HSBC is back in the news. According to several articles published in different newspapers on 9 February 2015, Geneva HSBC accounts have been used to transmit €180.6 billion worth of transactions, between 9 November 2006 and 31 March 2007 (a period of less than five months!!!). Mohamed VI king of Morocco, showbiz celebrities and many private corporations entrusted a part of their incomes to HSBC in order to hide them from tax and judicial authorities in their countries. In the following pages we will look at the past and recent history of HSBC, one of the World’s biggest private banks.
Towards a head-on collision - Tsipras rejects the blackmail of the ECB and the aggressive acts of the European leaders
9 February 2015, byThe statement of general policy by Alexis Tsipras tonight was followed with special attention both in the country and by European governments - and no doubt also in the USA. In the country, after the blackmail of the ECB and the continuous attacks of EU leaders, an atmosphere of effervescence is spreading, a sense of newfound dignity, of determination both to support the government in the face of blackmail and to exert pressure to prevent any retreat. Abroad, especially in ruling circles, every word and every particular measure that is announced are being carefully weighed to gauge the determination of the Prime Minister and his government.
From the short "Soviet century" to Putin’s Russia:
9 February 2015, byThe recurring celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall is the ideological illumination of a beautiful tree that hides a darker forest. The real socio-economic and geopolitical turning point was German unification, whose historical significance was consolidated with the dismantling of the USSR of Gorbachev. This turning point of 1989-1991 ended the short "Soviet century" (in the words of Moshe Lewin). Far from being a "democratic revolution", it had more the features of a social counter-revolution whose internal/ external actors hid their goals behind the screens of parliamentary "demo-dictatorships" without any real choice.
What’s Left in Africa?
5 February 2015, byThe early 1950s witnessed an extraordinary sweep of popular mobilisations across the continent inspired by aspirations for emancipatory freedom – an end to the colonial yoke. Across the continent, nationalist parties convinced people that the path to freedom was through political independence.
Since then, many of the gains of independence, which cost the blood and lives of millions in Africa, have been reversed with the privatisation of the commons and public utilities, as well as by dispossessions of land, by unemployment and by the increasing costs of food, rent and other necessities of life. In response, discontent has been growing across the continent, with spontaneous eruptions and mass uprisings that have in some cases resulted in the overthrow of regimes nurtured and nourished by imperialism (e.g. in Tunisia, Egypt and Burkina Faso). In such circumstances, one would have thought that there would have been fertile grounds for the emergence of strong left working class movements across the continent. But why has this not happened?
Revolution, Reaction, ?and Intervention in Syria
4 February 2015, byThe second part of a major interview from New Politics with Syrian revolutionary Joseph Daher. We published the first part at the end of November 2014 here
The lessons that can be drawn from the failure of the Greek 2012 restructuring
3 February 2015, byÉric Toussaint interviewed by Maud Bailly
What caused the killings?
3 February 2015, by ,In the aftermath of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and the wave of repression and Islamophobia that followed, Gilbert Achcar talked to Ahmed Shawki in late January about the questions the left in France and internationally need to answer to organize an anti-racist, anti-imperialist response.
Rebuilding the Left – “building movements, bringing them together”
2 February 2015, by , ,Rebuilding a U.S. socialist left requires, first of all, coming to grips with the full magnitude of the social crisis and decline in this society.
Violence against women in West Bengal and Police-party Axis and the police-party axis
2 February 2015, byThe incidence of police torture on a woman at Kalamadanga village under Budbud police station in Bardhaman district of West Bengal, is a grim reminder that the “normalisation” of state violence, including, or better to say particularly, violence on women, has continued unabated regardless of which political party has been in power.
After the Peshawar massacre of 141 children, Imran Khan’s retreat
1 February 2015, byThe dharma [1] convention by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on January 18 had some distinct features. For the first time, Imran Khan chose not to be aggressive, agitated or offensive. It was a retreat from his previous attitude. His usual criticism of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) government for rigging and stealing the general elections was replaced by “all efforts to build a new Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”.
Footnotes
[1] sit-in, mass public meeting