Blogs

Following our last report on the Iranian oil workers' strike, when the strike had reached its 81st day (it started on 19 June 2021), on 12 September, the Council for Organising Protests by Oil Contract Workers issued statement no. 20, under the title of "What have been our achievements?", which we are publishing here. However, since then there have been reports that sections of striking workers are going back on strike.

Opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig undermines efforts to fight Covid-19 with her confused commentary on vaccines, herd immunity, and related subjects.

The United Nations International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) published its sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in August. This is a reworked and an updated version of their last report AR5 published in 2013. It is much more confident in its assessments and its summary for policy makers is clearly intended to shock countries into promising drastic reductions in their emissions of Green House Gases (GHGs) at the international climate conference, the Conference of the Parties (COP 26), to be held in Glasgow in November. When one understands that such reductions are very unlikely to happen the report reads like a death sentence, a harbinger of a new mass extinction.

The article which follows was written before the German elections last month. The German lower house of parliament (Bundestag) reopened today (26/10/21) but Germany still awaits a new government. One thing seems clear though. After 16 years of “Mutti” (Angela Merkel) another capitalist coalition will be pieced together as in the past. As the old adage has it “whoever you vote for, the bourgeoisie always win”.

Leaflet distributed by Klasbatalo during the CPE daycare workers' strike in Quebec.

Article from 1919 #2 (mcmxix.org), the journal of the North American affiliates of the ICT.

A well-attended demonstration (between 10 and 20 thousand people) against the Green Pass was held in Rome on Saturday, 9 October. The instigators were a varied bunch: from the "sincere democrats" who brandished copies of the Constitution, and the rights enshrined therein, to the galaxy of the far right who were (in an irony of propaganda) "against the health dictatorship" and for "freedom!”.

The leaflet which follows was distributed by our comrades of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) in demonstrations across Italy last Monday. It was the first time that all the rank and file unions had united to call such a strike but as the leaflet makes clear it was only for a day and they gave the bosses plenty of warning. According to one of them (the Union Sindacale di Base or USB) there were one million on strike with demonstrations in over 40 places across the country involving 100,000.

Editorial from 1919 #2 (mcmxix.org), the journal of the North American affiliates of the ICT.

Leaflet distributed by the IWG during the Kellogg's strike in Lancaster, PA.

As this statement is being written the number of active COVID-19 cases in Australia currently stands at just over 23,000, with New South Wales and Victoria accounting for the bulk of that. Between the two states, cases are averaging around 2,000 per day. The number of deaths is now nearing 1,400 since the beginning of the pandemic and almost 300 people are in the ICU. New South Wales has been in lockdown since the end of June and Victoria since the start of August. Nationwide, a little over 58% of people over 16 are now doubly vaccinated.

This introduction is being written on the day the British Government ends its support for the “furlough” scheme to pay 80% of workers’ wages so they would not be sacked during the pandemic. At least 1 million workers now face an uncertain future. The Italian government began unravelling its support for jobs on 1 July when it ended the moratorium on lay-offs. It was the signal the finance capitalist organisation, Melrose, had been waiting for.

article I wrote on my blog about American exit from Afghanistan

article I wrote about the Cuban protests on my blog when it was in the news

Article from 1919 (mcmxix.org), the journal of the North American affiliates of the ICT.

For the capitalist mode of production and for the bourgeois class that manages it, the problems only multiply.

There could hardly be a more complete encapsulation of the brutality and savagery of capitalism in the United States than the recent photos of mostly white Border Patrol agents, armed and mounted on their horses, whipping thousands of defenseless black Haitian migrants who don’t have a penny to their name at the Southern Border. They were scenes reminiscent of slavery because of the setting, the race of those involved, and the power-dynamic between the hired thugs of the ruling class, the Border Patrol, and the desperate and destitute wretched of the Earth, the migrants.

A discourse on climate change in terms of revolutionary change can and must be developed.

Alongside other crises, the Covid pandemic is contributing to growing uncertainty in the capitalist world. Together with economic devastation, including an assault on the wages and conditions of the working class, proxy wars are multiplying and becoming more intense, with the threat of increasingly generalised wars on the horizon. In the meantime, the major imperialist powers, calculating the significance of these wars, are defining their tactical-strategic objectives in a kaleidoscope of oscillating alliances. They are as comfortable today in these economic and military pacts with yesterday’s enemies as if they had been allies all along.