Anti-austerity protests lack anti-capitalist leadership

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Police break up the demonstration in Parliament Square

Last weekend saw spontenous demonstrations outside Downing Street and the Grand Connaught Rooms, where Cameron was apologising to the Tory party, attracting several thousand before being broken up by police. These demonstrations came in the wake of revelations that the ruling class (including Cameron) have been – shockingly! – routinely engaged in avoiding paying taxes on their assets. The leak, dubbed the Panama Papers, reveals connections between major banks, heads of state, and government officials the world over with tax avoidance vehicles and shell companies.

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Anti-war and anti-imperialism: where Stop the War fails

Anti-war demonstrations against British airstrikes in Syria took place across the country on Saturday (12/12/2015), with a march in London, attended by thousands, taking place from BBC Broadcasting House to a rally outside Downing St. The anger was palpable, and rightly so. After a brief stall when Cameron’s previous attempts to openly bomb Syria were frustrated by intense opposition to constant war, a lynchpin of British imperialism, the recent terrorist atrocities in Paris were cynically used to get the green light for airstrikes in the region.

Syria demo, Assad portrait

 

“It is very clear tonight that while the House has not passed a motion it is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action.”

David Cameron, July 2015

With recent reports of coalition airstrikes hitting a Syrian Arab Army position in Deir ez-Zor, the real motives are as clear as ever. Despite Western heads of state openly admitting they have no hope of defeating terrorists in the region unless they work with Assad, they refuse to do so. Western airstrikes are still not being coordinated with the Syrian government and they seem to have little effect. The Russian strikes however, which are seriously pushing back ISIL/Daesh, are coordinated fully with the Syrian Arab Army.

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End Austerity Now: tens of thousands march

Demo Panorama
It has been reported that the demonstration attracted 250,000 people.

The End Austerity Now national demonstration in London this Saturday (20 June 2015) attracted over 250,000 people, by far the biggest single showing of public anger against the British regime in over a decade. Unions, political parties, activist groups, and individuals came together under a single clear message – we won’t tolerate capitalist austerity that puts profit before people.

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TTIP protests across Europe

No TTIP European Day of Action, London, UK 11 Oct 2014.

CPGB-ML and Red Youth activists attended and spoke at a demonstration opposing TTIP today at Shepherd’s Bush in West London (see video below).

TTIP is the latest in the legacy of cuts and privatisation ushered in by successive imperialist governments, and has been rearing it’s ugly head with increasing frequency in the media recently – but not without opposition, despite the best attempts of our governments and media to sanitise it, and brush its anti-social effects under the carpet.

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Taking Action For Palestine

Earlier today activists from London Palestine Action bravely occupied UAV Engines in Shenstone, Staffordshire, owned by Elbit Systems (an Israeli company). UAV Engines produces parts for Israeli drones used in the massacre of Palestinian men, women, and children, as well as to destroy schools and hospitals in Gaza. A contingent from Red Youth are attending in solidarity with the activists and the Palestinian people, and in protest against the Zionist regime.

Red Youth protesting Israeli arms factory
Pro-Palestine protest at an Israeli arms factory shut down by activists

The activists have chained themselves to the roof of the factory, forcing it to stop production and demanding that UK ceases trading arms to Israel, imposes sanctions on Israel, and supports the investigation into human rights abuses in Gaza.

Despite having to keep the operation a secret, as soon as it was announced earlier today people have been travelling from all over the country to show their support. Ordinary people who know they have the ability and the duty to make a difference are arriving from Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Milton Keynes, and further afield to protest British involvement in the war crimes perpetrated by Israel.

Despite an overwhelming police response, including countless vans, officers, and a helicopter, the protesters are determined not to let these crimes against humanity go unchallenged. The stony indifference of the ruling class’s lackeys have only fuelled the determination of the protesters to help the activists keep the factory shut, and their servitude to the warmongering, profiteering bosses of this country are as clear as ever.

These is awareness growing amongst the working classes that the media is selling us a cheap fairy tale of good versus evil in the world, that the wars of the ruling class are not their wars, and that there is a world to fight for in which justice and equality can be the norm rather than the exception.

Together, by organising, educating, and taking action we can throw a spanner in the gears of the imperialist war machine. This is the only way the working people of the world can take back their rights, dignity, and redirect the fruits of their labour to the betterment of humanity.

Do something today, share this article, tell someone about the injustices committed by the UK in their name, come to the UAV Engines factory at Shenstone (Lynn Lane, near the train station, WS14 0DH) to support the activists and protest the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children.

The CPGB-ML and Red Youth are hosting a public meeting to discuss the bourgeois media lies about what is happening in Gaza and what can be done about it this Friday 8th August at 274 Moseley Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, B12 0BS at 6:30pm.

You should also join us at the Palestine Solidarity Committe demonstration in London on Saturday 9th August, taking place at 12 noon in front of BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA. Take action! Make a difference!

Read more here:

Stand with Gaza… Join the axis of resistance! (CPGB-ML, August 2014)

Resistance is the key to defeating zionism (joti2gaza, July 2014)

Palestine: strengthen the axis of resistance! (Proletarian, December 2013)

RT report: Protest against media bias in war for public opinion over Syria

The following is taken from the article on Russia Today concerning protests aimed at exposing media bias against Syria in the war for public opinion.

syrian electronic army

The New York Times’ website has been disabled for the second time in under a month, with the newspaper attributing the outage to a “malicious external attack” widely thought to have come from hackers affiliated with the Syrian Electronic Army.

“Many users are having difficulty accessing the New York Times online,” the paper wrote on its Facebook page. “We are working to fix the problem. Our initial assessment is the outage is most likely the result of a malicious external attack. In the meantime we are continuing to publish key news reports.”

Multiple screenshots online reveal that when a user attempts to visit www.nytimes.com, the only message that appears is “Hacked by the SEA.” The hacker collective regularly infiltrates media organizations it perceives to be aligned against the Assad government.

The Times has continued publishing news articles on http://news.nytco.com since the main site began experiencing outages at approximately 3:00 pm EST.

This was the NYT homepage for a few minutes earlier pic.twitter.com/p8zJA96Nmn
— Megan Hess (@mhess4) August 27, 2013
The SEA also claimed in a series of tweets that it hijacked the domain for Twitter, redirected the social media traffic to its own server and rendering the site unstable.

Twitter spokesperson Jim Prosser confirmed to journalist Matthew Keys that site technicians are “looking into claims” from the SEA.

Hi @Twitter, look at your domain, its owned by #SEA :) http://t.co/ZMfpo1t3oG pic.twitter.com/ck7brWtUhK
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) August 27, 2013

The SEA, a shadowy group of hackers sympathetic to the Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has launched cyber-attacks on a number of media outlets in recent months including the associated Press’ Twitter feed, which falsely reported that US President Barack Obama was injured in an attack on the White House.

The Times’ page was last unavailable on August 14, although the several-hour outage was later blamed on “a failure during regular maintenance.”

“While it may seem a little bit like they’re doing it for lulz because it is kind of random, it is ideologically motivated in the sense that these are all supporters of the Assad regime,” Eva Galperin, a global public policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Verge. “And they’re looking to get a message out about what they feel is bias in the media against Assad.”

This string of attacks comes as US leaders have publicly discussed the possibility of launching an attack against the Assad government, which they say used deployed chemical weapons on the Syrian people as the nation’s civil war passed the two-year point. US Secretary of State John Kerry has called Syria’s use of chemical weapons “undeniable” and “a moral obscenity” as government sources said a cruise missile strike was imminent.

Communists demonstrate in Turkey against Syrian intervention

As thousands demonstrate regularly across Turkey, follow the stories on the youtube site of the TKP and the daily newspaper Sol.

Scene from the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles are being brought into the country
Scene from the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles are being brought into the country

The TKP (Communist Party of Turkey) has organised a series of militant demonstrations opposing the arrival of patriot missiles and the escalation of Turkey’s aggressive stance towards Syria these last few weeks. The photograph above shows workers at the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles were arriving over the weekend. The first video which we post below is from one of the first major demonstrations which was reported by Iran’s PressTv and the subsequent video’s are of TKP activists rallying in Istanbul and other places.

After Syria comes Iran

In 2007, retired US general Wesley Clarke revealed details of a secret Pentagon ‘Redirection strategy’ document, which proposed using 9/11 to justify launching unprovoked wars (the highest international crime) on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iran and Lebanon – all countries seen as obstacles to US world domination and obstacles to the raking in of maximum profits by British and US corporations.

It is clear that if the Syrian government is toppled, the attacks against Iran will be escalated into a full war – and the inevitable endgame if the juggernaut is not stopped will be a catastrophic conflagration against Russia and China. Meanwhile, those who tell us to support the Syrian ‘opposition’ are blocking our ability to effectively mobilise and sabotage the war effort, which means objectively (whether or not they mean to) they are weakening not only Syria’s chances of survival but also Iran’s.

For imperialism, Syria is a stepping stone, a gateway to Iran. And so the best defence for Iran will naturally be a victory for the Syrian government. Which means the most urgent question for the British anti-war movement today is the defence of Syria.

Iran’s envoy, Saeed Jalili, says that Iran and Syria are part of an unbreakable “axis of resistance”. We workers in Britain need to join this ‘axis of resistance’ by refusing to cooperate with the criminal war against Syria. We must refuse to fight; refuse to make or transport arms and supplies; refuse to create or broadcast war propaganda that demonises Syria’s leaders and justifies the war. And we must give full support to the Syrian and Iranian governments in defending their people against imperialism.