Middle East

October 30, 2011 -- Ecosocialists Unite -- Hugo Blanco led a successful peasant revolution in Peru for land rights in 1961 when peasants were being killed by landowners. Praised by Che,  Blanco -- then a leader of the Fourth International -- was captured and placed on death row. He lived due to an international campaign of solidarity launched by figures like Jean-Paul Sartre.

Now in the his late 70s, he publishes Lucha Indigena ("Indigenous Struggle"). The uprising in Peru of the Awajan and Wampis and other Amazon people, of the Aymara and Quechua, have shown that Indigenous and workers can organise to challenge the destruction of the Earth and to build a democratic alternative to capitalism.

Hugo Blanco argues that the revolution must be global and that the Occupy movement shows that people in the global North are joining the revolt against the 1% and for a democratic, ecological society for the 99%.

This Lucha Indigena editorial on the occupy movement and the global fightback against neoliberalism has been roughly translated by Derek Wall and Martin O'Beirne.

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Amnesty estimated up to half those detained were migrant workers from Sub-Saharan Africa, who have been persecuted since the beginning of the conflict over spurious allegations that they served Gaddafi as mercenaries.

By Tony Iltis

October 31, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- The October 23 declaration of Libya’s “liberation” by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the de-facto government since taking Tripoli from former dictator Muammar Gaddafi on August 21, was a showcase victory for the West’s vision of how the Arab democratic awakening should progress.

An uprising began in Libya on February 17 — part of the popular rebellion that has broken out against dictatorial regimes across the Arab world. The Gaddafi regime's brutal repression — carried out with Western-supplied weapons — meant the rising turned into a civil war.

By March 17, with the regime's forces preparing to attack the rebel-held eastern city of Benghazi, a NATO intervention was sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution in the name of protecting civilian lives.

By Rupen Savoulian

[For more on the BDS campaign click HERE. For more on Occupy Wall Street, click HERE.]

 If a people one day wills to live                     fate must answer its call
And the night must fade                               and the chain must break

– Abou-Al-kacem El-Chebbi (Tunisia)

We are part of the world’s 99% yearning for freedom, justice and equal rights!

[The writer is an Australian Socialist

September 23, 2011 –

By Rupen Savoulian

On September 9, a huge protest took place outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo. The protest was driven by anger at Israel's killing of Egyptian police in August, the deep solidarity the Egyptian people feel towards Palestinians and frustrations at the slow pace of change.

By Raul Bassi, Cairo

September 11, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- After the overthrow of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, a new chapter in Egyptian history is being written and its authors are the people themselves. Anything could happen and everything is up for grabs given the profound political, social and economic crisis in which Egypt's neoliberal system finds itself in.

These events are part of the broader process of revolutions sweeping the Arab world, but Egypt's future will in no small part be influenced by the characteristics and history that make the country what it is today.

The results of neoliberalism in Egypt are clear: poverty, misery and daily struggles to survive.

See also:
Cairo eyewitness: Fresh protests demand real change