IV596-September 2024

The fires and air pollution across the country demonstrate the insufficiency of government measures and demand popular mobilization for the climate emergency

‘The people have, through their own fault, lost the confidence of the government...Wouldn’t it then be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?’ Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Solution’, 1953

[This article was written hours before the mass terrorist act that targeted Hezbollah members through pagers in the afternoon of 17 September, thus enhancing its title’s topicality.]

In an angry, determined, yet festive action, with music blaring, airhorns blasting, and fireworks shooting into the sky, 33,000 Boeing workers walked out on strike at plants in Washington, Oregon, and California on September 13, stopping production of the Boeing 737 plane and other aircraft. The Boeing strike by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the biggest strike of this year so far, is principally over wages and pensions.

Despite the confusion that accompanied the announcement of the recent presidential elections’ results in Algeria, one thing is clear and certain: the Algerian people overwhelmingly reject military rule, after having devoted their Hirak [movement] five years ago to demanding an end to this rule and its replacement with a democratic civilian authority. Indeed, the confusion itself is a direct result of this fact, which emerged through what were the real stakes in these elections, as no one could have the slightest doubt about the victory of the military establishment’s candidate, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) was founded during the first Intifada by a group of Palestinian and Jewish doctors. The PHRI Prisoners and Detainees Department deals with all prisoners who are under the control of different Israeli forces. In this interview, Oneg Ben Dror recounts his observations in this hell.

The assassination of Ismael Haniyeh only confirms that Israel has no interest in ending its genocidal and terrorist campaign on Gazans in particular, and Palestinians more generally. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank (WB) as illegal settlers, backed by the Israeli army and police have extended their capture of more territory. It should be crystal clear by now that Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza is not any ‘unbalanced’ or ‘disproportionate’ reaction to the 2023 October 7 Hamas attack, that liberal and right-wing apologists for Zionist Israel, whether Western or Indian, have tried to make out. That Hamas action has served as the much-awaited excuse for Tel Aviv to carry out its own longstanding ambitions to establish an unchallengeable, but quietly accepted, status as the world’s only remaining settler-colonial apartheid state.

Iran’s recent presidential election was called earlier than expected following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19. It seems that the clique of Supreme Guide Khamenei, the dominant faction within the regime, seized this opportunity to make a tactical shift: to present a more acceptable face to Western countries in the hope of ending their heavy sanctions.

The results of the regional elections in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia on 1 September 2024 indicate a rise in support for the far right which is as overwhelming as in many other countries. What a terrible feeling it is to have to hope that in both Länder a government led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) can somehow be assembled to confront the far right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)!

The last few months have given rise to a succession of local crises of astonishing magnitude. These crises are the occasion for mass movements within which we hope fwiil evolve in ways that attack the system.