IV478 - November 2014

“We do not like prisons, but they do not scare us,” says Mahienour al-Masry, Egyptian lawyer and human rights activist who was serving a three year prison sentence for violating anti-protest laws before her recent release.

Finally, even if three decades too late, America’s politicians are beginning to take notice of the fact that we have become the country on the planet locking up more people than any other.

The national demonstration in Brussels, the beginning of the plan of action of the common trade union against the Michel 1 plans (and the cuts at the regional level) was a huge success. With 120,000 participants, all expectations were broadly met. Contrary to what was feared at one time, the mobilization was a great success in Flanders also: there were thus 20,000 participants from the province of Antwerp, close to 9,000 from Eastern Flanders and so on. The fear created by some that the CSC and the liberal CGSLB union would only mobilize verbally also proved unfounded.

On May 25, two candidates for the Parti du Travail de Belgique (PTB – Workers’ Party of Belgium) entered the Chamber, two in the Walloon parliament and four in the Brussels Parliament, elected on the lists of the PTB-GO (Gauche d’Ouverture) in Wallonia, and on a bilingual PTB-PVDA-GO! list in Brussels.

This statement by Izquierda Anticapitalista, section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state, was issued on 5 November 2014 after the internal vote in Podemos. The platform presented by Pablo Iglesias won an overwhelming majority while that presented by the grouping including the IA comrades, notably Euro MP Teresa Rodriguez, won 12 per cent.

This statement was issued on 9 November 2014 by NUMSA after its expulsion from COSATU to assert the union’s intention to wage a fight to defend and strengthen its membership and political role.

This interview with Gilbert Achcar for the English-language Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman was published on 4 November 2014.

Tens of thousands of trade unionists marched in London on October 18th in a demonstration called by the TUC, the unified British trade union confederation, under the slogan ‘Britain needs a pay rise’. Since 2008 the average worker has lost about £2000 in annual income. Britain is the fastest growing G7 member with 3% growth this year and an official unemployment rate of 6%. But working people are not experiencing the benefits. Why is this? Millions have been forced to take pay cuts or reduced hours. Two million workers have been re-classified as self-employed earning less money and not sick pay. If you add the huge cuts in social spending this explains why surveys still show high levels of dissatisfaction and give the Labour Party a three point lead over the Conservatives with 32% in the polls.

This speech was made by Numsa General secretary to the Cosatu EC on 7 November 2014, before his union was expelled from the confederation.

Since the summer, dozens of documents, written by Podemos activists, individually or in a more collective manner, are circulating and being discussed throughout the hundreds of "circles" that bring together rank-and-file activists from across the Spanish state and beyond its borders, for example in Belgium. What is at stake is nothing less than deciding collectively what constitutes the political project of Podemos.