IV442 - November 2011

While voices were being raised from the right, and part of the left, declaring the “Arab Spring” over and advising the rebellious masses to go back home, recent days have made it abundantly clear that the revolutionary process which was sparked in Tunisia late last year remains alive and well. Indeed, it has reinvigorated itself and is experiencing a fresh upsurge – to be followed by others undoubtedly over the course of the years to come.

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On November 30 up to three million workers in Britain will be taking strike action in defence of pension rights under brutal assault by the Tory-led Coalition government, following overwhelming yes votes in ballots by thirty unions.

A police attack on a small sit-in by 100 protesters in Tahrir Square November 19 has turned into a massive challenge to Egypt’s military rulers as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Cairo and other cities to demand the ouster of the military regime.

Why suddenly this concern, this confusion (as the faces become serious). Why do the streets, squares, empty so quickly while everyone returns home in great anxiety? Because the barbarians arrive today and these things dazzle the barbarians.” K. Kavafis, “Waiting for the barbarians”

It is an old reflex of Turkey’s state tradition to collectively imprison political figures who express the desires of the Kurdish people. Collective arrests started in 1959 with the imprisonment of forty-nine Kurdish intellectuals and turned into collective executions in the 1990s. Now—during the tenure of the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP - Justice and Development Party) of Prime Minister Erdo?an—they have taken the form of sensational mass detentions through the so-called KCK operations under which almost 8000 people have been arrested since 2009.

The expected defeat of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain’s elections on November 20, 2011 was not as heavy as had been predicted. The Spanish electoral system is far from proportional and projects deformed images which strongly distort reality. In terms of number of seats the elections can be seen as a "historic victory" for the Popular Party, the conservative right of Francoist origin The PP increased its representation from 153 deputies at the 2008 elections to 186 seats, a crushing absolute majority. Certainly, the right galvanised and mobilised its traditional electorate which indisputably included popular layers. However this was not a “blue tidal wave”: the PP only increased its vote by slightly over 600,000 votes on the scale of Spain as a whole. No, the shift to the right of the parliamentary majority is due to the undoubted collapse, heavy with consequences, of the PSOE. In terms of deputies the setback for the socialists is crushing: 169 seats in 2008, only 110 in 2011. But it is above all when one compares votes received that it is possible to grasp the extent of the disaster: the PSOE lost more than 4,000,000 votes in relation to the previous general election.

Daniel Noverraz, known as Léonce Aguirre, died suddenly on September 29, 2011. Initially close to the Communist Party, he joined the Fourth International in 1968 in Lausanne, after May 1968 in France and the impact of the role played then by the French section and the Jeunesse communiste révolutionnaire. In 1969 he participated in the foundation of the Ligue marxiste révolutionnaire (LMR), Swiss section of the Fourth International.

Several supporters and members of Labour Party Pakistan are locked up in different jails of Pakistan. 9 textile workers including Fazal Ilahi a leading member of LPP are in Faisalabad jail. 15 activists are in Gilgit jail including Baba Jan, en elected member of LPP Federal Committee. They are not terrorists. They are political activists. However, all of them are charged with anti terrorist laws.

The farce, and the arguments of the "political elite" of Greece along with the "power play" — mainly of the two large system-supporting parties PASOK ("Socialist Movement") and the right-wing "New Democracy" (ND) — to support a government coalition with the participation of the far-right LAOS, finally led to the formation of an "interim government" in November. Elections are scheduled for February. The reformist parties KPG (KKE) and SYN/SYRIZA demand immediate elections.