Issue 1167

News

Analysis

World

  • Ecuador: Referendum could decide fate of Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution

    Ecuadorians will head to the polls on February 4 to cast their vote in a referendum that could prove to be decisive for the government of President Lenin Moreno and the political direction of the country.

    Moreno was elected president last April as the candidate of PAIS Alliance, the party of former left-wing president Rafael Correa. However, less than year on from the election, Correa – together with a majority of PAIS Alliance activists – now view Moreno as a “traitor” for failing to honour his commitment to continue the policies of the Citizens’ Revolution, which was kick-started by Correa’s election in 2007.

  • For the sake of humanity, we must defend the Rojava Revolution

    The dark clouds of 21st-century fascism are once again hanging over the heads of the people of northern Syria. As if the inhabitants of the region often referred to as Rojava haven’t suffered enough over the course of the past 7 years of war, the Turkish state has come to the conclusion that the time is ripe to pick up the fallen, bloodied sword from the corpse that is Islamic State.

    Together with Salafist mercenaries carrying flags of the Syrian ‘rebels’ – one of the many components of what at one historical juncture seemingly all so long ago was a cohesive ‘Free Syrian Army’ – Erdogan’s regime vows a ‘swift operation’ to destroy ‘terrorism’ in Afrin.

  • Britain: Jeremy Corbyn stands with Afrin, Theresa May sells Turkey more jets

    As Turkey’s air force bombed the Afrin canton in northern Syria, causing growing civilian casualties in a region that is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, British Prime Minister Theresa May signed a new deal worth £100 million with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on January 28 to help Turkey develop new fighter jets.

    By contrast, the socialist leader of the Labour Party opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, sent a message to a protest against Turkey’s invasion that expressed his solidarity with Afrin and the Kurdish people.

  • Turkey: Left-wing HDP opposition calls for support for Rojava

    The left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has condemned Turkey’s invasion of the Afrin region in northern Syria (known as Rojava in Kurdish) in collaboration with mostly jihadi Syrian militias.

    The HDP, with strong roots in Turkey’s Kurdish minority, has itself faced worsening repression from the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

  • Honduras: People resist sham presidential self-inauguration

    In the days leading up to the January 27 “self-inauguration” of fraudulent Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, three early morning news bombshells only added fuel to the raging fire of public outrage and indignation in the Central American nation.

    Opposition to Hernandez (or JOH, as he is commonly known) has been mounting since he stole the November 26 national elections in which he sought re-election, despite the constitution allowing only single terms.

  • Honduras: History always repeats itself

    What has happened in Honduras confirms the old thesis that history always repeats itself: the coup against president Manuel Zelaya in 2009 as tragedy and the electoral fraud of 2017 as farce.

  • Trump accelerates attacks on immigrants

    In his now infamous statement on immigration last month, Trump expressed his views clearly: He doesn’t want immigrants from “shithole” countries in Africa, Haiti and El Salvador — Black and Latina — to be let into the US.

    On the other hand, he wants to encourage immigrants from predominantly white nations like Norway.

  • Argentina: New austerity, old neoliberalism

    Mass mobilisations broke out in Argentina over the last two weeks of 2017 following the government’s attempt to cut pension benefits. Unions, political parties and student organisations took to the streets to protest the austerity measures and resist the battering of the police.

Culture