Port worker unions in France and Italy recently protested and struck, keeping Saudi ships from being loaded with weapons bound for attacks on Yemen.
europe
Corruption brings down Austria’s hard-right vice chancellor
In a thumping for the far right and an upset for the government, Austria’s vice chancellor was compelled to resign over corruption that surfaced in mid-May.
The far right makes gains, but fails in bid to control EU Parliament
Despite a well-orchestrated attempt, the ultra-nationalistic, anti-immigrant Identity and Democracy coalition failed to win control of the EU Parliament in May’s elections.
Queer rights in Eastern Europe
Renewed attacks on LGBTQ community in Chechnya; Gay MP confronts the Polish right.
Labor Weather Report for June 2017
May 2017 — Autoworkers fight for contract. Seventy percent of Volkswagen-Chattanooga workers in Tennessee voted to join United Auto Workers over a year ago. Yet the automaker still defies U.S. government orders to negotiate a contract. Unionists from seven other countries visited to show support for Local 42’s anger at unsafe working conditions, constant shift… Read more »
Catalonia’s right to decide
Spain’s right-wing government is using every weapon to stifle the independence movement and imprison or otherwise sideline its leaders.
Greeks betrayed by Syriza reformists
More cut-backs, more belt-tightening, more desperation.
Turkey: a police state in the making
Turkey’s internal political divisions and its role in the turbulent Middle East remain unexplained in the mainstream media. To begin with, Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan is a right-wing politician and Muslim fundamentalist. He founded the ruling capitalist party, Justice and Development. Economic austerities imposed on Turks by neoliberal privatization policies created mounting opposition, which was… Read more »
Putin: the cost of turning back history
With Putin’s supposed meddling in the U.S. election making headlines, a deeper question surfaces: How did the world’s first workers’ state become a country that could produce such a repressive, war-mongering capitalist autocrat? The answer lies first in the decades of U.S.-led aggression aimed at starving and isolating the Russian Revolution — and then in… Read more »
European Union on shaky ground: Angry residents of member nations have had it with austerity and chaos
The European Union (EU) is teetering. In the past two years, three of its member countries passed anti-EU referenda: the 2015 vote in Greece against EU-imposed austerity; the startling 2016 Brexit decision to sever Britain from the bloc; and a recent vote in Italy rejecting constitutional changes proposed by the pro-EU prime minister. A flood… Read more »
