IV480 - January 2015

“Islamic State"” (Daesh) traces its origins to the formation of an Iraqi kernel of Al Qaeda following the US invasion. The self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi joined the latter, when it was led by the Jordanian al-Zarkawi. In 2006, the consultative council of the Mujahedeen in Iraq proclaimed “the Islamic State in Iraq”. It was by involving themselves in the Syrian revolution, fighting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) more than the Assad regime, particularly from 2013, that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (Daesh) was able to expand, competing with Al Qaeda and its Syrian franchise, the al-Nusra Front (or Jabhat al-Nusra).

A month after her conviction and imprisonment for “unlawful procurement of naturalization,” Rasmea Odeh’s release on $50,000 cash bond was secured on December 11, 2014.

Despite happy talk of Detroit “rebounding” from bankruptcy, the basic problems remain: lack of jobs, deep poverty, the state takeover of the public schools and a 28% decrease in state revenue sharing over the last decade.

In the run up to the crucial elections in Greece at the end of the month, we publish an interview conducted by Sozialistische Zeitung with Panos Petrou from International Workers Left (DEA) before the failed attempts to elect a president, or the parliamentary elections were finally called.

“They took them alive and we want them back alive” demanded the families of 43 students kidnapped from Ayotzinapa in the Mexican state of Guerrero. The cry was taken up everywhere, even though many believed they must by now be dead.

The passing of the 21st constitutional amendment with no one voting against it apparently seems a victory for Mian Nawaz Sharif. However, there are reports of dissent within the PPP and the PML-N. Raza Rabbani breaking down into tears and publically admitting that the voting against his ‘conscience’ indicates the massive pressures the parliamentarians felt while voting for the amendment.

We cannot but rejoice at Thomas Piketty’s refusing the Légion d’honneur that the French governement wanted to award him with at the beginning of 2015.  [1]

“Zero problems with the neighbours” - such was the motto of Turkish diplomacy directed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs (and current Prime Minister) Ahmet Davutoglu since 2009. This goal of “normalization”" of Turkey’s relations with the neighbouring countries was paradoxically accompanied by the “neo-Ottoman” motivation to establish a politico-cultural and economic hegemony over the countries of the Middle East. But the crisis today around the resistance of Kobane shows that these goals seem far from being achieved.

This statement was issued by the Secretariat of the Bureau of the Fourth International on 11 January 2015.

Namibia is the least populated country in the planet, and yet one often hears among working class and increasingly middle class groups that one of the biggest challenges in the country is ‘the land issue’. Debates on the land issue after Namibia’s independence in 1990 revolved solely around farmland redistribution, but today they are mainly concerned with the issue of land within towns and cities, where almost half of the population lives.