Portside

1. Multi-Imperialism?
2. Ontario Unions Call for Support for Student Palestine Action
3. Social Democratic Dilemmas
4. Big Elections
5. The Brothers Ortega
6. Taming Amazon, Renewing Labor
7. New Caledonia and France
8. People’s Rights in Jammu Kashir
9. Hungary: Sparks of Hopes
10. Sudan: Revolutionaries and Peace

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Multi-Imperialism?

Ilya Matveev / Jacobin (Brooklyn)

Vast shifts in the world economy are driving a new imperialist rivalry, for which a series of regional wars are creating dangerous flash points.

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Ontario Unions Call for Support for Student Palestine Action

Laura Walton / rabble.ca (Toronto)

As in 1968, a similar dynamic is underway, as parents, professors, and campus workers show up to support the students–many of them facing arrest, too. Labour leaders are also speaking out, defending freedom of speech and assembly and other civil liberties. We need to show up, speak out, and back the students. The forces attacking their rights are the same ones attacking ours.

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Social Democratic Dilemmas

Eric Shaw / Chartist (London)

If we extend our angle of vison to include Labour’s sister parties in the rest of Western Europe, a clear, common pattern emerges almost without exception over the last couple of decades: their electorates have been shrinking.

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Big Elections

• South Africa   Mazibuko Jara and Federico Fuentes / Links (Sydney)
   
• India   Sanjay Jha / The Wire (New Delhi)
   
• UK   Mike Phipps / Labour Hub (London)

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The Brothers Ortega

Wilfredo Miranda / EL PAÍS (Madrid) 

The retired Sandinista general and brother of President Daniel Ortega has again launched criticism of the authoritarian Nicaraguan administration and questioned its ability to establish a succession based around the figure of the ‘co-president’.

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Taming Amazon, Renewing Labor

Sam Gindin / Canadian Dimension (Winnipeg)

In considering the ‘Amazon Challenge,’ two inter-related realities, controversial to many, are central: the depth of labour’s decades-long defeat and the identification of Amazon as the iconic 21st century corporation. Success at Amazon could make credible labour’s claim that “In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold.” Failure would consolidate labour’s defeats.

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New Caledonia and France

Colin Falconer / Green Left (Sydney)

The French government has declared a state of emergency in the country’s semi-autonomous overseas territory of New Caledonia. Residents in the mainly European districts have organised armed vigilante (or “self-defence”) groups.  Many of the indigenous Kanak rioters are also armed. Increasingly politically conscious and educated young Kanaks and women, in particular, are proud of their culture and committed to independence. 

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People’s Rights in Jammu Kashir

Haris Qadeer / Asian Marxist Review (Lahore)

The ongoing peoples rights movement in Pakistani-administered Jammu Kashmir has finally emerged victorious after a year-long struggle. In a decisive phase, the people effectively paralyzed the state’s functioning across the region for over five days, culminating in a massive procession marching towards Muzaffarabad. Facing mounting pressure, the state issued a notification accepting the demands before the rally could reach the capital.

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Hungary: Sparks of Hopes

Áron Rossman-Kiss / transform! europe (Vienna)

If, a few exceptions aside, the Left has made only little electoral inroads in Hungary during the past decade, a lively left-wing scene has nevertheless emerged. Still small, Budapest-centric, and inevitably beset by fierce disagreement, it has nevertheless contributed to broadening the terms and possibilities of political imagination.

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Sudan: Revolutionaries and Peace

Mohammed Amin / Middle East Eye (London)

The resistance committees - nationwide groups of local activists that have been at the heart of Sudan’s revolutionary movement - have, along with the affiliated emergency response rooms (ERR), been organising lifesaving wartime support across Sudan, and are actively trying to bring the war to an end. In a document titled, “The political vision to end the war in Sudan,” the resistance committees have detailed their bottom-up approach to solving the crisis in Sudan through political pressure and popular organising.