By ANDY STOWE Elizabeth Windsor, the English queen, isn’t supposed to make political statements, but on June 16 she announced to the world that she thinks Tory Prime Minister Theresa May is a morally gutless coward and a useless leader. Of course, she didn’t quite put it that way. Instead, she met survivors of the Grenfell…
A displaced resident of the now destroyed Grenfell Tower in London told the press after the June 14 pre-dawn fire: “A building like that wouldn’t fly in a rich area. But because everyone here is poor and working class—that’s why it happened.” For years, residents of the 24-story tower block had complained to local government…
CHRIS HUTCHINSON interviews JEAN ROCH-FORT Emmanuel Macron, a French banker and longtime establishment politician, emerged victorious on a “third party” ticket in this year’s French elections. His victory follows the breakdown of the traditional center left and right capitalist parties through major corruption scandals. The candidate of the Republicans, a center right-wing party, Nathan Fillon,…
By THOMAS WEYTS — BRUSSELS —Twelve thousand people took part in the demonstration here on May 24 against Trump and the world that he stands for and against NATO. As expected and hoped, it was a very diverse, lively, and militant demonstration. More than 70 organizations took to the streets against war and imperialist adventures,…
By ANN MONTAGUE Women in Ireland are going on strike to protest the country’s ban on abortions. In Ireland it is a crime to have an abortion, and the procedure carries a 14-year prison sentence. There are no exceptions for rape or incest or when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb due to a…
By Y. FIKRET KAYALI The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, barely rescued from the grave, may yet prove to be one of the walking-dead. The signature of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and those of his European counterparts on the document are, at this point, merely ceremonial. Before implementation, ratification votes must be held in Ottawa and…
By PHIL HEARSE It is likely that the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential elections will give new momentum to the right wing in world politics. As part of the discussion, we print this article from Phil Hearse, which appeared in Socialist Resistance, journal of the British section of the Fourth International. The international…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE After over 315 days of political stalemate, the right-wing Partido Popular [PP] has regained control in Spain with the tacit support of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party [PSOE]. The vote to form the new government took place in two stages, the first on Oct. 27 and the second on Oct. 29, just…
By ANN MONTAGUE In October there were mass protests linked with strike activity by women in three countries. The feminist strike demands were unique to each country and an indication of increased militancy around demands that address issues women have been fighting for year after year. Poland: Abortion On Oct. 3, seven million women throughout…
By MARTY GOODMAN This year activists received an education in corporate politics when Wikileaks revealed the dirty tricks played on Bernie Sanders by Hillary Clinton operatives. Just as in corporate America, you can’t find two cents worth of democracy in the Democratic Party. For those tired of the corporate rule of both major parties, the Green…
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE The political revolution has been postponed. For the second time in six months Spanish voters went to the polls to vote in national elections on June 26. The big winner was the hard right and the biggest loser was the new left-populist party Podemos. An earlier election held on Dec. 20 resulted…
By SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY — Socialist Democracy is the sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Ireland. — At first sight, the Tale of 1916 seems a simple one. On the one hand, there was a small band—an alliance of socialists and revolutionary democrats. On the other hand, were the British imperialists and their Unionist supporters.…
By JEFF MACKLER One million workers and students took to the streets of Paris and cities across France on March 31 to protest draconian Labor Code changes proposed by the austerity-minded governing French Socialist Party of Francois Holland. The changes are set to be considered by the French parliament in late April; more giant protests…
By CARL SACK After 10 days of talks at the COP 21 climate conference in Paris, negotiators from 195 countries celebrated the adoption of an agreement that calls for a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5o Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. On one hand, the agreement goes farther than any previous accord to acknowledge the…
By LISA LUINENBURG A huge number of refugees have been flowing across European borders in the last year, and this great migration crisis has had reverberations in the United States as well, where over 100,000 migrants fleeing violence in Central America arrived in 2015. As of Dec. 21, more than a million refugees have crossed…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER In the space of less than two weeks, the world recently witnessed three massacres outside the home base of the Islamic State (ISIS) for which the jihadist group took credit. On Oct. 31, a homemade bomb brought down a Russian airliner over the Sinai, killing all 224 people on board. On Nov.…
By CHRISTINE FRANK On the eve of the UN Climate Summit in Paris, some 785,000 people marched and rallied in 2300 locations around the world to demand concrete action to phase out fossil fuels and implement clean, renewable energy to prevent catastrophic warming of Earth’s atmosphere with a binding agreement to achieve that. Despite the…
The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire-Socialistische Arberjderspartij (LCR-SAP), the Belgian section of the Fourth International, issued the following statement on the third day of the “Brussels lockdown,” as the government’s “level 4” alert was known. BRUSSELS— The LCR/SAP has sounded the alarm over the anti-democratic procedures that have been introduced in the name of the fight against terrorism.…
The following interview is with Kostas Skordoulis, a leading member of OKDE-Spartakos. The OKDE is Socialist Action’s sister party and the Greek section of the Fourth International. The interview was conducted by Josefina L. Martinez; it first appeared in English in the on-line journal Left Voice (October 2015), associated with the Trotskyist Faction-Fourth International. Socialist…
By MARTY GOODMAN The Sept. 20 Greek national election, held in a rush, resulted in the reelection of the Syriza party’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The election occurred merely 30 days after its announcement. It was timed cynically to take place before the onset of a new wave of punishing austerity conditions—the worst ever—agreed to…
By MARTY GOODMAN Since being elected in January, Greece’s Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) was for a time the most followed movement on the international left and the hope of millions of long suffering Greek workers. But those wishful sentiments were buried in July with the most brutal “loan” and austerity package yet, finalized…
By BARRY WEISLEDER Unprecedented numbers of people are desperate to migrate. Stories fill the media about the many who drown in the Mediterranean or die in desserts in a failed bid to escape horrible conditions. Stunning figures released on June 18 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees quantify the extent of the global…
By JEFF MACKLER The classic definition of Greek tragedy from the times of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides 2500 years ago applies with a vengeance today. The Greek working masses have suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Europe’s imperial economic and political powers—tragically, with the full complicity of the reformist, that is, pro-capitalist, Syriza…
By MARTY GOODMAN (Updated Aug. 5) The new $93 billion (86 billion euros) economic bailout deal in Greece is a shameless act of international capitalist piracy. The July 13 proposal—approved by the Greek parliament two days later—wielded cuts to pensions, including special aid to the poorest; a hike in taxes on food and other goods…
As we go to press, on Sunday, July 12, Greece’s Syriza government has just submitted a new proposal to EU leaders and financial institutions that contains significant concessions to their demands for austerity. This proposal follows by days the referendum vote by the Greek people that strongly rejected any further austerity measures. As background to…
