This interview with left activist Munif Mulhem was conducted by the editor of the Arab revolutionary Marxist journal Permanent Revolution, published jointly by the Socialist Forum (Lebanon), the Organization of Revolutionary Socialists (Egypt) the Al-Mounadil-a current (Morocco) the League for a Workers’ Left (Tunisia), the Current of the Revolutionary Left (Syria) and the Union of Iraqi Communists (Iraq). It was first published in Permanent Revolution, 4 January 2014.
Under Obama, Inequality and Greenhouse Gases Increase in the United States
17 February 2014, byIn his State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted growing inequality in the U.S. He also pledged to take steps to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. What has the Obama administration done recently on both counts?
Economic and Ecological Crisis ?in Greece – The Global Context and Syriza’s Solution
17 February 2014, byMany misconceptions still exist in the mainstream about the ongoing economic crisis in Southern Europe. First, the crisis is often considered a direct result of the 2008 banking sector collapse in the United States, but it is becoming abundantly clear that it is a by-product, an expected outcome, of the current economic system, capitalism, which relies on continuing growth and competition, profit maximization, power and wealth accumulation by the oligarchy, commodification of public goods and resources, and the voracious exploitation of the environment. In the late 2000s the system reached a serious downturn, a situation that persists in Southern Europe in particular.
Reproductive Rights Assaulted
16 February 2014, byTHREE YEARS AGO Tamesha Means was rushed to Mercy Health Partners Hospital in Muskegon, Michigan after her water broke 18 weeks into her pregnancy. The hospital diagnosed a premature rupture of membranes but sent her home, saying there was nothing to be done at that stage.
New faces, same austerity
16 February 2014, byMatteo Renzi is poised to take the baton from fellow Democratic Party (PD) leader Enrico Letta. He will be the third Italian prime minister in a row to be installed without personally being elected. Italian president, Napolitano, also from the PD, will go through the motions of a parliamentary consultation about the transition but everyone knows this is a done deal once the PD national leadership voted overwhelmingly to dump Letta and put the youngest ever prime minister into power.
What remains of the Arab Spring?
14 February 2014, byIt is now in vogue – in our present increasingly short-term and short-sighted times – to ask this question to the tune of Charles Trenet’s song: “What remains of those beautiful days?”. The euphoria of 2011 has given way to the melancholia of those disillusioned with the revolution, when it is not the dumb satisfaction of the supporters of the “ancien régime”, hostile to the uprising from the start on the pretext that nothing good would come out of it.
Dualities of Latin America
13 February 2014, byHas Latin America gained autonomy or reinforced its dependent condition in the last decade? Broadened or reduced its margin of sovereignty? Confronted the global economic crisis with greater protection or greater helplessness? (This is the first part of a three part article.)
Open Letter of support for Citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina
13 February 2014This Open Letter was published on 12 Feburary 2014 on the website of the Committee for the Aboliition of Third World Debt (CADTM).
The People’s Uprising : A Break with Dayton Bosnia ?
13 February 2014, byWar has returned to the cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Not the nationalist wars of partition of the 1990s, or the cold war of nationalist politicians within an ethnically divided federation presided over by a colonial style High Representative of the Great Powers, but a social war, an uprising of the people.
Ukraine’s Protest Movement: Is a ‘Left Sector’ Possible?
12 February 2014, byBack in mid-December, our estimate of Ukraine’s political crisis as a “revolutionary situation” resulted in a lot of critical reviews. Further, the use of the word “revolution” in the context of Ukraine was condemned as a kind of sacrilege, because the events in Kiev appeared to be totally incomparable to the grandeur of past revolutions. There are no proclamations about the beginning of a new world, and no discussions of the socialization of property, while the social order established over the last two decades of post-Soviet rule has itself not been called into question. But a revolution’s political content may not totally correspond to its dynamics: the masses’ actual experience, their determination and ability to organize on their own, may be far ahead of their “political imagination.” And if the revolution fails simply by virtue of a lack of independent political projects, it never ceases to be a revolution.