8 February by
Miriam Lang
Ecuador’s third largest city Cuenca, of more than 600.000 inhabitants, has voted clearly against large-scale mining on February 7
th, 2021. According to estimates published on Sunday night, 80% of voters have expressed themselves for water and life, and against mining and extractivism. This referendum has been approved by the Constitutional Court in September 2020, what makes its results binding. While the results of the simultaneous presidential election were still being counted, pointing at a second round in April, the referendum organizers made clear on election night that any new president will have to respect the will of the people of Cuenca. It is the first time in Latin American history that a binding referendum against large-scale mining is won in a big city, and not in a directly affected rural community, according to Argentinian sociologist Maristella Svampa.
Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Egypt
Yanis Iqbal
The whiplash of authoritarianism is being ruthlessly used in Egypt. On January 6, 2021, Ahmed Khalifa, social news editor of Egypt 360 website, was arrested after publishing a series of reports on workers’ legitimate protests. He was falsely charged with joining a terrorist group and spreading fake news, and remains in detention to date. Before his arrest, Khalifa published articles about strikes at the state-owned ElDelta Company for Fertilizers and Chemical Industry.
Contents
In 2011, bold protest chants flowed out from Tahrir Square: from “The people want the fall of the regime!” to “Down, down with military rule!” – everything seemed full of new possibilities. Today, all the dreams envisioned by those chants lie in tatters. Egyptians have gone through an unprecedented and dizzyingly fast-paced trajectory.
Evolution of the external debt of developing countries between 2000 and 2019
Part 1
An update of the three part series “A new trap of indebtedness of the South to the North” published in September-October 2020.
At the end of the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, developing countries (DC) were emerging from an unprecedented debt crisis, the “lost decades of development”, which had started in 1982 with Mexico defaulting. Between 1980 and 1999 there had been at least 280 debt restructuring operations.
At the time, faced with the sheer size of the crisis and popular pressure, creditors launched emergency financing or debt relief initiatives. Since 1982, those measures have essentially guaranteed the debt would still be paid for creditors not to be affected by a general suspension of debt payment as had happened in the 1930s.
What are the challenges of World Social Forum 2021 in relation to the global situation? 18 January by
Contents
The challenges of the World Social Forum 2021 are high. In a deep contradictory world situation, it must make it possible to: redefine an alterglobalist proposal corresponding to the new situation; understand the new contradictions of the world system; start from the movements to resist, define the alternatives, build a new emancipation project.
Taking into account a contradictory world situation
The shock of the pandemic and the climate exacerbated the turmoil of the financial and political crisis of 2008, which had resulted in an evolution that combines austerity and authoritarianism evolution of the neo-liberalism. The economic and financial, social, ecological, democratic, ideological and geopolitical contradictions are reaching a historically unknown degree.
The Macron Doctrine, or the Paris Consensus, pledges to reverse those trends. To fight back against the ills of the financialised economy, Macron offers a three-pillar solution: more Europe, a true Europe-Africa partnership, and coalitions with governments and non-governmental players. Indeed, the Macron Doctrine is notionally post-colonial. It calls for re-inventing the ‘Afro-European Axis’ and puts the onus on Europeans to ‘show that this universalism we uphold is not universalism of the dominant, as it was during colonisation, but one of friends and partners’. If the Macron Doctrine for Europe is to make it ‘the leading power in education, health, digital and green policies’ with massive investments, by extension it promises a post-financialisation, post-colonial partnership with Africa.