heaven-storming

A greve geral do dia 28-4 mostrou a disposição de luta da classe trabalhadora. Muitas categorias de trabalhadores apesar de não estarem organizados e com seus sindicatos ativos não saíram para trabalhar. O setor de transporte público mais uma vez foi importante para paralisar as grandes cidades. O funcionalismo público parou na sua maioria e os movimentos sociais bloquearam ruas e estradas.

A crise no Brasil se aprofunda e algumas semanas após a greve, denuncias de corrupção atingiram diretamente o presidente Michel Temer. Após as denuncias de corrupção na Petrobras, agora são alvos das investigações da PF, a corrupção envolvendo os empréstimos do BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) para grandes empresas, em particular a JBS.

A JBS é uma empresa de frigoríficos que recebeu R$10 bi do governo, através do BNDES, em 2007/08. Enquanto fechava plantas e demitia trabalhadores durante o estouro da crise global do capitalismo…

The police and the judiciary, on behalf of the evil and anti-poor ZANU-PF government are brutalising and persecuting the democracy fighters and the poor who are fighting for a better life and a an accountable way of government. The past two months have witnessed a growing number of protests by civic groups, trade unions and opposition political parties(as well as counter protests by the youths aligned to the ruling party in its defence).The protests have mainly been against dictatorship, corruption and poverty. These concerns have united all the anti-government forces, including sections of the ruling party, with the resultant proposed solution being the resignation of the president (and the party) to pave way for new elections (under a “neutral” National Transitional Authority, NTA).In scenes reminiscent of the colonial era, the police has reacted with extreme and ruthless violence towards anyone excising the democratic right to protest and assemble. As we…

Two rival linking plans at expense of Daesh in northern Syria: Green – rebels, Yellow – SDF, Black – Daesh, Red – Assadist. Distance between rebel-controlled territory beyond towns of al-Rai and Jarablus now only 10 km.

By Michael Karadjis

(An abridged version of this article appeared in ‘The New Arab’ under the title ‘Tensions tried and loyalties tested in northern Syria’, at https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/9/2/tensions-tried-and-loyalties-tested-in-northern-syria).

One week the United States rushed to the defence of its Kurdish allies, People’s Protection Units (YPG), when the Assad regime bombed them in Hasake; the following week many pro-YPG voices were accusing the same US of betrayal, for supporting Turkey’s intervention into Syria, with 5000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) troops, to expel ISIS from the border town of Jarablus.

However, fickleness would not be a useful explanation of US behaviour. Rather, both events suggest that the outlines of a regional understanding on a reactionary…

Marx on the Dialectics of Nature

The inevitable failure of COP21 ‘hot air’ to meet the challenge of global warming proves yet again that capitalism is the problem not the solution. But what makes the crisis of capitalism this time different from past crises is that climate change makes the crisis terminal. The capitalist class cannot survive without destroying both popular resistance to its rule and the ecological foundation of humanity in society. Marx always saw socialism as bringing alienated humanity back to nature. That is why there is no future for humanity without a global socialist revolution. Better to be red than dead!

Most analyses of this predicament blame the hubris of humanity in destroying nature – nature ‘good’; capitalism ‘bad’. This idea is expressed in the term Anthropogenic that refers to the changes brought about in climate (nature) as a result of ‘industrial’ society. For most climate warriors…

The drone operators in air conditioned trailers in Missouri are killing civilians in Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria alike; therefore the Pentagon conception that so-called terror bombings constitute “asymmetrical warfare” is wrong; “limited war” the term used in the Eisenhower and Kennedy days leading up to Vietnam acknowledged that the U.S. military was fighting “irregular forces” overseas.   For all the victims on all the continents these distinctions are meaningless, they are victims of imperialist war and this is true in the metropolis as well as in the semi-colonies.   The bombings in Kenya and Mali are not different from the bombings of civilians in Paris and neither are they different from the victims of the U.S. drones or one ton French fragmentation bombs and Matra missiles. This is war, something imperialism makes continuously and non-stop and has done so since before the end of the Cold War, beginning with the Charlie Wilson/Brzezinski…

Hands Off the Street Vendors!

The Mugabe ZANU PF regime has threatened so-called illegal street vendors in Harare and Bulawayo with police and perhaps also army repression beginning Monday, June 8^th, 2015.   The Mugabe regime is under pressure from local and foreign capitalists to deal with the vendors, hence the crackdown. The Mugabe “revolution” has not secured national independence and has taken and survives due to its role of imposing the will of foreign capital on the masses with total disregard for their needs. This is the popular front trapping the masses in misery. Around 5 million people are involved in street vending and their unions have vowed to resist the action. The RWG calls for strike actions across the country to foil this attack on masses of the urban poor! In Zimbabwe, anyone is liable to become a small vendor who is not part of the labor…

Snowden’s piece in the The New York Times yesterday is a fitting epilog to the vulgar, cynical performance of democracy we have just been subjected to these past few days, wherein The Patriot Act metamorphosed into The Freedom Act. This “victory lap” in The Times as some are seeing it, is vintage Snowden, kitted out with the by now customary hype, infantilizing civics lesson, and genuflection to the private sector, where, according to Ed “progress has come even more quickly [than in government]” via “pioneering companies like Apple” among others.

“Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen” declared Ed, a statement which would be an outright lie were it not for the lawyer-like “under the Patriot Act” qualifier. Of course everything under The Patriot Act has ended, because the Patriot Act has ended. As Ed most certainly knows, mass surveillance…