GEORGIA IS a poor country with only four million inhabitants. But facing the Black Sea between Russia, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, it is of key strategic importance for any outside power trying to exercise influence over the whole region from the Middle East through to the Chinese border. Britain occupied the country briefly as part of its efforts to destroy the Russian Revolution in the aftermath of the First World War.
TRADE UNIONISTS and protesters against corporate globalisation were united on a demonstration through Miami in Florida last week. The march took place on the same day as 300,000 protested against George Bush in London.
THE OCCUPATIONS of Iraq and Palestine are provoking bitterness and unrest in the Middle East. This anger is directed against the US and local rulers who refuse to challenge Bush's imperialist project. That is the backdrop to the second Cairo conference against the war in Iraq and the occupation of Palestine, which will take place in Egypt on 13 and 14 December.
The Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s is still such a live issue in Chinese politics because of the length and brutality of the occupation.
The present interview with Alex Callinicos was performed over several weeks by email spanning late July to mid September. The early questions took place at the start of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The last five questions were answered in one go in mid September. Because of the lengthiness of the interview it was not possible to pose any further questions arising out of these answers.
ANTI-CAPITALIST forces moved to the centre stage of French politics last weekend. The country's two main far left organisations announced their united electoral challenge in important regional and European elections due next June-the same time as similar elections in Britain.
US SECRETARY of State Colin Powell was forced to cancel a visit to Greece due to take place on Wednesday of this week. He had arranged to meet the Greek prime minister in the capital, Athens. But anti-war campaigners, as here, found a huge response to protests they called to stop Powell.
THE UPRISING was the culmination of a month of strikes and demonstrations after troops killed seven demonstrators on 20 September. The protesters were calling for a referendum over the neo-liberal government's export of natural gas to the United States.
REPORTS FROM the radical news agency Econoticias tell the story of last weekend: Thursday At least a quarter of a million workers and people from almost all the lower class neighbourhoods of El Alto and La Paz have surrounded the government palace. They have given the most hated man in the history of the country, the millionaire president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado, a last chance to resign and flee Bolivia.
Brid Smith, a member of the Socialist Workers Party of Ireland, spoke to Socialist Worker from Mountjoy women's prison in Dublin The movement against the bin tax is pitting working class communities against a corrupt political establishment and its big business cronies. It is the biggest upsurge in Ireland since the campaign against increased taxes on workers' wages over two decades ago.
BOLIVIA WAS plunged into a political crisis at the start of this week as workers and the poor resisted a government plan to hand the country's natural gas reserves to corporations.
THE THREE major trade union federations in Italy have organised a four-hour general strike for Friday 24 October.
