The shock result of the February 2018 local government election, on a high turnout exceeding 75%, has triggered governmental instability and continuing turmoil within the ‘good governance’ touting coalition that rode to power in the presidential election of January 2015, and stabilised itself after the August 2015 parliamentary election.
Catalonia’s independence movement :A strategic assessment
5 September 2018After more than two million people in Catalonia voted to declare independence from the Spanish state in October 2017, the state struck back. The Spanish central government, under the conservative President Mariano Rajoy, dissolved the Catalán government and charged its leaders with crimes of rebellion against the state. Rajoy called new elections in Catalonia for December 2017. In the results of those elections, the pro-independence parties took the small majority of a sharply polarized electorate. The independence movement, the Catalán government, and the Spanish state are currently locked in an impasse.
Muddying the Revolution
3 September 2018, byWe should be honest about the Communist Party of the Philippines’ record, including its assassinations of left-wing activists.
The Troika’s Policy in Greece: Rob the Greek people and give the money to private banks, the ECB, the IMF and the dominant States of the Eurozone
2 September 2018, byOn 20 August 2018, the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras, the IMF and the European leaders celebrated the end of the Third Memorandum.
Syria’s Disaster, and What’s Next
30 August 2018, byMore than seven years after the beginning of the Syrian popular uprising, which was gradually transformed into a deadly war with an international character, the situation in the country is catastrophic at all levels. The popular classes are the most affected with continuous suffering.
Secularists, Secularism and the Syrian uprising
27 August 2018, bySyrian secularists, and moreover the concept of secularism, are under attack online and on the ground. Joseph Daher takes a critical look at recent efforts to discredit the contribution of Syrian secularists to the 2011 revolution and offers historic perspective on the meaning of secularism and how the concept has been used and misused in the battle to shape the future of Syria.
The retreat of the pink tide in Latin America
27 August 2018, by ,Jeffery R. Webber is senior lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. He spoke with ISO editorial board member Phil Gasper on April 5, the morning after the Brazilian Supreme Court voted to imprison the country’s former president, Lula da Silva.
1968 and the Spanish State: The Year in its Context
20 June 2018, byUnderstanding the Spanish 68 requires an understanding of the rise of anti-Francoism in the previous years and its evolution after the state of exception declared in January 1969.
Trade Union Power and Democratic Transition in Tunisia - The UGTT: A Unique Story, An Unprecedented Experience
19 June 2018, byIn the wake of the collapse of the dictatorship in Tunisia, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) constituted a key player in ensuring the country stayed on track for a peaceful transition to democracy. This article is intended as a guide facilitating better understanding of the UGTT’s power which allowed the trade union to assert itself and serve as a balancing force in a national context marked by strong political competition and significant social instability. In this context, the authors explore the origins of the UGTT’s power and analyse how these power resources were articulated and combined in the national dialogue (between October 2013 and November 2014), a process that allowed the country to extricate itself from the political impasse, earning the UGTT and three other civil society organisations the Nobel Peace prize in 2015
Fifty years after the revolutions of ‘68
18 June 2018, byThe fiftieth anniversary of May ‘68, like the centennial of the Russian Revolution, is far from a mere ritual commemoration. Both mark high points of the struggle of the workers for their self-emancipation, and their lessons are incorporated into our history and give continuity to the struggle for socialism. History is alive in these central events of the class struggle. The revolutions of 1968 had objective and subjective consequences that have been fundamental in the last decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st.
