On Friday, the 1st of May, Arif Wazir, a leader of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), was shot three times by unknown assailants near his home in Wanna, Waziristan. He was critically injured and rushed to a local hospital. He was then shifted to Dera Ismail Khan and further to Islamabad’s PIMS hospital for treatment. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his injuries the next day on Saturday. Arif Wazir hails from Ahmadzai Wazir tribe of Wana Waziristan. He was the first cousin of Comrade Ali Wazir, the main leader of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement and a Marxist member of Pakistani parliament.
Health from Below in a Global Pandemic
4 May 2020, byThe fact that the current coronavirus pandemic has spread conditions of dystopia tells us a great deal about the politics of health. A virus may be a natural phenomenon, but the destruction wrought by this pandemic is a product of the way our society is organized. The scale of suffering and dislocation created by a health emergency is the result of human actions and inactions, just as the differential impact on various communities follows along the lines of prevailing social inequalities, disproportionately hitting people who are racialized or Indigenous, with specific devastating consequences for those who are homeless, incarcerated, elderly, living with disabilities and migrants without status.
Singapore: epidemic, racism and class struggle
3 May 2020, byThis city-state located to the south of the Malaysian peninsula is often taken as an example of alternative strategies to containment in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic. Dishonestly, it is used to justify the implementation of tracking applications. But the second wave that the city is currently experiencing should above all remind us that health measures cannot be analysed independently of the class struggle and of specific oppressions such as racism.
The viral emergency in Palestine
3 May 2020, by ,How has the pandemic made itself felt in Palestine? S C Molavi and Eyal Weizman, of Forensic Architecture, look at how Israel has used the coronavirus crisis in order to further consolidate its regime of surveillance and domination against Palestinians.
EcoSocialist Internationalism Now!
2 May 2020, byRevolutionary Salute to the Workers of the World!
Revolutionary Salute to all Comrades in the Revolutionary Workers Party-Mindanao, Comrades in Arms in the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army and all other Revolutionary Friends and Allies!
Medics, health workers protest ‘non-provision’ of PPE in Lahore
2 May 2020Lahore: Scores of doctors and nurses under the banner of the Grand Health Alliance on Monday took to the street to press the Punjab government for accepting, what they call, their legitimate demands.
“Look at Chile to understand the kind of world they want us to live in”
2 May 2020, byThe Chilean uprising began in October 2019 and spread like wildfire in the student movement after the Piñera government’s decision to raise the price of subway tickets. The repression of Chile’s youth ended up mobilizing all of society, no longer against the increase in transportation prices, but against the whole neoliberal system inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship.
On October 22, when a dozen people had already been killed and more than 80 injured–some of them shot by the Carabineros (Chilean national police) –while acts of torture and sexual aggression were being committed by the military patrolling in Santiago, President Sebastián Piñera publicly apologized to the Chilean people. And he announced social measures aimed at “calming” the anger of the insurgents: an increase in the minimum wage, a 20% increase in the lowest retirement pensions, the cancellation of the recent 9.2% increase in electricity rates, the creation of a new tax bracket for those with incomes over 8 million pesos per month ($9,600 USD), a reduction in the salaries of parliamentarians, etc.
In addition, on October 24, the Chamber of Deputies voted (88 votes in favor, 24 against, and 27 abstentions) on a bill to shorten the working week from a maximum of 45 hours to 40 hours. The proposal will have to go through a committee and then through the Senate.
“We organize to remake our lives”
1 May 2020, byLast October, Chile’s neoliberal order was shaken by a popular revolt. Pushed into a corner, the mainstream parties agreed a national referendum, scheduled for April 26, 2020 and since postponed, to rewrite the Constitution, a holdover from the Pinochet dictatorship. On March 8 and 9, millions of women and gender non-conforming people struck and took to the streets on International Women’s Day in the largest protests in the world on that day. Now the coronavirus has forced this struggle into quarantine, making May Day mobilizations impossible. But Chilean workers, and especially its powerful feminist movement, continue to organize.
The Virus Is Color Blind, Humans Are Not
1 May 2020, byThe coronavirus is color blind. It strikes whites, Blacks, Latinos, indigenous people, Asians, rich and poor. So why the higher number of cases and deaths for African Americans?
Historical Lessons of the Syrian Revolution
1 May 2020, byMore than 9 years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the situation is more than catastrophic for the popular classes in the country. It is facing a deep humanitarian crisis with 11.7 million persons in need of humanitarian assistance, while more than 5.6 million Syrians are living as refugees across the Middle East. Overall poverty rates are over 80 percent, while the cost of reconstruction has been estimated at around $400 billion.