An interview about whether promoting communism has really been banned in the Czech Republic and what this means for the local left-wing scene. Pavel Uhl is a Czech lawyer specialising in public law. He provides legal services for the organisation Člověk v tísni (People in Need) and is a board member of Transparency International Czech Republic. From 1 January, promoting and supporting communism has become a criminal offence according to numerous media outlets and politicians. What does (…)

After 22 years as general secretary of Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee, (a network of 36 peasant organisation in Pakistan), I stepped down and pave the way for a women activist to be elected as general secretary of PKRC. The normal tradition in South Asian Left movement is that, once you are elected as one of main leader of an organisation, that is life long post. However, in the past, I vacated my post as general secretary of Labour Party Pakistan after 10 years. This is really to (…)

Since 1951, the USA has had an agreement granting it the right to maintain virtually unlimited military bases on Greenland. During the Cold War, they had 27 bases and other military installations with a total of 10,000 soldiers. Today, they have only one base with approximately 200 soldiers. This base, Pituffik (formerly Thule), is located far from most inhabited areas of Greenland. The Pituffik base housed 6,000 soldiers during the Cold War. The existing agreement means that the USA could (…)

A “real opposition” exists in Venezuela, an alternative to both the extreme right wing of María Corina Machado and the increasingly authoritarian government of Maduro. This opposition, operating largely out of the public eye, is usually defined as dissident Chavismo, but also encompasses many other democratic and leftist forces. Amongst its many members is constitutional lawyer María Alejandra Díaz, a prominent figure in the 2017 Constituent Assembly, now in exile in Colombia to escape (…)

Suppose a state drunk on the sadistic pleasure of mass expulsion, torture and genocidal annihilation, in the name of 'total victory,' finds itself in a mental health crisis – if there is no psychiatric healer to treat it, can it at least be diagnosed? Photo: A Palestinian man records a burning truck after an Israeli settler attack in the village of Beit Lid, east of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank in November.Credit: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP “The Arabs have 52 states? Let them go there.” (…)

Eleni Varika, daughter of the historic leader of the Trotskist movement Vasos Varika, was born in Athens in 1949 and studied at the Philosophical School of the University of Athens, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the University of Paris 7. She participated in the Trotskist Communist Revolutionary Front in the Metropolitan and since 1977 in the OKDE after the unification of the two organizations. Shee was a key member of the newspaper Roadblock and was active in the (…)