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Created: Tuesday, 16 April 2019 09:50

Written by FRFI

On 12 April, the Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange was roughly seized by British police from the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he had sought asylum seven years earlier, in a politically motivated assault co-ordinated by the governments of Britain, the United States and Ecuador. He now faces the possibility of 12 months in a British gaol for jumping bail followed by possible extradition to the United States. This latest assault on Assange is intended to punish him for Wikileaks’ consistent publication of classified documents exposing the crimes and brutality of imperialism and to warn off anyone else attempting to do the same. In the words of the journalist John Pilger, ‘Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with the truth’.

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Created: Thursday, 11 April 2019 11:04

Written by Juanjo Rivas

After nine months of social-democratic government, President Pedro Sánchez has not implemented any change to the austerity programmes set out by his conservative predecesor. Parliamentary activity has grown sterile and dominated by arguments over Catalonia. As the division of forces in the congress has made it impossible to pass new laws, only a few decrees have been approved by the cabinet. Meanwhile, the trials have started in Madrid against Catalan political leaders charged with ‘rebellion’, ‘sedition’ and mishandling public funds for holding an independence referendum on 1 October 2017. The only way the ruling class in Spain has found out of the political impasse and social instability of the country is to declare a general election on 28 April, followed by municipal and European parliament elections at the end of May. Juanjo Rivas reports from Madrid.

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Created: Friday, 01 February 2019 15:05

Written by Robert Clough

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 268, February/March 2019

Costas Lapavitsas, The left case against the EU. Polity Books 2019 184pp £14.99;

Another Europe is Possible: The left against Brexit – an internationalist case for Europe. 2018 48pp; downloadable from www.anothereurope.org. 

As the Tory government staggers from one political crisis to another, so the opportunist British left continues to flounder in a reactionary morass of its own making. Determined from the outset to participate in the Brexit process, the left has put forward spurious and conflicting arguments as to why socialists should support either the Remain or Brexit camp. Whatever they may claim, however, both sides capitulate to chauvinism and imperialism. Remainers raise the spectre of future US domination to oppose withdrawal from the EU; ‘Lexiters’ play on the fear of a European juggernaut with Germany at its core undermining a future Jeremy Corbyn government. Corbyn himself is still pro-Brexit but leads a divided party where a majority are for Remain. ROBERT CLOUGH examines the arguments put forward by Costas Lapavitsas, a Lexiter who advises Corbyn, and those on the left of the Labour Party who favour Remain, organised in Another Europe is Possible.

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Created: Friday, 15 February 2019 16:22

Written by Toby Harbertson

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 268 February/March 2019

In November 2018, the US government announced it was considering designating the Ansar Allah coalition in Yemen – commonly known as the Houthis – as a terrorist group. Imperialist politicians and much of the bourgeois media uncritically follow this approach of seeking to present the Houthi-led opposition as the villains in the ongoing war in Yemen. Accusations that the Houthis are Iranian proxies and that they are being armed by Iran are parroted in line with the foreign policy objectives of the brutal Saudi-led coalition which has been making war on Yemen since 2015. However, the truth is that the Houthi-led movement is a broadly-backed resistance movement fighting for national sovereignty against attempts by Saudi Arabia and its regional and imperialist backers to loot, plunder and subdue Yemen.

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