UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called a special Climate Summit at United Nations Headquarters in New York City on September 23, 2014. This meeting, which is in addition to the annual UN Climate Change Conferences within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is intended to “mobilize action and ambition on climate change”. Because this event will take place during the annual UN General Assembly meeting, Ban can expect a large number of heads of state to attend, as well as the “business, finance, civil society and local leaders” that he has invited.
Capitalism, Global Slump & the New Normal
25 July 2014, by ,It’s been nearly seven years since the onset of the global economic crisis that began in 2007. In order to get an understanding of the crisis—of its origins, depth, and trajectory, we spoke with David McNally, activist, political economist, and author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (2010) and more recently Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (2012). For readability’s sake, we have broken this interview into two parts. This first part focuses on the crisis itself, its causes, the way in which working life has been reorganized, the perspective of ruling elites in managing the crisis and pursuing austerity policies, and how this should help inform our stance as movement activists.
Four months after our establishment
24 July 2014Comrades
Since the announcement of the establishment of the People’s Liberation Faction four months ago, which defends the program of the popular revolution for the liberation and emancipation of the Syrian people, of all Syrians, from all kinds of tyrannies and for equality and social justice, in order to defend itself and for the protection of the masses, which we embrace and we defend its right to exercise their freedom and mobilisation in all its liberty and from below. Therefore we were not, and we are not, at odd or separate of the masses, because the activists of the People’s Liberation Faction are themselves from the masses. We were, despite our modest capacities and the absence of any full support of anyone, able to maintain the spirit of the popular revolution in areas in which we are present to oppose the brutality and oppression of the authoritarian regime’s killing machine and also to oppose the reactionary forces of the counter-revolution, foremost Daech and similar organizations.
Presidential Election: Tensions rise as Indonesia awaits official election result
24 July 2014, byAccording to the majority of polling institutions that carried out “quick counts” on 9 July, Joko Widodo won 52-53 percent of the vote in the Indonesian presidential election. Widodo, accompanied by Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), declared himself and his vice president Jusuf Kalla “winner of the quick count”.
Legitimate support of the Palestinians has no common ground with anti-semitism
23 July 2014, byFrançois Hollande et his prime minister, Manuel Valls have chosen to outrageously link the struggle for the rights of the Palestinian people to anti-Semitism. Today, because of their bans on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, they are principally responsible for any incidents which may happen on the fringes of such protests.
The downing of MH17 Boeing 777: Between “Yes” and “No” – Can Putin back down?
23 July 2014, byWe can say with confidence that the tragedy of Boeing 777, which took the lives of 298 people, has brought the conflict in Eastern Ukraine to a principally new level. Now the main centers of power—Russia, the US, and the EU—must make themselves known and must take the responsibility for stopping the war or conversely—for its practical legitimation and expansion. Even considering the possibility that the plane was shot down by mistake, it is events of such magnitude that divide history into “before” and “after.” “After” such an event the possibilities of such “strange,” “hybrid,” and other “wars without war” become exhausted.
Chinese ambitions - An imperialism in formation
22 July 2014, byChina is not an "emerging country" but a power that has emerged. It is not a "sub-imperialism" ensuring order in its own region, but an imperialism "in formation." The new Chinese bourgeoisie is aiming to play in the big league. The success of its enterprise is still far from assured, but this ambition determines its international policies, both economic and military.
Statement of solidarity with the Kurdish masses against the attacks of the reactionary counter revolutionary forces
22 July 2014, byThe attacks of the reactionary and takfirists armed forces did not cease against the Syrian civilian and revolutionary forces in each region it entered, including the kidnapping, murdering, arresting and slaughtering publicly activists. These reactionary counter revolutionary forces always worked to destroy the revolutionary popular movement and to impose their reactionary hegemony on the rest of the popular masses in the so called «liberated» areas, in which these reactionary forces were able to penetrate, especially Daech and similar type of organizations.
“We are all Palestinians”
20 July 2014, byTens of thousands of people marched from Downing Street, home of the British prime minister to the Israeli state’s London embassy on Saturday July 19th. It was a nice way of underlining the active support virtually the entire British political class gives to the perpetrators of the carnage in Gaza. The slogan that united them was “in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians. At the same time protests were taking place all across Europe, including Paris, in defiance of a ban imposed by Francois Hollande’s “socialist” government.
French government bans solidarity with people of Gaza
20 July 2014, byThe demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza against Israeli attacks called by the “Collective for a lasting and just peace” on Saurday 19 July in Paris was banned by the police. The president François Hollande justified the ban saying the "conflict should not be brought to the streets of France". The Socialist Party mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, also defended the ban.