WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, OCL CA #343 - Retirement and inequalities, briefs from the economy (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 It is very complicated to find your way around the amount of pensions.

Indeed, retirees receive a basic pension (CNAV) or a state pension
(civil servants) (or a bit of both for those who have worked in the
private and public sectors), and one or more supplementary pensions, the
calculation bases of which are different, not to mention of course the
special schemes. You will tell me that it is enough to add all that up,
except that, fortunately, Big Brother is not yet completely there, so we
know the amount of pensions and retirement benefits, the amount of
supplementary benefits, but we do not know how to say for a given
bracket of basic retirement income how much supplementary pension should
be added. The Pensions Advisory Council (COR), the organization that
tries to manage all this, is reduced to presenting "typical cases" to
try to see things clearly, typical cases that it itself recognizes are
not able to indicate their representativeness.
Since the basic pension and the pension are based on our contributions,
high salaries mean high pensions, low salaries mean low pensions. But
for equal salaries, there is no equal pension, because of the
differences in social security systems and supplementary pensions. And
it should also be remembered that bonuses do not count towards
retirement. So for example in the civil service, civil servants without
many bonuses, generally therefore low-level civil servants, have a
better replacement rate (1) than senior civil servants for whom bonuses
represent a larger part of their remuneration.
Everyone says that the civil service pension is more advantageous than
the private sector pension. It is not so obvious. In particular, the
private sector's supplementary pensions are much higher than those in
the public sector. The DREES (statistical department of the Ministry of
Labor) tried to measure the difference by simulating what pension a
civil servant would have had if he or she had worked in the private
sector for the same salary. 62% of sedentary civil servants born in 1958
would benefit from having the private sector's rules applied to them,
32% would lose out and 6% would see their pension unchanged to within
plus or minus 1%. The ratio between the average pension of women and
that of men, in the field of single pensioners with a full career, was
in 2021 86% for civil servants, 88% for territorial and hospital civil
servants and 87% for those insured under other special schemes, compared
to 71% for employees covered by the general scheme and 62% for the
self-employed. We must pay attention to all the words. These are women
who have had a full career. Until a few years ago, many women did not
have a full career because they stopped when they had young children.
Then they started again in poor conditions. So the retirement gap
between men and women is much greater than that. Women earned on average
42% less than men in 2012. The same year, the salary gap between men and
women was "only" 30% (20% in full-time equivalent). In total, that year,
445,000 women over 75 (14.1%) lived below the poverty line compared to
175,000 men (8.9%). In fact, the replacement rate is higher for low
incomes than for high incomes. A manager has a replacement rate if he
leaves at the age of entitlement of around 53%, a non-manager of 78%.
But if the non-executive has been unemployed (a relatively common
case!), their replacement rate is only 69%. For the categories who have
the right to retire early, their pension is also lower, since it is
prorated, that is to say it is calculated by removing the missing
quarters. What is the point of having the right to retire early in this
case, you might say? Simple, no reduction is applied. The reduction is
what is removed in addition, approximately 6% per missing year (the
calculation is more complicated than that, it would be a shame
otherwise). For example, if you have contributed 161 quarters instead of
169, you will receive 161/169 of the pension (that is the prorating) -
approximately 12% (that is the reduction). To no longer be affected by
the reduction, you must work until the age limit (which, I believe, has
remained at 67).
It is actually very complicated to go into detail and find the real
state of inequalities. Indeed, it is not only the amount of the pension
that counts. First, all these figures are calculated for a full-time
career, that is to say without interruptions and without part-time work.
This is less and less the case for the general population. On the other
hand, it is increasingly the case for women who now have on average a
career as long as men (in other words, they no longer stop for
children). But among today's retirees, there is still among the oldest
the generation of housewives who only receive a survivor's pension, and
also the generation of women who have worked with interruptions. Then,
among wealthy households, many take out life insurance and other
retirement savings plans. These are private banking products that are
therefore not included in the statistics I am talking about. Which means
that it is not certain that the income of senior executives will drop
that much when they retire.
Finally, there is one last major inequality: the inequality in life
expectancy. On average, executives live 7 years longer than workers.
They therefore receive their pension for significantly longer... Not to
mention health inequalities: being reduced to a state of dependency or
being able to enjoy your retirement are not the same thing. In 2022,
life expectancy without disability at birth is 65.3 years for women and
63.8 years for men (figures from the ministry). To compare with the
retirement ages...
Let's retrace the changes in very broad strokes. Throughout the first
half of the 20th century, old age rhymed with poverty (except for the
bourgeoisie of course). This is the situation that the establishment of
a pension system remedied. This system took time to have its full
effect. Those who retired up until the 1970s had not contributed enough
to receive a full pension. Today, overall, retirees earn a little more
than the average population but a little less than working people, and
their poverty rate is lower. The survivor's pension (2) put an end to
the great poverty of widows. When Mitterrand lowered the retirement age
to 60, the life expectancy (3) of a worker was 61. After the crisis of
the 1970s, we started to talk about the "new poor": this was a term used
to describe poverty that was not traditional, meaning that these poor
were not necessarily old people. Since then, a reform has reduced the
purchasing power of all retirees: pensions are no longer indexed to the
general increase in wages, but to inflation. It is difficult to find the
effects of recent pension reforms in the figures: among the mass of
retirees, many retired before. And many things have changed. For
example, women mostly reach retirement with a full career, the working
life span of men has decreased, career breaks due to unemployment have
become commonplace... To take a real look at inequalities and what the
reforms have changed, we would need studies that are not funded, to have
figures that are not provided to us, and possibly that do not exist. But
it is certain that the situation of the mass of retirees will deteriorate.

Main source: Conseil d'Orientation des Retraites, annual report,
Evolutions and perspectives of pensions in France, June 2024. Available
free of charge on the internet.

Notes
(1) The replacement rate is the percentage that the pension represents
in relation to our last year of activity.
(2) Half of the pension is paid to the spouse, in fact more often to the
surviving spouse. But be careful comrades, to benefit from it you must
be married!
(3) Life expectancy is the average length of life.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4275
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WORLD WORLDWIDE UK EUROPE - news journal UPDATE - (en) UK, SOLfed Direct Action #2 - Education Not Marketisation (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Many higher education institutions face financial collapse, but what has
brought about this perfect storm and what can be done about it? ----
Headlines often focus on 'over-reliance on international students', but
it is more complex. Why do universities try so hard to recruit
international students? Because international fees are not regulated and
universities can charge what they can get away with, meaning Cambridge
can charge a Chinese student more than Cardiff Met. So, are they just
being greedy? Not really - they are trying to cover the short-fall
arising from domestic student fees barely rising in a decade.
In 2012, universities could charge an undergraduate student £9,000 per
year; twelve years later, it has only risen to £9,250, while
universities' costs have gone through the roof. We are all familiar with
the cost of living crisis, but imagine how much worse it would be
without a pay rise in twelve years!
So is the answer to raise tuition fees? Of course not - the answer is to
challenge the marketisation of higher education. This, and this alone,
is the cause of the problem.
In a stroke of neo-liberal "genius", the then established £3,000 per
year tuition fee hit true capitalist territory in 2012, and universities
could charge between £6,000 and £9,000 a year. A typical university was
expected to charge £6,000, and only exceptional institutions would
charge £9,000. The government believed market forces would sort it all
out; the 'good' universities would survive, and the sub-par ones would
wither away or merge.
To make matters worse, 2015 saw the market forces strategy at play
again, with the lifting of the cap on student numbers. Rather than each
university being capped regarding numbers of students they could
recruit, any university could now recruit as many students as it wanted.
This was great for Russell Group universities and other prestigious
institutions, but less good for smaller, regional universities and
ex-polytechnics. If you could get into Bristol Uni, why go to the
University of the West of England (ex-Bristol Poly)?
So the older (pre-1992) universities hoovered up as many students as
they could by lowering their entry standards. The knock-on effect was
the post-1992 universities lowering their own entry standards even
further to stand a chance of attracting enough students and their
much-needed fees.
Many universities are now reporting levels of student mental health
concerns at an all-time high. The pressure to get a degree, and the
willingness of universities to offer places, means that many students
are really struggling with degree-level study, as well as debt.
There is no positive spin on the marketisation of higher education; all
that happens is rich institutions get richer and the poor get poorer,
while student choice and mental health suffer.
Market forces have no place in our education. While the economy may be
too messed up to expect an immediate abolition of student fees, a
realistic step forward would be to reinstate the cap on student numbers,
which would at least distribute student fee income more fairly. Despite
what the Russell Group of universities may say, this idea is not unheard
of - during Covid, it looked like it could happen.
What we see now are the all too familiar effects of market forces -
increasing concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands and a declining
standard of service available to all but those with the deepest pockets.
Looking no further than housing or the railways or the water companies,
to name but a few, should leave little doubt as to where marketisation
of education, if unchecked, is headed.
The Solidarity Federation Education Union sees the education system,
including the HE sector, as a resource that must be as widely accessible
as possible. Market forces, however, are about re-distributing society's
wealth into the hands of those at the top. In other words, education for
the majority is becoming increasingly substandard, while the richest can
always pay for the best.
SFEU is not motivated by the self-interest of capitalist structures like
the Russell Group. Instead, all our collective energy is directed at
fighting for the interests of those engaged in education, whether as
workers, no matter what job, or as consumers.

http://solfed.org.uk/da/direct-action-solidarity-federation-2024-issue-2
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #352 - Culture, See: Coline Grando, Le Balai Libéré (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In 1975, the cleaners at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve

went on strike and fired their boss. With the help of their union, they
created the cooperative Le Balai Libéré and became owners of their
company. ---- After fourteen years of self-management, Le Balai Libéré
lost its contract with the University when it launched a call for
tenders for a public market. Since then, six companies that responded to
these calls for tenders have followed one another. Today, the site
represents 350,000 m2 to clean. There are around fifty workers to carry
out this task.

After La Place de l'homme, her first feature-length documentary,
director Coline Grando is interested in "Le Balai Libéré", in
collaboration with the Maisons Médicales. This cooperative of cleaners
in the particular setting of Louvain-la-Neuve, a Belgian university
town, through its self-management experience was inspired by Lip's
struggle in Besançon.

By taking several paths, the director tries to answer two questions: how
can this story be useful to us today and what view should we take of the
cleaners of this university and their working conditions?

The director ends her meeting with interviews with former Balai Libéré
staff and with the new people in charge of cleaning. She tries to answer
the question of the sustainability of the story of a victorious struggle
and its political and social outcomes.

Throughout the film, Coline Grando shows us the difficulty of the
cleaning sector, the speed required and the isolation linked to
subcontracting.

She perfectly documents the solitude of the workers in this immense
place to be cleaned. To highlight this solitude, she films by opposing a
wide shot frame, very small people.

Around a table, the workers discuss the deterioration of current working
conditions. A worker from the former framework asks the question of
self-management and the possibility of creating a cooperative by
throwing the boss out: "the problem of self-management... I often find
that we have the impression that it is a matter of small arrangements by
the workers. For me, self-management is to take power of the company!"

Rose (UCL Paris-nord-est)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Voir-Coline-Grando-Le-Balai-Libere
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #32: Bill 1660: demonstration and occupation in Livorno (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 A few hundred people braved the rain to demonstrate in Livorno against

bill 1660. The demonstration was called by Azione Livorno Antifascista,
a group that brings together a series of city groups, including the
Collettivo Anarchico Libertario, the Federazione Anarchica Livornese and
Unicobas. At the end of the demonstration, an abandoned cinema in the
city center was symbolically occupied. ---- The building is owned by a
certain Gonnelli, a businessman on the far right, who in recent days has
been in the news in the local news for complaints from employees about
the working conditions and wages he imposes.

Gonnelli intends to build a nightclub in the area of the former cinema,
sparking protests from the neighborhood residents.

T.A.

https://umanitanova.org/ddl-1660-manifestazione-e-occupazione-a-livorno/
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE MOROCCO - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL Press Release - Macron in Rabat: French imperialism on a diplomatic visit (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 At the end of October, Emmanuel Macron went to Morocco on a state visit

at the invitation of King Mohamed VI. Accompanied by a delegation of
more than 100 people including political figures and ministers (Bruno
Retailleau, Sébastien Lecornu or Jean-Nöel Barrot, respectively
Ministers of the Interior, Defense and Foreign Affairs) but also public
figures: among them Teddy Riner, Jamel Debbouze, Gérard Darmon and Jack
Lang. The extent of this delegation to include those close to the
president raises questions all the more since a report from the Court of
Auditors already warned in July about the astronomical costs of
delegation trips abroad. While Macron was received with great pomp in
Rabat, this visit looks like a gala for cultural elites close to the
Moroccan and French authorities.

In the media, this meeting was presented as a "reconciliation" between
the two countries. In reality, it illustrates a desire to strengthen
Franco-Moroccan ties to consolidate the French presence in North Africa.
This is done within a pro-Israeli diplomatic axis, decidedly attached to
the contempt of international law. Beyond the red carpets and dinners,
French influence in Morocco emerges increased from this meeting against
the backdrop of the struggle for the independence of Western Sahara and
rising tensions with neighboring Algeria. Western imperialism always
instrumentalizes the rivalries between nation-states of the Global
South: Macron's neo-colonial policy and his shaky diplomacy contribute
to the instability of the entire continent. Macron's visit is also part
of a tradition of collaboration for the control of migratory flows. The
European agency Frontex has thus practiced the return of migrants to
Mauritania or Libya since the 2000s. We have witnessed negotiations with
Erdogan's Turkey to keep hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees on its
soil: for years, Europe has been subcontracting the management of
migration to the South. An imperialist state is no exception, France and
its racist and conservative government are seeking through this visit to
negotiate with Morocco to contain the hordes of migrants fantasized by
the extreme right. It is seeking more possibilities for "readmission of
Moroccan nationals in an irregular situation". In exchange, Macron
promises closer economic cooperation and significant French investments
in the Moroccan economy. In short, a liberal project that smells of
Bolloréen "Afroptimism". If France is the leading source of foreign
direct investment (FDI) in Morocco, the country's debt situation with
the IMF does not seem to worry the president, who is taking with him the
bosses of Alstom, Total Energies, Thalès, CMA CGM and other major French
capitalists. Dozens of agreements have been signed between French groups
and Morocco under the banner of "strategic partnership". Thus, French
capitalism can continue to interfere in the Moroccan economy. France can
boast of promoting cooperation and sharing while refusing to grant the
slightest crumb of dignity to asylum seekers. By perpetuating the
conditions of death for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for a
better life. The Libertarian Communist Union demands the transcendence
of borders and the national framework, towards a federalist society
where the political and economic bases of racism will have been abolished.

But Macron has also caused controversy in his support for Moroccan
colonization in Western Sahara. If the disputes over the borders between
Algeria and Morocco are already due to the colonial legacy and therefore
the arbitrary drawing of the borders, Macron has chosen to privilege his
ties with Morocco - even if it means further angering Algeria and
dealing a blow to the Sahrawis' claim for independence, even though
international law recognizes their right to self-determination. The
national liberation struggle waged by the Polisario Front for almost
half a century is legitimate. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
(SADR), proclaimed in 1976 and a founding member of the African Union,
must be sovereign. The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in
Western Sahara (MINURSO) has aimed to organize a self-determination
referendum there since 1991. France must comply with the demands of the
Sahrawi people and stop violating international law by asserting that
"the present and future of Western Sahara are part of Moroccan sovereignty."

The Sahrawi territory is also disfigured by the "Sand Wall". Built by
Morocco from 1980, this "wall of shame" is one of the last large border
walls in the world: 2,700 km of mined trenches and guarded by thousands
of soldiers. This wall is both ecologically and culturally destructive:
the nomadic lifestyle of certain Sahrawi populations comes up against
this insurmountable barrier. Morocco's predatory attitude is not only
motivated by nationalist arguments; it is also fueled by the
extractivist reason of the Moroccan state: Western Sahara is rich in
phosphate used in many agricultural products. It is also an oil region
with significant offshore resources. From minerals to hydrocarbons,
including fish reserves, Western Sahara is an exceptional boon for
Morocco, which occupies 80% of the territory. The economy, intrinsically
colonial, is based on the North/South imperialist division that
structures global capitalism.

Despite this situation, some left-wing political groups refuse to take a
position. We, libertarian communists, denounce the French alignment with
the Moroccan state. We affirm the need to allow the total independence
of Western Sahara and demand recognition by France of the SADR. We call
for support for the national liberation struggle of the Sahrawi people.

Liberty, Democracy, Unity Slogan of the Sahrawi independence fighters
Libertarian Communist Union, November 15, 2024.

For more information:

"Western Sahara: An injustice that drags on"
"A comic book and a film on the struggle of the Sahrawi people"
"Western Sahara: Stop Moroccan colonization"

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Macron-a-Rabat-L-imperialisme-francais-en-visite-diplomatique
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, OCL: No one will silence us. We will speak in the name of our dead (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

See online: BARBARIA group website ---- We know this perfectly well. The
hundreds of dead and missing are not the product of an uncontrolled
nature. They are not the result of a fatality against which there is
nothing to be done. ---- We are not satisfied with the "meteorological"
explanation, liters of rain, overflowing rivers... ---- The causes are
deep, they are linked to the very foundations of capitalism: a system
that crowds workers into marginal and low-income areas of cities in
order to better exploit them, a system that protects and privileges
productive and commercial activity, without worrying about protecting
people, at the mercy of their fate in the middle of the storm.

And then there are also the various "leaders" of the capitalist system
who are six of one and half a dozen of the other. On this occasion,
these scum, these nobodies, whether they are called Mazón or Sánchez,
without forgetting the Bourbons, can add to their usual status as
lackeys the fact that they are responsible for the deaths and the
tragedy experienced. We will not forget their names and, at the first
opportunity, we will make them pay.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE DISASTER
Both the meteorological service and the Hydrographic Confederation had
predicted the disaster. On Tuesday, October 29, torrential rains
saturated the dry basins, caused the rivers and ravines to overflow,
flooded and submerged a large part of L'Horta Sud in Valencia with water
and mud. The tragedy was served.

 From then on, and without the State (autonomous or central) planning
anything, it was the inhabitants who saved other inhabitants and helped
them with the most basic tasks. Without water or electricity, they
survive and organize themselves in the absence of the "government" and
its military and police "forces". The testimonies that reach us are both
moving and heroic: people and families who help each other, even at the
risk of their lives, and prevent the catastrophe from becoming much worse.

On Friday, November 1, the "authorities" and their "forces" still do not
show up, but the solidarity of the people is shown in an extraordinary
way. Thousands of people organize themselves from the city of Valencia
and descend in columns on foot to the villages of L'Horta to help, bring
water and food, support their fellow men with their presence. The State
is alarmed and begins to hinder solidarity, tries to structure it and
give it the form that corresponds to its own interests. He begins to
disorganize solidarity in the form of volunteering and, in a
catastrophic way (because it cannot be otherwise on the part of the
capitalist State), he tries to disarticulate it.

On November 2, five days after the floods, the army shows up with heavy
machinery and sets in motion its strategy to unblock the streets and
villages, discovering the enormous tragedy still hidden by the mud, the
rubble and the piled-up cars.

The "volunteers" begin to be directed to disgusting tasks (cleaning
shops and supermarkets), which the volunteers refuse to take on. They
did not go there to help businessmen and multinationals, but to help
their own people, people like them.

At that time, the missing number in the hundreds and the dead too. The
damage is considerable and thousands of people, most of them workers,
have lost everything.

On the 3rd, the government of the Generalitat banned the influx of
"volunteers" into the affected areas, invoking the orange alert, a way
to avoid protests and confrontation with the politicians who were going
to the area that day, politicians detested and hated by the population,
regardless of the color of the party or the rank they held in the state
apparatus, whether they were kings or presidents. But despite the ban,
people continued to descend on the villages of l'Horta. The
confrontation took place and Felipe VI, Mazón and Pedro Sánchez had to
flee the town of Paiporta under the cries of "murderers" and under the
throwing of mud and stones. MOTIVES FOR THE MASSACRE
This is indeed a massacre that could have been avoided to a large
extent, because it is the product of a system, capitalism, which is
catastrophic and has been managed by its State (autonomous and central,
it is the same rottenness) which only obeys the laws of profit and
capitalist profit.

Elements that favored the massacre:
Developmentalism and absurd and unbridled constructions are not the work
of corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen or clumsy urban planning. It
is the way that capital has found to transport workers to the cities
where work and consumption are concentrated, without taking into account
the place and the way in which these constructions were built,
constructions that are generally of very poor quality and located in
natural spaces where water and rivers used to flow. It is not surprising
that a city can be called Torrent or that a large number of streets are
called cañada or rambla, names that designate the place where the water
flowed and where it will flow again if it rains too much. It does not
matter where we build, what counts is the immediate benefit without
measuring the consequences for the workers, we who are for them (the
rich, the bourgeois, their politicians) only a commodity, a commodity
that can be replaced.

The cold drop has always existed in these regions, but the high
temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea due to global warming are causing
an increase in the intensity and frequency of torrential rains.
Capitalism is the system that has accumulated the most knowledge about
the effects of human action on its ecosystem, but it is also the most
destructive mode of production towards it. Its need to accumulate
capital leads it to require ever greater quantities of energy and raw
materials, no matter what. It is an internal dynamic that it cannot stop
and that necessarily places us in a scenario where the catastrophe
experienced can be recurrent over time.

The lack of prevention was also part of the massacre, part of the
cruelest. Despite the warnings, despite the forecasts and despite the
knowledge of the risk since Tuesday 29 in the morning, nothing was done,
the flow of labor-commodity could not be interrupted, stopping
production is something unimaginable for the political administrators of
capital. No one, neither the Generalitat, nor the central government,
nor the opposition (which is now trying to take advantage of the
situation) has considered that people would not go to work, nor to the
shops, nor to the educational centers; they have not considered
evacuating the inhabitants of the "flood zones" (which are well known,
however!). The world of goods and value must not be altered, no human
sacrifice is too much to quench the thirst for blood of capitalism and
its bastard leaders.

And once the crime is committed, the attention paid to the victims is
crowned by chaos. The State provides practically no help until the fifth
day and prevents self-organization. The State clearly shows that its
function is not to "take care" of people, but to take care of the world
of money, goods and the ruling classes, and in any case to control and
repress any attempt at organization from the bottom up, any attempt at
human solidarity.

SPONTANEOUS SELF-ORGANIZATION
Capital and its media never tire of repeating everywhere that human
beings are selfish by nature, that they only care about their own petty
interests, that they care about no one, that man is a wolf to man. They
want to impose on us what they are, what their system of exploitation,
their class system represents. This refrain is as old as capitalism.
Stories that scare.

What they will not be able to hide is the solidarity and
self-organization of people in the midst of tragedy. They will not be
able to hide from anyone the spontaneous organization in the face of the
massacre and the brutality of a system that hates life. Contrary to what
they preach, we have seen thousands of men and women offering their
selfless, passionate and active help in the affected areas. They can't
stand to see how, in villages and cities, people organize themselves to
meet their needs without waiting for the State's approval. What scares
them is that the cash register doesn't ring, that many goods become use
values, which can be enjoyed without purchase. The capitalists and their
media, this servile and well-paid carrion, have rushed to denounce the
theft and pillage of their properties. The State only appears to defend
private property with fire and blood.

The mountain of corpses grows every day, every hour, the devastation is
Dantesque, but they only think about saving their four fucking bags of
madeleines, their two pairs of shoes and their television... We won't
forget that either.

At this point, the answer is obvious: this happens to us because we live
under the thumb of the capitalist system, whether its political leaders
are left or right.

In the coming days we will witness the circus of "reproaches". Those who
today call for demonstrations against the "fascist" government of the
Generalitat are opportunists who seek to make political profit from our
deaths, from our misery.
While left-wing political parties, like unions, are equally guilty and
responsible for promoting and managing unbridled developmentalism, which
turns its back on natural space, because the only thing that matters to
them is the production of wealth (for the rich, of course) and the
extraction of profits (surplus value) at the expense of the working class.

Because let's not be mistaken, this is the reason for the existence of
parties and unions: to defend the capitalist mode of production to the
limit, to be the essential intermediaries, both politically and
ideologically, by maintaining the illusion that this system can be
reformed, that it can be made more "humane". We cannot ask them to be
anything other than what they are.

It is time to mourn the lost loved ones, to find their bodies, to bury
the deceased with dignity. It is time to remove the rubble and recover
the little we have in this life of misery. It is also time to clench our
fists and our teeth. But beyond the flood of feelings, it is time to
understand in depth the real causes that led to the tragedy. The
essential thing is that capitalism cannot stop activity, workers must
produce at their workstations, and "citizens" must consume the goods
produced. The wheel of capitalist valorization cannot be stopped,
whatever the cost, even if it means transforming cities and villages
into gigantic mousetraps.

Nature has not suddenly gone mad. What prevents the reduction of
greenhouse gases is the profound alteration caused by the competition of
capital and productivity itself as well as by the accelerated production
of superfluous goods, simple "trinkets" that have no meaning. And even
recognizing the natural nature of floods and floods, which have always
existed, the exponential increase and their appearance in areas where
they did not occur before (let us recall the floods in Germany and
Belgium in 2021 with their 167 deaths) respond to causes that are
social: capitalism.

Although at the individual level, anyone could have been "hit" in a car,
and even a businessman could have been swept away by the flood, it is
the workers who mainly pay the price, crammed into their neighborhoods
threatened by floods, prey to real estate speculation and a precarious
and miserable life. It is no coincidence that uncontrolled urbanization
has crammed millions of workers for decades, often having built their
homes with their own hands, into rieras[old riverbeds now dry]or into
landfills. These workers, from impoverished rural areas, are today
paying with their lives for capital's thirst for labor. What seems to be
a simple misfortune is in reality only the observation of the existence
of a society divided into classes.

Faced with so much pain, so much suffering, it is comforting to see the
solidarity that has been demonstrated everywhere. Outside of the State
and administrations of all kinds, people recognize each other as equals,
as brothers and sisters in misfortune. We must concentrate this energy.
Complicated days are coming, when the helplessness in the face of so
much destruction will be aggravated by the action of all the proponents
of the system, from the extreme right with its "national" and racist
solutions, praising a so-called "people" that would include us all, to
the extreme left, with its "new" proposals for "radical" reforms and its
incessant harassment of the right.

But there is another option. We must bring reflection to our
surroundings, at work, in schools, among friends and family. The tragedy
concerns us all as a proletariat, regardless of the sector. We must
discuss in depth the real causes, placing the analysis of capitalist
laws at the center of the debate. There is no half-measure, no
intermediate solution. Not attacking the capitalist system at the root
is contributing to perpetuating its devastating effects in each of its
manifestations.

The mud will be cleaned, the cars and furniture will be removed. Let us
hope that from there emerges a new class consciousness, a new dignity,
honoring all the dead, present and past, screaming in the face of our
enemies, all this cohort of politicians, cops, businessmen and beggars
of the capitalist system, that what we want is a community without
capital, without money and without goods, without a State. That we want
communism.

It is probably not for today, but perhaps we can swell the ranks of
those who want to wage a relentless fight.

Because no one will silence us, we will speak in the name of our dead.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4289
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WORLD WORLDWIDE CANADA - news journal UPDATE - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - The housing crisis is the government (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In free fall in the polls, the Legault government is targeting an easy

target, immigrants and asylum seekers. Easy, because they are a
vulnerable population and especially without a voice, who ultimately
will not be able to punish the CAQ at the ballot box. By designating
them as scapegoats, the government can thus deny its role and
responsibility for its own inactions, negligence and errors in matters
of housing, homelessness, in the health and education sectors.
To this end, Premier François Legault stated last June: "100% of the
housing problem comes from the increase in the number of temporary
immigrants".

He also stated that: "For two years, across Quebec, mainly because of
the federal government, because the majority are accepted by the federal
government, there has been an increase of 300,000 temporary immigrants.
This means an additional need for more than 100,000 homes. It's
physically impossible... "(La Presse, June 28)

During his trip to France, he even hoped that the federal government
would take inspiration from the worst European practices by requesting
the establishment of detention camps on Canadian soil: "What we asked
Ottawa to do was to take inspiration from France, among other things,
because there, we currently have 160,000 asylum seekers.[...]And more
than a third, 40%, of asylum seekers do not speak French and settle in
Montreal, while there is already a decline in French in Montreal. Is
there a possibility of moving them to other areas?" Le devoir

You have to be "cheap" in osti to blame immigrants for a housing crisis,
which, let's remember, existed well before the recent increase in
temporary immigration. This crisis has accelerated since 2022. It is a
multifactorial phenomenon that, according to the Front d'action
populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), results mainly from:
insufficient supervision of the rental market; the deficit in the
construction of social housing over the last 30 years; lax regulations
concerning short-term accommodation, such as with Airbnb; the
financialization of housing and the absence of programs dedicated to
student housing. In short, the market and its so-called invisible hand.

To listen to them, immigration would be responsible for all evils.

For a long time, Prime Minister Legault has pointed to immigration as
"the great culprit of all evils". In the last election, he had to
apologize after making amalgams between immigration, violence and
extremism and suggesting that immigration could threaten social peace in
Quebec.

Its Minister of Education, and former PQ minister Bernard Drainville,
stated for his part that the delays in the implementation of 4-year-old
kindergarten classes were caused by the arrival of temporary immigrants.

The government also stated that a third of the shortage of health
personnel and half of the lack of qualified teachers in Quebec result
from "the presence of temporary immigrants."

Anne Plourde, a researcher at IRIS, highlighted the irony of the
situation: "the government blames the increase in temporary immigration
for the labour shortage in public services. But this increase, the
researcher reminds us, is partly the result of pressure exerted since
2021 by the Legault government itself on the federal government to
facilitate temporary immigration. It is also the result of its own
recruitment efforts abroad, steps that are aimed precisely at
countering... the labour shortage, particularly in public services."

Designating "false culprits" and titillating the identity and
nationalist fiber obviously allows us to rise in the polls (see the PQ),
but above all to hide the widening of inequalities and to exonerate the
real culprits: the State and this minority of wealthy people who exploit
the majority of people. We have not reached the end of this nationalist,
identity-based and populist bidding war between the PQ and the CAQ.
After the PQ proposed (warning, sarcasm) "to counter the devitalization
of regions and villages" with robots, the CAQ government has announced a
freeze on new applications in the Quebec Experience Program (PEQ) until
next spring. The next few years are likely to be very difficult. We have
not finished hearing the speeches about our so-called "reception
capacity". To the great displeasure of those fleeing bombs, violence,
hunger and environmental disasters. People pushed onto migratory routes
remain the main victims of international division, access to work,
wealth, resources, but also exposure to ecological nuisances.

It is more imperative than ever to link and converge environmental
struggles with those against capitalism, racism and colonialism.

by Collectif Emma Goldman

https://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2024/11/la-crise-du-logement-cest-le.html
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE BELGIUM BRUSSELS - BRUZZ - Deze Week - News from Brussels - Zondag 1 december 2024

 

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Weik van 't Brussels Quiz Weik van 't Brussels: hoe goed is jouw Brussels? vrijdag 29 november 2024 Lees meer Trambestuurster Ilham Ouamass is 'Brusseleir van’t joêr' donderdag 28 november 2024 Lees meer

Interview Zwangere Guy en Vera Coomans verenigd op de soundtrack van 'Putain': 'Wij ademen samen' donderdag 28 november 2024 Lees meer Podcast #109 Radio Radzinski met Gui Polspoel: over Pelé, Mobutu en een daadkrachtige Dolberg woensdag 27 november 2024 Lees meer Dit was de recordeditie van Brussel Helpt 2024! maandag 25 november 2024 Lees meer De week van BRUZZ vanuit Sint-Joost zaterdag 30 november 2024 Lees meer

Vlaams Brusselse Media vzw Eugène Flageyplein 18 Elsene 1050 Belgium