Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

A personal reflection on alienation experienced within National Democratic mass organizations.

We interviewed a comrade from Germany who has been following events and movements in South America. She works as a postal worker for DHL. The initial introduction to the series can be found here: https://letsgetrooted.wordpress.com/2020/09/05/working-class-internationalism-series/

Today (28/11/20) marks 200 years since the birth of Friedrich Engels. For this occasion we reproduce an article from Revolutionary Perspectives 1 (Series 3), originally published back in 1995 for the 100th anniversary of Engels’ death.

We are publishing this article to commemorate last year’s shooting in Yuendumu, shortly before the 5th year anniversary of the Sydney Long Bay Jail Killing, and for the 16th anniversary of the Palm Island Riots. Its content is largely reflective of these events and other deaths in custody. We wish to advise Indigenous readers that this piece mentions the names and stories of people who have died at the hands of the bourgeois state.

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world, infecting tens of millions, killing over a million so far and leaving many survivors with recurring or permanent health conditions.(1) The region of Oceania has had tens of thousands of virus cases and around a thousand deaths. However, it has been hit even harder in the form of other pandemic related factors, such as border closures, unemployment, and a rise in mental health issues and domestic violence.

In this first piece on reproductive struggles in class society we bring to focus some of the facts and dangers surrounding abortion, as well as the family unit and prostitution, two phenomena that Marxists deem to be flipsides of the same coin, and inseparable from the struggle for reproductive freedom.

The media on 5 November was greatly agitated by the news that a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 had been found in intensive rearing of minks on Danish factory farms. This mutation weakens the ability to produce antibodies, a fact which could compromise the effectiveness of future vaccines.

Why would seriously want to you waste your time reading about various infights of pretty minuscule Trotskyist sects 80 years ago?!

A Tagalog translation of Cindy Milstein's pamphlet Anarchism.

A Tagalog translation of Errico Malatesta's 1920 pamphlet “An Anarchist Programme”

For years video platforms have been dominated by Youtube, part of Google and an effective monopoly. This has created a number of problems and tensions which have only gotten worse with time. Time to consider some alternatives.

On the student strikes against the Duterte administration in the Philippines.

A meditation on the notion of Filipino resilience after the typhoon disasters of 2020.

Original published here: https://www.redblacknotes.com/2020/11/14/the-importance-of-being-rooted-an-interview-with-angry-workers-world/

Statement from the Internationalist Workers' Group, affiliate of the ICT in the USA.

As well as exacerbating the decline in living conditions of the international working class the deepening world economic crisis is sharpening imperialist competition.

The expansion of university education, which is now a relatively common feature of the working-class condition, has not and cannot deliver the goods in terms of prosperity, well-being and any other measure of progress for societies trapped within the constraints of class division.

Review: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy by Stephanie Kelton (published by John Murray, 2020).

Article from Bilan et Perspectives #19, magazine of our French comrades.