The UN COP27 climate conference is taking place in Egypt, which is an apt choice for a climate conference—a military dictatorship propped up by oil money from Saudi Arabia. And it’s reflected in the outcome.
“You don’t know what you’ve started!” was one of many warnings shouted at politicians by leaders of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) earlier this month from the public gallery of the Ontario parliament. The MPs had just passed the strike-breaking Bill 28, or Keeping Students in Class Act, which used something called the “notwithstanding clause” to force a contract onto workers while making it illegal for them to take any strike action.
A wave of mass struggle has surged in Haiti, anti-regime riots and protests washing over the country over the last nine weeks. Sparked by fuel price increases, the protests have linked dire living conditions to the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Protests continue across Iran following the police murder of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September.
Israeli security forces shot and killed the revered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on 11 May this year while she was covering an army raid in the occupied West Bank. She was wearing a press vest and surrounded only by other journalists, one of whom was also shot in the back.
The decision by the Chinese Communist Party at its twentieth national congress to re-elect Xi Jinping as general secretary, setting him up for an unprecedented third term as Chinese president, takes place at a time of significant change in China.