The 1953 London Debt Agreement on Germany’s debt

by Eric Toussaint

Germany benefited from the cancellation of most of its debt as of February 27, 1953. This cancellation was instrumental in helping the country regain its position as the leading economic power on the European continent. Since then, no other country has received such favourable treatment. It is very important to know the why and how of this debt cancellation. In a nutshell, the great creditor bloc of West Germany wanted to give the German economy a real boost and make it a stable and central element in the struggle between the Atlantic and Eastern blocs.

The Far Right in Ukraine: an Interview with Taras Bilous

by BILOUS Taras, SHALOM Stephen R.

Taras Bilous is a Ukrainian historian, an editor of Commons: Journal of Social Criticism, and an activist in Sotsialniy Rukh (Social Movement). He is currently serving in the Ukrainian army. He was interviewed by Stephen R. Shalom, a member of the New Politics editorial board. Denys Pilash helped with the translation.

New Politics (NP): How would you assess the influence of far-right forces in Ukraine? We have seen claims that, on the one hand, suggest that Ukraine is a Nazi state, or, on the other hand, that the far right is an insignificant factor in Ukrainian life. What is your assessment?

Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years

by Oxfam

• The super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in past decade.
• Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.
• A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

According to a new report published by Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth. . 

Retraites : une mobilisation historique à transformer en victoire contre Macron

Les chiffres de grève et de manifestations sont historiques, avec 1,2 million de manifestantEs selon la police, plus de deux millions selon l’intersyndicale, des taux de grève très importants (ainsi plus de 70 % dans l’éducation), des mobilisations massives dans les villes. 50 000 à Bordeaux et à Toulouse, 20 000 au Mans, 3500 à Alençon, 4000 à Compiègne, 20 000 à Nice, 7000 à Agen et Montauban, 4000 à Gap, 15 000 à Avignon, 50 000 à Nantes, 10 000 à Saint-Nazaire, 20 000 à Rouen, 35 000 au Havre, 15 000 à Bayonne et Pau, 13 000 à Quimper, 13 500 à Brest, 11 000 à Angoulême, 10 000 à Poitiers, 13 000 à Angers, et bien entendu plusieurs centaines de milliers à Paris (bien loin des 80 000 annoncés par le ministère de l’Intérieur)…

The House Speaker Crisis and the Transformation of the Republican Party

By oaklandsocialist

The last two times members of the House of Representatives had to resort to multiple ballots to elect a House Speaker tell us a lot about the present crisis. Both times the crisis resulted from a major shift in US politics and either the rise of a new party or a major shift in the role of an already existing one.

1858-9

In 1858, the Republican Party, which had suddenly emerged, won a plurality in the House. It in effect replaced the Whig Party, which contained both pro and anti-slavery forces. But by 1858 the issue of slavery had become so hot that a party combining both sides of the issue could not survive. While the Republican Party was not overtly anti-slavery, it was the political center of anti-slavery elements. Because the Republicans didn’t have an outright majority, they could not elect their own Speaker without support from another party. This battle over House Speaker indicated a fundamental realignment in US politics. That realignment could only be settled by war – the US Civil War, and the Speaker battle was a warning of that coming Civil War.

COP 27 (Climat) – Victoire fossile à Sharm-el-Sheikh : il ne reste que la lutte

par TANURO Daniel

Quelque jours avant l’ouverture de la COP27 à Sharm-el-Sheikh, en Egypte, j’ai écrit que cette conférence serait un « nouveau sommet du greenwashing, du capitalisme vert et de la répression ». C’était une erreur. Le greenwashing et la répression étaient plus que jamais au rendez-vous sur les rives de la Mer Rouge, mais le capitalisme vert, lui, a subi un revers, et les fossiles ont remporté une nette victoire.

En matière climatique, on peut définir le capitalisme vert comme la fraction du patronat et de ses représentants politiques qui prétend que la catastrophe peut être arrêtée par une politique de marché qui incite les entreprises à adopter des technologies énergétiques vertes ou « bas carbone », de sorte qu’il serait possible de concilier croissance économique, croissance des profits et baisse rapide des émissions, et même d’atteindre le « zéro émissions nettes » en 2050. Ce volet, dit de « mitigation » du changement climatique, est alors complété par un volet dit « d’adaptation » aux effets désormais inévitable du réchauffement, et par un volet « financement » (à destination des pays du Sud, principalement). Sur ces deux plans-là aussi, les tenants du capitalisme vert estiment que le marché peut faire le job - ils y voient même une opportunité pour le capital.

The Uprising in China - Resisting lockdowns, repression, and precarity

by Yun Dong

Young, angry protesters in Shanghai confronted the police that encircled them, calling for freedom and shouting, “Aren’t you supposed to serve the people?!” Hundreds had gathered in the evening of November 26^th on Urumqi Road in Shanghai, which has served as the symbolic site to hold vigils to pay tribute to the victims of a fire at a high-rise residential building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

The fire led to the death of at least ten people and injured nine others from several families. It took three hours to extinguish it. Protesters believe that the victims could have been saved had the residential complex not been under Covid lockdown, despite the government’s claims that the tragedy had nothing to do with the lockdown.

L’économie du football entre dans une nouvelle ère

par ARONDEL Luc

« L’hypermodernité » du ballon rond se caractérise par de fortes inégalités, des profils inédits d’investisseurs, les stratégies de mondialisation des grands clubs et l’arrivée de nouveaux diffuseurs.

L’idée que le football est le « miroir » de la société est souvent avancée dans les salons et s’avère plutôt exacte du point de vue de son économie. Branko Milanovic, spécialiste reconnu des inégalités et fin analyste du ballon rond, l’observe bien : « Le football a été un miroir de la société, où les inégalités se sont accrues de manière exponentielle au cours des trois dernières décennies », explique-t-il dans les colonnes du magazine Forbes.

Statement by Ukrainian Feminists in Solidarity with Iranian Women

by Collective

We, Ukrainian feminists, express our solidarity with Iranian uprising, triggered by the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian moral police. Thousands of women responded to this crime by going out on the streets, cutting their hair and publicly taking off and burning hijabs as a symbol of their oppression. What started as a protest against police brutality and obligatory hijab, quickly transformed into a general resistance of the Iranian people against the patriarchal and dictatorial mullah regime and the authoritarian form of capitalism that it represents. The grassroot mobilization is today being joined by schoolgirls, students, trade unions, ethnic minorities, and people from other social groups affected by the economic crises, high food prices, social cuts, and privatization. This new wave of struggles thus continues and expands the series of uprisings against socio-economic inequalities, political oppression and ethnic disctimination that shook Iran during the last decade.

The debt and climate crises : Why climate justice must include debt justice

by Tess Woolfenden , Dr Sindra Sharma Khushal

The CADTM supports the following text, which shows the link between debt and climate crises and contributes some relevant ideas on this issue. However, we do not believe that radical changes such as debt cancellations will come from major international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The CADTM considers that these necessary changes will come from the people, from social movements, from a citizen public debt audits. Moreover, we do not consider the debt swaps system to be a solution and advocate for debt cancellations combined with reparations paid by former colonizing countries, imperialist ones and creditors for all the damages (including environmental ones) they have been causing in the Global South.

Global Week of Action for Justice and Debt Cancellation

10 October by Collectif

We stand in solidarity with the millions of people in countless countries who have taken to the streets over recent months to demand an end to debt domination and the destructive policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other global lenders. From 14-16 October, the IMF and World Bank will again hold their annual meetings to advance their neoliberal policy reforms, a typically wasted opportunity to take bolder actions in support of debt-burdened, climate-stricken countries in the Global South. The IMF has consistently imposed these reforms amid debt crises rooted in global inequalities and colonial legacies. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted and aggravated these long-evolving failures of our public health, social and economic systems, requiring a deep rethink of the practices and conditionalities of the IMF, which have frequently contributed to these failures. Almost three years since the UN declared Covid-19 a pandemic, the world faces a troublesome outlook, more deeply unjust, unequal and unsustainable than before.

After the floods, Pakistan needs reparations, not charity

by Farooq Tariq

At the time of writing, more than one-third of Pakistan is under water. Flash floods, generated by abnormal monsoon rains have so far claimed the lives of 1350 people. One million residential buildings are totally or partially damaged, leaving more than 50 million people displaced from their homes.

Crucially, the flood is expected to add $10 billion worth of damage to an already teetering economy. More than 793,900 livestock have died, and families across Pakistan of a critical source of sustenance and livelihood. , Around two million acres of crops and orchards have been impacted.

« Le canari dans la mine de charbon » :
La crise du Sri Lanka est une chronique annoncée

par Eric Toussaint , Balasingham Skanthakumar

La grave crise économique que traverse le Sri Lanka, la suspension du paiement de la dette souveraine et le soulèvement populaire de 2022 ont attiré l’attention du monde entier. Le Sri Lanka est décrit comme le « canari dans la mine de charbon », c’est-à-dire comme un signe avant-coureur de l’avenir probable d’autres pays du Sud. Éric Toussaint, porte-parole du Comité pour l’abolition de la dette illégitime (CADTM) a interviewé par e-mail Balasingham Skanthakumar, basé à Colombo, de la Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka et du réseau Asie du Sud du CADTM. Les réponses en version préliminaire ont été améliorées par la révision d’Amali Wedagedera.

Queen and king. Trône et bouffons

Serge Vandepoorte

Les pornographes de l’émotion s’en donnent à cœur joie. En tête de gondole, les magazines « people » et toute la cohorte des médias qui prétendent encore faire œuvre d’information auprès du grand public. Logique. Vendre du papier et faire du chiffre en termes d’audience, leurs motivations se résument à cette trivialité.

Communiqué (France) : Face à l’urgence sociale et écologique, construire une large convergence

par Alternative, Attac France, CGT, Confédération paysanne, Convergence services publics, EELV, Fondation Copernic, FSU, LFI-Nupes, MAN, NPA, Oxfam, PCF, UNEF, Union syndicale Solidaires

La hausse des prix rend de plus en plus difficile la vie quotidienne de la grande majorité de la population. Les mesures prises par le gouvernement aboutissent à une baisse des revenus réels, alors même que le patrimoine des plus riches et les dividendes versés aux actionnaires ne cessent de croître et que de nouveaux cadeaux fiscaux pour les employeurs sont déjà programmés. De plus, le gouvernement prévoit de nouvelles attaques frontales contre la protection sociale que ce soit sur la question des retraites ou sur l’assurance-chômage, et contre les services publics.