THE JANUARY 3 drone strike on Baghdad Airport that killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and responsible for Iran’s operations in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, along with nine figures from the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces is a heavy blow for the Islamic Republic. It is an act of […]

Podemos and the PSOE have formed a coalition against a marked swing to the right

Lebanon, like Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria, is experiencing its own version of the Arab Spring with mass demonstrations, occupations and street blockades

Iraq is once again the scene of massive protests. In the capital and in southern cities thousands-strong demonstrations have been dispersed with tear gas, and police snipers using live ammunition. A huge rally in Sadr City in Baghdad – a district with 3.5 million people, was savagely broken up. UN officials in the city have […]

Over 80 years ago, CLR James’ remarkable work, The Black Jacobins was published in London. Its author openly intended his book to “stimulate the coming emancipation of Africa”. And indeed it did, playing a part in developing a movement of young black intellectuals in London, who were paralleled by similar figures in Paris and New […]

ANYONE WHO doubted that Donald Trump’s arrival as 45th president of the United States heralded a major change in both the country’s internal and external relationships must surely have been forced to think again by his inaugural address and the barrage of executive orders issued in his first week. Many political commentators and leader writers who put their […]

THE PROJECT to develop “our own progressive patriotism”, as Owen Jones puts it, is seriously misplaced, indeed a fool’s errand since all the positive points he cites for inclusion are not national at all, but international, indeed universal, values. Another of the left’s most popular speakers, Clive Lewis, has also fallen for the idea that […]

AFTER TEN months of political wrangling and two inconclusive elections, Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) has secured the support of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) to form a minority government. In a warning to PSOE MPs whose abstentions broke the deadlock, Rajoy said his government would be one “that can govern, not a government that […]

THE FIRST of the reactionary consequences of Brexit is the major boost it has given to racist attacks on people perceived to be migrants. The effect was immediate. In the first four days following the 24 June announcement, True Vision, a police-funded website, reported a 57 per cent increase in reported hate incidents month on […]

FIRST THE good news from Hangzhou; the US and China have adopted the international climate change agreement reached in Paris in December 2015. The bad news; none of the provisions of the Treaty are enforceable. Ironically, the G20 reportedly met in Hangzhou because of the dire air quality in Beijing. The meeting of the 20 […]

IN THE LAST weeks of the Referendum campaign the Brexit campaigners, led by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, decided to play their ace – the widespread fears about immigration. With the mass readership of the right-wing Tory tabloids going into overdrive, administering their daily of horror stories about migrants, no one should have been surprised it had […]

How revolutionaries use elections as a weapon against capital.

The building workers' strike holds lessons on the dangers of Broad Leftism for union activists today

The global day of indignation against banks and pro-business politicians was an enormous success. A new movement has been born.