IN 1999, Fidel Castro of Cuba travelled to Caracas, Venezuela, to deliver an important speech at the central university. The USSR had collapsed, Fidel said, and the ‘extremely powerful empire’, the United States and its global tentacles, mounted a ‘ceaseless ideological battle with all their resources’. Structures of globalisation weakened the national projects of many states, whose agendas were increasingly set by the International Monetary Fund and by transnational corporations. We are a ‘people armed with just ideas’, Fidel said, ‘endowed with a great political consciousness’.

ON January 27, 2022, the Hebrew-language news site Walla published part of the text from a telegram sent by Amir Weissbrod – who is part of the Israeli foreign ministry – to Israeli embassies around the world. The telegram warned the Israeli diplomats that in the upcoming 49th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which is expected to begin on February 28, a report will be tabled regarding Israel’s 2021 bombing of Gaza.

IN November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the El Guerguerat area, a buzzer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (the area claimed by the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi people). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. This is the first time a ceasefire agreed upon between Morocco and Polisario in 1991 has been violated.

INDIAN Worker’s Association(IWA) has stated that the proposed Nationality and Borders Bill is oppressive, racist, discriminatory and above all, immoral. The new draconian Bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 366 votes to 265. The Bill, according to the government, is proposed to increase fairness in the asylum system and to deter illegal entry into the UK and easily remove people that the home secretary, at her discretion, deems to be a threat to the nation.

FOUR emblematic coups have been now substantially reversed: Chile (1973), Peru (1992), Honduras (2009), and Bolivia (2019). Each of these coups were driven by political forces of the hard right backed by the military and by the United States government. Left-leaning governments will all be in power after March 2022, when Gabriel Boric of the Apreubo Dignidad (Approve Dignity) alliance will be sworn in as president of Chile. In January 2022, Xiomara Castro will be the president of Honduras, and in Bolivia and Peru, President Luis Arce and President Pedro Castillo are already in office.