News from around the world

Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Oassim Suleimani on Iraqi soil is an escalation of his desire to destroy the Iranian regime. Since he came to office Trump has plotted to pull the U.S. government out of the nuclear agreement signed by several European countries and Iran. Following that he has imposed sanctions that have made the average Iranian civilian’s life much more difficult. Given that a quarter of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, on Iran’s shore, U.S. military maneuvers there also inflamed tensions between Washington and Tehran.

After French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s announcement on Wednesday, 11 December – which only confirmed what we already knew about the attack on pensions, and despite the continuation of strikes and the success of the mobilization day on 17 December – the government is putting on the pressure to put a stop to the strike movement by the end of the week. Adopting belligerent and contemptuous postures – which only goes to show how they are vacillating after this week’s resignation of national pension administrator Jean-Paul Delevoye– President Emmanuel Macron and Philippe do not know what to do. We must figure out how to take advantage of their indecision!

The Alliance for Economic Democracy (AED) is a concerned group of trade unionists, farmers, fishers, students, academics and activists who uphold the value of economic rights and justice in public policymaking. We wish to draw your attention to several key issues regarding the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC), which are not adequately represented in public discussion at this time, yet crucial to the wellbeing and security of people in Sri Lanka.

Between 800,000 (according to the police) and 1.5 million protesters (according to the CGT – France’s largest trade union federation), the first day of a strike against the government’s neoliberal pension “reform” was particularly impressive. In Paris and many regional cities, this was the largest street mobilization we have seen since the massive working-class movement during the winter of 1995, which bodes well for the future. In many cities, police tried, but failed, to disrupt trade union marches: the demonstrators were determined to march, despite police provocations and violence.

A new contribution to writing the history of the Fourth International was published in November 2019: Memoirs of a critical communist; Towards a history of the Fourth International by Livio Maitan.

This Sunday (10 November) will go down in South American history as one of its darkest days. After weeks of institutional destabilization, business groups, landowners and the Bolivian Armed Forces have just succeeded in removing President Evo Morales and his vice-president García Linera from office. This is a coup d’état with a reactionary character and strong racist components, as shown by the successive attacks on the headquarters of indigenous organizations and the violence of the extreme right against activists in favor of popular sovereignty.

At the beginning of last week an increase in fares was announced for the Santiago subway, a fundamental means of transport in this city, which unleashed a wave of protests led by the students who called for days of “subway evasion”. Subway evasions were harshly suppressed by police inside the metro stations themselves, with tear gas and even shots. The repression did not discourage the protest of the students but expanded it to other sectors.

The solidarity movement with conscripts/soldiers in Greece is under attack for yet again as a new persecution against the Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus” and the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts is underway. More precisely, an active duty officer of the Greek Army (a former commander of an army unit in the city of Alexandroupoli) sued Nikos Charalampopoulos, a member of the “Spartacus” network with the accusation of “continuous libel and slander”.

Today we have learned of the penalties imposed against Catalan pro-independence political prisoners. After two years in prison, Jordi Cuixart, Carme Forcadell, Dolors Bassa, Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Sànchez, Joaquim Forn, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull have been sentenced to various terms of between 9 and 13 years for sedition and misuse of public funds.

The international crisis has meant the ruling classes have unloaded the costs of the neo-liberal economic measures onto the backs of workers throughout the world. In a region which is again living through turbulent times, as we see with the people’s upsurge in Ecuador or the political crisis in Peru, the shift to the right in Latin America is real but also unstable. The axis of the authoritarian and ultra-liberal offensive internationally is the Trump administration but a key regional outpost of it can be seen in the semi-fascist Bolsonaro government. This is the context of the upcoming Argentinian elections.