This leaflet was issued as part of the intervention of the Greek
Marxists of Marxistiki Foni in the demonstrations over the weekend. We
publish it here in English for the benefit of our readers.
The tactless
intervention of the EU officials in Greek politics has put the cat
among the pigeons here. Until now the pretence was maintained of
“political consensus” as a condition for any funding from the IMF and EU
loan. There was even talk of a possible "soft restructuring” of
subsequent instalments of the € 110 billion loan or a new loan of € 50 –
€60 billion. It was hinted that they might lengthen the repayment of
the older debt.
IRELAND: News that Labour Ministers and TD’s have
been involved in a concerted campaign to attack Richard Bruton’s attacks
on low paid workers through changing the mechanisms of the Joint Labour
Committee has been denied by Pat Rabbitte who has claimed that the
suggestion is “utter nonsense”.
The Euro zone is in a mess. After a
year of huge financial bail outs intended to calm the markets, the
latter are very unstable, with a marked downward tendency. Signs of
slowing global growth, and the continuing euro zone debt crisis, have
caused the markets to slump. The nervousness of the markets is an
accurate reflection of the growing anxiety of the bourgeois about the
economic prospects for Europe.
On Tuesday
May 25, the US imposed penalties against Venezuelan state-owned company
PDVSA, and another 6 companies from other countries, for conducting
business with Iran. The sanctions are part of an attempt by Washington
to step up the pressure against Iran in relation to its nuclear program.
They are also an act of blatant bullying directed against Venezuela.
The last few
weeks have seen an unprecedented public dispute between the president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The dispute
officially erupted over Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of Heydar Moslehi, the
minister of intelligence who was fired by Ahmadinejad (officially he
resigned himself) on April 17, but was then reinstated later the same
day by a direct decree from Khamenei.
Options
are starting to run out for the Irish ruling class, already this week
they have deployed Jedward, Jack Charlton and the British Queen, while
Obama is waiting in the wings. Sooner
or later Bono and Geldof will appear and then it’ll be back to normal,
maybe they’ll even take the seals off the post boxes. Normal of course
is the IMF/EU, the Croke Park agreement and trying to reduce the
interest rates on the bailout.
It leaps across frontier,
defying all barriers, it laughs at the threats and curses of the ruling
class and it sweeps aside the forces of the state. It cannot be halted.
The mass protests that are spreading from one country to another have
caught all the forces of the old society by surprise. They do not know
how to react. If they do nothing, the movement grows, but if they
attempt to crush it, it will grow much more rapidly.
Latin American activists and supporters of the Bolivarian struggle gathered together in London on Saturday for this year’s HOV conference.
First it was
Tunis, then Cairo, then Wisconsin, and now Spain. The crisis of
capitalism has set in motion a tsunami that is impossible to control.
All the representatives of the old order have combined to halt it:
politicians and police, judges and trade union bureaucrats, the hired
press and the television, priests and “intellectuals”. But the tsunami
of revolt rolls on from one country to another, from one continent to
another.
If anyone was under any illusion that the mere detail of a
general election would have made any difference to the prospects for the
Irish economy and for unemployment in the state then by now their
illusions will have been severely tested.