Thursday, October 20, 2016

PAME: Solidarity with the General Strike of Italy's USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) on October 21

The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) expresses its solidarity with the workers and the USB (Unione Sindacale di Baseof Italy for their strike on October 21.
The attack of the Renzi Government in Italy, as well as the directives of the European Union in all countries of Europe, for wage and pension cuts, cuts in social benefits and social security, they all aim to safeguard the profits of the business groups. In this context escalates oppression, repression against trade union rights and freedoms, intimidations by the employers. Tragic consequence of these developments was the recent murder of the striker-USB member Abdel Salam El Danaf.
The class trade union movement of Greece supports the just demands of the Italian workers and expresses its solidarity to USB for the Strike it organizes on October 21.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Interview with Kostas Papadakis (KKE): "SYRIZA has been chosen by the bourgeois class to complete the dirty work..."

Special interview with Kostas Papadakis, member of the CC of the KKE and Member of the European Parliament.

International Communist Press, 17th October 2016.

ICP: After the 3rd memorandum in Greece, we are all witnessing anti-worker and anti-popular laws passing from the parliament. Is it possible to say that the people are getting more and more politicized and organized as their standard of living has been decreased into half?

Kostas Papadakis: The SYRIZA-ANEL government established its own memorandum, which was passed together with the votes of the "rightwing" and "centre" bourgeois parties (ND, PASOK, POTAMI), on the basis of the two previous memoranda. The memoranda are not just an agreement with the imperialist institutions, but the "programme" of the bourgeois class in order to return to profitability, reducing labour rights and the price of labour power.

The SYRIZA-ANEL government, taking harsh anti-worker measures, causes deep disillusionment amongst wide sections of the people. Amongst those who believed that the memoranda could allegedly be abolished via parliament and referenda.

Monday, October 17, 2016

KKE GS D.Koutsoumbas: "The Greek people must throw in the trash the lies and the propaganda of the government"

The General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Dimitris Koutsoumbas, who attended the large demonstration in Athens on Monday, made the following statement: 

"The Greek people must throw in the trash the lies and the propaganda of the government, the conclusions of the various alleged specialists, the pressure of the creditors, of the EU and the IMF and engrave its own way of struggle. General uprising everywhere, with the working class on the forefront, in alliance with the other popular strata, aiming against the monopolies and the capitalist way of development itself which brings poverty, crises, unemployment. There is no other solution, there is no other way out"

KKE honoured the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich

"A Composer of his great era" says the banner above the orchestra. Photo from the two-day
event organised by the KKE in Athens.
In a two-day cultural event held at the Party's headquarters in Athens, the Attica Party Organisation of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) honoured the legendary Soviet composer and musician Dmitri Shostakovich

The event began with an introductory speech by Themis Gionis, member of the CC of KKE and also member of the Political Bureau of the KKE Attica Party Organisation, who among other things said:

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Mass demonstrations organized by Labour Unions to take place in Greece on October 17th

Source: PAME (All-Workers Militant Front).
On Monday 17th October: In Athens at Syntagma Square at 18.30, in Thessaloniki at 18.30 at Venizelos statue.
More than 400 trade union organizations, federations, labour centres, industrial unions, etc from all branches and sectors, all over Greece, we coordinate, demand and fight for the cancelation of all anti-workers laws and measures of the recent years. We fight for the signing of National Collective Agreement and sectoral Collective Contracts.
We demand the reestablishment and the signing of sectoral Collective Contracts, the recovering of all of our losses! No worker without the minimum wage! All in the struggle for full time steady jobs, with full rights, higher wages, pensions and social benefits!

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Comment by KKE: Syriza's "Left" is the old, classic, sinful social democracy

On the occasion of Alexis Tsipras' speech at the congress of SYRIZA, the Press Office of the CC of KKE issued the following comment:

"Yesterday Mr.Tsipras tried to give a left, progressive wrapper to the invitation of submission he sends to the people, as well as to the total transformation of SYRIZA into a bourgeois social democratic party.

The "left" which undertakes duties and responsibilities for the management of the system has nothing to do with the militant traditions of our people. It is the old, classic, sinful social democracy, which the people has experienced for many years- and which is usually in line with its supposed enemy, the "neoliberalism"-in Greece and Europe, in order to jointly vote harsh antipeople measures and memorandums. This is the source of SYRIZA's openings to various "stars" of social democracy, both in Greece and abroad.

Friday, October 14, 2016

On the developments in Colombia and the peace agreement

On the developments in Colombia.
Οriginally published in 'Rizospastis', 9 October 2016.
Source: inter.kke.gr.

As is well-known, on Sunday 2 October, the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) was put to a referendum. In the referendum, where only the 37% of the eligible voters participated, the agreement was rejected by a 50.2% vote.

The agreement was finalized after four years of negotiations that took place in Oslo and Havana and aimed at putting an end to the armed conflict which began in 1964, when FARC-CP was founded as a response to the attack of the bourgeois army against the rural population of the Marquetalia region (1). At the same time, it had been announced that talks will also be pursued with the country’s other significant guerrilla organization, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

US Trotskyism: Behind the Socialist Masquerade

Behind the Socialist Masquerade.
By Zoltan Zigedy / Source: Marxism-Leninism Today.

Ashley Smith recently wrote an essay (Anti-imperialism and the Syrian Revolution) ostensibly about Syria and imperialism but more properly understood as a rekindling and re-statement of anti-Communist “leftism.”

Smith, an ideologue of the International Socialist Organization, unveils his true target when he inveighs against the “Stalinists”: “Stalinist groups like the Workers World Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization…”

Not content with these examples, Smith, in McCarthy-like fashion, feels the necessity to name further names. He sees the UK’s Stop the War coalition as also duped by the Stalinists, along with the US United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). Jill Stein of the Green Party and her Vice Presidential partner, Ajamu Baraka, are similarly infected with the “Stalinist” virus.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Mzwandile Makwayiba elected new President of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

The President of the South African National Education Health & Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), Cde. Mzwandile Makwayiba elected President of the World Federation of Trade Unions during the recent 17th Congress of WFTU in Durban.

The Secretariat of NEHAWU issued a statement congratulating Cde.Makwayiba: 

The National Education Health & Allied Workers Union [NEHAWU] congratulates its President, Cde Mzwandile Makwayiba for being elected as President of the World Federation of Trade Unions [WFTU] at the 17th Congress held in Durban last week. Cde Makwayiba will be President for the next five years.
His election proves the confidence WFTU has in his leadership capacity and we as NEHAWU, are more than convinced that he will tackle his new responsibility with aplomb. We wish him well in his new duty to service the more than 78 million workers belonging to more than 210 trade union organizations, from 105 countries across all six inhabited continents.

ΚΚΕ: The Paris Agreement on the Climate provides new field of profitability for the monopolies, amid fierce competition

Source: inter.kke.gr.
The KKE delegation to the European Parliament voted against its ratification by the European Parliament.
The KKE delegation to the European Parliament voted against the ratification of the Paris Agreement on the "climate change" in the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, because it perpetuates the causes which cause environmental problems, the ones which the capitalist development path creates and exacerbates.
In its speech to justify its negative vote, the KKE delegation to the European Parliament stressed the following:

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Thanasis Pafilis (KKE): "The capitalist way of development neither wants nor can give a better life to the people"

Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.

The KKE's pre-electoral evaluation that the SYRIZA government will continue towards an even worse way than the previous governments and will bring a third memorandum has been proved, Thanasis Pafilis, member of the Central Committee and Parliamentary representative of KKE pointed out in a TV interview. Talking on "Skai" Television, Pafilis said that the only hope derives from the people who must take the streets and fight for their lives; he called the people to participate in the demonstrations that will be held on October 17th by hundreds of labor unions. 

When asked about the "left" character of the government, Pafilis mentioned that the people know that "Left and NATO" are not compatible, bringing as an example the offer, by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, of a new military base to NATO at Karpathos island. 

A left party, Thanasis Pafilis said, is not the one which crushes the working people, the self-employed and the poor farmers while it gives new privileges to those who have the power; the capital and the monopoly groups. The solution, Pafilis pointed out, is not New Democracy which poses as the original best manager of the bourgeois power.