Brazil

Petrobras said on Thursday output at its platforms, refineries and distribution units was not affected by the strike. But the unions will vote next week on a proposal to stop production in a nationwide strike planned for Aug. 5.

The Brazilian state-run oil producer, Petrobras, says the strike has cut its production by 7%. The union, however, is saying the walkout has cut production by more like 22%, approximately 400,000 barrels.

Riodemption Songs
Directed by Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary, the Oscar-nominated Favela Rising documents the development of the Afro-Reggae cultural movement in Vigario Geral, one of 600-odd illegal shanty settlements (favelas) perched precariously among the hills behind Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach which together house over 20 million inhabitants in desperate poverty.

Born Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, Sócrates captained Brazil at both the 1982 and 1986 World Cups.

News reports said on Tuesday that around 200 members of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) on Monday evening peacefully occupied a property belonging to the Suzano company in Itanpenitinga in Sao Paulo state. A second property was also occupied in Bonito, in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco.

In 1918 Rio de Janeiro city was shaken by a series of events that would culminate in one the most important episodes in the history of the Brazilian workers movement: an attempted insurrectionary strike designed to bring down oligarchic republican government and replace it with workers’ and soldiers' councils.

The 1,800 layoffs are seen as the first wave of cuts at the 12,000-worker Sao Bernardo do Campo car plant. Workers will decide on a day-by-day basis the course of the strike. The main demand is guarantees of job security, which runs counter to bosses plans. The cuts are due to be made effective in November.

A new series of social and national polarities in the Western Hemisphere has dominated political life over the past few years. At the beginning of the new millennium the national confrontation was between Cuba and the US/EU, and the social confrontations between the rural/indian and urban/unemployed movements and a continent-wide collection of neo-liberal regimes.

http://libcom.org/blog has received reports from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Brazil, the USA, New Zealand, Ireland and Turkey so far, with actions ranging from university occupations and school walkouts to protests against French consulates and businesses.

See also French version below.