- India, Modi and Europe
- Early EP Election Reports
- Samsung Workers Make History
- Purge in UK Labour Party
- Why is a Chilean Mayor Facing Imprisonment?
- Italian Anti-Fascist Wins Election — and Freedom
- Sahrawis Fight On
- Communist Parties’ Post Election Statements
- Cuba: Solve, Struggle, Invent
- D-Day and the Anti-Fascist Revolution
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India, Modi and Europe
Jayati Ghosh / Social Europe (Berlin)
This election has changed the reality on the ground, in all sorts of ways. The BJP is now dependent for the government’s survival on pragmatic allies which do not share its enthusiasm for Hindu majoritarianism. Western governments and the European Union must realise that pretending that things are better than they are, especially on bread-and-butter issues, rarely works for long.
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Early EP Election Reports
- Harsh Reckoning C.J. Polychroniou / Truthout (Sacramento)
- Left Gains in Nordic Seats Cynthia Kroet / Euronews (Lyon)
- Wagenknecht Wins Six Seats Ben Knight / Deutsche Welle (Berlin)
- French Left Forms Electoral Bloc Romain Brunet / France 24 (Paris)
- Yolanda Díaz Resigns Sumar Leadership Ben Pawlowski / The Olive Press (Malaga, Spain)
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Samsung Workers Make History
Al Jazeera (Doha)
Staff at Samsung Electronics in South Korea have taken industrial action for the first time as part of a six-month campaign for better pay. Son Woo-mok, head of the National Samsung Electronics Union, which represents tens of thousands of people, said that employees were taking their paid leave entitlements simultaneously on Friday.
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Purge in UK Labour Party
Taj Ali / The Nation (New York)
The UK news was not dominated by tales of Tory collapse or the Labour Party’s forward march. Instead, it was Labour’s attempted purge of Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black female MP, that led the headlines. Rather than spend his time confronting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, party leader Keir Starmer, once again, went to war with his real enemy: the left of his own party.
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Why is a Chilean Mayor Facing Imprisonment?
W.T. Whitney Jr. / People’s World (New York)
Judge Paulina Moya ruled that Communist mayor Daniel Jadue of Recoleta, Chile, would be imprisoned “preventively” on charges of bribery, maladministration, tax fraud, and bankruptcy. The court’s decision had to do with the “people’s pharmacy” that Jadue devised for Recoleta in 2015. It also involves the spread of people’s pharmacies throughout Chile.
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Italian Anti-Fascist Wins Election — and Freedom
In-Cyprus (Nicosia)
Ilaria Salis, the 39-year-old Italian anti-fascist teacher, who has denounced the inhumane and degrading conditions she endured in Viktor Orban’s far-right Hungary, has been elected in the 2024 European elections. The 39-year-old Italian teacher received 173,000 votes, and reportedly should be released from Hungarian justice as soon as the European Parliament officially announces her election.
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Sahrawis Fight On
Alex MacDonald / Middle East Eye (London)
For decades, Western Saharan refugees have pinned their hopes for brighter futures on the eventual return to their homeland, but at the moment that prospect may be further away than ever. Analysts say the fighting has become hopelessly one-sided as a result of the advanced drone technology Morocco uses, which the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic army have little or no way of countering.
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Communist Parties’ Post Election Statements
- South Africa Political Bureau / SACP (Johannesburg)
- CP of India (Marxist) / Peoples Democracy (New Delhi)
- CP of India / New Age (New Delhi)
- CPIML (Liberation) / ML Update (New Delhi)
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Cuba: Solve, Struggle, Invent
Rachel Nolan / London Review of Books
In order to write about ‘ordinary Cubans’, or to gather oral histories, interviewees must be able to speak freely. But has there been freedom of speech in revolutionary Cuba? It depends on who is trying to speak, about what and when. Since the revolution’s earliest days, the loudest expression of Cuban free speech – at least in a register audible to foreign ears – has been migration.
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D-Day and the Anti-Fascist Revolution
Owen Dowling and editorial staff / Tribune (London)
As Europe’s right-wing politicians exploit the 80th anniversary of D-Day for their reactionary ends, Tribune remembers its significance for the progressive and anti-fascist revolutions which followed.
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