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Savas Matsas, Secretary General of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece, will go on trial on 3 September 2013. He is being accused of “defamation” against the fascist party the Golden Dawn because a leaflet issued by the EEK and published in its newspaper, the New Perspective, in May 2009, had characterised the Golden Dawn as a Nazi organisation that instigates racist attacks against immigrants and called for participation into an anti-fascist demonstration. Other accusations levelled at him are “instigation of violence and chaos” and “disruption of the civil peace”. Presenting themselves as innocent and peaceful citizens, the fascists are using the bourgeois state and its institutions in order to wage an assault on the workers’ opposition and the left. In this way, they intend to silence the left-wing press.

Déjà vu ! L’assassinat commis envers Mohammed Brahmi  est une triste répétition du meurtre Chokri Belaïd le 6 février. Nous le déplorons profondément et présentent nos condoléances à la classe ouvrière, le peuple opprimé et tous les révolutionnaires de Tunisie. Certes, la responsabilité de l’assassinat de Brahmi ainsi que celle du meurtre Belaïd tombent d’abord au gouvernement en place et au parti Ennahda. D’abord parce qu’il y a assez d’indications que c’était les milices d’Annahda qui ont tué Belaïd. Mais même dans le cas éventuel où ça serait un autre groupe islamiste qui soit derrière ces assassinats, c’est bien au gouvernement de coalition dirigé par Ennahda que tombe la responsabilité, en particulier du meurtre Brahmi, parce qu’il n’a pas poursuivi une enquête sérieuse de façon à démasquer les assassins de Chokri Belaïd, ce qui revient à encourager des actes semblables éventuels.

L’histoire réunit le destin de nos pays une nouvelle fois. Sauf que cette fois ceux qui nous lient ne sont ni les Sultans et les Pachas, ni l’impérialisme. C’est le peuple ordinaire de nos pays, les ouvriers et les chômeurs, les gagne-pain et les femmes au foyer, les retraitées et les jeunes, surtout les jeunes, les jeunes femmes et les jeunes hommes de nos pays qui se sont réunis pour créer un futur meilleur.

Quelle audace et quel enthousiasme de voir occupées les rues et les plus grandes places de nos pays par de centaines de milliers, voire de millions de personnes début juin en Turquie et fin juin en Égypte ! Quel grand espoir et optimisme pour le futur du Moyen-Orient et d'Afrique du nord !

Lo sgombero di Gezi Park da parte della polizia, la notte del 15 giugno, con l'ampio uso di gas lacrimogeni e per la prima volta dei cannoni ad acqua arricchita con liquido urticante, non ha spento il fuoco della ribellione in Turchia.

È vero, la rivolta che seguì l'espulsione e che ha portato a manifestazioni per tutta la notte e l'occupazione delle piazze in diversi quartieri di Istanbul e città di tutto il paese, fu di breve durata. Ma dall'energia continua delle masse nascono nuove forme di azione come gli “standing man”e “standing woman”, in cui alcune persone stanno in piedi in silenzio per ore, in luoghi dove non sono consentite manifestazioni. Questa forma di azione certamente isola gli individui gli uni dagli altri, non è paragonabile alla chiarezza delle masse manifestanti, e, quindi, è una modalità inferiore di protesta. Ma in questo contesto specifico, dove era quasi impossibile organizzare azioni in piazza Taksim, hanno annunciato il ritorno delle masse nel luogo più conteso e hanno sollevato il morale del movimento, dopo la battuta d'arresto causata dall'evacuazione (seguita, tra parentesi, dallo sgombero delle piazze occupate in altre città).

The evacuation of Gezi Park by the police on the night of 15 June through the ample use of tear gas, and for the first time chemically enhanced water cannon, has not extinguished the fire of rebellion in Turkey.

True, the insurgency that followed the evacuation, which involved night-long marches and the occupation of squares in the different neighbourhoods of Istanbul and cities all around the country, was short-lived.  But from the continuing energy of the masses burst forth new forms of action such as the ‘standing man’ and ‘standing woman’, in which individuals stand silently for hours at a venue where they are not otherwise permitted to demonstrate.  This form of action certainly isolates individuals from each other, is not amenable to voicing grievances explicitly, and hence is an inferior modality of protest.  But in this specific context, where it was almost impossible to stage actions on Taksim Square it heralded the return of the masses to the hotly contested space and raised the morale of the movement after the setback caused by the evacuation (followed, incidentally, by the evacuation of occupied squares in other cities).

The International Conference on “Europe in crisis: for an internationalist revolutionary alternative”, following the initiative  taken in December 2012 by the  Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI), has successfully taken place in Athens, Greece on June 9-10, 2013, hosted by the EEK, Greek Section of the CRFI.  They participated in the debates and/or brought their messages of support, representatives from over forty(40) revolutionary and anti-capitalist political parties, organizations, social movements, combative trade-unionists, collectivities of workers’ and citizens groups of struggle and individual militants from four(4) continents and twenty(20) countries.

Nosotros, reunidos en la Euro-Conferencia Internacional de Trabajadores los días 9 y 10 de junio en Atenas, militantes provenientes de veinte países de Europa, del Oriente y Occidente, del Norte y Sur, pero también del Medio Oriente, Asia, África y América Latina, luchando en docenas de diferentes organizaciones y partidos políticos de la izquierda revolucionaria y anticapitalista, de sindicatos combativos, de movimientos sociales, de colectivos de lucha popular auto-organizada, llamamos a los trabajadores, a los desempleados, a los pauperizados y las masas sociales excluidas en todos los países a unirse en una misma lucha por una salida revolucionaria e internacionalista de la catástrofe social diseminada por la actual crisis mundial del capitalismo.

Le 1er Mai 2013, la police a fait pleuvoir des tonnes de gaz lacrymogène sur des dizaines de milliers de travailleurs et de jeunes dans les différents quartiers d’Istanbul, afin de les empêcher de s’approcher de la place Taksim. Le gouvernement avait décidé que cette place, lieu traditionnel des célébrations du 1er Mai mais aussi de quantité d’actions politiques quotidienne, petites et grandes, devait être fermée aux manifestations pendant toute cette année, et cela parce que des travaux d’aménagement devaient être réalisés sur une grande échelle, impliquant le creusement d’énormes puits dangereux pour les foules de promeneurs. Au cours d’une prestation particulièrement ridicule, le gouverneur d’Istanbul a tenu une conférence de presse, juché au sommet d’un monticule au bord d’une de ces fosses, dans une tentative désespérée de faire comprendre à tout le pays la menace que représentaient ces fosses pour les passants.

After days of hesitation and negotiation, the government has finally decided to evacuate the Taksim Commune, where thousands camped in Gezi Park and which tens of thousands visited every night. Police attacked Gezi Park yesterday evening and after evacuating it using tear gas and, as a novelty, water cannon apparently supplemented with a special kind of chemical since it burnt the skin of everyone it touched, razed the tents, the infirmary, the kitchens and the library established there to the ground.

This resolution was adopted unanimously by the International Conference “Europe in Crisis: For a Revolutionary Internationalist Alternative” on 10 June 2013.

On May Day 2013, the police poured tonnes of tear gas on tens of thousands of workers and youth in different quarters of Istanbul in order to stop them from approaching Taksim Square. The government had decided that this square , the traditional venue for May Day celebrations and home to daily political actions big and small, was to be shut to demonstrations this year because development work was being done on a massive scale involving huge excavated pits making it dangerous for crowds.  In a ludicrous act, the governor of Istanbul stood atop a mound at the edge of one of those pits to hold a press conference in a desperate attempt to drive home the threat that these pits represented for people. Exactly one month later, on Saturday June 1, the masses protesting against the urban plans behind this development work and against the government itself had captured the square and made it the freest part of Istanbul, or rather of Turkey! The police withdrew that afternoon from Taksim Square to abandon the place to the thronging crowds of protestors unfathomably numbering in the hundreds of thousands! It has now been three days and not one single soul has fallen into the scarecrow pit...

Istanbul è diventata un campo di battaglia coperto da gas lacrimogeni. La polizia, senza dubbi e per volere di Tayyip Erdogan e il suo governo AKP, hanno attaccato i manifestanti nel centro della città, vicino a Piazza Taksim, per cinque giorni consecutivi. Questa non e' una novità' : la polizia turca è famosa per la sua brutalità nel trattare con le dimostrazioni sgradite al governo. Solo un mese fa, durante il primo maggio, avevano disperso una mobilitazione di migliaia di lavoratori e sindacalisti usando gas lacrimogeni senza limiti. Quindi niente di nuovo sul fronte della polizia. Questa volta pero' la situazione è diversa per un altro motivo.

Istanbul has become a battlefield covered by tear gas. The police, no doubt at the behest of Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP government, have been attacking protestors in the centre of the city, near Taksim Square, for five consecutive days. This would have been no news at all: Turkish police are famous for their brutality in dealing with demonstrations unwelcome to the government. Only a month ago, on May Day, they had dispersed a gathering of thousands of workers and unionists using tear gas unsparingly. So nothing new on the police front. This time is different for another reason.

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Le Forum Social Mondial 2013 a ouvert ses portes mardi, le 26 Mars 2013, à Tunis, la capitale de Tunisie. Une manifestation qui a commencé au centre-ville s’est dirigé, après une marche qui a duré plus de trois heures au stade Menzah, sur une scène près duquel a tenu lieu la cérémonie d’ouverture.

The revolutionary tissue of the Mediterranean is being woven in ever tighter knots. In a new display of the combative mood of the working classes of the different Mediterranean countries, the workers of a steel plant in Egypt (Kouta Steel) sent their greetings of solidarity to the workers of a factory in Thessaloniki, Greece by the name of Vio.Me, which has lately become a self-managed factory.

Vio.Me earlier had benefited from internationalist solidarity from Argentina. The Argentinian section of the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI), Partido Obrero, had been very much involved in the takeover and self-management of factories by the workers during and in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2001. In December 2012, during a meeting organised by the Ergatiko Epanastatiko Comma (EEK-Workers’ Revolutionary Party), our Greek section, a workers’ delegation from Vio.Me had the possibility of meeting with the representatives of the PO, who readily informed them on how the Argentinian workers had proceeded. International solidarity thus bore very concrete fruits for the Vio.Me workers.

The reader will...