With just a little more than two weeks until the November 5 U.S. presidential election that pits vice-president Kamala Harris against former president Donald Trump, the contest remains too close to call. A variety of issues, from conspiracy theories to assassination attempts complicate the campaign and sometimes confuse and mislead both voters and poll-takers.

In memory of 22 September 1988, the day on which Semira Adamu, an undocumented migrant activist, was killed by two police officers during an attempted deportation.
For freedom of movement and settlement and the abolition of fascist migration policies.

Last week, massive demonstrations took place throughout Argentina in defence of public universities and against President Milei's veto of a law passed by parliament to fund them.

When four Americans were stabbed in Jilin on June 10, I bought the CCP foreign ministry spokesperson's comment that it was an ‘isolated case' [1]. Then when another knife attack targeted at a Japanese school bus in Suzhou happened in the same month [2], I could still tell myself that China has a huge population so there must be more lunatics than smaller countries. Nevertheless, I started doubting my judgement after a Japanese school kid got killed in Shenzhen in September. This month, the victims of latest cowardly attack carried out by Chinese murderer were three kindergarteners in Zurich and the tragedy happened on China's National Day. Now I am quite sure that this is a seriously worrying trend.

I remember Kenya's June 25 protests like they were yesterday. The energy on the streets of Nairobi was frenetic, filled with the sound of whistles, motorcycle honks, vuvuzelas (long horns used to cheer in soccer games) and loud blasts of teargas.

A year after the beginning of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza and with the launch of Israel's assault on Lebanon, UK academic Gilbert Achcar describes possible future scenarios

The “Joint Statement” that Pravind Jugnauth and Keir Starmer have concocted is obviously riddled with fatal flaws for Mauritius' future. It is dangerous on all the main issues: decolonization, closing the USA's military base, the elementary right to free movement over all the land and sea for all Mauritians including Chagossians, and thus the right to return for Chagossians. It is even a blow to Mauritian sovereignty, itself. So, the Treaty must be opposed. LALIT now puts the following issue on the agenda for the general elections: Full sovereignty to be exercised democratically over Chagos, and a date for base closure and clean-up! No to militarism! No to prolonged occupation or colonization!

There's no doubt Hassan Nasrallah's assassination by Israel has weakened Hezbollah. Joseph Daher explains why this is not the end for them.

As Israel has continued to expand its war in the Middle East, the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris has continued to provide military aid and to increase its military forces in the region to support Israel.

The Tanzanian government's policy, with the complicity of major Western NGOs, is to replace herders with tourists, who bring in more money. Joseph Oleshangay has embarked on a European tour to alert the authorities and NGOs to the situation of the Masai of Tanzania. A lawyer from this community of herders, he is committed, despite threats and pressure, to fighting the mass expulsions of the Masai from their ancestral lands, particularly in the Ngorongoro region.

On 15 September, a Mexican bank holiday, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave a ‘farewell' speech in front of 300,000 enthusiastic people gathered on the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is stepping down from office on 1 October, giving way to the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was triumphantly elected in June.

“The formation of the NFP, and the unexpected success of its electoral campaign, have rekindled hope. But we know that this is only a reprieve. The rise of the National Rally continues, and the dynamic of popular mobilisation remains fragile, but the time gained can be put to good use.”

The right-wing extremist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) under Herbert Kickl received 29% of the vote and was elected by 1.4 million, almost twice as many voters as five years ago. This is the best result for the FPÖ since its founding in 1955; in 2019, it was 770,000. Compared to the last election for the National Council (the parliament of the Federal Republic of Austria), where did the voters come from? 76% voted for the FPÖ again, 443,000 came from the conservative party ÖVP and 258,000 from non-voters.

“We must not hesitate at all to mobilize against Israeli aggression, that of a colonial, oppressive and predatory state. Whatever the dominant political leaderships on the other side, resistance to the colonial aggressor is right.”

Former president Donald Trump and Vice-president Kamala Harris continue to campaign in a neck-and-neck race, both holding large rallies in swing states in an attempt to pull ahead. Trump continues his racist rants against immigrants, whom he calls “stone-cold killers,” and his vicious insults against Harris, now calling her “mentally disabled.” He has blamed immigrants, released from other countries' prisons and mental hospitals, for an invasion of the country that has “poisoned our blood” and destroyed the economy, taking jobs from American Blacks and Latinos. “And if you think about it,” says Trump, “only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Anura Kumara Dissanayake's (AKD) victory on 21 September as the candidate of the centre-left National People's Power (NPP) coalition is highly significant for symbolic and substantive reasons. His predecessors have been from the social and political elite that has mis-ruled Sri Lanka since independence from Britain in 1948. Some were born into that elite, while a couple (Ranasinghe Premadasa, Maithripala Sirisena) made their way into it through the business of politics before they occupied the presidency. In contrast, Dissanayaka's political life has been as an outsider and critic of that elite.

The French publishing house Editions Amsterdam has just published the first book from the La Boétie Institute , entitled Extrême droite: la résistible ascension. Coordinated by Ugo Palheta , with a preface by the historian Johann Chapoutot and an afterword by Clémence Guetté, this work aims to provide intellectual weapons, rooted in contemporary research ,on the far right, in order to understand and combat the rise of the FN/RN (National Front/National Rally).

Since the fall of President Yanukovych in 2014, all Russian interventions in Ukraine - from the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in the Donbass to the February 2022 invasion - have been presented by Putin as responses to an ‘anti-Russian, NATO-backed fascist coup'. A part of the international left has embraced this narrative, unlike the small Ukrainian left in the making.

“The aim here is to shed light on the specific profile of this young left, based on its activist practice at the heart of Ukrainian society and breaking with the dominant contradictory interpretations of the ‘Euro-Maidan' (2013-2014) that divide the left and are exploited by Putin.”

The need is greater than ever for a consolidated voice of the working class and the poor. On the one hand, daily community protests seem to indicate a population that is not by any means apathetic. But when it comes to elections, the majority don't participate. No political party has been able to capture the imagination of the mass of people who experience unemployment, sewage in the street, erratic water supply, unaffordable electricity and intolerable levels of gender-based violence. Yet enough of those people are desperate and sufficiently concerned to protest.

There are a number of candidates vying to capture this imagination. The field is becoming crowded. But they are by no means genuine supporters of the interests of the working class and the poor.