Ethiopia’s new rebel alliance faces an old problemWe have seen part of this story before, though this time the alliance took longer to form. In November 2021, nine opposition groups hastily announced the United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces. Tigrayan forces and the OLA advanced towards Addis Ababa, while the alliance’s leaders spoke of dismantling Abiy’s government and installing a transitional authority. By January 2022, the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front had left the united front, accusing the TPLF of killing Afar civilians. In December of the same year, the Benishangul People’s Liberation Movement signed a peace deal with the regional government. The federal army counterattacked, Tigrayan forces withdrew from neighbouring regions and the TPLF eventually signed the 2022 Pretoria agreement with the government. That pact required the TPLF to stop supporting armed groups elsewhere in Ethiopia. The same pattern could repeat itself. The lesson is not that 2026 will mirror 2021 exactly. The new alliance includes Fano, whose fighters stood with the federal government against the TPLF during the earlier war and now fight Abiy. The government is also fighting on several fronts. But the precedent shows how quickly a common enemy can stop being enough when battlefield fortunes change. Both Fano and the TPLF claim western Tigray, or what the Amhara call Wolgait-Tsegede. The founding statement offers no settlement. A Tigrayan leadership that abandons its claim risks alienating people displaced from their homes; a Fano leadership that concedes it risks losing the support of fighters for whom the territory is central. Calling the issue a matter for later negotiations buys time but does not create a compromise. The same problem reaches beyond the north: Oromo, Amhara and Somali movements do not share one vision of Ethiopia’s federal order, boundaries or distribution of power.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/9/25/ethiopias-new-rebel-alliance-faces-an-old-problemMamdani Says He Supports Palestine, but Let the NYPD Arrest Anti-Netanyahu ProtestersYesterday’s scenes were a betrayal of all of those who protested as well as the hundreds of thousands of voters and activists who brought Mamdani to power — a growing sector of the population that is tired of the Far Right and becoming increasingly persuaded by socialism and progressive policies. Mamdani is also betraying the massive social movements who are demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Palestine and an end to ICE’s brutality, part of Trump’s violent anti-immigration crack-down. But Mamdani’s actions are not a mere character flaw, or a momentary lapse in judgment. They are also not, as some claim, a kind of four-dimensional chess — tactical maneuvering to secretly forward socialist goals and undermine the capitalist state, while merely giving the winking appearance of complicity. No, Mamdani’s actions are the predictable consequence of governing as a representative of a capitalist, imperialist party. For all their handwringing about Netanyahu, the Democrats are still a Zionist party, invested in propping up Israel as U.S. imperialism’s guard dog in the Middle East. To be sure, Mamdani’s stance on Palestine is far more progressive than his fellow Democrats. But in practice, his role as an elected Democrat results in a contradiction in which he must toe the Zionist, imperialist Democratic Party line and, as a result, sell out his base. The Democrats are no friends of the working class and oppressed, and when push comes to shove, they’ll brutalize us and co-opt our movements. As we saw repeatedly during the 2020 George Floyd uprising and movement for Black lives, Democrats have no problem siccing the violent arm of the state on protesters while draping themselves in kente cloth. Mamdani, too, as a member of that party and the executive of the capitalist financial center of the world, allows the NYPD to repress protests, thinking that planting an olive tree can buy patience from the millions of people outraged by the genocide.
https://www.leftvoice.org/mamdani-nypd-netanyahu-protesters/Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845 ch07: ResultsHaving now investigated, somewhat in detail, the conditions under which the English working-class lives, it is time to draw some further inferences from the facts presented, and then to compare our inferences with the actual state of things. Let us see what the workers themselves have become under the given circumstances, what sort of people they are, what their physical, mental, and moral status.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society [1] places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains. I have now to prove that society in England daily and hourly commits what the working-men's organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions. That it knows the consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation of my charge.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch07.htm