[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptXO28hPld8[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ma6E94MQhM[/youtube]

Οι Ουκρανοί όμως μας ενημερώνουν ότι τα πράγματα είναι πολύ πιο πολύπλοκα από ότι θα ήθελε το Mega και τα σταλινικά απολιθώματα:

We, the collectives and members of Ukrainian leftist and anarchist organizations, announce that “Borotba” union is not a part of our movement. During the whole time of this political project’s existence, its members tended to be committed to the most discredited, conservative and authoritarian “leftist” regimes and ideologies, which do not represent the interests of working classes in any way.

”Borotba” has proved itself an organization with a non-transparent funding mechanism and unscrupulous principles of cooperation. It uses hired workers, who are not even the members of the organization. The local cells of “Borotba” took part in the protest actions together with PSPU (Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, which is an anti-Semitic, racist, and clerical party, and has no relation to the world socialist movement) and with Kharkiv pro-government, anti-Semitic and homophobic group “Oplot”; and are known for their linkage with an infamous journalist O.Chalenko, who openly stands for Russian chauvinism.

Recent events demonstrate that the leadership of this union, following the example of the “Communist” Party of Ukraine, have been overtly defending the interests of president Yanukovych, justifying the use of weapons by security forces and denying the acts of unjustified violence and cruelty on their part, the use of tortures and other forms of  political terror.  The representatives of “Borotba” take an extremely biased stance concerning the composition of protest movement, which is represented both on their own web resources and in the media commentaries. According to them, the Maidan protests are supported exclusively by nationalists and radical right, and were aimed only at a coup d’etat (“fascist putsch”).

Continue reading →

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_6BIjjxySE[/youtube]

Την ίδια στιγμή που απελαύνονται χιλιάδες σομαλοί μετανάστες στα πλαίσια της αντι-μεταναστευτικής πολιτικής των τελευταίων μηνών από το κράτος της Σ. Αραβίας (δες video) συνέβη και το ακόλουθο γεγονός:

An illegal migrant has died and nine others were wounded when Saudi police intervened to quell “chaos” at a detention centre in the west of the kingdom, police said Monday.
The casualties fell during a “stampede” at Al-Shumaisi detention centre, south of the holy city of Makkah, where migrants of various nationalities are held pending deportation.
Detainees “tried to cause chaos… resulting in damages to the centre,” Makkah police spokesman Commander Ati al-Qurashi told AFP. He did not elaborate on the nature of the disturbances but said that police “had to intervene” and that a migrant was killed and nine others wounded in a “stampede”.
The spokesman did not provide details on the nationalities of the casualties, the number of illegals held at the centre, or the progress made in their deportation procedures.
Police have been cracking down on illegal migrants since the expiration in early November of a seven-month amnesty during which they had to regularise their status or leave the country.
The operations have sparked deadly clashes, with two Saudis, a Sudanese and another foreigner killed, according to official figures. The Ethiopian embassy in Riyadh has said three Ethiopians were killed in clashes.
More than 307,000 illegal migrants have been expelled since the start of the campaign, according to Saudi authorities.
Nearly a million migrants from various countries took advantage of the amnesty to leave voluntarily, while another four million were able to find employers to sponsor them, a legal requirement in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUx1yYdDymk[/youtube]

While Lagarde’s comments were met with applause inside the Guggenheim Museum where the forum was being held, the main street of Bilbao told a different story. A group of protesters smashed the shop windows of major shops including the department store El Corte Inglés and clothes chain Mango at around 10.30am, according to local daily Diario Vasco. A police van was also tipped over during the demonstration which saw hundreds of protesters chanting “Troika go home” — a reference to the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. The troika are blamed by many in Spain by exacerbating the country’s crisis by demanding debt reduction and spending cuts. At least two people were arrested during the protests according to Spanish news agency Efe.

A French questionnaire: Venezuela today

αναδημοσίευση από periodico el libertario

Rafael Uzcátegui

As the Venezuelan situation changes every day, I should clarify that I wrote this on 03/01/14 at 06:00 pm.

– Who are the people who took to the streets? They are only upper middle class people of some housing developments, militants of far-right parties and Colombian paramilitary activists, (“Aguilas Negras”)?

– This question can only be answered correctly, referring to the beginning of this cycle of protests in Venezuela. On February 4 students at the Universidad Nacional Experimental del Tachira (UNET), in San Cristobal, staged a peaceful protest against insecurity, caused by the sexual abuse against a student. The protest was brutally suppressed by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), the agency of the Venezuelan Armed Forces in charge of “maintaining public order”, and 6 students were arrested. On this episode we should clarify two things: 1) Historically the student movement in Latin America and Venezuela, has always rejected detained students in protests and 2) San Cristobal, capital of Tachira state, is a city located in a border area with Colombia that has been particularly hard hit for several years by interruptions of utilities (water and electricity mainly), price inflation as well as shortages of various consumer products. The arrest of these students led protests in other cities of the country, which in turn were suppressed by increasing the number of students arrested. This created an “snowball-effect”, from the inner cities of the country to Caracas. It is in this climate of protests and unrest, which two opposition politicians (Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado), make a call to hold demonstrations to demand the resignation of President under the slogan “the exit”.

It is important to say that the rest of the opposition parties, including the coalition “Bureau of Democratic Unity” (MUD), and the governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles; rejected the first few days the protests, which have overwhelmed the political parties opponents. When I write these answers (03/01/14) the protest against the government was decentralized, with some violent foci but largely, peacefully. It also has two different dynamics : One in Caracas , starring with middle class students from public and private universities territorially in the east of the city, and basically with political demands (release of the students, the resignation of President and rejection of repression); and in the rest of the country, qualitatively more important than that one in  Caracas because it incorporates popular sectors; and in some cities, (such as San Cristobal), rural areas (thus this city was militarized), and including social demands and lack of products, the high cost of living and lack of basic services.

Continue reading →

Μια αυτό-συνέντευξη σε δυο μέρη:

Μέρος 1  και  Μέρος 2

Δείτε το video της συνέντευξης των εργατών του εργοστασίου Dita εδώ:

http://en.labournet.tv/video/6657/interview-dita-workers-tuzla

We are showing here an interview with the workers of the factory Dita, whose protest was a trigger to the whole movement that is sometimes referred to as the Bosnian Spring.

The workers of the detergent factory Dita told us that they had been on strike for more than a year and tried different forms of peaceful protests (including a hunger strike) that did not lead anywhere. When they demonstrated with other workers on the 5th of February, they were brutally attacked by the police. This provoked a massive movement of solidarity by younger people and unemployed, who took to the streets and stormed and burned the government building of canton Tuzla, forcing the government to resign (local authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina are more important than national ones).

In this short video, the workers tell us about the history of their struggle as well as their grasp of the movement that is currently shaking Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ταραχές ενάντια στη λογοκρισία που προσπαθούν να επιβάλλουν στο ιντερνετ:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arVWfxv8mjE[/youtube]

Φοιτητές συγκρούστηκαν με την αστυνομία στη διαδήλωση ενάντια στην κατασκευή αυτοκινητόδρομου στην περιφέρεια της Άγκυρας:

Ταραχές παντού και για τη “διαφθορά του Ερντογάν” (πηγή revolution news):

 A leaked recording surfaced of Turkish PM Erdogan Instructing his son to hide huge sums of money. In the new voice recording, Erdoğan and his son Bilal allegedly discuss during five wiretapped phone conversations on plans how to hide huge sums of cash on the day when police raided a number of venues as part of a corruption investigation that has implicated sons ofthree Turkish ministers, businessmen and chief of the state bank. At the beginning of the phone conversation, the prime minister briefs his son Bilal about the raid and asks him to “zero” the amount (at least $1 billion cash) stashed at five houses. The authenticity of the recordings has not been verified.

Tonight citizens of Turkey have taken the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, Sakarya,Bursa, Antalya, Izmir, Kartal and others to vent frustration and disapproval over Erdogan’s corruptive practices.

Continue reading →

Παρά το σαφή εργατίστικο προσανατολισμό της ανάλυσης του Wildcat αναδημοσιεύουμε το άρθρο γιατί θεωρούμε ότι φωτίζει με ικανοποιητικό τρόπο τα αποτελέσματα αλλά και τις εσωτερικές αντιφάσεις της πολιτικοποίησης των ταραχών στην Αίγυπτο.

 W.

πηγή: http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/eindex.htm

Go to the Afterword from February 2014

For two years, Tahrir Square was the symbol of a radical departure from social ossification and crisis. The military coup in the summer of 2013 ended this phase. The various illusions and hopes were buried with the hundreds that died. Essential parts of the liberal milieus have accepted state-led massacres and mass arrests in the name of ‘defending democracy’. The hope of a state solution to social misery is also lost; the last heirs of Nasserism and trade union movement-hopefuls now sit at the military (side) table. Their vague promises of reform are drowned out by their appeals to peace, order and willingness to work.

In the acute social situation there is currently no room for participation. The movement will have to provide new questions about social revolution and organisation and will have to find new answers. To this end, migrants play an important role.

Egypt’s ruling class

With the fall of President Morsi at the beginning of July 2013, the amalgamation of the state and military apparatus with the economy once again became visible. This form of class power emerged at the end of the Nasser era. In the mid-seventies, the military had lost its role as protectors of an ‘anti-colonial’ state industrialisation, and the bloated military apparatus afterwards found itself new fields of activity in the civil economy after the 1978 peace treaty with Israel. A new model of accumulation developed, particularly during the second, ‘neoliberal’ half of the 30-year long Mubarak regime, which was less based on industrialisation, and more on privatisation, the plundering of social wealth and on state-secured investments in infrastructure (transport, tourism, telecommunications). This model was enforced by a gigantic repressive apparatus, which was detached from any ‘democratic control’. This apparatus included an informal army of baltagiyyas (thugs) and the military courts, which had been installed permanently since the state of emergency in 1981. The uprising in 2011 showed the crisis of this model.

It is still the case that most of the companies are small and medium-sized enterprises, but they are controlled by a very small layer of society through an old boys network, which means that we are dealing with monopolies. In 2010, around 500 families owned financial assets of more than 30 million USD, while 20 families (the ‘core-elite’) owned more than 100 million. The main economic focus of these groups of enterprises is on construction, telecommunications, tourism, food and pharmaceutical production, and (foreign) trade. At the very top stands the Sawiris family, which owns Egypt’s largest construction company and rules over the telecommunications market and the media sector. In the 2000s this new economic elite took over the high command of political power directly; prime examples being Gamal Mubarak and the Nazif government, which came to power in 2004. Politically, they thereby entered into competition with the military apparatus, which manages the factories of the Nasser-ite epoch of industrialisation (consumption goods and arms manufacturing) and which, in addition, started to participate in the business of mass tourism since its boom in the 1990s. In total the military controls 5 to 15 per cent of the national economy.

The military played a significant role in the enforcement of this neoliberal looting because it has the right to confiscate land e.g. for the construction of infrastructure projects, tourist parks, and new industrial zones. This was the cohesive element between the military and the oligarchic elite. The top-layer of the Muslim Brotherhood, which mainly engaged in trade, were part of this arrangement, although, apart from a few exceptions, they were situated rather in the second or third tier. The military and civil top elite is partly Coptic (like the Sawiris) and in general rather secular.

The network of clientelism that was directed towards the masses was organised in ‘religious’ terms. After the privatisation in the 90s, the welfare system (benefits for the poor, education and health care) was split off into a completely deficient and corrupt public sector, an expensive private sector and a third sector comprising the various liberal, islamist and christian charities. The vast NGO sector is based on voluntary and informal labour and, in part, directly organises the informal economic sector.

Continue reading →