Not only was Macron badly elected, but half of his votes in the second round were in no way in support of record or his programme. They come from a vote of refusal, to prevent the election of Marine Le Pen, which the polls on the evening of the first round had presented as a serious possibility.
The consequences, as always, will be most brutal for those who are young and poor or working class—which includes a disproportionate number of Black and Brown women—who do not have the financial means or the ability to take the time off work to travel far away to a state that still allows abortions.
It is no exaggeration to say that the almost four years of PTI’s stint in power was one of the darkest periods of this country, which only drove society backwards—and in the absence of a mass revolutionary upsurge, its reactionary political, social, and cultural ramifications will continue to haunt Pakistan.
The sort of anti-authoritarian politics that mainstream liberals embrace is long on bellicosity and short on policies or activism to address the erosion of working-class living standards and democratic rights.
Revelations of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay persisted as the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continued, while the U.S. sent “suspects” to secret prisons in foreign countries to be tortured, a procedure it sanitized with the label “rendition”.
By constantly repeating the claim of an alleged American conspiracy to oust him, Khan has successfully retained his base to some extent. It is possible that the no confidence motion was not orchestrated by the Americans, but it served their interests.
The expectation of a strike wave in October, dubbed “Striketober”, was greatly exaggerated by both the mainstream and left press. Amazon, however, is the real thing. The sheer numbers involved show this is a real victory.
Inflation globally will not subside until a new slump emerges, signalling that the central bank war on inflation has been lost.
The result of the failure of social democracy is that social emergencies do not find answers if we do not bring into play the balance of power of social mobilization, if we do not attack to the capitalist system.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the second defining moment of the New Cold War in which the world has been plunged since the turn of the century as a result of the US decision to expand NATO.
Here, we reprint an editorial from the International Socialist Review examining NATO’s sustained bombing of the former Yugoslavia for more than two months in 1999, when civilians again paid the price.
The ISP reprints this article with the reminder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who, in 1967, called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Imperialist countries invade weaker nations and try to impose their rule over them. Once the world is divided up by the great powers, one imperialist’s gain can come only at the expense of another. That is the nub of the matter today.
The relations between Western powers and Russia have never been closer to war since WWII than after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the US and Russia was never closer to each other than in Syria after the chemical deal in September 2013.
Putin’s approval rating spiked after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, as it had fifteen years earlier with the bombing of Chechnya. An ideological climate of conservatism and nationalism has dominated the country for almost ten years, at least among older Russians.
