Headlines

Puigdemont challenged the Spanish government while attending a meeting with his party 'Junts per Catalunya' parliament group in Brussels.

 Brussels, Jan.19.– The sacked former leader of Catalonia said on Friday he was perfectly eligible to be re-elected as regional president and there was no reason why he couldn’t rule the Spanish region remotely from self-imposed exile in Brussels.

Supporters of Carles Puigdemont, who faces arrest for charges including sedition and rebellion if he returns to Spain, have suggested he could rule via video link – earning him the sobriquet ‘the hologram president’ from detractors.

A view on Monetary Theory and Democratic Socialism

Jan. 2.– Medicare for All has quickly become a principal rallying cry for many progressives and leftists alike. Organizations ranging from Our Revolution, National Nurses United and certain branches of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have done much of the day-to-day work to bring single-payer health care to the forefront of political debate. Their efforts have helped push Medicare for All to the floors of the United States Senate and House. Currently, there are 16 senators and 120 Congress people cosponsoring Rep. John Conyers' (D-Michigan) Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act. 

With greater congressional backing of Conyers' bill and the grassroots surge in democratic socialist politics, questions have moved from the desirability to the viability of programs like Medicare for All. Partisans and opponents of social democracy alike are wondering, "Single-payer health care sounds great, but how can we pay for it? How can we pay for any universalistic program without going bankrupt?" If democratic socialists see social democracy as one of the key stepping stones towards a truly egalitarian society, the issue of how we can sustainably finance such programs is of the utmost importance.

• The clerics are struggling to control widespread unrest
• Protests have engulfed several cities in Iran
• Iran death toll rises as protests continue ← click for more 

 Midle East, Jan.2.– Incredibly, religious hardliners may have started the protests that have spread across Iran. Preachers in Mashhad, Iran’s second city and a stronghold of the clerical regime, called their followers onto the streets on December 28th to protest against rising prices, most recently of eggs. Many of those who turned out supported Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric, in the presidential election last May. “Death to Rouhani,” they chanted, referring to President Hassan Rouhani, whose liberal economic policies they oppose and whose budget in December called for sweeping subsidy cuts.  

But their cries have been drowned out by a far broader swathe of Iranian malcontents. Even as the hardliners retreated, the protests spread to more than 20 cities, where Iranians of all stripes voiced pent-up anger over a lack of economic and political progress.

Havana, Dec.29.– After Raul’s announcement in his latest speech in front of the National Assembly, him stepping down as the President of the State Council and Council of Ministers seems to be pretty much definite. Everything is pointing towards Miguel Diaz-Canel being named his successor, the First Vice-President who rose up to the highest ranks of Cuban politics thanks to the post-Fidel purge that took some of the system’s key figures out of the game.

While it is true that there were strong indications, during the first half of this year, that this transfer of power might not happen, his nomination today is clear. Ambiguous declarations by figures close to power, such as Mariela Castro, have predicted that there may be “surprises”. The Vice-President himself has made sure to come off as a “die-hard Communist” in the few public images that have leaked of him, in a clear move to create trust among the population. And added to his absence from national press, there has been a sudden and unprecedented appearance of the Castro family’s descendents, both Fidel’s and Raul’s children.