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| On 6th November,
movements across the world are coming together to take action – from
indigenous struggles to trade unions, from racial justice groups to
youth strikers.
The Covid pandemic means that not everyone can travel to Glasgow. That is why on the 6th November, we’re calling for decentralised actions worldwide. Wherever you are in the world, you can help bring climate justice to COP26. |
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The Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan believes that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime will not hesitate to massacre millions of Iranians, like it has done in Syria and Iraq as well as in Iran these these last few days. Therefore, the Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan is prepared to declare that it will cooperate with all Kurdish, Arab and Baloch armed opposition forces. With respect to the widespread repression of defenseless people in Iran, we must be able to provide them with the right tools to defend themselves, before there are more dead and the people’s movement has been permanently suppressed. Therefore the need to form an armed revolutionary front to support and defend the people against the Islamic regime’s executioners is urgent and necessary. If it is possible to transport weapons to people inside Iran, you should not hesitate for a moment to prevent more people from being bled and buried. The duty of the revolutionary and radical opposition outside of Iran is to provide logistical and strategic support to the struggles and resistance of the people inside Iran
And:This year has seen an extraordinary number of significant mass protests in over twenty countries or territories, many of which in a national context represented the biggest in recent times. They are often spontaneous, with a distinctly revolutionary nature. In many cases protesters would face a serious risk of arrest, injury or death. The ruling class, government or even the whole system of government, are the targets. Corruption, authoritarianism and/or austerity are their key motivators. ------
For the list of mass protests continue reading:-------Obviously protests occur constantly, and we haven’t done a thorough data analysis comparing this year with historical averages. However, it’s generally accepted that the current protests aren’t normal. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria called them “this autumn of protest”, and noted that “the politics of each of these movements seems quite distinct. But they are all occurring against a worrisome backdrop: a collapse of [global] economic growth”, which is now at its lowest point since the 2008 crash.We can take the line of thinking further and note that these various uprisings are in fact different theatres of the same conflict.Protesters may be waving their national flags, and speaking of national rebirth – not global justice, but as the example of Ecuador especially shows, these national transformations can take place, but they must currently do so in spite of the prevailing global system, which is institutionally incompatible with the needs of the world’s population, captured by an undemocratic, ahistorical ideology which fetishises the balancing of national budgets with same year tax revenues which effectively prohibits effective development strategies, such as the provision of basic services or redistribution.
The bloodbath in Baghdad19 November 2019
The death toll in the mass protests that have shaken Iraq for the last seven weeks has risen to over 330, with an estimated 15,000 wounded. Young Iraqis have continued to pour into the streets in defiance of fierce repression to press their demands for jobs, social equality and an end to the unspeakably corrupt political regime created by the US occupation that followed the criminal American invasion of 2003.Most of those killed have been felled by live ammunition, including machine-gun fire and bullets fired by snipers, both randomly into crowds and at identified protest leaders. Others have suffered hideous fatal wounds from military-grade tear gas grenades fired point-blank into the demonstrators, in some cases with canisters ending up lodged in the victims’ skulls or lungs. In addition, water cannon have been employed, spraying scalding hot water into the protests. Forced disappearances have been reported, while families of victims shot to death by security forces have been compelled to sign statements acknowledging the deaths as “accidental” in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones.An injured protestor is rushed to a hospital during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
This brutality has only succeeded in drawing ever wider layers of the population, and in particular growing sections of the Iraqi working class, into the anti-government mobilizations. In Baghdad, protesters have succeeded in occupying three strategic bridges over the Tigris River leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where government buildings, top officials’ villas, embassies and the offices of military contractors and other foreign agencies are located.In the south of the country, demonstrators have once again mounted a siege of Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing its activity by over 50 percent. Oil workers announced Sunday that they were going on a general strike in support of the demonstrators, and columns of workers organized by Iraqi unions poured into Tahrir Square to back the protests. In the southern Shia heartland of Iraq, the teachers unions have led a general strike movement that has shut down most cities.Only in the predominantly Sunni northern areas of Anbar Province and Mosul, which were bombed into rubble during the so-called US war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has the protest movement failed to bring masses into the streets. This is not for any lack of sympathy, but rather the threat of a renewed military offensive against any sign of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their solidarity on Facebook have been rounded up by security forces, while the authorities have made it plain that anyone there who opposes the government will be treated as “terrorists” and ISIS sympathizers.If anything approaching this level of both mass popular revolt and murderous repression were taking place in Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran, one can easily imagine the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they would receive from the corporate media in the US. Yet, the Iraqi events have been virtually ignored by the broadcast networks and the major print media. This is certainly not for lack of popular interest in the country.
We all know capitalism produces wars between countries, and has done so more or less, since the system crawled out of the slime to infest the globe. What most people don't seem to recognise, is, it also causes wars within countries, wars between the ruling elite and the ordinary people. As capitalism is global it is difficult to find a country where the people are not in open conflict with the powers that be. The Ferguson riots in America, though classed as racial, racism is an aspect of capitalism. Mexico, the recent disappearance of 43 students and teachers and the ongoing violent protests, is the capitalist state attempting to crush any resistance to its exploitation. Recently we have seen over 100 protests across Ireland against watercharges, as capitalism tries to squeeze more profit from the ordinary people. In Brussels, there have been violent clashes as more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets against that common aspect of capitalism, “austerity”. In London we have just had more than a thousand masked anti-capitalist protesters take to the city centre. Protests took place in towns and cities across the Republic, including Letterkenny in County Donegal
It would be extremely difficult to find a country where the people are not at odds with the system, across the globe unrest, anger and disgust are the feelings of the people, all have a growing hatred of a system that ties them to poverty, while they produce an abundance of wealth, that invariably ends up in the hands of a small greed driven bunch of parasites. With so much anger and unrest, it seems strange that the system is still managing to bleed us dry, perhaps we just have to join the dots between these world wide protests and we will see the system collapse.
Our analysis of 843 protest events reflects a steady increase in the overall number of protests every year, from 2006 (59 protests) to mid-2013 (112 protests events in only half a year). Following the onset of the global financial and economic crisis began to unfold, there is a major increase in protests beginning 2010 with the adoption of austerity measures in all world regions. Protests are more prevalent in higher income countries (304 protests), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (141 protests), East Asia and the Pacific (83 protests) and Sub-Saharan Africa (78 protests). An analysis of the Middle East and North Africa region (77 protests) shows that protests were also prevalent prior to the Arab Spring. The majority of violent riots counted in the study occurred in low-income countries (48% of all riots), mostly caused by food-price and energy-price spikes in those countries. Interestingly, the period 2006-2013 reflects an increasing number of global protests (70 events), organised across regions.
