Kasama Project renews itself with a host of new interesting articles

You may know of Kasama on its own right or maybe by links and reposts at this blog. I've personally found a lot of interesting materials and debates in that North American space and therefore I feel glad that they are growing and able to renew the site in full. 

A little inconvenience was maybe that today I found myself with dozens of articles at my feed, many of which are very interesting. With a more spaced publication tempo, I would select a few and publish here, one entry at a time, the first paragraphs with a link to the original site for those interested... but in this case, I will have to make a quick list in a single entry because the interesting materials are so many... 

Greek reality under the Troika

The humanitarian crisis in Greece is worsening day by day as a result of the policies decided by the IMF-EU-ECB Troika and implemented by the puppet tripartite government (composed by the right-wing Nea Dimokratia, the “social democratic” PASOK and the so called “Democratic Left”). The official data that have been published last week by the Hellenic Statistical Authority under the auspices of EUROSTAT, despite been “embellished”, are quite revealing:

UNEMPLOYMENT ALMOST TRIPLED SINCE 2009

The unemployment, which was 9,5% in 2009, before the transformation of Greece into a guinea pig by the Troika and its local lackeys, has jumped to 12,5% in 2010, then to 17,7% in 2011, and now (official data for October 2012) amounts to 26,8%. What makes things even worse is that actually, out of the 1.300.000 unemployed, less than 200.000 receive any form of “unemployment benefit” (the term is rather an euphemism: the “benefit” for the few lucky ones ranges from € 180 to € 468 per month, and is paid for a period of 5 to 12 months, depending on the wage, the length of employment, and the number of dependent members of the family).

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→ continue reading at Kasama.

India's Revolution: deeply entrenched despite media's blackout

In a political environment dominated by unrest in West Asia, tension in East Asia and economic crises in North America and Europe, everyone seems to have forgotten about the insurgency still raging in the heartland of Eastern India. For their own reasons, both the Indian government and the insurgents seemingly do not mind the lack of attention to the battle they are waging.

The Maoists of India, popularly known as the ‘Naxalites’ have been waging a war of attrition with the government of India for four and a half decades. It has seen its ups and downs over the years. After being almost wiped out in the early 1970s, it regrouped and reemerged as a much more strong force around a decade ago. It appeared so strong that the Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh declared it to be the “greatest internal threat” India is facing in 2006.

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→ continue reading at Kasama.

[USA] The West Coast port shutdowns: beyond 'defend the ILWU'

In the last few weeks of November and December, strikes have broken out or been threatened at the Ports of Oakland, LA, Portland, Seattle and beyond. These struggles of port workers (SEIU clerical, short haul truckers, ILWU longshore/security guards/clerical), against regional governments and the port authorities, as well as the multi-national corporations that depend on and profit from the Ports, have drawn our attentions for good reason. Occupy members have come forth to join picket lines and rallies up and down the coast. These struggles, which are also linked to a struggle within the unions and, in some cases, against the limitations of all unions, have the potential to lay the basis for a broader base of power for all of us.

What did we Learn from Longview and West Coast Port Shutdowns?

The Occupy-led West Coast Port Shutdown of Dec 12, 2011, marked an important shift in Occupy’s trajectory. Inspired by Occupy Oakland’s General Strike/Shut Down The Port on November 2, 2011, it demonstrated how a movement in the streets can be transformed in encounters with the daily struggles of working class life. In doing so, it posed radical new possibilities – ones further clarified when Longview, WA Local 21 of the ILWU called on Occupy to prepare to assist them in shutting down the EGT grain terminal when a threatened scab ship arrived to be loaded in January, 2012.

Some in the union, the media, state and city officials and even “Left” parties and intellectuals told us at the time that it wasn’t valid for us to be marching on the ports because we weren’t the “real workers” or because the union had opposed it. Yet our presence in the ports transformed not only our sense of power and possibility, but the sense of what was possible for the workers there. It is still transforming it, as shown in the one-day SEIU strike a week ago which shut down the Port of Oakland (when ILWU workers honored the picket line staffed by SEIU and Occupy folks) and forced the Port Commission and the City of Oakland to negotiate after months of stalling.

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→ continue reading at Kasama.

Other interesting articles (my selection):

• Argentina's RCP on general strikes and upcoming struggles.
• India: "Why did it need an incident so unspeakably brutal to trigger outrage?"
• The cult of Anti-Revisionism.
• Whose revolution? Syria and the anti-imperialist Left.
• The Maoist Revolution in Tibet (historical).
• People's Power in Michoacán, Mexico.
• Puerto Rico's fight for independence (historical).
• First impressions: Reporting on new tremors of change in Nepal.
• and a long etcetera...

And, of course, there is an appeal for donations.