revolution

Nearly four months in and the new US-led war in the Middle East is enjoying patchy progress at best.

At an official briefing at defence headquarters in Canberra on November 25, Australian Defence Force Chief of Joint Operations Vice-Admiral David Johnston said Australian-led air strikes Iraq the previous week had killed about 100 fighters from the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

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.

An incredible political transformation has been taking shape in the “Land of the Upright or Incorruptible People”, Burkina Faso.

Twenty-seven years after the assassination of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, Burkinabes turned out in their hundreds of thousands, for several days of protest. Chanting “enough is enough”, it echoed a long history of trade union activism against political repression in the country, as well as protests staged through the Balai Citoyen collective.

After four days of the popular anger, president Blaise Compaore vacated his post.

A young Kurdish woman called “Rehana” has garnered a great deal of media attention over the past few days, after reports emerged claiming she had killed more than 100 Islamic State (IS) fighters ― single-handedly ― in the struggle to defend predominantly Kurdish Rojava in Syria's north.

A picture of the smiling beauty, wearing combat gear and toting a rifle, is still making the rounds of social media. Even as Rehana's circumstances remain uncorroborated, the overabundance of attention she has received raises several important questions.