Ten years after a brutal attack by the police and organized crime resulted in the forced disappearance of 43 students from a Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa, Mexico. What cannot be forgotten is the living social forces that can transform Mexico root and branch–first of all, the parents of the students, who continue searching for their sons.
The obviously fraudulent election results in Venezuela, along with the dire economic-political situation in the country, signal the impasse, if not dead end, that the decades-long call for “21st Century Socialism” has reached.
The UK faces a stark reality of empowered anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim racism. Riots have been spreading in Northern Ireland, as well as in Southport, Liverpool, London and other cities in England.
What started as a student protest at universities has become an expression of profound discontent about life in Bangladesh. Can this mass movement grow and force authentic change?
On June 25, young protesters stormed the National Assembly in Kenya protesting a bill raising taxes and prices on imported staples. The protests forced the president to cancel the bill. Grave contradictions exist in this supposedly “stable” country, including multiple dimensions of revolt.
The mass of French voters in the latest parliamentary elections allowed the Left-wing coalition of parties—the New Popular Front—to gain the largest number of seats in Parliament, though far short of a majority. The far-right National Front has hardly been defeated.
Thirty years after the ANC took power, defeating the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, the party decisively lost its majority in the parliamentary elections. How could this happen?
Three years after the army staged a coup against the elected government of Myanmar, hundreds of pro-democracy militias, ethnic armies and local defense forces control over half of the country’s territory. Can the unity against the military forge a country with the need for multiple self-determinations?
In the almost two years since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has reached unprecedented levels of violence and chaos. While violent criminal gangs are causing havoc, whether some of the “gangs” now active in the country are revolutionaries remains to be seen. What is clear is that only social revolution in the hands of Haiti’s masses can bring forth a fully human, free society.
More than a year since two Sudanese generals began warring against each other, the country is devastated. The choice cannot be limited to these two. Only a reigniting of the Sudanese revolution from below can provide a viable pathway forward.
Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?
On Jan. 15, Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated President of Guatemala. It was by no means assured that he would be able to take office. What finally allowed Arévalo to do so was a massive Indigenous outpouring. Now, many questions remain, for his government is far from being revolutionary.
The situation for migrants in Mexico is dire: the National Guard is used against newly arrived immigrants; gang members kidnap them and demand ransom from relatives in the U.S.; Mexican and U.S. authorities make the journey to the border excruciating.
After eight years of ultra-nationalist, reactionary rule, Poland’s Law and Justice Party was defeated in parliamentary elections. However, the country’s future direction is by no means assured. Two areas are key: women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.
Venezuela’s president rekindled a territorial dispute with its neighbor Guyana. Not to actually take the territory, but rather to create an issue of patriotism to use in his upcoming re-election campaign.
Argentina’s new President Javier Milei quickly imposed social welfare cuts, while threatening protests. Still, mass resistance from below is developing. Is that enough to break out of the political-economic-social straitjacket that Argentine masses have been living through for decades?
Focused on two regions in Sudan—Darfur, where the Masalit ethnic group live, and the region of Sudan’s capital Khartoum—Eugene Walker looks briefly at what the conflict between two warring Generals has wrought to the country since it began on April 13.
In October, the Pakistani government announced mass deportations for all migrants without papers by Nov. 1, mostly aimed at Afghans and causing great hardship. It decided on this mass expulsion mostly because of the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
Hurricane Otis on the coast of Guerrero on Oct. 25 left more than 80% of the hotel infrastructure unusable and hundreds of houses without roofs. The population was already suffering from hunger and organized crime.
Garment workers poured out of factories in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh to demand a wage of about $200 a month. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Bangladesh is the second largest garment-producing country in the world after China.
On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean army brutally overthrew the elected government headed by Salvador Allende. This coup should have destroyed, but evidently did not fully destroy, the illusion that bourgeois democracy will allow any authentic socialist transformation process to proceed peacefully.
Torrential rains on Sept. 12-13 caused the collapse of two dams in Derna, Libya. 11,000-plus people were swept away in the flood and over 30,000 displaced. A government spokesman insisted the collapse was “a natural disaster.” Was it?
There is an “Eastern route” for migrants from Africa that crosses Yemen and lands in Saudi Arabia. A new report from Human Rights Watch documents the violence of Saudi border guards against Ethiopian migrants. The U.S. has chosen not to raise the issue publicly.
On Aug. 25, the flag of revolution flew high in villages, towns and cities across Syria. The Syrian revolutionary process of the second decade of the 21st Century was one of the most important developments to arise from the Arab Spring. Now is the time to solidarize with it, a solidarity that has been sorely missing.
The military coup against Gabon President Ali Bongo on Aug. 29, 2023, was welcomed with jubilation in Gabon’s capital, Libreville. Whether that leads to a move toward civilian participation and something approaching democracy remains to be seen.
The crucial question after the military coup in Niger is what will it mean for Niger’s 25 million plus people? What is their attitude to the present moment? This is the difficult question which few seem interested in exploring.
Eight South American countries met in Brazil for a summit to combat deforestation in the Amazon basin. The summit’s failure to agree on a pact protecting Amazon forests points to the global failure of forging concrete agreements to combat climate change.
More than 50,000 migrants are known to have died worldwide since 2014, revealing inhuman conditions that force so many people to flee their homes, indifference of governments, and official acts that caused the deaths of hundreds of migrants.
Since the April outbreak of fighting between rival forces in Sudan, civilians have suffered and died. Willfully forgotten is the Sudanese Revolution of 2018-19 and the powerful participation of the Sudanese masses who carried it out.
The Israeli military occupation of Jenin is the latest manifestation of the state terrorism the government is carrying out against the Palestinian population. What is new about this repression? How can continued occupation and neo-fascist tendencies in Israel be overcome?
After Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of Algerian-Moroccan descent, was killed by police at a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, French youth, many of North African descent, responded with outrage. How did France come to this explosive moment?
Takes up: how Mexico has increased the number of migrants it has detained five-fold, most at the behest of the U.S.–from 88,000 a year a decade ago to 450,000 now; and that Lopez Obrador is pushing the mega-project “Mayan train” that is invading Indigenous communities, as well as a new airport outside Mexico City, a huge oil refinery, a thermo-electric plant.
In Thailand’s election, the general who seized power in a 2014 coup was unseated as prime minister. But will the military allow an independent civilian government to be formed?
Haiti in general, and Port-Au-Prince in particular, have come under increasing gang siege. Several hundred Haitians have been killed by the gangs, and over 130,000 have fled their homes. Now residents in scattered neighborhoods are taking the situation into their own hands.
Sudanese generals—Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on one side and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “Hemedti,” on the other—are sending soldiers against each other in Khartoum making the masses fair game to be bombed, shot, and forced to flee. Hundreds have been killed since the fighting erupted on April 16. It is the Sudanese revolution that both armed factions fear and aim to suppress.
In a stunning reversal on May 7, voters in Chile elected a majority of far-right candidates responsible for drafting a new constitution. The first draft, written by a progressive coalition of elected representatives from below, had insisted on gender equality and Indigenous rights. It was rejected after an extensive negative campaign of misinformation and right-wing media manipulation.
Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after 20 years in power—first as Prime Minister, and then with a constitutional change as President—faced a challenging election and failed to receive a majority in the first round, before winning the second round runoff.
Fearing defeat in the 2021 Presidential elections, Ortega’s solution was to jail or deport every possible presidential candidate, along with others opposing his rule, including ex-Sandinistas from the revolution like well-known Sandinista Comandante Dora María Téllez.
While tens of thousands across the globe marked the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with support rallies for Ukraine’s fight for self-determination, there were a few disturbing “anti-war” rallies bringing together far-right with Left groups calling for an end to supplying arms to Ukraine.
Tunisia’s President Saied demonized Black immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa as the latest move in his authoritarian takeover.
With the world’s highest incarceration rate, El Salvador is rounding up young men by the thousands and throwing them into its gigantic new prison with shocking inhumanity.
For the sixth time Benjamin Netanyahu has become Prime Minister of Israel. This time he returned to power by bargaining for a government of the most extreme right: an ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition.
Days after Lula da Silva had taken office as President of Brazil, right-wing supporters of former President Bolsonaro stormed the Congress, Presidential Office and Supreme Court in Brasilia.
Great Britain is in a cost of living crisis. Newspapers are publishing “Heat or Eat Diaries.” Brexit has been an important catalyst for Britain’s dire economic situation. Hopefully the labor militancy now taking place can show a way forward.
Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, runs on sweated migrant labor. Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup over 6,500 migrant workers have died there building the infrastructure for the games.
Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has completed a counter-revolution aimed at ending the Arab Spring that the Tunisian masses launched in December 2010. He has gotten rid of Parliament and ended judicial oversight, and now has maneuvered a new constitution for the country. This gives him almost total power.
When the U.S.-imposed non-elected, illegitimate government of Ariel Henry decided to raise highly subsidized fuel prices in September, all hell broke loose in Haiti. Mass protests occurred everywhere, particularly on the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
People are robbing banks in Lebanon as the only way to get to their own money. The economy has experienced a meltdown. Years of war, sectarian violence, and rampant corruption have led to extreme poverty for Lebanon’s citizens and thousands of Middle East refugees there.
In both Sweden and Italy neo-fascist leaders have won great influence: Jimmie Akesson in Sweden and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. They have in common vicious anti-immigrant and other racists beliefs and actions.
A critical note on the post-Arab Spring Tunisia, which has gone back to one-man rule.
