A year ago at the World Economic Forum, China’s president, Xi Jinping, won plaudits from Davos elites for his commitment to open trade. Of course, because China’s economy is heavily dependent on exports, so-called “free trade” is in its interest, so President Xi’s stand was no surprise.
Austerity, Brexit and the Corbyn challenge
10 March 2018, byIn the middle of the harshest winter for more than a decade, Britain finds itself still gripped by the icy fingers of neoliberal austerity. Both the health service (NHS) and local government stagger from crisis to crisis, as savage spending cuts by Theresa May’s Conservative government make the provision of adequate services – those used mainly by the elderly, disabled people, the ill, the poor and the homeless – impossible. Eight years of austerity and harsh pay restraint among public sector workers have pushed economic growth into a nosedive, sharply reducing tax income, thus giving a further twist to the knife of Tory cutbacks.
Crisis and Olympic diplomacy
9 March 2018, byAs the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang take place, the Korean peninsula is experiencing a moment of détente whose consequences cannot be predicted, but which has already changed the geopolitical situation and sheds new light on the way in which the question of reunification is posed.
We are going on strike together: young women are organizing to change everything
8 March 2018, by ,“It would be a shame if we go to the streets all happy and then return home and do not combine this moment with the construction of something different.” - Silvia Federici
Readings: Intersectional Black Activists
8 March 2018, byDomestic Worker Organizers, 1960s-1970s
In the mid-to-late 20th century, while the Civil Rights movement was well under way, Black domestic workers spearheaded a movement of their own. Dorothy Bolden, Geraldine Roberts, Josephine Hulett and other African-American household laborers fought for respect, professionalism, and improved working conditions for their profession.
For International Women’s Day: Honoring the Fighters
8 March 2018, byIn recognition of International Women’s Day, Against the Current takes the opportunity to honor some of the heroic women fighters of the present and recent past. Obviously this is only a small list that symbolizes much larger movements of resistance. We cite them here both for their own contributions and for the freedom struggles they represent.
Education strikes are women’s strikes
8 March 2018, by"The struggle for gender justice has always been and remains today crucial for the struggle for labour and social justice in general" - Sara Farris
A New Wave of Water Privatisation in Indonesia
7 March 2018, byThe central government of Indonesia has repeatedly announced its intention to universalise access to clean water by 2019. To achieve this, an estimated 27 million new connections are needed, with a major investment gap of IDR 274.8 trillion (US$20.8 billion).
Historic meeting between CIG and trade union and workers’ organisations
6 March 2018The importance of the formation of the CIG (Concejo IndÃgena de Gobierno – Indigenous Council of Government) and the campaign of its spokesperson, Marichuy, to register as an independent presidential candidacy goes beyond an electoral campaign.
US support for repression and fraud
4 March 2018, byRight wing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) was inaugurated in a January 7, 2018 ceremony in a nearly empty National Stadium in the capital Tegucigalpa. Since the stolen election of November 26, 2017, the country had been totally militarized to protect his fraudulent victory — with a death toll of more than 34 killed by military and police.