Two days of clashes and street barricades followed the brutal police effort to clear Taksim Square and Gezi park of protesters, ahead of Erdogan’s show of strength with mass rallies in Ankara and Istanbul. Five different trade union and professional bodies called a one day protest strike today, June 17.
The declaration of Obama that the USA will step up its support for the rebels in Syria represents a change in the situation. The White House announcement means that the US is to supply direct military aid to the Syrian opposition for the first time. Alan Woods asks: what attitude should Marxists and the Labour Movement take to this?
The government in Greece has shut down all state TV and radio stations, causing extreme outrage and anger amongst the masses. This latest attack by the Samaras government has reignited the mass movement, leading to another 24-hour general strike. Georgios Diakogeorgiou looks at the latest episode in the crisis in Greece.
Early yesterday morning, when most of the protestors were asleep in their tents, riot police armed with rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas stormed Taksim Square in Istanbul. This attack is part of a co-ordinated string of measures being pursued by the Erdogan government in an attempt to crush the mass movement of Turkish people that has been developing over the past two weeks.
June 5, the 9th day of the mass movement against the authoritarian and reactionary government of Erdogan, was marked by joint strike action by KESK and DISK trade unions, while different government figures were busy trying to contain the movement with talk of concessions. Jorge Martin looks at the latest development in the mass movements in Turkey.
The magnificent movement of the workers and youth of Turkey is an inspiration to the whole world. What began as a peaceful protest against the cutting down of trees in a park to pave the way for the construction of a shopping mall has turned into a tidal wave of mass protests against the vicious and reactionary Erdogan regime, which has acquired insurrectionary dimensions.
What started as a small scale protest against the destruction of Gezi Park that stands next to Taksim Square in Istanbul has now developed into a nationwide movement demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Erdogan, of the AK Party. Jorge Martin looks at the mass movement in Turkey and the tasks facing workers and youth.
Riots – similar to those in Britain in the summer of 2011 – have broken out recently in Stockholm, Sweden. A country that is normally regarded as a model of “responsible capitalism” has been rocked by this outburst of anger from a generation of youth that have been let down by this economic system. We publish here an article by Stefan Kangas of the Swedish Marxists “Avanti”, who outlines the underlying social tensions in Sweden and the causes behind the Stockholm riots.
After the trade unions overwhelmingly rejected the original Croke Park 2 proposals, new proposals have been made that are more or less the same as the original ones. The proposals include extensions on the distances people can be redeployed, longer hours, cuts in pay for newly qualified nurses and cuts to teacher’s allowances, as well as alterations on overtime payments. The trade unions must mobilise to defeat these attacks.
As the Syrian revolution remains locked in civil war for a third year, regional powers have begun to use the conflict as an opportunity to advance their own imperialist agendas. Syria has become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran, Israel, and the Arab states of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Reza Mohammadi looks at the devastating effects of imperialist meddling in the Syrian civil war.
In the wake of the recent Pakistan elections, which saw a victory for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and its party leader Nawaz Sharif, we publish here an article written before the elections by Fred Weston, editor of www.marxist.com, who takes a wider look at the economic, social, and political contradictions in Pakistan – a society pregnant with revolutionary potential.
We publish here a recent article on the tragedy at Rana Plaza, an eight-storey building in the town of Savar in Bangladesh that housed five garment factories and thousands of garment workers, which collapsed a couple of weeks ago. At the time that the article was written, over 500 had died as a result of this collapse. Latest estimates for the death toll are now over 1,000 and the Bangladeshi army are still searching through the rubble for survivors. Adam Pal looks at the horrific effects of capitalism in Bangladesh.