IRAQ: On Recent Events in Mosul and Other Cities in Iraq

[ISIS fighters in Iraq. Image from Creative Commons/Google.]

13 June 2014

Mosul and other cities in Iraq are experiencing dramatic, dangerous, and fateful changes.

The media, especially that which is allied with the Iraqi government and western states, has been focusing on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIS) and its control over several Iraqi cities, provoking its audiences against the militant group. Indeed, ISIS terrorist groupings do exist among armed groups there and its influence in the recent events is clear. However, it is also true that Iraqis generally reject ISIS, whether in the central or southern regions of Iraq or in parts of the country that are no longer under government control: the so-called “Sunni” areas or the “Sunni Triangle”, a term that intelligence services, particularly the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), devised as part of a plan to engineer sectarianism in Iraq. At the same time, Iraqis generally reject Maliki’s regime and its policies, built as they are on an ethno-sectarian basis. This is especially the case in urban areas where sectarian discrimination is most concentrated, wherein the government treats ordinary people as political enemies.

EGYPT: Workers struggle to self-manage, Renationalized companies left idle as workers fight to make factories function

self-managed Economic Company for Industrial Development, 2009

By Jano Charbel

Weary of governmental inaction regarding the court-ordered renationalization of their companies, many workers have sought to take matters into their own hands through experiments in workers’ self-management — only to find that the government is actively obstructing their efforts.

Workers Of Self-Managed Factories Gather in Marseille

By Theodoros Karyotis
SolidarityEconomy.net via ZSpace

Feb 6, 2014 – Workers, activists and academics gather at the occupied and self-managed Fralib factory in Marseille for Europe’s first “Workers’ Economy” meeting.

Fralib is a herb processing and packaging factory located twenty-odd kilometers from the southern French port city of Marseille. The previous owner of the factory, chemical and agri-food giant Unilever, decided three years ago to move production of Lipton tea abroad to save on costs. The 80 workers, through protest and boycott campaigns, have demanded that the factory stay open and, after this proved impossible, they decided to take production into their own hands.

عبد الناصر والطبقة العاملة المصرية

02.01.2010

تعرضت الطبقة العاملة المصرية لتجربه قاسيه، ما زالت تعاني من آثارها حتى الان، هي تجربتها مع النظام الناصري الذي ما زالت فلول اليسار المصري التقليدي (الستالينيون، الناصريون، التجمعيون) يذرفون الدموع الساخنه عليه،  ويعتبرون سقوطه ردة يمينيه، كما لا يزالون يرددون شعاراته الباليه، و هم في هذا يخونون الطبقة التي يدّعون الدفاع عنها، و قد سبق لهم ان ساعدوا النظام الناصري على أن يحقق أغراضه في تحطيم وحدة ووعي الطبقة العاملة المصرية، وهو الأمر الذي أوصلها لما هي فيه من ضعف الآن.

POLAND: Union Protests in Warsaw, September 11-14

09/15/2013 by ZSP

Over these 4 days, the three largest mainstream unions organized protests in Warsaw as a reaction to changes in the Labour Law and the Act on Trade Unions which, among other things, allow employers to put up to 78-hour weekly schedules for months at a time. The Multi-Branch Union of ZSP in Warsaw (formerly Education and IT) took part in some protests and organized some alternative events.

POLAND: Poland does away with the 8-hour day

15 June 2013 by akai

The avant-garde of neoliberal horrors has finally done away with the 8-hour working day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IRAQ: Class struggle in Iraq – interview with a veteran

An interview covering class struggle in Iraq from the ’40s to early ’90s in Iraq.

The following interview was first published in ‘Workers Scud – no patriot can catch us!’ (London, June 1991), a collection of articles reflecting on the Gulf War.

The Class Struggle in Iraq – an interview with a veteran

Q: Can you briefly tell us about the class struggle in Iraq before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958?

A: In the 1940’s and early 1950’s the class struggle was mainly situated in the rural areas. Peasant uprisings (eg. in Aali-azarchi which lasted about 3 years before being violently suppressed) were a constant headache for the semi-feudal landowners and the state.

Urban struggles intensified with the nine-day strike of Kirkuk oil workers in 1946 (put down with loss of 10 lives). Unemployment and homelessness were rampant. There were thousands of sarifas (shacks made of palm branches) around and inside Baghdad.

1956 (Suez Crisis) had a massive impact on Iraq, with demonstrations against the Iraqi regime who were seen as British stooges. The Palestinian issue also helped radicalisation. I still wonder why there wasn’t a revolution in 1956!I These internal and external events led to the formation of the Free Officers (nationalist/Nasserist) who had links with the Iraqi ‘Communist’ Party (l.C.P.) but not so much with the Ba’ths.

GREECE: The Greek workers who took inspiration from Argentina

by ROAR Collective on May 9, 2013

Photo: a worker-owner in the recovered IMPA factory in Buenos Aires.

Drawing inspiration from the Recovered Factories Movement in Argentina, the Vio.Me factory in Greece has begun production under worker self-management.

SYRIA: May Day … the revolution of the workers and the toiling masses

Aware of the revolutionary left in Syria

Declaration

In this third year of the Syrian popular revolution which has made enormous sacrifices, it is clear that it reflects a fierce struggle and acute class. A struggle that involves the popular classes, led by the workers, the working masses and the poor in urban and rural areas, to face a tyrannical power bourgeois coalition around a corrupt junta that serves the interests of a middle class whose power and greed have achieved in the last decade of staggering proportions. This along with the implementation of anti-social liberal policies that led to the loss of more than a third of the country’s population accompanied by an absolute denial of civil liberties, including freedom of opinion, expression, party and trade union, the right to demonstrate …

EGYPT: The self-management of Port Said and the workers’ struggles

27 February 2013

An unprecedented situation is taking place in the city of Port Said – complete self-management, a rejection of everything that authority represents. It is a situation that the main actors in the Egyptian struggle at this time – the workers – are trying to reproduce in other cities too.