form the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees attract global attention, but the Ukraine war has opened the door wide to the mass expulsion of two million Syrian Kurds, which is likely to take place in the coming months. Turkey is threatening to complete the ethnic cleansing of Kurds from northern Syria which it began five years ago.

Warehousing and logistics are emerging as key sites in contemporary struggles over work.

Naomi Klein | The rolling judicial coup coming from this court is by no means over.

For years, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pursued a harsh crackdown against Kurds and dissidents in the name of anti-terrorism. Now he’s using his role in NATO to launder his image and entrench his rule at home.

Emmanuel Macron has lost his majority in parliament and looks increasingly set to make deals with conservative and far-right parties. The demonization of the Left and indulgence of Le Pen show the hollowness of his establishment liberalism.

Jodi Dean and Kai Heron argue for Climate Leninism as the key to ecological transition

Virtually all socialists today are descendants of the Second International of 1889 to 1914. Yet its legacy remains sharply disputed. Some associate this International with its betrayal of socialist principles at the start of World War I, and think there is little reason to study it any further. Others see the prewar Second International as a model to be re-created. Both assessments are mistaken.

In an interview with Matt Kennard, the former Labour Party leader speaks candidly about British media, the U.K. military and intelligence services, Israel, Keir Starmer, Julian Assange and Saudi Arabia.

Caitlin A. Johnstone | The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the U.S. and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the U.S. intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.

Michael Tigar | The Supreme Court Justices have left town for the summer. Their sense of justice departed a few months ago, along with their fidelity to the history and text of the Constitution.

Private capital has failed to reduce poverty and inequality – on the contrary. It has failed to invest in the infrastructure and technology to raise living standards globally and reduce carbon emissions – on the contrary, fossil fuel production and profits continue to rise. It’s clear, even if the IMF experts do not admit it, that public investment for common good should replace capitalist investment for profit to meet the needs of the many and to introduce the technology to reduce emissions and expand vaccines. And fossil fuel companies need to be brought under public ownership and control and phased out. Global coordination is impossible while imperialist powers dictate the terms. Peace and imperialism is an oxymoron.

With a rising national profile and donor base and relatively little state funding, Boise State University should be able to resist pressure by the Idaho Legislature. Instead the university, led by a liberal transplant, has repeatedly capitulated.

BC’s public sector unions are currently locked in negotiations with the province over new collective
agreements covering much of BC’s public sector. A key area of contention across several tables – in
health care, education, and the provincial public service – is the rising level of price inflation overtaking
the provincial economy. It is this situation that has many unions taking a new look at using cost-of-living
adjustment (COLA) clauses as a hedge against unpredictable increases in consumer prices. The response
from BC’s government to the call for negotiated COLAs has been less than enthusiastic. As things
currently stand, there is no clear mandate guidance from BC’s Public Sector Employers’ Council (PSEC)
for employers to include these kinds of provisions in new collective agreements.

With high inflation continuing, mainstream right-wing economists and pundits seem very concerned with a mythical beast called the 'wage-price spiral'. These spirals are not real and are simply an attack on working people with the poorest bearing most of the brunt of the policies of wage control. Here we look at why this is and the correct response to it.

The Tricontinental | The great Bajan writer George Lamming (1927–2022) left us recently. In his 1966 essay, ‘The West Indian People’, Lamming said, ‘The architecture of our future is not only unfinished; the scaffolding has hardly gone up’. This was a powerful sentiment from a powerful visionary, who hoped that his home in the Caribbean, the West Indies, would be shaped into a sovereign region that could relieve its people of great problems. This was not to be. Strangely, the IMF’s Georgieva-Kinova quoted this line in a recent article while making the case for the region to collaborate with the IMF.

While anti-women, racist, xenophobic, and homophobic narratives have become standard for the far-right for most of recent memory, anti-trans has been pushed to the front pages in recent elections. A current top election campaign point is the attempt to ban trans women from 'single sex' female sports.

In France’s parliamentary election, left-wing parties more than doubled their number of MPs, helping to deny Emmanuel Macron a majority. Yet the smaller forces who backed Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s coalition are already pulling back from any longer-term pact.

In law and public policy, arguments against adopting an action due to its inevitable future effects are known as “slippery slope” arguments. More worrisome in public policy are slippery slope events, which commence an unstoppable descent toward an undesired result. Canada’s foray into Internet regulation may be well-intended, but it risks opening a Pandora’s Box and running afoul of the Law of Unintended Consequences.