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May 2012

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Foiled attempt to kill a trade union leader in Venezuela – Campaign for justice

On Monday May 21, there was a foiled
attempt against the life of comrade Abraham Rivas. Rivas is General
Secretary of the National Union of Workers of Helados EFE (SINATRASOHE)
as well as General Secretary of the recently created National Federation
of Workers in Food, Beverages and Other Companies (FENACTRALBECA),
which organizes workers in 21 different companies belonging to Grupo
POLAR. He is also a revolutionary Bolivarian activist and a supporter of
the Marxist tendency Lucha de Clases.

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Greece: “The battle for a Left government: eight weaknesses that we ought to correct”

The ruling class is scaling up its
dirty war against SYRIZA, and is drawing together its various political
fractions in the hope of preventing a potential electoral victory of
SYRIZA in the elections on June 17. From the point of view of SYRIZA, in
order to achieve our aim of a Left government, we need to correct eight
grave errors and weaknesses.

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1972: The year of struggle and turmoil

Forty years ago, in 1972, Britain faced a sharp and qualative change and
teetered on the verge of a general strike for the first time in nearly
50 years. A wave of factory occupations and sit-ins had swept the
country.  More than 23 million days were lost in strike action,
excluding 4 million lost through political strikes. Only once, in the
revolutionary year of 1919, was the number of days lost greater.

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Euro crisis deepens

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of capitalist crisis.
Events are moving at lightning speed. This slow-motion train wreck has
suddenly speeded up.  Each day we come closer to a Greek default and its
exit from the euro. Squeezed by foreign bankers, demanding their pound
of flesh, ordinary Greek people are being pushed to the limit. They are
being reduced to a state of wretchedness and indignity.

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Boot Tories Out!

In the May elections, workers delivered a sound hammering to the
Coalition parties and made very clear what they thought of them and
their policies.

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Bangladesh in ferment

With two-thirds of its work force in
the rural sector, Bangladesh’s agriculture contributes just 19 percent
to its GDP. Sixty-six percent of exports are from the garment industry
that makes it the third largest clothes exporting country in the world.
It is perhaps the cheapest and most profitable place for garment
manufacturers. However, the conditions of the workers, mainly women, are
atrocious.

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Quebec government trashes democratic rights in order to crush the student movement

Over the past two weeks, the student
strike in Quebec has entered a new stage. What originally began as a
strike against a 75% increase in tuition fees has rapidly progressed
into a movement against the Liberal government itself. Premier Jean
Charest’s government has clumsily fallen over itself, trying to suppress
or divide the movement, with little success. Instead of killing the
movement, every action by the government has only given the movement new
life.

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Global Warming: a Marxist perspective

Just five years ago, not a day would go by without global warming making
the headlines. The American politician Al Gore’s documentary film about
climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, was seen by hundreds of
thousands in cinemas across the world. The Conservative Party rebranded
themselves as the champions of the environment, nailing their ecological
colours to the mast and urging people to ‘vote Blue to go Green’. Even
the arch-reactionary American president George W. Bush was forced to
concede that, maybe, the environment was worth thinking about.

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The crisis in Europe: a decisive turn in the situation

The
elections in France and Greece represent a fundamental change in the
situation. The crisis of European capitalism has entered a new and
turbulent stage. A mood of anger is sweeping across Europe. Of course,
we understand that election results do not reflect the psychology of the
masses with complete accuracy. They are like a snapshot of the mood at a
given moment. But it is necessary to analyse election results
carefully, since they do show certain trends in society.

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