International Viewpoint

Much of the world at this moment is a laboratory searching for the cure for capitalism, and the social scientists running the experiments are in the streets.

As current international pushes for Syrian refugee returns take hold, European solidarity efforts must understand that the danger of return is not simply war but corrupt and brutal state repression.

Bolivians went to the polls on Sunday, October 20, 2019. According to the country's electoral system, in order to avoid a second round in presidential elections the leading candidate must secure 51 percent of the vote, or more than 40 percent of the vote and a lead of 10 percent over the second place candidate.

Donald Trump is the first modern politician who's used the U.S. presidency — as everyone knows, since the liberal media, punditry and presidential historians repeat it on a daily basis — to brazenly solicit a foreign regime's intervention for his personal benefit in electoral politics. It's a damning indictment of the “big twit” in the White House. It also happens to be false. The notorious precedents aren't even secret anymore: Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, in their election campaigns, pulled the kind of tricks that Trump did with Russia in 2016.

The biggest popular mobilizations since the coming to power in 2013 of the dictator Sissi shook Egypt at the end of September, against a backdrop of political protest by the regime and an ever more difficult socio - economic situation. After protests began in Cairo and several Egyptian cities on September 20, the authorities reacted by mass repression and a wave of arrests of over 3,000 people.

Massive new mass mobilizations are shaking Iraq. The protesters are denouncing economic and social difficulties, corruption and the ruling bourgeois and confessional political parties.

The streets of Lebanon are ringing with protest chants as the country witnesses its largest popular movement in decades. Their target: a political and economic system that impoverishes the many while enriching the few.

The alleged jubilation at the start of the First World War in Germany is called Spirit of 1914 by some people. If we use the same example we can call current public sentiment about war in Turkey Spirit of 2019.

The Hong Kong government, in the face of the massive opposition movement since early June, finally made the promise to withdraw the China Extradition bill altogether in early September. However, the people have refused to put a halt to the movement. They continue pressing their five demands, formulated in July. The first four are related to the immediate situation (the complete withdrawal of the bill; establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into police conduct; retraction of the designation of “riot” to describe the protests; amnesty for arrested protesters), and the fifth is universal suffrage – something that Beijing promised in the (1997) Basic Law. They have kept up their protests because the three-month struggle has revealed one simple fact: Beijing's hidden agenda is to finish off Hong Kong's autonomy altogether. This understanding has prompted them to continue the struggle, which has escalated into a great battle to save Hong Kong autonomy.

The publication of the Supreme Court ruling last Monday 14 October, after the trial of several independence leaders, has triggered a wave of protests in Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, in other regions of the Spanish state and even in some European cities.

Lebanon has a golden opportunity for the formation of an alternative, we should not let the ruling class reproduce itself again.

At the beginning of last week an increase in fares was announced for the Santiago subway, a fundamental means of transport in this city, which unleashed a wave of protests led by the students who called for days of “subway evasion”. Subway evasions were harshly suppressed by police inside the metro stations themselves, with tear gas and even shots. The repression did not discourage the protest of the students but expanded it to other sectors.

The situation in Chile is evolving rapidly. This statement was issued on Sunday 20 October, the day before the general strike.

In September 2019, following a new feminicide in the West Bank in the occupied territories, a Palestinian feminist movement, TALIAAT, was set up.

The reality of the current turn to the right in Latin America is as evident as its instability.

Former metal worker Søren Søndergaard, who presently represents the outer Copenhagen electorate of Gladsaxe in the Danish parliament, has a long history in radical left politics. In the 1980s, he was part of the daily leadership of the Socialist Workers Party, one of the three founding organisations of the Red-Green Alliance (RGA), known in Denmark as the Unity List—the Red-Greens.

A few hours ago [the article was written on 14 October], the dialogue between the government and the indigenous movement ended with the announcement that Decree 883, issued on 2 October 2019, was without effect, and would be replaced by a new decree, to be drafted by representatives of the indigenous movement and of the government. Consequently, the strike was lifted. A first, provisional, clear balance sheet can be made for now.

The Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists condemn Turkeys invasion of Northeastern Syria and its deadly assault on the Kurds.

Now, in its seventh month of uninterrupted mobilization, the Algerian popular protest movement Hirak, considering its spread, scale and lack of political resolution, can be seen as a long-term development generating a debate which is more conceptual than punctual. Terms like revolution, democracy, constituent process, social class, oligarchy, issaba and bourgeoisie, are the key words that structure debate and action.

The solidarity movement with conscripts/soldiers in Greece is under attack for yet again as a new persecution against the Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus” and the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts is underway. More precisely, an active duty officer of the Greek Army (a former commander of an army unit in the city of Alexandroupoli) sued Nikos Charalampopoulos, a member of the “Spartacus” network with the accusation of “continuous libel and slander”.