IV514 - November 2017

Within the next year the referendum on the self-determination of Kanaky / New Caledonia must be held. This territory of the Pacific has been a French colony since 1853, and was re-registered in 1986 by the United Nations on the list of non-autonomous territories to be decolonized. The Kanaks have never accepted the spoliation of their lands and the denial of their culture.

IVP514 November 2017 PDF magazine

“A new actor is emerging as a promoter of mobilizations supporting independence movements, but leading more direct actions, such as the occupations of public spaces and blockades of communications. [1] So the Catalan press analysed the mobilizations of thousands of “citizens” after they mounted successful the road blockades during the “national strike” of November 8, at the initiative of the Committees for Defence of the Republic (CDR). The CDRs initially appeared to ensure that the referendum of October 1 could be held, and were then called Referendum Defence Committees.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri recently threatened to resign and bring down the government, opening a new period of instability in a country that has recently had a sustained but fragile peace. In the weeks since the initial announcement, Hariri has reversed himself and now promises to continue in office.

This article was written for the October issue of Amandla, so before the second Presendential election was scheduled for October 17. This was then postponed to October 26. Odinga announced that he was withdrawing on October 10 - seemingly in the hope that the October elections, in which he had no confidence, would have to be postponed. The election went ahead with a much lower turn out than in August and some violence. The international press has had very little coverage of the situation in Kenya since, for the reasons that Firoze explains below.

Tensions in Lebanon are escalating once again as Saudi Arabia threatens to open up yet another front in its cold war with Iran. The trigger for the latest crisis was the resignation of prime minister Saad Hariri, who has been the Saudi’s main representative since the assassination of his father in 2005.

With the two parties of the Right entering into a coalition government, Austrians can expect more neoliberalism and more xenophobia.

The high-level purge in Saudi Arabia has more to do with consolidating power than fighting corruption.

It is not too much to say that the Russian Revolution made South African Marxism possible. There were Marxists in South Africa before the Russian Revolution, and Marxist organizations. But there was nothing that could have been recognized as specifically South African Marxism.

For four months, an acute political crisis has affected Venezuela, in the context of an economic collapse that has hit the country since 2014. The Venezuelan popular classes are paying a heavy price and suffering violence of all forms.