Today's Topics:
1. UK, AFED: May Day 2021 arrests in Turkey
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. afed.cz: 25 years of the Institute of Anarchist Studies
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Grupo Libertario Vía Libre: Around the national strike of
April 28 (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
April 28 (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Belarus, pramen: Brochure «Uprising in Belarus from
anarchist perspective» [machine translation]
anarchist perspective» [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. UK, ACG: No one is safe until everyone is safe
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Greece, APO, Land & Freedom: Black and red
May Day - AGAINST
THE STATE, CAPITAL AND CRIMINAL MANAGEMENT OF
THE STATE, CAPITAL AND CRIMINAL MANAGEMENT OF
THE PANDEMIC
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Belarus, pramen: 35 years later, Soviet functionaries still
strive for a new Chernobyl [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
strive for a new Chernobyl [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. France, UCL AL #315 = History, 1921: Kropotkin's funeral,
Russian libertarian twilight (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Today's Topics:
Russian libertarian twilight (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Today's Topics:
1. Brazil, Libertarian Mulheres Resistem - May 1st is a day of
struggle for all working women! - Women Resist RJ (pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
struggle for all working women! - Women Resist RJ (pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, UCL - A hit against one of us is a hit against all
of us (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
of us (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. UK, AF Notinghamshire: May Day 2021 - Greetings on
International Workers Day! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
International Workers Day! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Poland, rozbrat EMPLOYEE INITIATIVE - OPENING OF THE
BOGDANKA FREE CITY GARDEN [machine translation]
BOGDANKA FREE CITY GARDEN [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
A message in English from our brave comrades in Turkey in the DAF (Devrimci
Anarsist Federasyon) after May Day 2021 actions in two cities, referencing
Haymarket Square, Chicago 1886 and the fight of organised labour for the Eight
Hour Day. At least 9 of the 19 from one of the Istanbul areas were reported
released the following morning (see Facebook link below). ---- On 2021 May Day,
as Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, we walked to Kizilay Square in Ankara and
Taksim Square in Istanbul. 19 comrades were detained in Mecidiyeköy and Kazanci
Yokusu in Istanbul and in Mesrutiyet Street in Ankara. On May Day, when they
tried to ban it under the pretext of the coronavirus crisis, we crossed the bans
with our fight.
May Day is our fight day. Today we are growing this struggle, which we started in
1886, with the same courage. As those who resist in the streets despite all the
prohibitions and obstructions of the power mechanisms, we have shown once again
that May Day cannot be banned. As Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, we organize
anarchism and continue this fight which was inherited from our comrades in 1886.
Long Live May Day, Long Live Anarchism!
May Day is Fight, It Can't Be Banned!
http://afed.org.uk/may-day-2021-arrests-in-turkey/
------------------------------
Message: 2
An international project to support the development of anarchist theory
celebrated a quarter of a century. ---- Anarchism arose from the socialist
movement as an independent political direction in the nineteenth century. He
argued that it was necessary and possible to overthrow coercive and exploitative
social relations and replace them with egalitarian, self-governing and
cooperative social forms. Anarchism thus gave new depth to the long struggle for
freedom. ---- The main interest of the classical anarchists was the opposition to
the state and capitalism. This was complemented by a policy of voluntary
association, mutual assistance and decentralization. Since the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and especially in the 1960s, anarchist
criticism has spread to a more general condemnation of domination and hierarchy.
This has made it possible to understand and call into question a whole range of
social relations - such as patriarchy, racism or the devastation of nature - and
at the same time to face political and economic hierarchies. As a result, the
ideal of a free society has grown to include sexual liberation, cultural
diversity, or ecological harmony, as well as the institutions of direct democracy.
The fundamental rejection of all forms of domination makes anarchism historically
flexible, politically complex, and consistently critical - as evidenced by its
revival in today's global anti-capitalist movement. Yet anarchism has not yet
acquired the care and complexity needed to understand and transform the present.
Anarchist Studies Institute ( The Institute for Anarchist Studies , IAS) was
founded in 1996 to promote the development of anarchism. He started as an
organization providing grants to radical writers and translators around the
world. So far, the IAS has funded hundreds of projects by authors from different
countries. In 1997, he began publishing the newsletter Perspectives on Anarchist
Theory . The reporter eventually teamed up with The New Formula: An
Antiauthoritarian Review of Books, and in 2009 a new team took over publishing
it, giving it its current form.
In 2010, IAS, in collaboration with AK Press and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative,
began publishing the book series Anarchist Interventions. During the Occupy
movement, he published a series of five pamphlets called Lexicon , of which
30,000 were distributed free of charge in various Occupy camps and social movements.
With the publication of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social
Justice Movements , which in 2015 prepared jointly Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne
Maree Brown started IAS along with AK Press, a new publishing series, which also
contained the Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison , and
redemption (Angels with dirty faces: Three stories of crime, incarceration and
redemption) from Walidahy Imarishy, the book, which won the Oregon book Award,
and the Guerillas of desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make
a Revolution Possible (Partisans of desire: Notes to the daily resistance and
organization to make a revolution possible) by Kevin Van Meter, and others follow.
During the twenty-five years of its existence, the IAS has consistently held
educational events, such as a series of Restoration of Anarchist Traditions
conferences in New England and discussion events in Portland, Oregon, and has
participated in radical conferences throughout North America.
IAS is part of a larger movement for a radical transformation of society. It is
an internally democratic collective that works in solidarity all over the world
with people who share its values.
In this 25th year, the IAS renewed its grant project and expanded the scope of
what it finances, so that it counts not only the written word but also video and
audio projects.
Contact: info[a]anarchiststudies.org
Source:
https://anarchiststudies.org/30928-2/
Related link:
Project of the Institute of Anarchist Studies
https://www.afed.cz/text/7358/25-let-institutu-anarchistickych-studii
------------------------------
Message: 3
The current tax reform presented by the government of Iván Duque and his finance
minister, the questioned Alberto Carrasquilla, seeks a way out of the deep
situation of economic crisis derived from the socio-sanitary crisis, the most
important since the world economic crisis of 1929, which has led to a decrease of
-6.8% of GDP in 2020, as well as a significant increase in the external debt
calculated at 164,968 million dollars and 55% of the GDP of last year and the
public deficit that reached 90 billion pesos and 8.9% of GDP in the same period.
---- The third tax reform of the new Uribista administration after the so-called
financing law of 2018 and the growth law of 2019, seeks to raise an additional 35
billion pesos, maintaining the line of neoliberal economic adjustment of the
current government, although it also dismantles some of the most unsustainable
concessions that it made a few months ago for the richest population. In turn,
this is the twelfth reform implemented in the last 20 years to face crises and
increase the State budget, a continuous period of conservative and privatizing
economic policy that, however, has greatly accelerated the policies of continuous
reform, with continuous increases in indirect taxes such as VAT, as well as costs
associated with public and financial services,
This project called "Sustainable Solidarity", partially agreed with the bosses'
leaders of the National Trade Union Council, organizations that have been a
historical defender of unequal fiscal policies and the cut in social spending,
seeks to reduce the assets exempt from the indirect Value Added Tax (VAT),
increase the base of people who pay income tax by expanding it on the middle
sectors and well-off workers, reducing taxes and subsidies of various kinds for
companies without modifying massive layoffs, stimulating policies for hiring
young people without corporate responsibility with social security,maintains the
scholarship credit programs for young students without modifying the delicate
budget crisis of public universities and maintaining in a slightly more flexible
framework the so-called fiscal rule that contains the public budget.
In the reform, the so-called social approach vaguely promises to increase social
income for the poorest households, an income that by 2020 represented 4.1% of GDP
according to the Monetary Fund, less than half of other countries in the region.
This project, which arises after the achievements obtained in the situation of
mobilization for employment and economic support by unemployed workers and
inhabitants of popular neighborhoods who blocked roads throughout the country in
the first months of the quarantine, represents a delayed and reduced response to
to the universal basic income proposal defended by sectors of the political and
social opposition, and it is also a continuation of the partially failed programs
of targeted social subsidy and direct monetary transfer useful to contain poverty,
The call for a national strike
Faced with the announcement of reform and other policies of the Uribe government,
various social and political organizations led by the Unitary National Command
(CNU) have called for the organization of a national strike on April 28. This
would be the seventh movement of general strike called by the unions against the
Duque government, if we include the 2 partial calls of 2018, the most significant
3 calls of 2019 with axis on November 21 and the only and most limited day of 2020.
Once, however, the situation of relative weakness of unionism and urban popular
organization has not been overcome, and a strike is called with very limited
capacities for its effective development, in a movement to stop work for the
moment limited to the teachers of the public sector dispersed by virtuality, and
very localized sectors of state workers. The same occurs in the call to stop the
university student movement, which is in a relative ebb after the struggles with
mixed results last year and especially with its weakened local components.
Despite everything, there is a significant atmosphere of discontent with the
government and unrest among the youth, especially notorious among female
students, as well as sectors of workers. The broad and dispersed social group
mobilized in the national protest days of November-December 2019, seems to come
out of its relative ebb, although it was still based on organized alternatives
and sustained actions, which we must still build by learning from our mistakes
and weaknesses of the last period.
In the midst of this circumstance, the country is going through the third peak of
the coronavirus pandemic that by April 26 already leaves 71,000 fatalities and
2.77 million officially registered cases, amid the painful ineptitude of national
and regional governments to do it front, an economic reopening without sanitary
control and with crowded transport and offices, weak programs for tracking and
monitoring cases, a slow and uneven vaccination process, as well as great
indolence and institutional inability to expand the emergency network and meet
minimum demands of health workers. Recently various sectors of opinion, including
sectors until yesterday deniers or in closed defense of the government failure,
have been calling for the suspension of the strike due to the dedicated public
health situation. However, the right to protest is simply inalienable, a
guarantee of all other rights and freedoms, and as many popular struggles have
shown during the pandemic, in many cases these have turned out to be the only
guarantee that minimum measures of protection are met. government care. Thus, it
is essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity
measures, with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask,
social distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes. And as many popular struggles
during the pandemic have shown, in many cases these have turned out to be the
only guarantee that minimal government care measures are met. Thus, it is
essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity measures,
with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask, social
distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes. And as many popular struggles
during the pandemic have shown, in many cases these have turned out to be the
only guarantee that minimal government care measures are met. Thus, it is
essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity measures,
with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask, social
distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes.
We think that it is our task as organized anarchists to contribute at this moment
of mobilization, promote and seek to organize with force the call for a national
strike on April 28 under the indispensable self-care measures, seeking to
overcome the old and the new bureaucracy, strengthening the scenarios of direct
democracy and grassroots participation whose germs emerged in 2019, at the same
time with a commitment to immediate vindictive struggle and an anti-authoritarian
program, in a feminist, environmentalist and libertarian socialist key.
Against the precariousness of our lives!
Up those who fight!
Libertarian Group Via Libre
https://grupovialibre.org/2021/04/28/en-torno-al-paro-nacional-del-28-de-abril/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32271
------------------------------
Message: 4
Many months have passed since the beginning of the uprising in Belarus. The
euphoria of August 2020 gradually turned into depression for some, but for many
it became the basis for political organization against the dictatorship. And
although the protests in the streets have so far disappeared and the dictator
thinks he has won, daily resistance against the regime continues in Belarus.
Neighborhood activists continue to hold one-off actions and organize themselves
into small resistance cells. Telegram channels continue to push the revolutionary
agenda. ---- Even though for the anarchists this repression is the most serious
in all the years of the movement's existence since its restoration in 1991, we
continue to fight the regime and organize in the streets and neighborhoods!
For comrades from abroad, we have translated a number of texts that should help
us understand what is happening in the country.
The brochure includes articles by various anarchist collectives on the background
of the revolution and its development. On the pages you can also find interviews
with various activists of the anarchist movement who took an active part in the
protests and were repressed for it. We hope this selection will help you better
understand the situation in the rebellious Belarus!
https://pramen.io/en/2021/04/brochure-171-uprising-in-belarus-from-anarchist-perspective-187/
------------------------------
Message: 5
The situation in India has highlighted the global inequality that has existed
throughout the pandemic. The virus may have started in China, but soon spread
worldwide. Initially, because of global travel, richer countries and richer
people within countries got the virus first. One of the sources of spreading in
Europe was ski holidays in Italy. However, as the pandemic developed, the
inequality between and within countries manifested itself with people in the less
well-off countries, and the working class in all countries, being more likely to
die from Covid. ---- The amount of cases and deaths, however, is not completely
down to wealth. Some poorer countries such as Vietnam managed to get the virus
under control early on whereas it raged in the USA and Europe. India managed to
have a very low case rate until recently due to a very pro-active public health
scheme. These differences had to do with policies of suppression or containment
with countries like New Zealand, Australia, China, Taiwan and Vietnam following a
suppression strategy. On the other hand, the USA and the UK let the virus get out
of control and have yet to fully suppress it- worried about profits rather than
the health of the population.
Nevertheless, the richer you are the more likely you are to be able to deal with
the disease if you do get it. Richer countries have a better health care system
and richer people in those countries will have the best access to that health
care. Countries such as India and Brazil have a health care system that caters
mainly to the well-off, with millions of people left to fend for themselves.
The vaccine and inequality
The vaccine has a crucial role to play in controlling the pandemic, though it
needs to be stressed that it is only one measure among many. The vaccine does not
offer 100% protection and it is still unclear how the vaccines will cope with new
variants. The bigger the unvaccinated population, the greater the chance for
mutations. And with world travel still going on at quite a significant level, the
chance of new variants spreading is high. This is why the sooner everyone is
vaccinated the better. Yet, that is not happening. As Johnson takes the credit,
undeservedly, for the roll-out of the vaccination programme in Britain, many
other countries struggle to vaccinate their population - and the poorer the
country, and the poorer you are in that country, the less likely there is to be a
vaccination programme. If it is so important to vaccine everyone why isn't it
being done? There are three main reasons:
the cost of the vaccine itself which is prohibitively high for many countries,
vaccine patents which prevent manufacturers getting the ‘recipe' for the vaccine
and greatly increasing the supply.
vaccine nationalism which has obstructed efforts to have an international
strategy both in research and development of the vaccine and in its distribution.
All of these reasons stem from the fact that the development of the vaccine and
its manufacture and distribution has been controlled by corporations whose main
interest is making profits.
Cost of the vaccine
The cost of the vaccine to the government varies according to the company.
AstraZeneca is the cheapest at £3.00 a go. This is meant to be based on the
actual costs of production. Of course, with the UK government footing 99% of the
cost of the research, the company could hardly do otherwise. However, this will
only continue for the pandemic. It has reserved the right to declare the pandemic
over. Boosters or new versions will be unlikely to be provided so cheaply.
Pfizer refused US government funding and has not made any efforts to provide at
cost - it is honest about its desire to make money out of the vaccine. The Pfizer
vaccine is costing the UK government £15 per dose. This explains why this vaccine
was only used for the most vulnerable. People under 70 are being given the
AstraZeneca vaccine, which according to studies so far is not as effective as the
Pfizer, especially against the South African variant.
The prices charged, however, have been found to vary across countries. Companies
have been using capitalist market relations to charge what they think they can
get away with. Recent studies have shown great variations in what different
countries have been charged.
"A string of revelations about vaccine prices has focused attention on a practice
considered normal in the drug industry but often frowned on elsewhere: charging
different prices to different customers for the same product."
The EU has managed to negotiate a cheaper price for the AstraZeneca vaccine
-£1.56 - half of that the UK is paying. Meanwhile, South Africa is paying £3.84
for one dose.
The excuse used for giving some of the richer countries a cheaper price is
because they have contributed money to the development of vaccines. So if you are
a richer country and can afford to do this, then you benefit whereas poorer
countries have to pay more. And, prices are decided on the basis of the economic
status of the country as a whole, even though there is great inequality within a
country. So South Africa is considered a middle income country despite enormous
poverty among large portions of the population.
Companies, even those like AstraZeneca who claim not to be currently profiting
from the vaccine, are still operating as a capitalist company - ask as much as
you can get away with, negotiate deals with big consumers etc, with no thought of
simply getting the vaccine to those who need it.
The role of patents and the manufacturing of vaccines.
According to Stephen Buriyani:
"The world desperately needs coronavirus vaccines. About 430m doses have been
produced so far this year, enough for about 215 million people. And of the doses
already given, about half have gone to the richest 16% of the world's population.
Covax, the World Health Organization initiative to transfer vaccines to nations
in need, has delivered just 38m doses. According to analysis by the Center for
Global Development and the Economist, nations in the global south may not reach
widespread vaccination until 2023."
The key cause of this shortage is that the companies who have developed the
vaccines do not want to waive the patents to allow manufacturing to go ahead.
Companies take out patents on products they develop. There is some justification
in this within a capitalist system; if a company spends millions on developing
something then it would be unfair for other companies to use the research and
make money out of it. However, even within the logic of capitalism, the greed of
the pharmaceutical companies during a global emergency, long known for their
disregard for social welfare, is criminal.
If patents were shared then anyone could manufacture the vaccine. This would
greatly increase much-needed supply and go a long way to getting the world
vaccinated. Many factories are all geared up to start producing the vaccine if
they can be given permission by the drug companies.
For example, according to Stephen Buranyi:
"Biolyse is a small pharmaceutical manufacturer in Canada with a simple
proposition: provide a recipe for a coronavirus vaccine, and it will produce 20m
doses for nations in the global south. It has approached AstraZeneca and Johnson
& Johnson, and even asked the Canadian government to help it with compulsory
licensing - which would give it the authorisation to produce another company's
patented product for emergency use - but so far no one has taken up its offer.
"When I reached him by phone this week, John Fulton, the vice-president of
Biolyse, told me: "We've been passed over. We've got this production capacity and
it's not being put to use. If we had started this last year, we could have
shipped millions of doses by now. This is supposed to be like a wartime effort,
everyone in it together. But that doesn't seem to be the case" (The Guardian, 24
April).
Of course, this would affect the profits of the companies that have done the work
to develop the vaccine. However, there are already schemes to compensate
companies who waive the patent. No company, including AstraZeneca, is willing to
waive patents.
According to Jacobin Magazine, Bill Gates has played a major role in fighting
calls for patent waiver.
He "used an appearance on Britain's Sky News to explain why the various recipes
for vaccines currently held by drug companies should not, in fact, be shared so
that production and distribution can increase. Asked directly by Sky's Sophy
Ridge if he thought changing patent restrictions ‘would be helpful,' Gates
answered with a quick and curt ‘no'...
"Gates, who incidentally owes much of his own fortune to monopolistic
intellectual property laws, has been more than a passive actor in the pandemic -
having, among other things, convinced Oxford University to renege on its original
promise of a no-patent vaccine and partner with the profit-driven AstraZeneca
instead. Arguably more than any other single figure, the billionaire has
mobilized his immense personal wealth and power to ensure that the interests of
for-profit drug companies prevail over global public health."
Vaccine nationalism
Nationalism has manifested itself in a variety of ways though-out the pandemic.
Because of the fact that the nation state is the main political unit, it has
dominated policy making. The necessity of stopping the spread of the pandemic
necessarily led to border controls in many cases. It was people travelling from
infected places that spread the virus in the first place. But as Independent Sage
has repeatedly stressed, it is not that we are blaming foreigners for bringing
the virus - it is movement in general which is the problem. We need to protect
ourselves but need to protest others from us. Even within the UK the different
"nations" have been responsible for managing the pandemic and have taken somewhat
different approaches. On the one hand it is useful to be able to adapt to local
circumstances but the division into "nations" has led to an upsurge in
inter-nation competition and blame about who is responsible. Scottish nationalism
has had a great boost with the Scottish government, supported by many, closing
the borders to keep the "English" from spreading the virus, even though this was
largely meaningless as there are no official border crossings.
Nevertheless, even with allowing to have distinct national policies on managing
the pandemic, the lack of co-operation between nations has been a major factor in
prolonging the crisis.
Common strategies
One of the main problems is that countries did not seem to learn from each other.
The advent of the virus in Italy and Spain provided an ideal opportunity for the
UK and other countries to learn from their experience. But instead, many
governments were determined to manage the pandemic in their own way - keen to
show their superiority. In the UK's case, this backfired. The UK ended up having
one of the worst death rates in the world, higher than countries like Germany,
Spain, the USA, Brazil and India. The success of the suppression strategy adopted
by New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and others, was completely
dismissed, even though the success of that strategy soon became apparent.
International organisations such as the WHO struggled to unite everyone around a
common set of policies but were often ignored. Many countries, including the UK
and the US, ignored the WHO warning back in January 2020. It took months for
governments to take action. In the case of the UK, the government has continued
to ignore WHO advice, such as ensuring that an effective find, track, trace,
isolate, and support system is in place.
If countries had worked more closely together, the spread of the virus could have
been quickly contained.
The Vaccine
The development of the vaccine has shown nationalism at its worst. We have
already seen how pharmaceutical companies have looked after their own interests.
Rather than international co-ordination, we saw individual companies racing to be
the first to produce a vaccine - often with the support of a particular
government. We now have at least 5 different vaccines. If there was more
co-operation then maybe we could have developed one that was better than each one
individually. Nevertheless, vaccines have been developed much quicker than many
thought.
However, nationalism now comes in to the picture as countries, or blocks like the
EU, compete to get hold of the limited amount of vaccines that are on offer. The
UK has ordered enough vaccines to inoculate the population twice - that is two
sets of the necessary two doses. Meanwhile, other parts of the world are being
left without. If patents were waived, it would be a different story but given the
scarcity, the rich countries have the money to grab up all the available doses.
An article by Fatima Bhutoo in The Guardian sums up the situation:
"Rich countries with 14% of the world's population have secured 53% of the best
vaccines. Almost all of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will go to rich countries.
The Moderna vaccine will go to rich countries exclusively; it is not even being
offered to the poor. In fact, nine out of 10 people in poor countries may never
be vaccinated at all. Washington is sitting on vaccines, making sure no one gets
any while the US needs them. The European Union has exported 34m doses to, of all
places, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong - countries that have no problem
sourcing or paying for vaccines. In fact, the EU sent about 9m doses to the UK, a
country which, no longer in the EU, also has what amounts in practice to an
export ban of its own, official denials notwithstanding.
It's unlikely that Moderna's chief executives feel badly about the unvaccinated
poor. The company forecasts sales of over $18bn for 2021, pushing Moderna into
profit for the first time since its founding 11 years ago. Pfizer hasn't done too
badly either; they're expecting a cool $15bn in sales.
"Canada has bought more doses per head than anyone else - enough doses to
vaccinate every single Canadian five times over. But the entire continent of
Africa - home to 1.3 billion people - has been allocated a total of 300m doses.
As of the last week of January, in all of sub-Saharan Africa, only 25 vaccines
had been administered. Twenty-five.
"Israel, administering over 150,000 doses of vaccine a day in the dawn of the new
year, leading the world in vaccine rollout, is pointedly, purposefully, not
vaccinating the Palestinian people it occupies. When asked about it, the Israeli
health minister sniffed that Israel had no legal obligation to vaccinate
Palestinians. What then were the obligations of the Palestinians, he asked, to
look after dolphins in the Mediterranean?
"While western countries were barging ahead, stockpiling vaccine doses for
themselves, China and Russia were practicing vaccine diplomacy. China offered
free doses of their vaccines to 13 countries; between the two of them, China and
Russia have supplied more than 800m doses to 41 countries. No one imagines they
do this out of charity, but it's a clear, resounding sign of the changing world
order. Eight hundred million to the EU's paltry 34m. The US and UK have given
nothing at all. This petty vaccine nationalism is irreparably damaging the west,
betraying their claims to magnanimity, inclusive global leadership and concern
for global health" (The Guardian, 17 March).
The situation in India has arisen because the government allowed large political
rallies and religious festivals to go ahead in the run-up to elections. They have
a crisis in all areas, hospital beds and oxygen. However, lack of vaccines is
also an issue. They had a good vaccine roll-out programme and are also one of the
biggest producers of vaccines, though much of this is for export. All the issues
discussed so far come into play. The overall global scarcity means that India
does not have enough vaccines. They will have to divert the vaccines they are
producing to their own people which will cause problems for other countries.
Again we have a situation where countries are fighting to get hold of vaccines
when there should be plenty to go round if patents were waived. It also shows the
global nature of the pandemic - what happens in one country does affect what
happens in another.
The People's Vaccine, not a Profit Vaccine
Increasingly people are becoming aware of the need to have a global approach to
the pandemic. Unfortunately, this is not widespread among corporations and
governments. It is up to us to push for an international, anti-capitalist
strategy. One campaign that has got underway is for a People's Vaccine.Though
Oxfam seems to be heavily involved, it is supported by a range of organisations
and whatever criticisms we may have of Oxfam and other NGOs, the demands are
clear and deserve to be campaigned around. They include:
Ensure the vaccine is purchased at true cost prices and provided free of charge
to people.
Prevent monopolies on vaccine and treatment production by making public funding
for research and development conditional on research institutions and
pharmaceutical companies freely sharing all information, data, biological
material, know-how and intellectual property.
Ensure the vaccine is sold at affordable prices: Pricing must be transparent and
based on the cost of research, development and manufacturing, as well as taking
into account any public funding provided.
Implement fair allocation of the vaccine which prioritizes health workers and
other at-risk groups in all countries. Distribution among countries should be
based on their population size. In-country vaccination programmes should include
marginalized groups, including refugees, prisoners, and people living in slums
and other crowded housing conditions. Allocation between and within countries
should be based on need and not ability to pay.
There is also a related campaign to call for the suspension of all Covid patents.
The governments of India and South Africa along with 100 countries are calling on
the World Trade Organisation to suspend patent rules during the pandemic to
produce mass quantities of vaccines and treatments to tackle this virus. The UK
government and other rich countries are opposing this proposal. The UK can defend
big pharma profits or it can save lives. It can't have both.
There is a call for the UK government to back this proposal to suspend patents
during the pandemic (Global Justice Now).
The problem with these campaigns is that even though they have a lot of support,
they rely on making demands on corporations and governments - the very
institutions that have caused the problem in the first place. Making demands does
have a role, but it needs to be backed up by a strong social movement. At the
moment there are no grass roots campaigns mobilising for the suspension of
patents. Setting up such a group could be a first step - under the slogan "No one
is safe until we are all safe. For international solidarity."
What really needs to happen is that scientists and workers in places which have
vaccine manufacturing capacity take direct action. The recipes for the vaccines
will be known by scientists and they can be distributed to appropriate factories,
with workers taking control of production and then link up with distribution
networks. In other words, we cannot afford to wait for corporations and
governments to do the right thing - we can do our best to force them to act by
building a movement, but the most effective would be for people themselves to
take control of the production and distribution of vaccines.
anarchistcommunism.org/2021/05/01/no-one-is-safe-until-everyone-is-safe
------------------------------
Message: 6
The outbreak and spread of the covid-19 pandemic worldwide has highlighted in the
most obvious way the criminal nature of the state and the capitalist system.
While more than ten thousand people have lost their lives in the pandemic across
the country, attempts are being made to use it as a tool of anti-social
enforcement of neoliberal management to implement faster and harder conditions
the overall restructuring that is plundering the vast majority of society and
targeting securing and expanding the privileges of economic and political elites.
From the complete dissolution of public health, the degradation of public
education, the passage of the new anti-labor bill to the murder of workers in the
scams of wage slavery, the further plunder of the natural world,
135 years after the Chicago workers' uprising, the project of linking partial and
demanding struggles, such as the one for the eight-hour, with the total struggle
for an emancipated society, to overthrow the world of power and the liberal
social transformation based on principles of communal ownership, equality,
freedom, solidarity, always remain relevant.
Against anti-labor and anti-union laws
Against wage slavery, employer terrorism and state repression
ORGANIZATION - SOLIDARITY - INTERNATIONALISM
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL REVOLUTION, ANARCHY AND FREEDOM COMMUNISM
ANARCHIST POLITICAL ORGANIZATION - FEDERATION OF COLLECTIVES
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/375-mavrokokkini-protomagia
------------------------------
Message: 7
Today, actions to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster are taking place all over
the planet. Paradoxically, in the country that suffered the most from Chernobyl,
memorial events are banned. And Lukashenko and his loyal officials continue to
play with nuclear power. ---- Belarusian politicians and clerks were well aware
of the threat of the "peaceful" atom at first. That is why the country had a
moratorium on nuclear construction until 2008. In the 1990s, anarchist
environmental groups, among others, played an important role in prolonging the
moratorium; they used their protests and other actions to draw public attention
once again to the dangers of building a nuclear power plant.
The decision to build the new plant in 2008 was not made for energy reasons, but
rather as another major political project. For the Lukashenko dictatorship, such
large projects play a symbolic role - they become a kind of monuments to the
regime, which will poison the life of Belarusian society for generations to come.
With such ambitions, it is not surprising that environmental protests have
yielded no results in extending the moratorium or canceling plans to build the
nuclear power plant. Anarchists and a number of NGOs have opposed the
construction of the nuclear power plant since 2008. In principle, even then it
was clear that a political project that had to be completed by any means, could
very easily turn into another disaster. Constant news about technical problems
during construction and after the plant is put into operation only confirms these
fears.
On the one hand, Lukashenko has driven Belarusians into a "peaceful" atom swamp
with his megaproject - if the plant continues to operate, we will have to deal
with the storage of spent radioactive materials. On the other hand, credits of
Russia tied the Belarusan society to the Putin regime. Any attempt to cut these
financial obligations would bring new problems with Russia, and the opposition
understands this very well. Even if Lukashenko is ousted, it is difficult to
imagine a new liberal government that would shut down the nuclear power plant and
refuse to pay the debts of this reckless project.
Meanwhile, reality has shown that even with all the technological progress,
Belarus hardly needs a nuclear power plant. Part of the produced capacity is
exported to countries that are still willing to do some business with the
dictator. As the sanctions list against the regime grows, the opportunities for
Lukashenko to sell nuclear power diminish. Eventually, the regime may become the
first to build a nuclear power plant to mine cryptocurrencies.
Thirty-five years later, Belarusian society still has to fight the government to
recognize the threats of the nuclear power plant, and the further we put the
Chernobyl accident into history, the harder it will be to convince politicians
and officials that other solutions are needed for the country's energy
independence. The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a threat to the safety and
future not only of our society, but to all our neighbors who are already buying
iodine. Let's hope that we can overthrow the regime before it kills us all and
destroys part of the country.
https://pramen.io/en/2021/04/35-years-later-soviet-functionaries-still-strive-for-a-new-chernobyl/
------------------------------
Message: 8
On February 8, 1921, the old revolutionary, great scientist and main theorist of
anarchism, Pierre Kropotkine, died at the age of 78. His funeral brings together
20,000 people. It will be the ultimate public manifestation of anarchism in
Soviet Russia. ---- Born in 1842 into a family from the Muscovite aristocracy,
starting a career as an officer in the tsarist army, nothing predestined Pyotr
Alexeïevich Kropotkin to become one of the theorists of anarchism. However, in
1863 he resigned from the army following the Polish uprising. Passionate about
geography and anthropology, he made scientific expeditions to Siberia and
Manchuria. He discovered the libertarian movement during a stay in Switzerland in
1872 and joined the First International.
From then on his life was devoted to anarchist propaganda. At first close to the
nihilists, he was arrested in Russia in 1874 and imprisoned for two years for
subversive propaganda. Following his escape he took refuge in Switzerland where
he militated for propaganda by the fact.
It was at this time that he met Élisée Reclus. Together they co-founded the
newspaper Le Révolté. Kropotkin began his theoretical work at this time. The
anarchist society that he promotes in the form of a free federation of producer
and consumer groups will be born out of collectivism and the abolition of all
forms of government.
An anarchist attack in Lyon in 1882 provides a reason to stop it. He was
condemned in 1883 in the famous "trial of the 66" which aimed no less than the
destruction of the anarchist movement [1]. Kropotkin will be sentenced to five
years in prison, the heaviest sentence.
In 1917 we esteem him, but we no longer follow him
Pardoned the following year, he moved to London where he carried out scientific
research and theoretical work. His ambition: to found a scientific anarchist
theory. Noting that the strategy of propaganda by the fact has failed, "an
edifice based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of
explosive" he writes, he sees in the unions a movement to be invested without
making it. an exclusive strategy.
Back in Russia in 1917 following the February revolution, the anarchist movement
retained its esteem for him, but no longer followed him. Because he supported the
sacred union against Germany. But also because he allowed himself to be exploited
by the Kerensky government by participating in the State Conference of August
1917. On February 8, 1921, Pierre Kropotkine died at the age of 78, in Dmitrov,
near Moscow.
On February 10, the coffin was transported by train to the capital, where the
body was exhibited for two days at the Maison des Syndicates. The funeral took
place on February 13, in the presence of 20,000 people. If Kropotkin's family
finally managed to keep control of the organization of the funeral, the Bolshevik
power is still there. The All-Russian Department of Cinema and Photography (VFKO)
is also making a full report on this event.
All the libertarian tendencies, as well those placed in satellite by the regime
as the oppositional ones are present. Other currents insisted on being
represented, whether they were the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks or
Bolsheviks, proof of the political importance of these funerals.
Read also the Report from beyond the grave: "The funeral of Kropotkin" (1921)
In front of the grave, a host of speakers and a female speaker will speak: Emma
Goldman ; Isaac Steinberg (left SR) ; Alfred Rosmer, French revolutionary trade
unionist rallied to Moscow; Sandomirski (anarchist orbited by the PC) ; Nikolai
Pavlov (anarcho-syndicalist opposed to the PC); Aaron Baron, who will return to
the cell the same evening ...
A few weeks after this funeral, the Petrograd strikes and the famous Kronstadt
revolt broke out. The Bolshevik power will then decide to eradicate any space of
expression. The anarchist organizations will pay the price, and will be
dismantled before the end of the year. Kropotkin's funeral was therefore the last
opportunity for them to demonstrate publicly.
Journal Commission
Validate
[1] The prosecutor thus justifying his requests for sentence: the defendants
being "affiliated with an international company (International Association of
Workers), whose aim is to cause the suspension of work, the abolition of the
right to property, of the family, of the fatherland, of religion, and thus to
have committed an attack against the public peace".
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1921-les-obseques-de-Kropotkine-crepuscule-libertaire-russe
------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
A message in English from our brave comrades in Turkey in the DAF (Devrimci
Anarsist Federasyon) after May Day 2021 actions in two cities, referencing
Haymarket Square, Chicago 1886 and the fight of organised labour for the Eight
Hour Day. At least 9 of the 19 from one of the Istanbul areas were reported
released the following morning (see Facebook link below). ---- On 2021 May Day,
as Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, we walked to Kizilay Square in Ankara and
Taksim Square in Istanbul. 19 comrades were detained in Mecidiyeköy and Kazanci
Yokusu in Istanbul and in Mesrutiyet Street in Ankara. On May Day, when they
tried to ban it under the pretext of the coronavirus crisis, we crossed the bans
with our fight.
May Day is our fight day. Today we are growing this struggle, which we started in
1886, with the same courage. As those who resist in the streets despite all the
prohibitions and obstructions of the power mechanisms, we have shown once again
that May Day cannot be banned. As Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, we organize
anarchism and continue this fight which was inherited from our comrades in 1886.
Long Live May Day, Long Live Anarchism!
May Day is Fight, It Can't Be Banned!
http://afed.org.uk/may-day-2021-arrests-in-turkey/
------------------------------
Message: 2
An international project to support the development of anarchist theory
celebrated a quarter of a century. ---- Anarchism arose from the socialist
movement as an independent political direction in the nineteenth century. He
argued that it was necessary and possible to overthrow coercive and exploitative
social relations and replace them with egalitarian, self-governing and
cooperative social forms. Anarchism thus gave new depth to the long struggle for
freedom. ---- The main interest of the classical anarchists was the opposition to
the state and capitalism. This was complemented by a policy of voluntary
association, mutual assistance and decentralization. Since the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and especially in the 1960s, anarchist
criticism has spread to a more general condemnation of domination and hierarchy.
This has made it possible to understand and call into question a whole range of
social relations - such as patriarchy, racism or the devastation of nature - and
at the same time to face political and economic hierarchies. As a result, the
ideal of a free society has grown to include sexual liberation, cultural
diversity, or ecological harmony, as well as the institutions of direct democracy.
The fundamental rejection of all forms of domination makes anarchism historically
flexible, politically complex, and consistently critical - as evidenced by its
revival in today's global anti-capitalist movement. Yet anarchism has not yet
acquired the care and complexity needed to understand and transform the present.
Anarchist Studies Institute ( The Institute for Anarchist Studies , IAS) was
founded in 1996 to promote the development of anarchism. He started as an
organization providing grants to radical writers and translators around the
world. So far, the IAS has funded hundreds of projects by authors from different
countries. In 1997, he began publishing the newsletter Perspectives on Anarchist
Theory . The reporter eventually teamed up with The New Formula: An
Antiauthoritarian Review of Books, and in 2009 a new team took over publishing
it, giving it its current form.
In 2010, IAS, in collaboration with AK Press and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative,
began publishing the book series Anarchist Interventions. During the Occupy
movement, he published a series of five pamphlets called Lexicon , of which
30,000 were distributed free of charge in various Occupy camps and social movements.
With the publication of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social
Justice Movements , which in 2015 prepared jointly Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne
Maree Brown started IAS along with AK Press, a new publishing series, which also
contained the Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison , and
redemption (Angels with dirty faces: Three stories of crime, incarceration and
redemption) from Walidahy Imarishy, the book, which won the Oregon book Award,
and the Guerillas of desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make
a Revolution Possible (Partisans of desire: Notes to the daily resistance and
organization to make a revolution possible) by Kevin Van Meter, and others follow.
During the twenty-five years of its existence, the IAS has consistently held
educational events, such as a series of Restoration of Anarchist Traditions
conferences in New England and discussion events in Portland, Oregon, and has
participated in radical conferences throughout North America.
IAS is part of a larger movement for a radical transformation of society. It is
an internally democratic collective that works in solidarity all over the world
with people who share its values.
In this 25th year, the IAS renewed its grant project and expanded the scope of
what it finances, so that it counts not only the written word but also video and
audio projects.
Contact: info[a]anarchiststudies.org
Source:
https://anarchiststudies.org/30928-2/
Related link:
Project of the Institute of Anarchist Studies
https://www.afed.cz/text/7358/25-let-institutu-anarchistickych-studii
------------------------------
Message: 3
The current tax reform presented by the government of Iván Duque and his finance
minister, the questioned Alberto Carrasquilla, seeks a way out of the deep
situation of economic crisis derived from the socio-sanitary crisis, the most
important since the world economic crisis of 1929, which has led to a decrease of
-6.8% of GDP in 2020, as well as a significant increase in the external debt
calculated at 164,968 million dollars and 55% of the GDP of last year and the
public deficit that reached 90 billion pesos and 8.9% of GDP in the same period.
---- The third tax reform of the new Uribista administration after the so-called
financing law of 2018 and the growth law of 2019, seeks to raise an additional 35
billion pesos, maintaining the line of neoliberal economic adjustment of the
current government, although it also dismantles some of the most unsustainable
concessions that it made a few months ago for the richest population. In turn,
this is the twelfth reform implemented in the last 20 years to face crises and
increase the State budget, a continuous period of conservative and privatizing
economic policy that, however, has greatly accelerated the policies of continuous
reform, with continuous increases in indirect taxes such as VAT, as well as costs
associated with public and financial services,
This project called "Sustainable Solidarity", partially agreed with the bosses'
leaders of the National Trade Union Council, organizations that have been a
historical defender of unequal fiscal policies and the cut in social spending,
seeks to reduce the assets exempt from the indirect Value Added Tax (VAT),
increase the base of people who pay income tax by expanding it on the middle
sectors and well-off workers, reducing taxes and subsidies of various kinds for
companies without modifying massive layoffs, stimulating policies for hiring
young people without corporate responsibility with social security,maintains the
scholarship credit programs for young students without modifying the delicate
budget crisis of public universities and maintaining in a slightly more flexible
framework the so-called fiscal rule that contains the public budget.
In the reform, the so-called social approach vaguely promises to increase social
income for the poorest households, an income that by 2020 represented 4.1% of GDP
according to the Monetary Fund, less than half of other countries in the region.
This project, which arises after the achievements obtained in the situation of
mobilization for employment and economic support by unemployed workers and
inhabitants of popular neighborhoods who blocked roads throughout the country in
the first months of the quarantine, represents a delayed and reduced response to
to the universal basic income proposal defended by sectors of the political and
social opposition, and it is also a continuation of the partially failed programs
of targeted social subsidy and direct monetary transfer useful to contain poverty,
The call for a national strike
Faced with the announcement of reform and other policies of the Uribe government,
various social and political organizations led by the Unitary National Command
(CNU) have called for the organization of a national strike on April 28. This
would be the seventh movement of general strike called by the unions against the
Duque government, if we include the 2 partial calls of 2018, the most significant
3 calls of 2019 with axis on November 21 and the only and most limited day of 2020.
Once, however, the situation of relative weakness of unionism and urban popular
organization has not been overcome, and a strike is called with very limited
capacities for its effective development, in a movement to stop work for the
moment limited to the teachers of the public sector dispersed by virtuality, and
very localized sectors of state workers. The same occurs in the call to stop the
university student movement, which is in a relative ebb after the struggles with
mixed results last year and especially with its weakened local components.
Despite everything, there is a significant atmosphere of discontent with the
government and unrest among the youth, especially notorious among female
students, as well as sectors of workers. The broad and dispersed social group
mobilized in the national protest days of November-December 2019, seems to come
out of its relative ebb, although it was still based on organized alternatives
and sustained actions, which we must still build by learning from our mistakes
and weaknesses of the last period.
In the midst of this circumstance, the country is going through the third peak of
the coronavirus pandemic that by April 26 already leaves 71,000 fatalities and
2.77 million officially registered cases, amid the painful ineptitude of national
and regional governments to do it front, an economic reopening without sanitary
control and with crowded transport and offices, weak programs for tracking and
monitoring cases, a slow and uneven vaccination process, as well as great
indolence and institutional inability to expand the emergency network and meet
minimum demands of health workers. Recently various sectors of opinion, including
sectors until yesterday deniers or in closed defense of the government failure,
have been calling for the suspension of the strike due to the dedicated public
health situation. However, the right to protest is simply inalienable, a
guarantee of all other rights and freedoms, and as many popular struggles have
shown during the pandemic, in many cases these have turned out to be the only
guarantee that minimum measures of protection are met. government care. Thus, it
is essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity
measures, with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask,
social distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes. And as many popular struggles
during the pandemic have shown, in many cases these have turned out to be the
only guarantee that minimal government care measures are met. Thus, it is
essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity measures,
with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask, social
distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes. And as many popular struggles
during the pandemic have shown, in many cases these have turned out to be the
only guarantee that minimal government care measures are met. Thus, it is
essential to mobilize, but we are required to reinforce our biosecurity measures,
with redoubled attention to the constant and correct use of the mask, social
distance and disinfection, in the course of open and outdoor activities,
comparatively more bio safe than multiple work, transport and recreation spaces
that until today function without major changes.
We think that it is our task as organized anarchists to contribute at this moment
of mobilization, promote and seek to organize with force the call for a national
strike on April 28 under the indispensable self-care measures, seeking to
overcome the old and the new bureaucracy, strengthening the scenarios of direct
democracy and grassroots participation whose germs emerged in 2019, at the same
time with a commitment to immediate vindictive struggle and an anti-authoritarian
program, in a feminist, environmentalist and libertarian socialist key.
Against the precariousness of our lives!
Up those who fight!
Libertarian Group Via Libre
https://grupovialibre.org/2021/04/28/en-torno-al-paro-nacional-del-28-de-abril/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32271
------------------------------
Message: 4
Many months have passed since the beginning of the uprising in Belarus. The
euphoria of August 2020 gradually turned into depression for some, but for many
it became the basis for political organization against the dictatorship. And
although the protests in the streets have so far disappeared and the dictator
thinks he has won, daily resistance against the regime continues in Belarus.
Neighborhood activists continue to hold one-off actions and organize themselves
into small resistance cells. Telegram channels continue to push the revolutionary
agenda. ---- Even though for the anarchists this repression is the most serious
in all the years of the movement's existence since its restoration in 1991, we
continue to fight the regime and organize in the streets and neighborhoods!
For comrades from abroad, we have translated a number of texts that should help
us understand what is happening in the country.
The brochure includes articles by various anarchist collectives on the background
of the revolution and its development. On the pages you can also find interviews
with various activists of the anarchist movement who took an active part in the
protests and were repressed for it. We hope this selection will help you better
understand the situation in the rebellious Belarus!
https://pramen.io/en/2021/04/brochure-171-uprising-in-belarus-from-anarchist-perspective-187/
------------------------------
Message: 5
The situation in India has highlighted the global inequality that has existed
throughout the pandemic. The virus may have started in China, but soon spread
worldwide. Initially, because of global travel, richer countries and richer
people within countries got the virus first. One of the sources of spreading in
Europe was ski holidays in Italy. However, as the pandemic developed, the
inequality between and within countries manifested itself with people in the less
well-off countries, and the working class in all countries, being more likely to
die from Covid. ---- The amount of cases and deaths, however, is not completely
down to wealth. Some poorer countries such as Vietnam managed to get the virus
under control early on whereas it raged in the USA and Europe. India managed to
have a very low case rate until recently due to a very pro-active public health
scheme. These differences had to do with policies of suppression or containment
with countries like New Zealand, Australia, China, Taiwan and Vietnam following a
suppression strategy. On the other hand, the USA and the UK let the virus get out
of control and have yet to fully suppress it- worried about profits rather than
the health of the population.
Nevertheless, the richer you are the more likely you are to be able to deal with
the disease if you do get it. Richer countries have a better health care system
and richer people in those countries will have the best access to that health
care. Countries such as India and Brazil have a health care system that caters
mainly to the well-off, with millions of people left to fend for themselves.
The vaccine and inequality
The vaccine has a crucial role to play in controlling the pandemic, though it
needs to be stressed that it is only one measure among many. The vaccine does not
offer 100% protection and it is still unclear how the vaccines will cope with new
variants. The bigger the unvaccinated population, the greater the chance for
mutations. And with world travel still going on at quite a significant level, the
chance of new variants spreading is high. This is why the sooner everyone is
vaccinated the better. Yet, that is not happening. As Johnson takes the credit,
undeservedly, for the roll-out of the vaccination programme in Britain, many
other countries struggle to vaccinate their population - and the poorer the
country, and the poorer you are in that country, the less likely there is to be a
vaccination programme. If it is so important to vaccine everyone why isn't it
being done? There are three main reasons:
the cost of the vaccine itself which is prohibitively high for many countries,
vaccine patents which prevent manufacturers getting the ‘recipe' for the vaccine
and greatly increasing the supply.
vaccine nationalism which has obstructed efforts to have an international
strategy both in research and development of the vaccine and in its distribution.
All of these reasons stem from the fact that the development of the vaccine and
its manufacture and distribution has been controlled by corporations whose main
interest is making profits.
Cost of the vaccine
The cost of the vaccine to the government varies according to the company.
AstraZeneca is the cheapest at £3.00 a go. This is meant to be based on the
actual costs of production. Of course, with the UK government footing 99% of the
cost of the research, the company could hardly do otherwise. However, this will
only continue for the pandemic. It has reserved the right to declare the pandemic
over. Boosters or new versions will be unlikely to be provided so cheaply.
Pfizer refused US government funding and has not made any efforts to provide at
cost - it is honest about its desire to make money out of the vaccine. The Pfizer
vaccine is costing the UK government £15 per dose. This explains why this vaccine
was only used for the most vulnerable. People under 70 are being given the
AstraZeneca vaccine, which according to studies so far is not as effective as the
Pfizer, especially against the South African variant.
The prices charged, however, have been found to vary across countries. Companies
have been using capitalist market relations to charge what they think they can
get away with. Recent studies have shown great variations in what different
countries have been charged.
"A string of revelations about vaccine prices has focused attention on a practice
considered normal in the drug industry but often frowned on elsewhere: charging
different prices to different customers for the same product."
The EU has managed to negotiate a cheaper price for the AstraZeneca vaccine
-£1.56 - half of that the UK is paying. Meanwhile, South Africa is paying £3.84
for one dose.
The excuse used for giving some of the richer countries a cheaper price is
because they have contributed money to the development of vaccines. So if you are
a richer country and can afford to do this, then you benefit whereas poorer
countries have to pay more. And, prices are decided on the basis of the economic
status of the country as a whole, even though there is great inequality within a
country. So South Africa is considered a middle income country despite enormous
poverty among large portions of the population.
Companies, even those like AstraZeneca who claim not to be currently profiting
from the vaccine, are still operating as a capitalist company - ask as much as
you can get away with, negotiate deals with big consumers etc, with no thought of
simply getting the vaccine to those who need it.
The role of patents and the manufacturing of vaccines.
According to Stephen Buriyani:
"The world desperately needs coronavirus vaccines. About 430m doses have been
produced so far this year, enough for about 215 million people. And of the doses
already given, about half have gone to the richest 16% of the world's population.
Covax, the World Health Organization initiative to transfer vaccines to nations
in need, has delivered just 38m doses. According to analysis by the Center for
Global Development and the Economist, nations in the global south may not reach
widespread vaccination until 2023."
The key cause of this shortage is that the companies who have developed the
vaccines do not want to waive the patents to allow manufacturing to go ahead.
Companies take out patents on products they develop. There is some justification
in this within a capitalist system; if a company spends millions on developing
something then it would be unfair for other companies to use the research and
make money out of it. However, even within the logic of capitalism, the greed of
the pharmaceutical companies during a global emergency, long known for their
disregard for social welfare, is criminal.
If patents were shared then anyone could manufacture the vaccine. This would
greatly increase much-needed supply and go a long way to getting the world
vaccinated. Many factories are all geared up to start producing the vaccine if
they can be given permission by the drug companies.
For example, according to Stephen Buranyi:
"Biolyse is a small pharmaceutical manufacturer in Canada with a simple
proposition: provide a recipe for a coronavirus vaccine, and it will produce 20m
doses for nations in the global south. It has approached AstraZeneca and Johnson
& Johnson, and even asked the Canadian government to help it with compulsory
licensing - which would give it the authorisation to produce another company's
patented product for emergency use - but so far no one has taken up its offer.
"When I reached him by phone this week, John Fulton, the vice-president of
Biolyse, told me: "We've been passed over. We've got this production capacity and
it's not being put to use. If we had started this last year, we could have
shipped millions of doses by now. This is supposed to be like a wartime effort,
everyone in it together. But that doesn't seem to be the case" (The Guardian, 24
April).
Of course, this would affect the profits of the companies that have done the work
to develop the vaccine. However, there are already schemes to compensate
companies who waive the patent. No company, including AstraZeneca, is willing to
waive patents.
According to Jacobin Magazine, Bill Gates has played a major role in fighting
calls for patent waiver.
He "used an appearance on Britain's Sky News to explain why the various recipes
for vaccines currently held by drug companies should not, in fact, be shared so
that production and distribution can increase. Asked directly by Sky's Sophy
Ridge if he thought changing patent restrictions ‘would be helpful,' Gates
answered with a quick and curt ‘no'...
"Gates, who incidentally owes much of his own fortune to monopolistic
intellectual property laws, has been more than a passive actor in the pandemic -
having, among other things, convinced Oxford University to renege on its original
promise of a no-patent vaccine and partner with the profit-driven AstraZeneca
instead. Arguably more than any other single figure, the billionaire has
mobilized his immense personal wealth and power to ensure that the interests of
for-profit drug companies prevail over global public health."
Vaccine nationalism
Nationalism has manifested itself in a variety of ways though-out the pandemic.
Because of the fact that the nation state is the main political unit, it has
dominated policy making. The necessity of stopping the spread of the pandemic
necessarily led to border controls in many cases. It was people travelling from
infected places that spread the virus in the first place. But as Independent Sage
has repeatedly stressed, it is not that we are blaming foreigners for bringing
the virus - it is movement in general which is the problem. We need to protect
ourselves but need to protest others from us. Even within the UK the different
"nations" have been responsible for managing the pandemic and have taken somewhat
different approaches. On the one hand it is useful to be able to adapt to local
circumstances but the division into "nations" has led to an upsurge in
inter-nation competition and blame about who is responsible. Scottish nationalism
has had a great boost with the Scottish government, supported by many, closing
the borders to keep the "English" from spreading the virus, even though this was
largely meaningless as there are no official border crossings.
Nevertheless, even with allowing to have distinct national policies on managing
the pandemic, the lack of co-operation between nations has been a major factor in
prolonging the crisis.
Common strategies
One of the main problems is that countries did not seem to learn from each other.
The advent of the virus in Italy and Spain provided an ideal opportunity for the
UK and other countries to learn from their experience. But instead, many
governments were determined to manage the pandemic in their own way - keen to
show their superiority. In the UK's case, this backfired. The UK ended up having
one of the worst death rates in the world, higher than countries like Germany,
Spain, the USA, Brazil and India. The success of the suppression strategy adopted
by New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and others, was completely
dismissed, even though the success of that strategy soon became apparent.
International organisations such as the WHO struggled to unite everyone around a
common set of policies but were often ignored. Many countries, including the UK
and the US, ignored the WHO warning back in January 2020. It took months for
governments to take action. In the case of the UK, the government has continued
to ignore WHO advice, such as ensuring that an effective find, track, trace,
isolate, and support system is in place.
If countries had worked more closely together, the spread of the virus could have
been quickly contained.
The Vaccine
The development of the vaccine has shown nationalism at its worst. We have
already seen how pharmaceutical companies have looked after their own interests.
Rather than international co-ordination, we saw individual companies racing to be
the first to produce a vaccine - often with the support of a particular
government. We now have at least 5 different vaccines. If there was more
co-operation then maybe we could have developed one that was better than each one
individually. Nevertheless, vaccines have been developed much quicker than many
thought.
However, nationalism now comes in to the picture as countries, or blocks like the
EU, compete to get hold of the limited amount of vaccines that are on offer. The
UK has ordered enough vaccines to inoculate the population twice - that is two
sets of the necessary two doses. Meanwhile, other parts of the world are being
left without. If patents were waived, it would be a different story but given the
scarcity, the rich countries have the money to grab up all the available doses.
An article by Fatima Bhutoo in The Guardian sums up the situation:
"Rich countries with 14% of the world's population have secured 53% of the best
vaccines. Almost all of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will go to rich countries.
The Moderna vaccine will go to rich countries exclusively; it is not even being
offered to the poor. In fact, nine out of 10 people in poor countries may never
be vaccinated at all. Washington is sitting on vaccines, making sure no one gets
any while the US needs them. The European Union has exported 34m doses to, of all
places, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong - countries that have no problem
sourcing or paying for vaccines. In fact, the EU sent about 9m doses to the UK, a
country which, no longer in the EU, also has what amounts in practice to an
export ban of its own, official denials notwithstanding.
It's unlikely that Moderna's chief executives feel badly about the unvaccinated
poor. The company forecasts sales of over $18bn for 2021, pushing Moderna into
profit for the first time since its founding 11 years ago. Pfizer hasn't done too
badly either; they're expecting a cool $15bn in sales.
"Canada has bought more doses per head than anyone else - enough doses to
vaccinate every single Canadian five times over. But the entire continent of
Africa - home to 1.3 billion people - has been allocated a total of 300m doses.
As of the last week of January, in all of sub-Saharan Africa, only 25 vaccines
had been administered. Twenty-five.
"Israel, administering over 150,000 doses of vaccine a day in the dawn of the new
year, leading the world in vaccine rollout, is pointedly, purposefully, not
vaccinating the Palestinian people it occupies. When asked about it, the Israeli
health minister sniffed that Israel had no legal obligation to vaccinate
Palestinians. What then were the obligations of the Palestinians, he asked, to
look after dolphins in the Mediterranean?
"While western countries were barging ahead, stockpiling vaccine doses for
themselves, China and Russia were practicing vaccine diplomacy. China offered
free doses of their vaccines to 13 countries; between the two of them, China and
Russia have supplied more than 800m doses to 41 countries. No one imagines they
do this out of charity, but it's a clear, resounding sign of the changing world
order. Eight hundred million to the EU's paltry 34m. The US and UK have given
nothing at all. This petty vaccine nationalism is irreparably damaging the west,
betraying their claims to magnanimity, inclusive global leadership and concern
for global health" (The Guardian, 17 March).
The situation in India has arisen because the government allowed large political
rallies and religious festivals to go ahead in the run-up to elections. They have
a crisis in all areas, hospital beds and oxygen. However, lack of vaccines is
also an issue. They had a good vaccine roll-out programme and are also one of the
biggest producers of vaccines, though much of this is for export. All the issues
discussed so far come into play. The overall global scarcity means that India
does not have enough vaccines. They will have to divert the vaccines they are
producing to their own people which will cause problems for other countries.
Again we have a situation where countries are fighting to get hold of vaccines
when there should be plenty to go round if patents were waived. It also shows the
global nature of the pandemic - what happens in one country does affect what
happens in another.
The People's Vaccine, not a Profit Vaccine
Increasingly people are becoming aware of the need to have a global approach to
the pandemic. Unfortunately, this is not widespread among corporations and
governments. It is up to us to push for an international, anti-capitalist
strategy. One campaign that has got underway is for a People's Vaccine.Though
Oxfam seems to be heavily involved, it is supported by a range of organisations
and whatever criticisms we may have of Oxfam and other NGOs, the demands are
clear and deserve to be campaigned around. They include:
Ensure the vaccine is purchased at true cost prices and provided free of charge
to people.
Prevent monopolies on vaccine and treatment production by making public funding
for research and development conditional on research institutions and
pharmaceutical companies freely sharing all information, data, biological
material, know-how and intellectual property.
Ensure the vaccine is sold at affordable prices: Pricing must be transparent and
based on the cost of research, development and manufacturing, as well as taking
into account any public funding provided.
Implement fair allocation of the vaccine which prioritizes health workers and
other at-risk groups in all countries. Distribution among countries should be
based on their population size. In-country vaccination programmes should include
marginalized groups, including refugees, prisoners, and people living in slums
and other crowded housing conditions. Allocation between and within countries
should be based on need and not ability to pay.
There is also a related campaign to call for the suspension of all Covid patents.
The governments of India and South Africa along with 100 countries are calling on
the World Trade Organisation to suspend patent rules during the pandemic to
produce mass quantities of vaccines and treatments to tackle this virus. The UK
government and other rich countries are opposing this proposal. The UK can defend
big pharma profits or it can save lives. It can't have both.
There is a call for the UK government to back this proposal to suspend patents
during the pandemic (Global Justice Now).
The problem with these campaigns is that even though they have a lot of support,
they rely on making demands on corporations and governments - the very
institutions that have caused the problem in the first place. Making demands does
have a role, but it needs to be backed up by a strong social movement. At the
moment there are no grass roots campaigns mobilising for the suspension of
patents. Setting up such a group could be a first step - under the slogan "No one
is safe until we are all safe. For international solidarity."
What really needs to happen is that scientists and workers in places which have
vaccine manufacturing capacity take direct action. The recipes for the vaccines
will be known by scientists and they can be distributed to appropriate factories,
with workers taking control of production and then link up with distribution
networks. In other words, we cannot afford to wait for corporations and
governments to do the right thing - we can do our best to force them to act by
building a movement, but the most effective would be for people themselves to
take control of the production and distribution of vaccines.
anarchistcommunism.org/2021/05/01/no-one-is-safe-until-everyone-is-safe
------------------------------
Message: 6
The outbreak and spread of the covid-19 pandemic worldwide has highlighted in the
most obvious way the criminal nature of the state and the capitalist system.
While more than ten thousand people have lost their lives in the pandemic across
the country, attempts are being made to use it as a tool of anti-social
enforcement of neoliberal management to implement faster and harder conditions
the overall restructuring that is plundering the vast majority of society and
targeting securing and expanding the privileges of economic and political elites.
From the complete dissolution of public health, the degradation of public
education, the passage of the new anti-labor bill to the murder of workers in the
scams of wage slavery, the further plunder of the natural world,
135 years after the Chicago workers' uprising, the project of linking partial and
demanding struggles, such as the one for the eight-hour, with the total struggle
for an emancipated society, to overthrow the world of power and the liberal
social transformation based on principles of communal ownership, equality,
freedom, solidarity, always remain relevant.
Against anti-labor and anti-union laws
Against wage slavery, employer terrorism and state repression
ORGANIZATION - SOLIDARITY - INTERNATIONALISM
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL REVOLUTION, ANARCHY AND FREEDOM COMMUNISM
ANARCHIST POLITICAL ORGANIZATION - FEDERATION OF COLLECTIVES
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/375-mavrokokkini-protomagia
------------------------------
Message: 7
Today, actions to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster are taking place all over
the planet. Paradoxically, in the country that suffered the most from Chernobyl,
memorial events are banned. And Lukashenko and his loyal officials continue to
play with nuclear power. ---- Belarusian politicians and clerks were well aware
of the threat of the "peaceful" atom at first. That is why the country had a
moratorium on nuclear construction until 2008. In the 1990s, anarchist
environmental groups, among others, played an important role in prolonging the
moratorium; they used their protests and other actions to draw public attention
once again to the dangers of building a nuclear power plant.
The decision to build the new plant in 2008 was not made for energy reasons, but
rather as another major political project. For the Lukashenko dictatorship, such
large projects play a symbolic role - they become a kind of monuments to the
regime, which will poison the life of Belarusian society for generations to come.
With such ambitions, it is not surprising that environmental protests have
yielded no results in extending the moratorium or canceling plans to build the
nuclear power plant. Anarchists and a number of NGOs have opposed the
construction of the nuclear power plant since 2008. In principle, even then it
was clear that a political project that had to be completed by any means, could
very easily turn into another disaster. Constant news about technical problems
during construction and after the plant is put into operation only confirms these
fears.
On the one hand, Lukashenko has driven Belarusians into a "peaceful" atom swamp
with his megaproject - if the plant continues to operate, we will have to deal
with the storage of spent radioactive materials. On the other hand, credits of
Russia tied the Belarusan society to the Putin regime. Any attempt to cut these
financial obligations would bring new problems with Russia, and the opposition
understands this very well. Even if Lukashenko is ousted, it is difficult to
imagine a new liberal government that would shut down the nuclear power plant and
refuse to pay the debts of this reckless project.
Meanwhile, reality has shown that even with all the technological progress,
Belarus hardly needs a nuclear power plant. Part of the produced capacity is
exported to countries that are still willing to do some business with the
dictator. As the sanctions list against the regime grows, the opportunities for
Lukashenko to sell nuclear power diminish. Eventually, the regime may become the
first to build a nuclear power plant to mine cryptocurrencies.
Thirty-five years later, Belarusian society still has to fight the government to
recognize the threats of the nuclear power plant, and the further we put the
Chernobyl accident into history, the harder it will be to convince politicians
and officials that other solutions are needed for the country's energy
independence. The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a threat to the safety and
future not only of our society, but to all our neighbors who are already buying
iodine. Let's hope that we can overthrow the regime before it kills us all and
destroys part of the country.
https://pramen.io/en/2021/04/35-years-later-soviet-functionaries-still-strive-for-a-new-chernobyl/
------------------------------
Message: 8
On February 8, 1921, the old revolutionary, great scientist and main theorist of
anarchism, Pierre Kropotkine, died at the age of 78. His funeral brings together
20,000 people. It will be the ultimate public manifestation of anarchism in
Soviet Russia. ---- Born in 1842 into a family from the Muscovite aristocracy,
starting a career as an officer in the tsarist army, nothing predestined Pyotr
Alexeïevich Kropotkin to become one of the theorists of anarchism. However, in
1863 he resigned from the army following the Polish uprising. Passionate about
geography and anthropology, he made scientific expeditions to Siberia and
Manchuria. He discovered the libertarian movement during a stay in Switzerland in
1872 and joined the First International.
From then on his life was devoted to anarchist propaganda. At first close to the
nihilists, he was arrested in Russia in 1874 and imprisoned for two years for
subversive propaganda. Following his escape he took refuge in Switzerland where
he militated for propaganda by the fact.
It was at this time that he met Élisée Reclus. Together they co-founded the
newspaper Le Révolté. Kropotkin began his theoretical work at this time. The
anarchist society that he promotes in the form of a free federation of producer
and consumer groups will be born out of collectivism and the abolition of all
forms of government.
An anarchist attack in Lyon in 1882 provides a reason to stop it. He was
condemned in 1883 in the famous "trial of the 66" which aimed no less than the
destruction of the anarchist movement [1]. Kropotkin will be sentenced to five
years in prison, the heaviest sentence.
In 1917 we esteem him, but we no longer follow him
Pardoned the following year, he moved to London where he carried out scientific
research and theoretical work. His ambition: to found a scientific anarchist
theory. Noting that the strategy of propaganda by the fact has failed, "an
edifice based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of
explosive" he writes, he sees in the unions a movement to be invested without
making it. an exclusive strategy.
Back in Russia in 1917 following the February revolution, the anarchist movement
retained its esteem for him, but no longer followed him. Because he supported the
sacred union against Germany. But also because he allowed himself to be exploited
by the Kerensky government by participating in the State Conference of August
1917. On February 8, 1921, Pierre Kropotkine died at the age of 78, in Dmitrov,
near Moscow.
On February 10, the coffin was transported by train to the capital, where the
body was exhibited for two days at the Maison des Syndicates. The funeral took
place on February 13, in the presence of 20,000 people. If Kropotkin's family
finally managed to keep control of the organization of the funeral, the Bolshevik
power is still there. The All-Russian Department of Cinema and Photography (VFKO)
is also making a full report on this event.
All the libertarian tendencies, as well those placed in satellite by the regime
as the oppositional ones are present. Other currents insisted on being
represented, whether they were the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks or
Bolsheviks, proof of the political importance of these funerals.
Read also the Report from beyond the grave: "The funeral of Kropotkin" (1921)
In front of the grave, a host of speakers and a female speaker will speak: Emma
Goldman ; Isaac Steinberg (left SR) ; Alfred Rosmer, French revolutionary trade
unionist rallied to Moscow; Sandomirski (anarchist orbited by the PC) ; Nikolai
Pavlov (anarcho-syndicalist opposed to the PC); Aaron Baron, who will return to
the cell the same evening ...
A few weeks after this funeral, the Petrograd strikes and the famous Kronstadt
revolt broke out. The Bolshevik power will then decide to eradicate any space of
expression. The anarchist organizations will pay the price, and will be
dismantled before the end of the year. Kropotkin's funeral was therefore the last
opportunity for them to demonstrate publicly.
Journal Commission
Validate
[1] The prosecutor thus justifying his requests for sentence: the defendants
being "affiliated with an international company (International Association of
Workers), whose aim is to cause the suspension of work, the abolition of the
right to property, of the family, of the fatherland, of religion, and thus to
have committed an attack against the public peace".
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1921-les-obseques-de-Kropotkine-crepuscule-libertaire-russe
------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Today, in yet another day of struggle and resistance, we arrived at that May 1st
- Day of struggle of the working class - in the midst of a harsh context for the
workers in our country. We are living in times of frightening intensification and
deepening of the economic and social crisis caused by the neoliberal death
policy, added to the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year. We have passed the mark
of 400,000 lives lost to a virus that could already be under control, of the 14
million unemployed people dependent on negligible emergency aid, with an informal
job rate of around 40%. Also in the heights are the hospital occupancy rates, the
price and capacity of the means of transport, the cost of living. We, as working
women, add to these alarming numbers the growth of gender-based violence, the
unquestionable overload of multiple journeys, the burden of care tasks. Racist,
homophobic and transphobic violence add innumerable layers of oppression and
precariousness to our class. It is also essential to talk about our reproductive
rights. In a country where abortion is criminalized, leaving thousands of women
exposed to real state femicide, we overheard the government suggesting that this
is not the "time to get pregnant". As if choosing was everyone's right. Today
many homes face the pain of grief and the despair of hunger and unemployment.
Once again, the importance of a historic date of struggle is to reinforce that
even in the face of the greatest difficulties, we have the choice of the path of
resistance, mutual support and solidarity. There are many examples of empowerment
and help among workers, that in the most diverse places of work and housing they
have been organizing the daily fight against all and any type of injustice and
oppression and for the right to survive and exist. We at Mulheres Resistem - RJ
reinforce that the day of the struggle of the working class is the day of
extolling the importance of trust in the strength of our hands, as it is from
this strength that we have always promoted the most diverse struggles, in cities,
in the countryside , in the neighborhoods, slums and peripheries. This must be
our horizon more than ever: that of affirming hope in another possible world,
built with the strength of our courage and solidarity! we reinforce that the day
of the struggle of the working class is the day of extolling the importance of
trust in the strength of our hands, as it is from this strength that we have
always promoted the most diverse struggles, in cities, in the countryside, in
neighborhoods, in slums and peripheries . This must be our horizon more than
ever: that of affirming hope in another possible world, built with the strength
of our courage and solidarity! we reinforce that the day of the struggle of the
working class is the day of extolling the importance of trust in the strength of
our hands, as it is from this strength that we have always promoted the most
diverse struggles, in cities, in the countryside, in neighborhoods, in slums and
peripheries . This must be our horizon more than ever: that of affirming hope in
another possible world, built with the strength of our courage and solidarity!
https://www.facebook.com/mulheresresistemrj/posts/209923170938827
------------------------------
Message: 2
During the Paris and Lyon manifestations of 1 stMay, the CGT union processions
were physically attacked and throw acid products. Recall that on 1 stMay is not
the "Labor Day", but since 1887 an international day of claim and struggle of our
class tribute to our union comrades murdered by the Chicago police on 1 stMay
1886. Despite health and social context that more complicated, the mobilization
of the 1 stMay throughout France should not be overshadowed by the unacceptable
violence. ---- These attacks have an unequivocal political significance: the
hatred of the self-organization of workers in trade union organizations. This
contempt for the tools, certainly always imperfect, forged by our class to build
class consciousness through struggles appears to us to be a strategic error.
Political differences exist in our camp on the organization of the proletariat.
But here it is something else in question. Physically attacking, injuring,
mutilating workers guilty of organizing to fight against their exploiters is a
characteristic feature of the extreme right and directly serves the interests of
our class enemies: the state and the bourgeoisie.
Those who attacked the CGT the 1 stMay are, whether they realize it or not,
accomplices of power. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the union
procession has been the target of this kind of aggression. During the
demonstration against the "comprehensive security " lawand the reform of
unemployment insurance on December 5, 2020, fellow trade unionists had already
warned about this kind of practice [1].
The insults uttered in Paris and Lyon, sexist, racist and homophobic, against the
activists of the CGT who ensured the serenity of his procession are intolerable.
The nature of the attack and the insults that accompanied it put those
responsible for it on a different camp than ours. Individuals and collectives who
claim political autonomy must denounce these unacceptable events. For years,
their propaganda has indeed contributed to devalue the trade union tool. It
should not now be the justification for this kind of aggression.
These attacks against activists and trade union organizations are, like those of
the police to which we are unfortunately more accustomed, attacks against our
class and must therefore be treated as such.
Libertarian Communist Union, May 2, 2021.
Validate
[1] Cops in front, assailants in the back: the demonstration of December 5 as
experienced in the union procession , published by libertarian communists
unionized with the CGT and Solidaires on the Paris-Luttes site.
ttps://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Un-coup-porte-contre-l-un-e-d-entre-nous-est-un-coup-porte-contre-nous-tou-tes
------------------------------
Message: 3
Please check out a May Day message from the IFA Secretariat (who are currently
the FAI in Italy - this role rotates amongst the federations making up the
membership of IFA ). ---- The Bristol group of the Anarchist Federation
previously published a nice read about the anarchist origins of Mayday including
the Haymarket Affair in Chicago mentioned in the above message. Also, our 25th
anniversary issue of Organise!magazine 77 from a decade ago has articles we have
previously published about the Paris Commune which was especially influential on
the development of anarchist communism. ---- Earlier in the year we celebrated
and remembered the bravery of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.
https://nottsblackarrow.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/mayday-2021-greeting/
------------------------------
Message: 4
On April 24, the official opening of the Bogdanka Free City Garden (WOMB) took
place. Thank you to everyone involved in the preparation of this event and to
everyone who came on Saturday! ---- The program of the day started with the
performance of Samba Halastra / RoR Poznan ---- On that day, the participants of
this momentous event awaited, among others workshops on the construction of
nesting boxes for birds, permaculture crops, a lecture on the life of animals in
the city garden, screening of the film "Concrete. Why does the government love
concrete? " and a discussion on the destruction of urban green areas and
gentrification, attended by representatives of the Rozbrat collective, Koalicja
ZaZ Zielony Poznan and Kolektyw Kapielisko .
There were also yoga classes and a shooting range, where you could test your
effectiveness in shooting with a bow, crossbow and slingshot. Among the youngest
ones, the zip line was very popular. Tea, coffee and sweet snacks were provided
by a wonderful REVENGE IN THE KITCHEN .
We were positively surprised by the turnout - it was openly gathered by a lot of
people of all ages. Some of them brought their seedlings to the previously
prepared soil. We spent several hours together. During, apart from the
above-mentioned events, everyone and everyone interested could find out what WOMB
is and on what principles it functions.
As a reminder, the area where WOMB is located has been the garden of ROD Bogdanka
for years. The developer, Darex from Warsaw, has put forward claims against the
land on which it is planning to build a housing estate. The gardeners were
intimidated with heavy fines in the event of not leaving their plots, several
arbors were set on fire. In November last year, Darex, assisted by the police,
tried to take over the area, but the Green Wave , the Rozbrat collective and
people concerned about the attempt to develop green areas blocked the developer
and, in agreement with former allotment owners, took care of the place. The
cleaned plots of land and shared space will give all interested parties the
opportunity to cultivate, organize and participate in various types of events or
spend their free time among the greenery.
WOMB is located in the West Greenway Wedge belt. Poznan Wedges are something
unique on a European scale - they were supposed to connect city parks with
suburban forests. Their main goal is to protect the waters and ventilate the
city, so they are an invaluable weapon in the fight against global warming and
drought. As such, they require strict protection and we must not allow them to be
poured over with concrete for the sake of private interests
https://www.rozbrat.org/informacje/poznan/4763-otwarcie-wolnego-ogrodu-miejskiego-bogdanka
------------------------------
Message: 1
Today, in yet another day of struggle and resistance, we arrived at that May 1st
- Day of struggle of the working class - in the midst of a harsh context for the
workers in our country. We are living in times of frightening intensification and
deepening of the economic and social crisis caused by the neoliberal death
policy, added to the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year. We have passed the mark
of 400,000 lives lost to a virus that could already be under control, of the 14
million unemployed people dependent on negligible emergency aid, with an informal
job rate of around 40%. Also in the heights are the hospital occupancy rates, the
price and capacity of the means of transport, the cost of living. We, as working
women, add to these alarming numbers the growth of gender-based violence, the
unquestionable overload of multiple journeys, the burden of care tasks. Racist,
homophobic and transphobic violence add innumerable layers of oppression and
precariousness to our class. It is also essential to talk about our reproductive
rights. In a country where abortion is criminalized, leaving thousands of women
exposed to real state femicide, we overheard the government suggesting that this
is not the "time to get pregnant". As if choosing was everyone's right. Today
many homes face the pain of grief and the despair of hunger and unemployment.
Once again, the importance of a historic date of struggle is to reinforce that
even in the face of the greatest difficulties, we have the choice of the path of
resistance, mutual support and solidarity. There are many examples of empowerment
and help among workers, that in the most diverse places of work and housing they
have been organizing the daily fight against all and any type of injustice and
oppression and for the right to survive and exist. We at Mulheres Resistem - RJ
reinforce that the day of the struggle of the working class is the day of
extolling the importance of trust in the strength of our hands, as it is from
this strength that we have always promoted the most diverse struggles, in cities,
in the countryside , in the neighborhoods, slums and peripheries. This must be
our horizon more than ever: that of affirming hope in another possible world,
built with the strength of our courage and solidarity! we reinforce that the day
of the struggle of the working class is the day of extolling the importance of
trust in the strength of our hands, as it is from this strength that we have
always promoted the most diverse struggles, in cities, in the countryside, in
neighborhoods, in slums and peripheries . This must be our horizon more than
ever: that of affirming hope in another possible world, built with the strength
of our courage and solidarity! we reinforce that the day of the struggle of the
working class is the day of extolling the importance of trust in the strength of
our hands, as it is from this strength that we have always promoted the most
diverse struggles, in cities, in the countryside, in neighborhoods, in slums and
peripheries . This must be our horizon more than ever: that of affirming hope in
another possible world, built with the strength of our courage and solidarity!
https://www.facebook.com/mulheresresistemrj/posts/209923170938827
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Message: 2
During the Paris and Lyon manifestations of 1 stMay, the CGT union processions
were physically attacked and throw acid products. Recall that on 1 stMay is not
the "Labor Day", but since 1887 an international day of claim and struggle of our
class tribute to our union comrades murdered by the Chicago police on 1 stMay
1886. Despite health and social context that more complicated, the mobilization
of the 1 stMay throughout France should not be overshadowed by the unacceptable
violence. ---- These attacks have an unequivocal political significance: the
hatred of the self-organization of workers in trade union organizations. This
contempt for the tools, certainly always imperfect, forged by our class to build
class consciousness through struggles appears to us to be a strategic error.
Political differences exist in our camp on the organization of the proletariat.
But here it is something else in question. Physically attacking, injuring,
mutilating workers guilty of organizing to fight against their exploiters is a
characteristic feature of the extreme right and directly serves the interests of
our class enemies: the state and the bourgeoisie.
Those who attacked the CGT the 1 stMay are, whether they realize it or not,
accomplices of power. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the union
procession has been the target of this kind of aggression. During the
demonstration against the "comprehensive security " lawand the reform of
unemployment insurance on December 5, 2020, fellow trade unionists had already
warned about this kind of practice [1].
The insults uttered in Paris and Lyon, sexist, racist and homophobic, against the
activists of the CGT who ensured the serenity of his procession are intolerable.
The nature of the attack and the insults that accompanied it put those
responsible for it on a different camp than ours. Individuals and collectives who
claim political autonomy must denounce these unacceptable events. For years,
their propaganda has indeed contributed to devalue the trade union tool. It
should not now be the justification for this kind of aggression.
These attacks against activists and trade union organizations are, like those of
the police to which we are unfortunately more accustomed, attacks against our
class and must therefore be treated as such.
Libertarian Communist Union, May 2, 2021.
Validate
[1] Cops in front, assailants in the back: the demonstration of December 5 as
experienced in the union procession , published by libertarian communists
unionized with the CGT and Solidaires on the Paris-Luttes site.
ttps://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Un-coup-porte-contre-l-un-e-d-entre-nous-est-un-coup-porte-contre-nous-tou-tes
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Message: 3
Please check out a May Day message from the IFA Secretariat (who are currently
the FAI in Italy - this role rotates amongst the federations making up the
membership of IFA ). ---- The Bristol group of the Anarchist Federation
previously published a nice read about the anarchist origins of Mayday including
the Haymarket Affair in Chicago mentioned in the above message. Also, our 25th
anniversary issue of Organise!magazine 77 from a decade ago has articles we have
previously published about the Paris Commune which was especially influential on
the development of anarchist communism. ---- Earlier in the year we celebrated
and remembered the bravery of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.
https://nottsblackarrow.wordpress.com/2021/05/01/mayday-2021-greeting/
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Message: 4
On April 24, the official opening of the Bogdanka Free City Garden (WOMB) took
place. Thank you to everyone involved in the preparation of this event and to
everyone who came on Saturday! ---- The program of the day started with the
performance of Samba Halastra / RoR Poznan ---- On that day, the participants of
this momentous event awaited, among others workshops on the construction of
nesting boxes for birds, permaculture crops, a lecture on the life of animals in
the city garden, screening of the film "Concrete. Why does the government love
concrete? " and a discussion on the destruction of urban green areas and
gentrification, attended by representatives of the Rozbrat collective, Koalicja
ZaZ Zielony Poznan and Kolektyw Kapielisko .
There were also yoga classes and a shooting range, where you could test your
effectiveness in shooting with a bow, crossbow and slingshot. Among the youngest
ones, the zip line was very popular. Tea, coffee and sweet snacks were provided
by a wonderful REVENGE IN THE KITCHEN .
We were positively surprised by the turnout - it was openly gathered by a lot of
people of all ages. Some of them brought their seedlings to the previously
prepared soil. We spent several hours together. During, apart from the
above-mentioned events, everyone and everyone interested could find out what WOMB
is and on what principles it functions.
As a reminder, the area where WOMB is located has been the garden of ROD Bogdanka
for years. The developer, Darex from Warsaw, has put forward claims against the
land on which it is planning to build a housing estate. The gardeners were
intimidated with heavy fines in the event of not leaving their plots, several
arbors were set on fire. In November last year, Darex, assisted by the police,
tried to take over the area, but the Green Wave , the Rozbrat collective and
people concerned about the attempt to develop green areas blocked the developer
and, in agreement with former allotment owners, took care of the place. The
cleaned plots of land and shared space will give all interested parties the
opportunity to cultivate, organize and participate in various types of events or
spend their free time among the greenery.
WOMB is located in the West Greenway Wedge belt. Poznan Wedges are something
unique on a European scale - they were supposed to connect city parks with
suburban forests. Their main goal is to protect the waters and ventilate the
city, so they are an invaluable weapon in the fight against global warming and
drought. As such, they require strict protection and we must not allow them to be
poured over with concrete for the sake of private interests
https://www.rozbrat.org/informacje/poznan/4763-otwarcie-wolnego-ogrodu-miejskiego-bogdanka
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