Our latest International blogs

Dracula is alive and well in Brussels
Eurozone finance ministers gave Dracula-style bloodsucking a bad name last night when they rejected proposals brought from Athens for even more severe austerity measures.

Hypocrisy all round over Syria's fate
Manoeuvres at the United Nations over a resolution on Syria cannot disguise the hypocrisy on the part of the major Western countries and the opportunism on the side of Russia and China.

'No' to war on Iran
With evidence accumulating that Iran is not actually building a nuclear weapon, the sanctions and oil embargo imposed by the United States and Europe look increasingly like the provocations that they are.

Israel stands accused of child 'torture'
Imagine a child arrested and taken from the family home by heavily armed soldiers in the middle of the night. Bound with plastic ties and blindfolded, the child is transported to another country for interrogation.

Scandal of German state's cover for far right
News of an astonishing catalogue of wanton failures by Germany’s intelligence agency, the Bundesverfassungschutz, is sending shock waves through the country.

Anti-Putin movement marks end of an era
Russia’s street protest movement, which has shaken not only the Kremlin’s autocrats but global financial markets, is the largest for two decades, and is the end of an era.

Russians revolt against fraud elections
The dramatic slump in United Russia’s share of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary elections shows that voters defied a massive campaign of intimidation aimed at bolstering support for the ruling party.

Arab Spring leads to winter revolution
The prospect of Egypt’s second uprising inside a year is more than a challenge to continuing military rule; it also poses the transformation of the democratic into the social revolution.

US rushes to shore up Gulf
President Obama’s announcement to bring home America’s remaining troops from Iraq has apparently fulfilled his promise to end the occupation and war. But Washington is busily reorganising its most reactionary allies in the region to fill any power vacuum.

Arab Spring's first election
“Whatever happens next, I feel like now I exist”, said one man in Tunisia, just after voting. And, indeed, Sunday’s elections in the small country that sparked off the Arab awakening of 2011 have seen an amazing enthusiasm from people, young and old.

Spare us the hypocrisy over Gaddafi
The brutal and sorry end of the Gaddafi era in Libya has brought the expected, sickening outpouring of faked concern in Washington, London and Paris for building democracy in that country and a rewriting of history to suit Nato. Spare us the hypocrisy.

Egypt's military provokes sectarian clashes
Tensions between Christians and Muslims are being stoked up by Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in the run-up to parliamentary elections in November and January. Senior army figures are determined to cling to power whichever way they can.

Statehood bid opposed by Palestinian activists
Key Palestinian organisations have united to denounce the attempt by president Mahmoud Abbas and his supporters to achieve a chair at the United Nations for a so-called Palestinian state.

Chile joins year of 'global indignation'
The political temperature continues to rise in Chile since last week’s killing of 16-year-old high school student Manuel Gutiérrez in the capital Santiago.

Nato-sponsored regime change
The jubilation of the anti-Gaddafi dictatorship fighters who have entered Tripoli is tempered by the fact that what is taking place is effectively a Nato-facilitated regime change in Libya.

Arab Spring meets Jewish Summer
The rhythmic Hebrew slogans used at many of the protests are strikingly similar to punchy Arabic lines that have reverberated throughout the Middle East since January: "Ha'am doresh / tzedek chevrati" ["The people demand social justice"], one observer noted.

Ethiopia evicts farmers as starvation grows
The Ethiopian government is evicting up to 90,000 of its own people from their land to lease to foreign investors to grow crops for export. And they are doing this at a time when 4.5 million Ethiopians in the south-east of the country face starvation.

Norway attack warning for us all
The killing spree in Norway was not a one-off attack by an “evil madman” but a conscious act of terrorism that will reverberate around Europe as the continent’s growing social crisis unfolds.

Egypt's military regime is challenged
The 25th of January revolution in Egypt that swept Mubarak from power after 30 years vented simmering social, political and economic pressures which had been building for a long while.

Real democracy on the march
In a bold and inspired move, Spain’s Real Democracy Now! movement is taking the struggle to towns and villages throughout the country, so that the issues they have raised can be presented and developed by many more people.

Militarism comes to Obama's America
President Eisenhower, the general who led the D-Day operation in 1944, famously warned Americans in 1961 of the threat to democracy from an emerging “military-industrial complex”. He’d be astonished at what’s going on 50 years later, where a new kind of complex has a seat at the top table.

Power vacuum in Yemen's 'endless revolution'
Inspired by the ousting of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, people have massed on the streets of Yemen since February in their “Endless Revolution”. They have defied government forces, including plain-clothes thugs acting for the regime, despite the martyrdom of at least 350 protesters.

Beyond the 'democratic transition'
The Egyptian revolution that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship in January also created the conditions for uniting the masses of North Africa and the Middle East with the new movements that have emerged, particularly in southern Europe, against a common enemy.

Obama's warning to Israel falls on deaf ears
President Obama’s latest speeches on Palestine, like his visit to Ireland and to London, are arousing a whole range of emotions and reactions.

Madrid echoes the spirit of Tahrir Square
The Real Democracy Now movement that has sprung up across Spain, with a main square in Madrid under occupation since Sunday, is a key moment in the developing global struggle against the failure of the political and economic status quo.

The Palestinian street has spoken
Perhaps the most serious evidence that the reconciliation agreement signed last week in Cairo by Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian organisations, upsets the global status quo is the chorus of denunciation by Israeli leaders.

Blair's 'gratitude' sums it up
The killing of Osama Bin Laden may satisfy America’s lust for revenge but ordinary people have paid a massive price in the hunting down of al-Qaeda’s US-trained leader.

Obama - defender of the status quo
As President Obama starts looking towards a second term in the White House, the realisation is growing among would-be supporters that he is just as much a defender of the status quo as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Assad in the firing line on the road to Damascus
The turmoil that has been sweeping Syria since January, when demonstrators caught the fever of the Arab spring revolutionary movement, is reaching a climax.

Ai Weiwei's 'guilt' is speaking out
If, as the brutal Chinese police claim, the artist Ai Weiwei is beginning to “confess” to alleged crimes, one can only imagine the horrors he is suffering at the hands of Beijing’s notorious secret police.

Colonialism is alive and well
Today’s international conference in London “on the future of Libya” has an unmistakeable colonial ring about it. Put plainly, Britain, France and America are openly plotting the destiny of someone else’s country, which is in the midst of a civil war.

Regime change is the real war aim
So Liam Fox, the Coalition’s defence secretary, has let the cat out of the bag. The aim of the air strikes on Libya is to kill Colonel Gaddafi and bring about regime change, whatever the UN Security Council resolution says.

No to military intervention in Libya
Let’s be clear from the outset. Whatever the leaders of Britain, France and the US say, taking military action against Libya is not primarily aimed at protecting civilians. Human rights have never been top of their agenda, as victims of Western foreign policy around the world will testify.

Egyptians storm their Bastille
The storming of the headquarters of Egypt’s secret police over the weekend, while soldiers stood by, is another remarkable episode in the country’s unfolding revolution. Once the feared and hated symbol of torture and abuse, the building was seized by thousands of protesters.

Revolution renews itself
The people’s revolution sweeping north Africa and the Middle East has entered a second phase, gathering a momentum of its own in country after country.

The point of no return
The anti-government demonstrations sweeping Libya mark a stunning turn of events in the revolutionary upsurge sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. With diplomats defecting and the army split, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is rocking.

How Cairo connects to Wisconsin and Britain
As people battle tanks and security forces in Bahrain, Libya, Iran and Yemen, and hundreds of thousands gather once more in Tahrir Square in Cairo to “protect the revolution”, you might wonder how this connects with struggles in Britain, the United States and other major capitalist countries.

'You Go - We Stay' fits the bill everywhere
The Egyptian revolution continues its unfinished business. Before but especially since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, a situation of dual power prevails in a country where eight million people – a tenth of the whole population – took part in the mass uprising that broke the back of the dictatorship.

Egypt’s unfinished revolution
The future of the Middle East is being fought out in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Egyptian people’s determined struggle for economic and political freedom against a regime of dictators and torturers goes on.

Egypt's uprising shakes Washington
The prospect of a renewed period of linked revolutionary struggles not seen since the 1989 anti-Stalinist movements in Europe, is taking shape in North Africa. Events are shaking not just regimes like Mubarak’s in Egypt but the calculations of Washington and London too.

One solution, one state
The leaked “Palestine Papers” establish beyond any doubt that the Zionist rulers of Israel are not interested in any sort of an agreement, however dramatic the concessions Palestinian negotiators are prepared to make.

The Jasmine Revolution marches on
As the landless poor from rural Tunisia organised in a “freedom caravan” defy curfews and teargas, the movement to drive all of the country’s old leaders from power has assumed a revolutionary momentum which is shaking the Arab world.

North Africa's own Intifada
Tunisian youth, workers and professional people have drawn a line against corrupt autocracies that is having powerful repercussions from Lebanon to Libya and beyond. It is the first time since 1985 that a mass people’s movement has overthrown a regime in an Arab country.

Tucson shooting and America's crisis
The attempted assassination of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, has inescapable links to extreme right-wing vitriol from radio talk shows and the mouthing of populist politicians like Sarah Palin. It marks a new stage in America’s unfolding political crisis.

Pakistan's poor caught in the middle
The political and moral crisis wracking Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer concentrates all the ills of our 21st century world – but also demonstrates the need for a revolutionary alternative.

Ethiopia drives farmers off their land
It’s Christmas time, and the old favourites are being wheeled out, including Band Aid’s Do they know it’s Christmas, which in 1994 brought together top musicians in response to the terrible famine then raging in Ethiopia. No-one who saw the Michael Buerk’s reports for the BBC will ever forget them.

Desert horror for asylum seekers
There has been a hullabaloo about the shark attack on a German tourist in the luxury Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh, on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula. But the continuing plight of a group of Eritrean refugees held prisoner in the Sinai desert, has received little attention, despite the killing of three hostages on November 28.

Corporate complicity in crimes against Palestinians
Corporations play a decisive role in enabling Israel to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity like destroying Palestinian homes.

A new Irish sovereignty
“Instead of drums and trumpets, our little apocalypse was played out against the background noise of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance murmuring evasive and mechanical denials.”

Haitian people fighting back
Haiti is usually depicted as the archetypal impoverished underdog – never as a fighting republic with a proud revolutionary history. Earthquakes and disease make the news but not the self-organisation of the Haitian people and their struggle for political independence.

America's crisis takes a turn for the worse
The sharp swing against the Democratic Party in the US mid-term elections will inevitably deepen a political crisis in Washington which centres on the inability of the state to halt the historic decline of the American economy.

Sarkozy forms crisis cabinet while unions dither
As oil refineries and public transport depots are blocked, petrol stations run dry and young people riot in the Paris suburbs, political tensions are rising in France. The unrest will climax today in demonstrations throughout the country intended to influence Wednesday’s vote in the country’s Senate.

Tea Party brews up a political crisis
Only in America could a woman like Christine O’Donnell become, in the words of New York Times columnist Frank Rich, “the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy”.

The continuing tragedy in Haiti
Haitians are no strangers to natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods but January's earthquake was much more terrible in its destructiveness. Yet why, after all the pious promises in the wake of the calamity, is desperately needed aid not reaching the people of Haiti?

Delhi becoming an 'apartheid city'
If the hit film Slumdog Millionaire showed the extreme contrast between the dispossessed of Mumbai and the city’s rich, the saga of the 2010 Commonwealth Games is doing the same for Delhi and the country’s political system.

Swedish election marks end of an era
In a shocked reaction, thousands of people have taken to the streets of Stockholm and Gothenburg to protest against the electoral gains of the far-right Sweden Democrats party in the country’s general election. The party, headed by 31-old Jimmie Akeson, won 5.7% of the votes, giving them a parliamentary foothold of 20 seats.

Worthless pledges as starvation grows
There is nothing like a display of commitment by world leaders to reduce global poverty and hunger to turn the stomach. This is just to forewarn you that there’s another gathering taking place in New York this week.

Pakistan's misery made worse by political failure
The Pakistan floods underline the impossibility of dealing separately with the three interconnected and interdependent ecological, financial and political crises now affecting every country.

The strange case of the Irish mercenary in Santa Cruz
Tensions in Bolivia are reaching a high point. Unrest has shut down the city of Potosi in the south-east while president Evo Morales has used a press conference to denounce the United States for fostering tensions in the region with its bases in Colombia.

US and Pakistan military - a deadly embrace
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s current visit to Britain must be one of the most unfortunate ever by a head of state. He has rightly come under fire for lavish junketing while millions of his people are suffering from the worst floods for nearly a century.

Check the label before you buy
The lifting of the state of emergency at the end of 2008 raised hopes of an improvement in the situation for the Bangladesh trade union movement and better economic conditions for workers, but nothing has changed in practice.

Italy's political crisis raises old fears
As Italian trade unions prepare for a general strike later this month against public spending cuts, political tensions are once again rising within the unstable edifice that is the Italian state.

Behind the Red Shirt uprising
The uprising of the poor and peasant farmers is continuing across Thailand, in spite of yesterday’s violent break-up of the Red Shirt camp in central Bangkok.

Extrajudicial murder by CIA drones
The slap on the wrist delivered to Israel yesterday by foreign secretary David Miliband over the use of fake British passport in the murder of a leading member of Hamas in Dubai should not obscure the fact that “targeted assassination” is a policy that Washington carries out in Afghanistan and Pakistan with London’s blessing.

Back the boycott of Israel
Some say it was bad timing or that one half of the Israeli government didn’t know what the other half was doing. In effect, however, the American government had its bluff called by a regime that has no intention of agreeing a deal with the Palestinians. Not now. Not ever.

Tolstoy still an 'enemy of the state'
You would think that the centenary of the death of Leo Tolstoy, widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists, would be celebrated in the country of his birth. You would be wrong, however. He is actually considered an embarrassment. That’s how bad things are in Russia today.

'Rage on the right' threatens Washington
As the Obama administration struggles to get its extremely modest health care bill through Congress, it faces not just a hostile Republican Party that has effectively opted out of the usual bipartisan politics on Capitol Hill, but the menace of far right-wing groups that have found a new lease of life across America.

Kurds and unions victims of Turkish state repression
While the media is full of reports of the arrest of alleged coup plotters in Turkey, the military top brass will be reassured by the continuing state repression of not only the Kurdish minority but also the harsh treatment meted out to their legal representatives.

An act of state terrorism
The Israeli state literally gets away with murder, dealing out death and destruction with impunity, confident that friendly governments in Europe and America will turn a blind eye or at worst profess temporary, affected outrage. That was the scene played out in London yesterday.

Losing 'hearts and minds' in Afghanistan
If there was ever a discredited phrase surely it’s “winning the hearts and minds of the people”. Used by the Americans in Vietnam and more recently Iraq, it is now on the lips of every commander and politician involved in the latest phase of the debacle in Afghanistan.

China cracks down as turmoil grows
Signs of growing social tensions in China continue to mount, revealed by the jailing of an activist for documenting shoddy construction work to a decision in one province to assuage workers’ growing anger with a 13% pay rise.

The real price of the 'green' Winter Olympics
The BBC animation promoting the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, begins with an Inuit athlete launching himself into a snowboarding run and, in the following few seconds, cleverly manages to feature the downhill skiing, ski-jump, toboggan and curling events.

Obama delivers - but not for the people
A year ago, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African-American president of the United States on a promise that he would deliver “change you can believe in”, the slogan that together with his “yes we can” appeal, swept him into the White House. His supporters eagerly awaited actions that would transform America. How sorely disappointed many of them are today.

Foreign troops out of Haiti!
Disaster relief in Haiti is turning into a debacle. While the earthquake was a natural event, the chaos and violence in the streets are compounded by a high-handed arrogance by the United States towards one of the poorest countries in the world.

Haiti a victim many times over
American forces have secured the airport in Port-au-Prince and thousands of Marines are on their way to Haiti, along with warships. Not for the first time in history either, which will help to explain why this week’s earthquake has had such a devastating impact on the impoverished country.

The biggest prison camp in the world
The deportation of Respect MP George Galloway from Egypt today is only the latest in a series of anti-Palestinian actions by the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak which have helped Israel enforce a blockade of Gaza.