The following article by Matt Willgress, on the US decision to impose sanctions against Venezuela, was originally published by the Morning Star.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has led a chorus of the Global South in angrily rejecting new sanctions against his nation signed into law by US President Barack Obama in December.
By Neil Keenan
In the closing weeks of 2014 the US saw the beginnings of a nationwide movement against police repression of the black communities. A series of local struggles in the United States against a number of high profile cases of cop killings of black youths and men exploded into a national black struggle on a level not seen since the civil rights movement.
This interview with a member of Borotba, a Ukrainian left-wing organisation, analyses the situation of the left in the east of Ukraine in the ‘Peoples Republics’. It points up the role of Russia in holding back any developments to the left, including blocking the recently refounded Communist Party in east Ukraine from standing in the elections held in October precisely because it has mass support and would probably have won. However, it should also be noted that it is only the pressure from Russia that forced Kiev to agree the ceasefire that significantly reduced the bombardment of eastern cities. The article was previously published on the website of Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine.
In the wake of the grotesque and vile attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which left 12 innocents dead, there has been an understandable rush to not only condemn the attack but to gather under the principle of the “defence of freedom of speech”. Large demonstrations in Paris have taken up the slogan “Je suis Charlie” to express their defiance at attempts to intimidate journalists into silence.
“Whilst we celebrate the return of all of the Miami Five to Cuba, and the changes foreshadowed in President Obama’s speech are to be welcomed, we have to emphasise that the blockade has not ended.”
The following article by Jude Woodward, assessing the US ‘Pacific pivot’ strategy following Obama’s recent visit to Asia, originally appeared on her New Cold War blog.
Obama’s November week-long, whistle stop tour of Asia – attending the Beijing APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit, the ASEAN meeting in Myanmar and the G20 in Australia – was intended to re-launch America’s crucial Asia-Pacific (aka China) strategy, in the doldrums since Obama’s aborted 2013 trip cancelled in the context of the ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis.[1] Instead the trip merely underlined how much ground the USA has to make up in order to trump China’s growing influence in the region.
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