International Socialists (CWI Scotland)

Sunday February 12th, the Greek parliament voted to make new austerity cuts that are demanded by the EU and IMF in return for a huge bailout, to prevent Greece defaulting on its massive debts. The savage austerity measures were demanded by the European Union as a precondition for releasing the funds. But the cuts provoked a massive response by the Greek workers, with a 24 hour strike on Tuesday 7th February and another 48 hour general strike on Friday and Saturday 10th and 11 of February. This is unprecedented in the post war history of the country.

The mostly young and working class football fans killed in the 1 February massacre played a crucial role during the Tahrir Square uprising. Parts of the old regime seem, through this massacre, to be trying to take revenge. Also in this way, the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) tries to use the fear of chaos to justify its role. But new demonstrations are developing.

The capitalist classes of Europe are all adopting the same policy of attempting to make the working class pay for the capitalist economic crisis. As the capitalist politicians arrived in Brussels for the 30 January EU summit they were met with a clear and determined message from the Belgian working class - a magnificent 24 hour general strike (see photo) - the first in the country for nearly 20 years - in defiance of the summit’s austerity agenda.

 
Below we carry the latest updates from Kazakhstan from CWI reporters in Russia and Kazakhstan. The regime of Nazarbayev have launched a bloody attack on oil workers and supporters in West Kazakhstan. For all past articles about developments in Kazkahstan on Socialistworld.net then click here. You can also see a video message from Paul Murphy MEP (CWI Ireland) to the striking oil workers posted on the Campaign Kazakhstan website here.

End the dictatorship of Wall $treet Follow Oakland’s example: For mass actions to fight against cuts and foreclosures. On November 2, the events in Oakland represented a new peak for the whole occupy movement – up to 20,000 came together to defend our right to protest against all attempts to crack down with police brutality. They didn’t limit themselves to demonstrations alone. Teachers left their schools, public sector workers went on sick-out, and the port was shut down. Unions called for support for the demonstrations when Occupy Oakland called for a “general strike.”

Greece was paralysed on Wednesday and Thursday the 19th and 20th of October by a 48 hour general strike called by the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the public sector Civil Servants’ Confederation (ADEDY). Up to half a million workers and youth took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday and around 100,000 on Thursday. Wednesday’s demo was the largest union demonstration in Greece since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974 and with the exception of a popular uprising in 1965, the largest since the end of World War II!

As the eurozone crisis develops, its political and institutional leaders are becoming increasingly desperate as they look for a way out. The latest postponement, amid increasing friction between the French and German governments, of a decision on the eurozone’s next steps is an indication of the crisis’s seriousness. Here, in an analysis written for Socialism Today (November 2011 issue), monthly magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI England and Wales), Robert Bechert examines both the crisis and the test it poses for the left.

On 15 October, all around the globe, the “enraged”, the “indignados”, the “occupiers of Wall Street”, demonstrators all over Portugal, in Santiago Chile and in Cairo – and many, many more – took to the streets to challenge the power of big business. The magnificent movements of young people and workers in these struggles, with common causes, methods and demands, instinctively reach out to each other across borders and continents.

How can the cuts tsunami be halted?

As the ‘troika’ – the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – arrive in Athens, this week, to review the Greek government’s “progress” in its vicious austerity cuts in return for the latest tranche of bailout funds, the people of Greece are suffering beyond endurance.