The Free Fare struggle rises up

June 18, 2013 By
Taking to the streets in São Paulo to protest public transit fare hikes (Sean Purdy)

Taking to the streets in São Paulo to protest public transit fare hikes (Sean Purdy)

Sean Purdy, a member of the Party of Socialism and Freedom (PSOL) and activist in the Free Fare movement in São Paulo, reports from Brazil on a police assault.

SÃO PAULO was a war zone the night of June 13 as riot police viciously attacked a peaceful demonstration of the Free Fare movement, which is protesting hikes in bus and subway fares.

Despite massive police repression and the intransigence of the city and state governments, there are have been four large demonstrations in the last two weeks by the Free Fare movement in São Paulo, South America’s largest city.

Polls show that a majority of residents support the demonstrations. Protests have spread to several other Brazilian cities that also face increases in public transit fares, and there have been demonstrations of solidarity organized or planned in several dozen cities in Europe and North America. Messages of solidarity have also been sent from the protestors in Taksim Square in Turkey.

Hundreds of videos and testimonies, from both demonstrators and the mainstream media, show that during the June 13 protest, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets indiscriminately at peaceful demonstrators, journalists and passersby. Dozens of demonstrators were injured, along with at least eight journalists, one of whom was blinded in one eye after being struck by a rubber bullet. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, Protests

Unmasking the Modern Surveillance State

June 12, 2013 By

National-Spying-on-you-Agency-final-bTHE SHADOWY and secretive National Security Agency (NSA) has been exposed to the light of day by revelations that show the vast extent of U.S. government spying, at home and around the globe.

The truth about two outrageous surveillance programs–apparently run for years by the world’s biggest spying agency with the support of Democrats and Republicans alike–has been revealed to the world in back-to-back exposés in the Guardian and other publications.

Under one program, called Prism, the NSA has gained access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype and other giant Internet companies, allowing it to examine all kinds of information at will, including browser histories and the content of e-mails, live chats, file transfers and more.

Under the other, the National Spying-on-you Agency has apparently been collecting records for probably the majority of telephone users in the U.S. This “metadata” obtained from the biggest telecommunications companies is warehoused in a giant database that NSA analysts can “mine” for intelligence, again at will [Read more...]

Filed Under: International

Solidarity with Turkey’s Protesters!

June 8, 2013 By

20130607_17121015 people joined a symbolic picket of Turkey’s Embassy in Wellington on Friday, answering the call from demonstrators in Turkey for solidarity.

The action was called by the International Socialists, but drew support and participation from local anarchists, other socialists and trade unionists.

The protests in Turkey are fighting for democratic rights and the control of public space against an aggressively neoliberal government.

Our action was small, but was one of many around the world showing support for the movement in Turkey. It gathers together Kurdish groups and Turkish socialists, LGBT groups, secular and Islamic currents, and trade union power, all united against the government’s savage repression.

At the picket we read out of this message of support from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, passed on by Peter Conway:

“The NZCTU condemns the actions taken by the Turkish government which began as attacks on people including unionists complaining about the demolition of a city park to replace it with a shopping centre, and has grown into repression of widespread public protests. We are informed that it is now becoming general repression against legitimate opposition to the government’s actions. Along with the International Trade Union Confederation, Turkish national trade union centres KESK and DISK, and many others, we call on the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to release the many trade unionists, journalists and others the government is unjustifiably holding in detention, and begin dialogue to find a just resolution of the concerns of the thousands of people protesting. We join with a coalition of Turkish organisations including trade unions in calling on the Turkish government to free all those arrested; drop all charges against them; hold accountable those responsible for the police violence; and lift all bans on meetings and demonstrations.”

Filed Under: International, Protests

The roots of Turkey’s rebellion

June 3, 2013 By

turkishdeclarationRichard Seymour analyzes the issues involved in an Occupy-style revolt in Turkey.

ON FRIDAY [31 June], Turkish police surrounded protesters in Gezi Park near Taksim Square, the central square in Istanbul. Police blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas.

An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul. The ostensible issue spurring the conflict is modest. Protesters started gathering in the park on May 27 to oppose its demolition as part of a redevelopment plan. But this is more than an environmental protest. It has become a lightning conductor for all the grievances accumulated against the government. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International

Hezbollah and the Syrian Revolution

May 30, 2013 By

SyriaImageHezbollah fought on the front lines against Israeli aggression against Lebanon in 2006, winning respect from Sunni and Shia in Lebanon and all opponents of Zionism. But Hezbollah fighters have now turned their fire on the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad’s regime in Syria, raising the risk of the Arab Spring becoming a sectarian war in Syria and Lebanon. Sam Campbell reports from Lebanon. [Read more...]

Filed Under: In-Depth and Historical, International, World

The Legacy of Hugo Chavez: Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution

May 21, 2013 By

hugo_chavez_by_drunahHugo Chavez was a figure that had the neoliberals of the world worried. He led a democratic sweep of changes across his country, appropriating businesses, nationalizing oil wealth and providing services for the people and the poor, something that, according to the logic of the market’s apologists, cannot work. For all that Time magazine called him ‘garrulous and pugnacious’, workers and the poor in Venezuela voted for him time and again, in elections that have been declared some of the freest in the world. Chavez’s mandate was real, his achievements – from healthcare to welfare – notable, and his networks of support substantial. And this is to say nothing of the support he gathered internationally when he spoke out against Bush and Blair’s War on Terror. He became a leader for progressive people worldwide.

However, Venezuela is still part of the capitalist world; it is no socialist paradise. The inherent contradictions of world capitalism still have their vicious effects in Venezuelan society. So what is Hugo Chavez’s legacy? [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, Uncategorized, World

The Second Chinese Revolution 1925-27

May 13, 2013 By

Hong Workers Strike in 1925The Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 was a turning point in world history. Consider the world situation around 1924-1925. In Europe the revolutionary wave that accompanied the end of the First World War had exhausted itself to leave the Russian Revolution isolated. In Germany the revolutionary process from 1918 to 1923 had been halted and capitalism temporarily stabilised by the Social Democrats.

The short-lived Hungarian Soviet government had fallen in 1919. In Italy the ‘Biennio Rosso’, the two red years of 1919-1920, had given way to reaction and the accession to power by Mussolini. In Poland reaction set in and Marshall Pilsudski would install himself as dictator in 1926.

Hope for the spread of the world revolution, and relief to the beleaguered Soviet Union, now lay in the east, in the struggle against imperialism, especially in China.  These hopes were not realised. The defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution had devastating consequences that defined the dark days of the 1930s. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, Liberation from oppression, Theory and History, World History

The horror we feel today

April 16, 2013 By
Aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing

Aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing

Khury Petersen-Smith and Sofia Arias attended the Boston Marathon as spectators. They had left the finish line area only an hour before two explosions ripped through the crowd. Today, the death toll stands at three, with more than 100 people injured, a number of them very seriously. Here, Khury and Sofia talk about their response to the nightmare–and the consequences of the witch-hunt to find a culprit to blame. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International

Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013: May her legacy follow her to the grave

April 10, 2013 By
Minerattackedbypolice

Police beating striking Miners

The death of Margaret Thatcher is an important event for anyone who stands for equality and socialism. While the event itself changes little, and Thatcher has not been in power for over 20 years, the legacy of the ‘New Right’ is still making people suffer today. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International

The Arab Revolutions Two Years On

April 9, 2013 By

Arab-Spring-women-EgyptWhat has come in the West to be called the ‘Arab spring’ was one of the largest outpourings of anger at corruption and injustice in the Arab world in many decades. It saw dictators forced from their palaces, and the people of many nations embrace their ability to make this change. It saw the resurgence of strikes and protests in countries that had not seen such things in years, or even decades, and inspired similar actions in other countries all over the globe from Europe to the Americas and everywhere in between. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, World Tagged With: , , ,
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