IV467 - December 2013

The end of the tunnel is far from being in sight. We are only at the beginning of a gigantic offensive by European capitalism against the world of labour, youth and women. Since 2008, in the European Union (EU,) more than two billion private bank debts have been transformed into public debts, and these debts serve as the pretext for a ferocious austerity.

The crisis that started in the United States in 2007-2008, hit the European Union head on in 2008, and has been causing major problems in the eurozone since 2010. Banks from the strongest European countries are responsible for spreading this plague from the United States to Europe, because they had invested massively in structured financial products. It is important to explain why this crisis has struck the European Union and the eurozone harder than the United States.

In the past half-decade, post-socialist Bulgaria has witnessed a persistent wave of protests. These protests have coincided with the global wave of anti-neoliberal mobilization against austerity, debt, and precarity, heralded by the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Indignados movements. Yet, interpreting the Bulgarian protests as part of the same protest wave might turn out to be dangerously misleading. In this paper, I explain the dynamic of contestation and frames of protest by discussing the three peaks of the 2012–2013 protest wave. I show a number of characteristics of the political and social landscape of post-socialist Bulgaria, which have made the anti-neoliberal or anti-capitalist framing of the protests increasingly difficult. I claim that a reason for this has been a few mutually reinforcing characteristics of the Bulgarian protests, typical not only for Bulgaria, but also for other post-socialist countries.

Pension theft: imported from Detroit? In giving the state-appointed Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr the green light to take the city into bankruptcy, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes’ December 3 ruling opens up a national offensive to loot public sector workers’ pension and health care benefits.

This statement by Izquierda Anticapitalista was first published on 19 December 2013 at www.anticapitalistas.org. Since the draft law was announced by the Spanish government there have been widespread protests in the Spanish state and elsewhere, including pickets outside Spanish Embassies and consulates, such as that in Paris on Friday 27 December on the call of the national and Parisian groups including feminsit groups, campaigns for women’s right abortion and contraception, and left political parties.

The official and traditional mourning period of forty days after the disaster in the Philippines (November 8 – December 18, 2013) has just been finished. It should be the period of painful acceptance of the loss of their loved ones and healing of their emotional and psychological wounds. It should also be a time to look at themselves in order to rebuild what is left with their houses and livelihood.

Sunday, December 15, Santiago de Chile, at three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun is at its zenith, the sky looks clear and temporarily free from the halo of pollution that clings every day to the slopes of the Andes which overlook the city. The heat of the southern summer is already here, stifling. Opposite the town hall, in the borough of the La Florida neighbourhood (in the south of the capital) there is a supermarket (which belongs to the multinational Wal-Mart), a big Christmas market and the Bellavista La Florida College. As in the first round of the presidential election on November 17, this municipal establishment has been transformed into a polling station. Passers-by glance at the soldiers stationed outside the entrance. More rarely, some of them go in.

IV 467 December 2013 PDF available to download here

In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) have reached an agreement with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to form a coalition government. The results have been approved by the CDU in a “Kleiner Parteitag” (“little congress”, in fact a kind of enlarged leadership meeting). The SPD has put the decision to its 475,000 members.

Between the continents of Europe and Africa, and a running jump to the Americas, more than 12 million people visit the Canary Islands each year.