IV598 - November 2024

Under pressure from Putin, the Russian military forces are using their superiority in terms of men and bombing resources to very slowly but surely gobble up territory and destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. Now, after massive deliveries of bombs, missiles and drones from North Korea and Iran, it has been announced that several thousand North Korean soldiers will be arriving to fight as reinforcements for the Russian army. Meanwhile, some on the left are still indignant about the delivery of arms to the Ukrainians by Western states, even though these are clearly insufficient to enable them to put up effective resistance to the Putin steamroller and reverse the balance of power.

While voices around the world are being raised against the kidnapping of Foniké Menguè and Mamadou Billo Bah in Guinea, the French authorities remain silent in the face of the putschists’ abuses. Three years after the coup d’état, General Mamadi Doumbouya, a former corporal in the Foreign Legion, is moving away from his promise to return power to civilians. The leniency he is receiving is unlikely to change his mind.

For several decades, Italy has pursued an abject migration policy that flouts human rights and endangers the lives of many people trying to reach Europe. Criminalising movement, restricting the right to asylum, outsourcing border controls, detaining migrants in so-called ‘safe’ countries: this is the xenophobic policy that Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni now claims to be setting as a ‘model’ for other EU countries.

“There will be many people feeling hopeless or full of despair right now, and that is exactly what the far right and fascists want. They take sadistic pleasure in the defeats they inflict on the ‘woke’ and on the left. But politics is determined by struggles for power and counter-power, building mass coalitions of resistance, identifying the weak points in the enemy’s side and mobilising forces to shatter their strength.”

“The outpouring of solidarity and the desire to help those affected show that, in the face of the TINA (“There Is No Alternative”) of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism, with its religion based on individualism and the commodification of life and society, it is possible to challenge not only its rhetoric but also its practice by creating popular power from below and from the left. ”

“The root of our problems is that too often, the interest of those whose invisible work actually keeps the country running has been ignored. Hopefully, this time, we’ve learned the lesson. This is why “Sotsialnyi Rukh” publicly declares our readiness to cooperate with other forces to build a political movement that ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power. ”

“The vote is too close to call. There are some shifts among the electorate, though we’re still divided geographically as usual.”

In China today social media reveals a variety of tragedies as the economic crisis deepens:

On June 5, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation rejected the appeal of Boris Kagarlitsky, leaving this prominent sociologist behind bars for the next five years. This event once again has attracted the world’s attention to the persecution of political prisoners in Russia.

In the convential truisms about climate crisis, we find a large number point — knowingly or unknowingly — in false directions. I am not referring here to denialist speeches (like those of Senator James Inhofe, who recently died), but to those who claim to offer “green” or “sustainable solutions.”