World

President Evo Morales and his party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), won a resounding victory last month. This gave the Morales administration a further five-year term to deepen the progress of the past nine years. I was privileged to take part in a delegation to Bolivia via the New York-based Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle. The delegation travelled around the country learning from, and offering solidarity to, the exciting revolutionary processes taking place in Bolivia.

Faced with growing public revolt against the introduction of water charges and faltering support, the Irish government is in a deepening crisis. The government ― a coalition between the right-wing Fine Gael (FG) party and the Irish Labour Party ― came to power in 2011 on the back of public outrage over austerity and social spending cuts.

Thousands of workers, campesinos, members of civil society, and students marched in Mexico City on November 20 to demand justice for the missing 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers' school. They were joined by the family members of the missing students, who have been traveling in three solidarity convoys throughout the country to build support for their cause.

For the first time since the eurozone crisis began in 2009, the Greek economy has reported a yearly growth of 0.6%. Unemployment is also down ― to a still-staggering 25.8%. However, you wouldn’t see any economic change on the streets; rather, the only changes visible in Greece are political. The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), has been consistently polling anywhere between five and 10 points higher than the coalition government led by conservative party New Democracy.

The statement below was released by the Party of the European Left (EL) on November 17. The EL is a Europe-wide political party that formed in 2004. It is composed of 26 member parties and seven observer parties. Visit www.european-left.org for more information. *** A delegation of the Party of the European Left (EL), headed by two of its vice presidents, Margarita Mileva and Maite Mola, returned on November 16 after a four-day visit to Kiev.

United States President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping of China have signed a bilateral climate agreement. Much of the US and British media, and many US Democrats, have hailed the deal as a key step forward. Many US Republicans have attacked it as going much too far. Anything the Republicans attack has to be good. Right? No. In fact it is an appalling deal. Let's look at the numbers.

Sinnathamby Krishnarajah was arrested on October 25, in Kilinochchi, a town in the north of Sri Lanka. His “crime” was to photocopy forms printed from the internet to be used for making affidavits to a United Nations investigation of war crimes committed during the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE, which had been fighting for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the island, were defeated in May 2009. Since then, Tamil areas have been under military occupation by the Sri Lankan army.

A national strike for November 20 to protest the government’s ineffective investigation in the case of 43 missing Ayotzinapa students was announced on November 12 by the Mexican Inter-university Students Assembly, chaired by the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training School “Isidro Burgos”. The assembly, attended by students from 79 schools, decided to support the national strike summoned by the parents of the missing students.

It is arguably the most important political development of South Africa’s post-1994 era. In the early hours of November 8, South Africa’s largest union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), was expelled from South Africa’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The political significance of NUMSA’s expulsion derives from three key, interrelated areas of impact. ANC-led alliance

This week, by law, I have to deride Russell Brand as a self-obsessed, annoying idiot. No article or comment on Twitter can legally be written now unless it does this, so by the weekend the Sunday magazine recipes will go, “Goose and marmalade paella, serves six ― unless one of the six is Russell Brand in which case he can make his own dinner as he’s such a rebel I suppose he doesn’t agree with ovens”.

The November 4 congressional mid-term elections in the US reflect the further shift to the right in capitalist politics. The obvious aspect of this is the fact that the Republicans won control of the Senate, increased their majority in the House, and won more state governorships. There has been speculation in the media about how this result came about.

How does capitalism survive? This was the question that greeted the 11th annual Historical Materialism conference in London. Held from November 6 to 9 at the Vernon Square Campus, it was a four-day long broad marriage of global leftist activists and academics run by the Marxist journal of the same name. Posed as a simple question, it quickly developed into as many answers and narratives as there are positions within the left.