The disappearance of 43 students from a rural school in Ayotzinapa, Mexico dedicated to training teachers mostly from indigenous communities has sparked outrage and solidarity throughout Mexico and the world. These horrible acts of violence must be understood within the context of an increasingly vile and murderous narco state.
To understand the October 26th re-election of President Dilma Rousseff, we must analyze the somewhat special politics of Brazil. Brazil’s politics are in many ways closer to those of western Europe and North America than almost any other country in the global South.
Source: Common Dreams
Tom Butt elected mayor and slate of progressive candidates all win city council seats after grim battle with corporate power
A slew of progressive candidates were elected in Richmond, California on Tuesday night in a resounding defeat of corporate power, after a multi-million-dollar opposition campaign funded by Chevron brought national attention to the race but failed to take control of City Hall.
Local politician Tom Butt, a Democrat, was elected mayor with 51 percent of the vote, beating the Chevron-backed candidate, Nat Bates, by 16 points. Richmond Progressive Alliance representatives Eduardo Martinez, Jovanka Beckles, and outgoing Mayor Gayle McLaughlin also won three of the four open seats on the City Council.
Source: The Nation
Catalans are fed up with Madrid’s austerity and corruption—making November’s referendum nonbinding has only postponed the confrontation.
The United Kingdom as we know it survived by a whisker in Scotland’s referendum on secession, after three centuries of union. Next in line is Spain, one of the oldest nation-states in the world, but one eternally racked by tensions from its peripheral nationalities: Catalan, Basque and, to a lesser extent, Galician. Catalonia has decided to recast its planned November 9 referendum on independence as a nonbinding consultation, after Spain’s Constitutional Court opened an inquiry into a referendum’s legality. This avoided a possible violent clash with the Spanish state, but given the huge turnout at a September 11 demonstration in favor of independence, the next Catalan elections are likely to give independence parties a majority. This would bring the breakup of Spain a step nearer, and along with it a new phase of the Eurocrisis.
Source: TomDispatch
What do the prime minister of India, retired National Football League punter Chris Kluwe, and superstar comedian Aziz Ansari have in common? It’s not that they’ve all walked into a bar, though Ansari could probably figure out the punch line to that joke. They’ve all spoken up for feminism this year, part of an unprecedented wave of men actively engaging with what’s usually called “women’s issues,” though violence and discrimination against women are only women’s issues because they’re things done to women — mostly by men, so maybe they should always have been “men’s issues.”
President Obama should call our country’s history of supporting insurgents abroad for what it is: U.S.-backed terrorism.
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