En mémoire de Patrice Lumumba assassiné
le 17 janvier 1961

par Eric Toussaint

Ce 17 janvier 2021, nous commémorons le 60^e anniversaire de l’assassinat de Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961).

Suite à une victoire éclatante aux premières véritables élections auxquelles les Congolais ont participé, Patrice Lumumba est devenu premier ministre du Congo du 24 juin 1960 jusqu’à son renversement et son emprisonnement le 14 septembre de la même année par le militaire Joseph-Désiré Mobutu et ses soutiens. Ce dernier a ensuite dirigé le pays, d’abord en sous-main, puis de manière directe à partir de 1965 jusqu’à son renversement en 1997.

What Trump's Doing Is Crazy and Dangerous—and It Ain't Over Yet

Trump still threatens us, and discussing the election in the past tense is stupid.

by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Ever since November 7, when the election was more or less authoritatively “called” by all major media, a wide range of pundits have spoken as if the election was decided. Some of these pundits have explained away Trump’s consistent and angry refusal of the results as a sign of his narcissism and immaturity; some have focused on the ineptitude of the Rudy Giuliani/Jenna Ellis legal team; and some have focused on the important fact that so many judges and state election officials, even Republican ones, have refused to comply with Trump’s efforts to subvert the election. Most recently, attention has focused on the December 8 “Safe Harbor” date prescribed by federal law. The point: the results have now been certified, and Biden obviously must be selected next week by the Electoral College, and Trump’s latest efforts are beside the point.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Rolling Constitutional-Fascist Coup in the World's Most Dangerous Nation

by Paul Street

“We Want to Get Rid of the Ballots”

We are in the middle of a rolling authoritarian and even fascist coup that is working with and through the United States Constitution to no small degree. To be sure, Trump is doing everything in his considerable power to undermine a “normal” bourgeois-constitutional election. He’s working to sabotage mail delivery in an election that will depend on mail-in ballots thanks to the pandemic Trump has fanned. He’s deploying armed right-wing “poll watchers” to intimidate minority and other Biden voters. He’s encouraging terrorist street actions and intimidation by white “tough guys” (bikers, militia members, cops, and soldiers) before, during, and after the election. His party will mess with voting sites and access in majority Democratic jurisdictions.

Will the Military Support a Declaration of Martial Law

Garett Reppenhagen, Veterans for Peace,
Interviewed by Bill Resnick

August 27, 2020

Recently, Veterans for Peace issued a statement condemning the deployment of troops in the U.S.: 

 “Veterans For Peace condemns the inflammatory statements of Donald Trump. His declaration of calling for military troops on US soil to quell people exercising their First Amendment right is inflammatory and incredibly dangerous. We stand unequivocally with the protestors who are in the streets calling for an end to senseless police killings and white supremacy.

In addition to the 200,000 troops already deployed across the world, US cities are being occupied by military force. Thousands of heavily-armed soldiers, military personnel and police have been deployed to the cities across the nation as Trump calls on the military to ‘dominate the streets’ and that he’d override any local control if governors refuse to deploy the National Guard. Threats and intimidation are tactics of terror by this administration. Trump’s statements as well as past statements are incendiary and effectively declare war on our communities…

Veterans For Peace calls on all active duty military leaders and personnel to refuse deployment. We as veterans know the terrible aftermath of participating in actions that are morally wrong against communities in other countries. Now is the time to refuse to participate in orders that are unjust.”  

Ernest Mandel

et l’écosocialisme

par Michael Löwy*

La préoccupation de l'environnement apparaît avec force dans les écrits de Mandel seulement à partir des années 1970. Elle ne figure pratiquement pas, par exemple, dans le Traité d'économie marxiste (1962). Il est vrai qu’on trouve déjà, dans cet ouvrage inaugural , l’idée d’un "arrêt de la croissance" dans le socialisme : " Lorsque la société disposera d’un parc de machines automatiques suffisamment ample pour couvrir tous ses besoins courants (…) il est probable que la croissance économique sera ralentie ou même momentanément arrêtée. L’homme complètement libre de tout souci matériel, économique, sera né. " ⁽¹⁾

A boot is crushing the neck of American democracy

by Cornel West

The fundamental question at this moment is: can the United States be reformed?

Here we go again. Another black person killed by the US police. Another wave of multiracial resistance. Another cycle of race talk on the corporate media. Another display of diversity with neoliberal leaders, and another white backlash soon to come. Yet this time might be a turning point. 

The undeniable barbaric death of George Floyd, the inescapable vicious realities of the unequal misery of the coronavirus, the massive unemployment at Depression levels and the wholesale collapse of the legitimacy of political leadership (in both parties) are bringing down the curtain on the American empire.

COVID-19:

The murderous state!

by SUD Santé

We are publishing this text from the SUD Santé Sociaux federation, because it reflects the reality encountered by staff in this sector in our different countries.

On 17 November 2019, in the city of Wuhan, China, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID 19) appeared. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern. Agnès Buzyn, then Minister of Solidarity and Health, declared that she had informed Edouard Philippe, Prime Minister, of the imminence of the pandemic …

In France, since this government has been in power, Emmanuel Macron has watched with extreme violence all the movements: yellow jackets, pensions, health. He criminalizes demonstrators, equips his forces of law and order with several million euros of war material and munitions to disembowel, injure, kill... And prepare, in general carelessness, with the complicity of the institutionalized political parties, the municipal elections without taking any particular precautions on the movement of goods and people. Normal for an ultra-liberal, capitalist and fascist government.

El activista y expreso político del franquismo Chato Galante fallece por coronavirus

Era miembro de la asociación de presos y represaliados de la dictadura franquista La Comuna y pertenecía a la Liga Comunista Revolucionaria cuando fue detenido y torturado hasta en cuatro ocasiones entre los años 1969 y 1973.

Nunca dejó de luchar. Llevó las marcas de la ignominia franquista en su propia piel y trató, por todos los medios, de que nunca olvidemos lo que ocurrió en nuestro país. El activista y expreso político José María 'Chato' Galante ha fallecido esta noche a consecuencia del coronavirus, según informa su propia cuenta en la red social Twitter.

The Capitalist Pandemic,

Coronavirus and the Economic Crisis (Part 1)

by Eric Toussaint

A public health crisis

The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.

The mainstream media and governments focus on the differences in mortality rates according to age, but they very carefully avoid any reference to class differences and how mortality, due to the coronavirus pandemic, will affect human beings according to their income and wealth

Under the pretext of necessary fiscal austerity to repay public debt, governments and major multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and regional banks such as the African Development Bank have everywhere enforced policies that have deteriorated public health systems: job cuts in the health sector, precarious employment contracts, reduction of hospital beds, closure of local health centres, increase of health care costs and of prices of medicines, under-investment in infrastructure and equipment, privatization of various health sectors, under-investment by the public sector in research and development of treatments for the benefit of the interests of large private pharmaceutical groups...

La Lega #HaciaLaHuelgaFeminista

- Coro de Mujeres Feministas

EL DIA  8 DE MARZO
HAREMOS UNA HUELGA
CON TODAS LAS MUJERES
LA CALLE SERÁ NUESTRA

ABUELAS, ESTUDIANTES
HETEROS, TRANS,  BOLLERAS
DIVERSAS Y MIGRANTES
VAMOS JUNTAS A LA HUELGA

O LI OLI OLÁ……..
LA HUELGA VENCERÁ
ES LA HUELGA FEMINISTA
ES LA HUELGA FEMINISTA

Thirteen theses on the imminent ecological catastrophe and the (revolutionary) means of averting it

 by Michael Löwy*

I. The ecological crisis is already the most important social and political question of the 21st century, and will become even more so in the coming months and years. The future of the planet, and thus of humanity, will be determined in the coming decades. Calculations by certain scientists as to scenarios for the year 2100 aren’t very useful for two reasons: a) scientific: considering all the retroactive effects impossible to calculate, it is very risky to make projections over a century. B) political: at the end of the century, all of us, our children and grandchildren will be gone, so who cares?

Megafires in Australia: a climate tipping point, live

by TANURO Daniel

The expression ‘tipping point’ refers to the point when a system passes from one system of equilibrium to another, the point where it is no longer possible to prevent accumulated quantitative changes from causing a qualitative change. It is used in many different fields, from population studies to climate change, as well as social sciences.

The spectre of a ‘hothouse planet’

The evolution of the Greenland ice cap provides an important example of a tipping point in the climate field. We know that the disappearance of the entire island’s ice cap will raise ocean levels by approximately seven meters. Specialists have observed that the melt has speeded up to a disturbing extent [1], but the ice cap does not seem to have entered an irreversible break-up process yet. According to IPCC, its tipping point would be located between 1.5°C and 2°C heating. At current emissions rates, we would enter the danger zone towards 2040…