- Violation of Venezuela
- The State of Democracy
- Behind Iran Protests
- A Factory Occupation for the Climate
- Palestine’s Path Forward
- Africa: Hard Looks Back
- Lebanon’s Domestic Workers Organize
- A Few Major Setbacks in 2025
- Canadian Labor’s Year
- Trump on the Prowl for Euroleft Antifa Groups
__________
Violation of Venezuela
Luís Bonilla-Molina / Green Left (Sydney)
The international legal system was torn to shreds on January 3, when the United States military intervened in Venezuela, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, National Assembly deputy Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro. The announced plans to install a US-run government harks back to the colonial era. The damage to Latin America’s dignity and sovereignty will not be easily undone.__________
The State of Democracy
Filippo Barbera / il manifesto Global (Rome)
The question is not how to return to the liberal democracy of the last century, but whether it is still possible to reconstruct the necessary preconditions that supported it. The problem to face is the deep fracture that the processes of capitalist modernization have imposed on the conditions enabling the functioning of our – always imperfect and gap-riddled – democracy.__________
Behind Iran Protests
Middle East Eye (London)
What began as a strike by merchants in Tehran has quickly escalated into nationwide protests and deadly clashes with security forces across Iran. Demonstrators have taken to the streets in more than 30 cities, turning an economic protest into broader political unrest. Their standoff with the government created space for other Iranians to join the streets and voice opposition to their rulers. __________
A Factory Occupation for the Climate
Lukas Ferrari and Julia Kaiser / Socialist Project (Toronto)
After the 422 employees and approximately 80 agency workers of the automotive supplier GKN Driveline in Tuscany, Italy, received an email on 9 July 2021 informing them that they didn’t need to come to work next Monday, they occupied their plant in Campi Bisenzio, on the outskirts of Florence.__________
Palestine’s Path Forward
Susan Abulhawa / Workers World (New York)
One of the most painful and recurring patterns in our struggle — a strategic error that has, time and again, transformed moments of undeniable power into periods of deepened dispossession. It is the mistake of willfully allowing the transfer of our struggle from the arenas of our power into the arenas where we are essentially powerless.__________
Africa: Hard Looks Back
• South Africa in History’s Shadow Kevin Cox / New Left Review (London)
• Mozambique After Liberation Fredson Guilengue / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Berlin)
__________
Lebanon’s Domestic Workers Organize
Kirsten O’Regan / Dissent (New York)
In a country of 6 million, there are now 250,000 migrant domestic workers laboring under the oppressive kafala system. Can a new union help transform conditions not just in Lebanon, but across the Middle East?
__________
A Few Major Setbacks in 2025
• Bangladesh: Aftermath of an Uprising Ambika Satkunanathan / The Wire (New Delhi)
• Defeat in Chile Giorgio Jackson / Jacobin (Brooklyn)
• Myanmar Junta’s Battlefield Comeback Sana Khan / Modern Diplomacy (Plovdiv, Bulgaria)
• CPI(M) in Kerala M.P. Basheer / The Wire
• Ukraine: Fine Print of the Peace Deal Selbi Durdiyeva / The Conversation (Melbourne)
__________
Canadian Labor’s Year
Gabriela Calugay-Casuga / rabble.ca (Toronto)
Despite a hard year to look back on, president of Unifor, Lana Payne, and president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), Sharon DeSousa, both said it is also important to highlight the way Canadian workers and their allies have stood up against injustice this year.
__________
Trump on the Prowl for Euroleft Antifa Groups
Ben Makuch / The Guardian (London)
The same anti-fascist groups the US state department recently named as foreign terrorist organizations and accused of “conspiring to undermine foundations of western civilization” barely qualify as groups, let alone terrorist organizations, and pose no active threat to Americans.
