On Friday more than a million Egyptian
youth, workers and poor yet again assembled in Tahrir Square. The
masses have once again risen in an attempt to remove the remnants of the
Mubarak regime, which are still in power. Not far from Tahrir, in
Abbassiya Square, not more than a couple of thousand people gathered in a
pathetic demonstration in support of the SCAF. To the sceptics who did
not believe in the revolution, this should be a clear demonstration of
the real balance of forces. But at the same time the revolution clearly
faces obstacles, not from external forces, but in its own internal
contradictions.

After overtaking Japan, this year
China became the second largest economy in the world. Some experts have
even predicted that by the end of this decade China may become the
largest economy bypassing the United States. However, that is based on a
mechanical, empirical approach that sees China maintaining its present
levels of growth uninterruptedly for years to come. In the past Japan
was also supposed to keep on growing, but then its apparent meteoric
rise was cut across by a long period of stagnation.

The results of the Spanish elections on Sunday November 20
represented a massive defeat for the Socialist Party (PSOE) which had
introduced austerity measures to make the workers pay for the capitalist
crisis, rather than a victory for the right wing Popular Party (PP)
which will now have to introduce even more savage austerity cuts in the
face of the acute crisis of Spanish capitalism.