Global Left Midweek – February 7, 2024

In an age of mass protest, why aren’t we winning?

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Protesters in Brisbane show solidarity with indigenous rights and Palestinian freedom. Credit, Jono Searle/AAP
  1. In an Age of Mass Protest, Why Aren’t We Winning?
  2. Strikes and More Strikes
  3. Ukraine’s Sotsialnyi Rukh on Palestine’s Fight
  4. Elections 2024: Pakistan, Indonesia, India, Ireland
  5. Stormy Germany
  6. Namibia’s President, SWAPO Founder and Reformer, Dies at 82  
  7. Myanmar Resistance: Tough Questions
  8. Kenya and Haiti
  9. Protests on Australia’s Invasion Day
  10. Walter Rodney’s Marxism

 

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In an Age of Mass Protest, Why Aren’t We Winning?

Mike Phipps / Labour Hub (London)

From 2010 to 2020, more people took part in protests than at any other time in human history – the Arab Spring, student direct action in Chile, democracy activism in Hong Kong and Ukraine, to name a few. Why, asks Bevins, has success proved so elusive, in many cases the outcome being the opposite of what the protesters wanted?

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Strikes and More Strikes

  • Argentina​​​​   Zoe Alexandra / Peoples Dispatch (New Delhi)
     
  • Northern Ireland   Phil Hearse / Anti*Capitalist Resistance (London)
     
  • Finland    AFP News / Yahoo! (Sunnyvale CA)
     
  • UK   Erika Page / The Christian Science Monitor (Boston)
     
  • Nigeria   Obiora Ikoku / Waging Nonviolence (Brooklyn)

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Ukraine’s Sotsialnyi Rukh on Palestine’s Fight

Sotsialnyi Rukh / Links (Sydney)

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For well-known Hamas partners and sponsors, such as the authoritarian authorities of Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Russia, the tragedy of the Palestinian people is only a bargaining chip. But reducing the Palestinians to “proxies of Tehran and the Kremlin” in the domestic information space is as much a caricature as the “proxy” justification of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

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Elections 2024

  • Pakistan   Dr Amar Ali Jan / Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (Lahore)
     
  • Indonesia   Johannes Nugroho / South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
     
  • India   Nidhi Sharma / The Economic Times (Mumbai)
     
  • Ireland   Rory Carroll / The Guardian (London)

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Stormy Germany

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Namibia’s President, SWAPO Founder and Reformer, Dies at 82 

Henning Melber / The Conversation (Waltham MA)

Swapo’s candidate Hage Geingob was elected as Namibia’s president for 2015 to 2020. In 2017 he became party president. As head of state with far reaching executive powers, he remained in control over party and government since then. He elevated Namibia into the league of countries with the highest proportion of women in leading political offices.

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Myanmar Resistance: Tough Questions

Nyan Lin / The Irawaddy (Yangon)

Staging an armed revolution requires well-articulated objectives and a sound strategy. Support from local people also matters. Fought by spirited and energetic young people, the revolution has made remarkable progress. But for success, an armed revolution must come under a single command or headquarters. The resistance government’s Ministry of Defense has achieved little success so far.

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Kenya and Haiti

Pavan Kulkarni / Peoples Dispatch

Despite the prohibition by Kenya’s High Court, President William Ruto has vowed to deploy policemen within this week to Haiti. Communist Party of Kenya leader Booker Omole says Ruto is selling the country’s foreign policy to the highest bidder, namely the US.

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Indigenous Protests on Australia’s Invasion Day

Caitlin Cassidy, Henry Belot and Andrew Messenger / The Guardian

The speeches in major capital cities highlighted anger and despair over high incarceration rates, ongoing deaths in custody and the forced removal of First Nations children from their families. The rallies come just months after the proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament was overwhelmingly defeated at the referendum.

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Walter Rodney’s Marxism

Shozab Raza and Noaman G. Ali / Boston Review

Rodney was among the midcentury thinkers deeply influenced by Marxism who argued that formal independence from colonial powers did not entail actual emancipation. Instead, it led to a “neocolonial” order in which a country’s “economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside,” as independent Ghana’s first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, put it in 1965.