Blogs

If there’s one thing, politically, that I want to happen in 2014 it’s for leftists to drop the demand for a 24 hour general strike from above and start building for an all out general strike from below.

A round up of our most popular articles of the year.

This blog post raises some questions posed by the election of Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council and related developments, questions for people who are pro- and who are anti- this kind of electoral effort.

The last two incarcerated members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolonnikova, were yesterday released from prison as part of an amnesty granted to around 22,000 prisoners. Whilst their release is obviously good news for everyone concerned, it is more of a public relations stunt by Vladimir ‘Bonaparte’ Putin, ahead of the Winter Olympics in early 2014 - than it is clemency, or a relaxing of Putin’s regime.

Railway workers have been striking since December 9, 2013, the longest rail strike in South Korean history, against privatization attempts of President Park Geun-hye's New Frontier Party (Saenuri Party, 새누리당). The strike has reduced freight service by 70% and passenger service by as much as 40%.

A run-down of the ten Libcom blog posts / articles that I found the most informative, interesting, or thought provoking in 2013.

Over 8,000 protesters have clashed with riot police as they protested against the planned eviction of squatters from a popular social centre, and against the eviction of hundreds of people from heir homes. The largely peaceful protest erupted following a baton charge, and use of teargas, and water cannons by the police. The protesters responded by building barricades, throwing stones, fireworks, and bottles. It is reported that over 500 people has been injured, and around 150 arrests made.

A significant amount of organizing experience in the IWW comes from working in relatively small workplaces such as stand-alone single shops or franchises of multiple smaller shops. These places present their own set of difficulties and opportunities. Lou Rinaldi talks about what happened at a former job of his in this piece.

Class Struggle Along Global Supply Chains, Parts III. In this installment in Seattle, we will give a presentation and facilitate a collective discussion to explore the possibilities of class struggle spreading along commodity chains. Saturday, December 28, 7 p.m., Black Coffee Coop.

There were a lot of interesting factors at play in the 2011 NATO bombings, and I want to start discussing them by first dispelling any idea that the bombings were somehow undertaken for humanitarian purposes.

Users will need to clear their cache to log in but otherwise everything is running a lot faster.

The new “pitchfork” protest – nationwide this time – was announced weeks ago but it still seems to have taken the whole country by surprise. It began on 9 December and is still going on today, the organizers declaring that they won’t stop until the Letta government collapses.

A blogpost about various 'zines, underground comics and alternative publications I was exposed to during the late 1980s and 1990s.

A brief look at the deaths of four construction workers at the World Cup 2014 stadium construction sites, and at several other scandals associated with next summer's tournament, FIFA, event organisers, and the Brazilian political elite.

Direct action is at the center of the housing justice, but what do we need to see a movement that is fully realized and can target housing-for-profit at its very core?

Giovanni Monti, president of Legacoop Emilia-Romagna, was reported by the Bologna edition of La Repubblica as saying that “these manipulative kind of events which are on the increase among political extremists, as we’ve seen in Bologna, and which target cooperatives and unions, are as worrying as mafia-related events”.

Lots of people who start Karl Marx's Capital get stuck somewhere in the early chapters of volume 1. In this post, I make some suggestions about how to get unstuck and read the whole book.

Summary and links to news stories of workers' struggles around East Asia during November 2013 and related resources. The most important stories appear on my Twitter feed as soon as I find them: http://twitter.com/spartacusnews.

Again, on the protests in Ukraine; this time mostly on the attitude towards 'Europe' among the several forces within the protests.

With recent strikes, occupations, and violent repression, the university is becoming a battleground. What does this mean for university staff and students?