The Anarchist Communist Group sends its revolutionary best wishes andsolidarity for 2024 to all our supporters, readers of our website andpublications, and to all those who we have collaborated with in variousactivities over the past year. ---- This coming year will undoubtedlyprove to be as 'interesting' a year as 2023. All the problems created bycapitalism, the state and patriarchy are ripening even more. We havecost of living crises, further degrading of existing infrastructures,the drive to war which threatens to escalate from regional to world war,the deepening climate crisis signally and wilfully not addressed byeither the Sunak government or by COP28. These are among many otherproblems.Here in the UK we had the biggest strike wave seen for decades, withhundreds of thousands involved in industrial action, many for the firsttime. Yet practically all of these strikes ended in defeat and in paydeals still below the rate of inflation. The trade unions signallyfailed to deliver, actively sabotaging struggles. One sign of hope wasthe action of workers on oil rigs in the North Sea. They organised astrike committee, independent from union structures, and carried out twowildcat strikes across 19 rigs. This brought results, with newcollective bargaining agreed this December. The trade unions attemptedto deter workers taking wildcat action, and then, typically, claimedcredit for the victory! The North Sea workers provided a shining exampleof how strikes can be fought successfully. These lessons need to benoted by any workers going into struggle. They must rely on themselves,creating their own independent organisations such as strike committeesand mass assemblies.Two cheeks of the same arseThis year will see an election with Labour likely to win and a loss ofmany Tory seats. This comes amidst a failing rail transport system, ahealth service on life support, the literal collapse of school buildingsand the fat cats of the water companies enriching themselves whilstpumping sewage into rivers and the sea. This is accompanied by a loomingrecession, rising inflation, lack of job security, and increasingpoverty and homelessness.But if you thought that Labour will address these problems, then you'vegot another think coming. The Starmer shadow cabinet has made it clearthat it will not protect the NHS, will be tough on immigration, promotefiscal conservatism, will not increase the minimum wage, will not defendthe pension triple lock and will not deprivatise the water companieswhilst disapproving of workers on picket lines. A disapproval which,once in power, will become outright attacks upon strikes.In addition, itwill do nothing to stop the Rosebank oilfield, at a time when it becomesmore essential that reliance on fossil fuels needs to be drasticallyreduced. Its support for Israel and the USA will continue.A Starmer government will be worse for the working class than the Blairgovernment because the British economy is in a far sorrier state than in1997. Starmer has said that he is happy to be branded a fiscalconservative, and will not spend on the NHS and other public services.Like previous Labour governments, the Starmer administration willattempt to break strikes, will do nothing to help solve the climatecrisis, will continue with bellicose foreign policies, and will threatencivil rights, using legislation already put in place by the Tories thatit will signally fail to repeal.That is why it is essential that we create a resistance movement in bothworkplace and neighbourhood, a hard task but one that needs to be tackled.It's Too Darn HotThe Sunak administration has launched an all-out attack on net-zeropolicies with a slew of bizarre scare stories in the media, with aremoval of plans to tax uninsulated buildings, the afore mentionedapproval of Rosebank, the delaying of the phase-out of petrol and dieselvehicles by five years, amongst other policies detrimental to theplanet. As we said above, Labour if elected will do little to reversethis situation.Even more laughable and at the same time more tragic, has been therecent COP28 conference, hosted in Dubai by the United Arab Emirates, amain oil producer, and presided over by Sultan al-Jabr, head of the UAEstate oil company. This was a conference attended by at least 2,456fossil fuel lobbyists, and where the UAE took the opportunity to makedeals of £175 billion for their oil industries! The conference, notsurprisingly, achieved less than nothing.War, What It Good For?The Biden administration has approved $150 million sales of arms toIsrael. This is happening in the context of Benjamin Netanyahu, theIsraeli prime minister, calling for the seizure of the Philadelphicorridor, a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt, and declaring that theGaza offensive will last "for many months." It re-affirmed this on thelast day of 2023, stating that the war would last through the whole of 2024.The Israeli war cabinet has declared that it is engaged in a"multi-front" war. Yoav Gallant, the Minister of Defence, describedthese fronts as Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Iraq, Yemen, andIran. Israel is preparing for war on Hezbollah there, only deterred forthe instant by US pressure. However, Netanyahu is discredited at home,so may go for an escalation of war, which would close down domesticcriticism and delay calls for early elections and his resignation.Netanyahu has often stated that he is ready to take on Iran. So far,Iran has acted through its proxies in the region-Hezbollah, Hamas, theHouthis in Yemen, and Tehran-alllied groups in Iraq and Syria. Thesehave all been armed, trained, and supplied by the Iranian theocracy.Iran has preferred an arms-length strategy, using its allies withoutdirectly involving itself in the conflict. So far.However, the continuing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza by the IsraeliDefence Force - more than 21,000 as we write- is putting pressure onboth Iran and its regional allies. The attacks by the Houthis on marinetransport in the Gulf thought to be supplying Israel is one sign ofthis. Another sign is the Hezbollah shelling of Israel. Here theNetanyahu administration may rapidly open up another front to create abuffer zone in Lebanon. Another member of the war cabinet, Benny Gantz,has intimated that this might happen.A former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, writing in the USpaper the Wall Street Journal, declared that the "evil empire of Iran"must be brought down. He expresses the views of many in both the US andIsraeli administrations. This echoes the rhetoric around previous foeslike the Soviet Union and the Saddam regime in Iraq.Israel has undertaken strikes in Syria against Iranian commanders there,the latest being the targeting and killing of Sayyed Razi Mousavi, asenior military official in the Iranian regime, and of 11 senior membersof Iran's Revolutionary Guard at Damascus airport. On November 8th, theUS Air Force undertook an attack on a weapons storage centre of anIranian-backed militia in Syria. On the last day of the year, the USdestroyed three Houthi boats.At the same time, the war intensifies in the Ukraine, with both sidesexchanging bombardments. More civilian casualties, more destruction.Both these battlegrounds risk escalating beyond the regional. Capitalismis threatening more and more carnage as the result of inter-imperialistrivalries.The escalation to war, the degrading environment, the attacks on theworking class worldwide through wage and social wage cuts, theincreasing poverty of many, should be countered by the vision of a newsociety, one without classes, without borders, without wars, withoutoppression and inequality. This is libertarian communism. Join with usin helping to make thishttps://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/01/01/new-year-message-from-the-anarchist-communist-group/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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