IV449 - June 2012

Abortion rights have been put under attack in Turkey by the Prime Minister Erdo?an repeatedly saying “I see abortion as murder”. He then outrageously likened abortion to Uludere, the village in Turkey’s Iraqi border where 34 Kurdish civilians were killed by a military airstrike, couple of months ago. Following these statements of the PM, Health Minister expressed that they were working on a new bill that would ban abortion and caesarean, adding that the state would take care of babies born because of incidents of rape.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has made a declaration concerning Greece and Africa that requires explanation. The third world debt crisis started thirty years ago. Under strong and increasing pressure to export, the poor countries bore the brunt of the heavy increase in interest rates and the collapse of commodity prices orchestrated by the international financial establishment.

On the eve of the elections on May 6, 2012, Germany’s Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, called on Greeks to elect a majority "that respects the commitments made to international creditors by the present coalition government " [1].He was wasting his breath, since more than 65 per cent of Greeks voted against the diktats of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A new period opened on May 6 in Athens. To discuss it, we interviewed Dimitris Hilaris of the organization OKDE-Spartakos, which is part of the Antarsya coalition.

Dressed in big coats of sandy, white or clear blue colours, the weaving loom workers fill the small union office – all men; it is a male trade here. We are in Etehad Town in the outskirts of Karachi, capital of Sindh, principal industrial and port metropolis of Pakistan. Several of those present had just been freed under bail. Their crime, like that of their comrades then still imprisoned, was wishing to set up a union in enterprises which live under a veritable regime of employer terror: the Etehad Power Looms Labour Union, affiliated with National Trade Union Federation. For this, they were arrested by paramilitary Rangers, tortured, imprisoned, accused of racketeering and brought before an anti-terrorist court.