Workers Resistance

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  • Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits set to end Dec. 31

    San José, CA – The Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, which provides federal aid to jobless workers whose state Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits have run out will expire at the end of 2013. This will cut off 1.3 million unemployed people immediately. Another 800,000 jobless workers who would have qualified for EUC won’t be able to extend their benefits in the first three months of 2014.

    Federal EUC and the Extended Benefits (EB) programs were started more than five years ago as the recession which began in December 2007 drove the unemployment rate higher. At the time the EUC started in June of 2008, the official unemployment rate was 5.6%, while the latest report released Dec. 6 on the November 2013 labor market showed a higher national unemployment rate of 7.0%. In June 2008, there were more than 1.5 million long-term unemployed (out of work for more than six months), while last month there were still more than 4 million long term unemployed.

    Almost 40% of all the unemployed in November 2013 have been out of work for more than six months. While this is a bit lower than the peak of almost 45% in 2010, it is still far higher than and any previous recession since the Great Depression. In contrast, the next highest percentage of long term unemployed, which followed the 1981-1982 recession, was only about 25%.

    Despite the clear need for extending federal EUC program, the House of Representatives, with its Republican leadership, is getting ready to go home for the holidays. But while jobless workers are looking bleakly at a big lump of coal for the holidays, the stock market is hitting new record highs. And why not? The latest report on Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, released on Dec. 5 shows that corporate profits were equal to about 11.1% of GDP. GDP measures the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S. This is a record high and almost twice the average of 6.1% of GDP since 1929.

  • A Vision of Socialism needed by Chris Hedges – A Strategic Concept of Socialist Revolution Needed says Democracy and Class Struggle

    Democracy  and Class Struggle  agrees with the  importance of a vision of Socialism or what Harry Pollitt called the “gleam of Socialism**” it needs to return in 2014 to the British Isles.

    This vision is articulated  by Chris Hedges for the United States but we need to do it better in Europe with a socialist vision as well. What is really missing is a strategic concept of Socialist Revolution

  • Syria: Obama and Cherry Picked Intelligence – Seymour Hersh

     

    “Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August.

    In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the

  • India: Supreme Court has never given Mr. Modi a clean chit on the issue of 2002 pogrom

    In an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013,Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief minister has made a desperate attempt to create an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it  to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on 27.4.2009. 

    A section of the

  • Rudolf Bahro: The Case of Mixing Red with Green and getting Brown – extract from Janet Behiel’s ‘Ecology’ and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-right

     

    Democracy and Class Struggle Says Rudolf Bahro was the darling of the European New Left when he was deported from East Germany and was an inspirer of the Red/Green Alliance he said “red and green go well together” and has this article from Janet Behiel proves in this case they make Nazis Brown.

    This article addresses the very important issue of Fascist Ecology has we are very

  • Fascist Ecology and the "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents by Peter Staudenmaier

    This article addresses the very important issue of Fascist Ecology has we are very concerned that the Ecological Movement is being subverted by Corporate capitalist interests and agree with the theses of  Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis that :

    “This isn’t the 1930s. Then, under the pressure of powerful social movements, the old ‘New Deal’ redistributed power and wealth downwards.

  • UK: Labour Friends of Hindu Fascism by Amrit Wilson

    In 2001, Labour MP for Brent North Barry Gardiner, visited Gujarat and describing himself as the Chair of Labour Friends of India (LFI) presented Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Minister Narendra Modi with a cheque for one million pounds.

    Till then  few people in India or Britain, had heard of LFI. The money raised by  Sewa International, a charity based in Britain, ostensibly for

  • Jharkhand – Fact-finding report on the abuse of labour and democratic rights by UCIL

    6 December 2013, Jamshedpur: We constituted a fact-finding committee at the request of the Jharkhand Krantikari Mazdoor Union (JKMU) to examine the extensive abuse of labour and democratic rights that the employees of Uranium Corporation of India Limited are faced with as also those who have been displaced and affected by the land acquisition by […]

  • Jharkhand – Fact-finding report on the abuse of labour and democratic rights by UCIL

    6 December 2013, Jamshedpur: We constituted a fact-finding committee at the request of the Jharkhand Krantikari Mazdoor Union (JKMU) to examine the extensive abuse of labour and democratic rights that the employees of Uranium Corporation of India Limited are faced with as also those who have been displaced and affected by the land acquisition by […]

  • WTO : India wilts under US pressure at Bali

    received from Anuradha Talwar & Biraj Patnaik [Right to Food Campaign] (At the WTO Ministerial, Nusa Dua, Bali) India has wilted under pressure from the US and agreed to accept conditionalities that were not part of the G-33 proposal. The text of the agreed draft can be accessed below (see section WT/ MIN 913)/ W […]