G8 Summit, no to austerity, for a socialist alternative

www.socialistworld.net, 17/06/2013 website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI End the rule of big business, poverty and war Article courtesy of comrade Niall Mulholland, CWI The leaders of the most powerful nations in the world will soon descend on Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, for the 17-18 June G8 Summit. We can expect much empty rhetoric from David Cameron, Barack Obama and other world leaders about how Northern Ireland is a model for ’peace, stability and growing prosperity’, which the G8 wishes to emulate on an international level. Nothing could be further from the truth. Northern Ireland has some of the highest rates of poverty and joblessness on these islands and society remains divided along sectarian lines. The huge security operation surrounding the summit is like the worst of the ’Troubles’. Thousands of armed police and military equipment will flood Fermanagh. These repressive measures are an attempt to intimidate workers and young people from protesting against the G8’s policies. And there is a lot to protest! The G8 heads of state lead the way in making the working class pay for the crisis of their capitalist system. Austerity policies have caused Depression-era conditions in Greece, which will soon be repeated in Cyprus. Mass unemployment stalks the EU, officially at nearly 20%. Youth joblessness in Spain is over 60% and around 80% in Greece. The G8’s austerity policies are not working. Most of Europe is in deep recession or facing economic stagnation. The US has feeble growth but also falling wages and rising social inequality. The G8 represents the opposite of ’prosperity, peace and stability’. Under the capitalist profit system, almost half of the world’s population struggles to live on less than $2.5 a day. The G8 represents the super-rich 1%. The ’great philanthropist’ Bill Gates, of Microsoft, has total wealth estimated at $66 billion, which is enough to end world poverty and still leave him with change. One of the G8’s stated purposes is to "save" African people from starvation - by corporate land grabs and control of the continent’s markets! The G8 also represents a system that causes war and environmental destruction. Since the economic crisis began, a staggering $1.75 trillion was spent by world powers on the highly lucrative arms industry. Working class The current Turkish uprising, which started in Taksim Square, is encouraging anti-G8 protesters in Belfast and Fermanagh, despite the security clampdown. The magnificent movement in Turkey has the potential to bring together working people across ethnic and national divisions, linking up with the organised working class, to become an unstoppable force to change society. The ’G8 Not Welcome’ campaign, initiated by the Socialist Party in Northern Ireland, will hold a demonstration in Enniskillen on 17 June, the first day of the Summit. This protest, with trade union backing, will bring together Catholic and Protestant youth, socialists, trade unionists and others. But marching together is not enough. A workers’ alternative to the G8 and pro-big business parties is needed in Northern Ireland, Britain and everywhere. The Socialist Party in Northern Ireland, like the Socialist Party in England and Wales, is an affiliate to the CWI. It calls for mass opposition to G8 policies and the local sectarian-based parties and their cuts. The CWI campaigns for jobs, homes, a living wage and decent benefits. It fights for socialism - democratic public ownership and planning of the major industries and banks which would unleash colossal wealth and resources for the benefit of the ’99%’ - to end the rule of big business, poverty and war.

Solidarity with Turkish protesters facing brutal police oppression

• ter Beaumont in Istanbul • The Observer, Su Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police used teargas and water cannons to clear the protest camp at the centre of Turkey's anti-government unrest. In a night of chaotic violence large areas of the city around the now symbolic area of Gezi Park were engulfed in plumes of tear gas, while protesters opposed to the government of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempted to push back to the city's central Taksim Square. The continuing protest through the night, and calls for fresh demonstrations at 4pm on Sunday suggested that despite the clearing of the encampment in the park, Turkey's crisis was far from over. In the immediate aftermath of the police operation trade unionists called for a national strike on Monday. Which internationalists and socialists around the globe should support in anyway they can. Underlining how deeply personal the issue has become for Erdogan, a spokesman for his AKP party blamed the protesters for allegedly reneging on a deal with Erdogan thrashed out two nights before. "A country's prime minister meets you for 10 hours, you reach an agreement then say something else behind his back," Huseyin Çelik said in a TV interview defending the assault. "Wouldn't you feel cheated?" he told the private broadcaster Habertürk. The lightning evening assault on the park and nearby square followed a warning from Erdogan that protesters should quit Gezi Park or be removed by security forces ahead of a rally of his supporters in Istanbul on Sunday. Protesters took to the streets in several neighbourhoods across Istanbul following the raid on Gezi Park, ripping up metal fences, paving stones and advertising hoardings to build barricades and lighting bonfires of rubbish in the streets. During the raid police fired tear gas against the volunteer doctors manning a clinic in the park who have been working anonymously for fear of losing their jobs. In the early hours of the morning groups of demonstrators blocked a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city, while to the east, police fired tear gas to block protesters attempting to cross the main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim. Thousands more rallied in the working-class Gazi neighbourhood, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s, while protesters also gathered in Ankara around the central Kugulu Park, including opposition MPs who sat in the streets in an effort to prevent the police firing teargas. In the last 18 days Gezi Park, with its tented encampment occupied by an umbrella of groups including football fans, nationalists, environmental campaigners, Kurds and young Turks from many walks of lives, had come to represent a new spirit of social resistance to what many fear is the increasingly authoritarian style of Erdogan and his moderate Islamist AKP. Erdogan had delivered his warning at a rally of tens of thousands of AKP supporters in Ankara, the national capital, promising that Taksim Square would be cleared by Sunday in time for a second rally there. "We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow," Erdogan warned. "I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it." Barely two hours later white-helmeted riot police assaulted Gezi Park shortly after a concert attended by protesters and tourists drew to a close. Protesters had vowed earlier to continue with their occupation, although they had promised to remove barricades and reduce the number of tents in the park. Police had given 15 minutes' notice to clear the park and the adjoining Taksim Square before storming the protest camp. Police warned protesters: "This is an illegal act, this is our last warning to you – evacuate." The speed of the move to seize the square and park caught protesters by surprise. They were quickly scattered by teargas canisters and rubber bullets. Within 20 minutes a bulldozer had moved in to demolish structures and tents that had been used by the anti-government movement. A little later police and municipal workers could be seen tearing down fences around the park and removing tents. Children and tourists were among those caught up in the assault, amid reports of many injuries. But despite quickly taking control of the park, running battles between police and thousands of protesters, driven back into the warren of side streets beside the square, carried on for hours afterwards. At one stage a bearded middle-aged man draped himself over the plough of one of the water cannons to try to prevent it moving forwards before he was beaten back by batons and gas. Protesters sought refuge in hotels and cafes, including hundreds in the Divan hotel, which was stormed by police. Later police stormed the hotel beating protesters, while a later assault left the lobby of the luxury hotel thick with gas. The Guardian saw two elderly women who had passed out being carried out on stretchers to an ambulance. Earlier riot police had stormed into the lobby, beating those inside. Many had been expecting a final move to clear the park after Erdogan's speech. But none had anticipated the action would begin so quickly. Tayfun Kahraman, a member of Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements, said an unknown number of people in the park had been injured, some by rubber bullets. A leading public-sector union alliance, KESK, said it would call a national strike for Monday. NUT executive and Socialist party member Martin Powell-Davies was part of a British trade union delegation that had approached the fringes of the square as police moved in. He said: "There was a concert by a well-known musician with hundreds of people and families in a festival atmosphere in the square and then suddenly from all sides the police came with water cannons and teargas." He struggled to speak as he choked on teargas and protesters regrouped to chant anti-government slogans. He said: "There are hundreds of Istanbul residents who have come out on to the streets to show their opposition. They are banging the shutters in protest at the sides of the streets." The assault followed Erdogan's defiant message delivered in a suburb of Ankara, depicting those on the streets as "traitors playing a game", "looters" or part of a conspiracy against the government. "Anyone who wants to hear the national will, should come and listen to [Ankara]," Erdogan said. "We are not like those who took molotov cocktails, or honked their car horns. I tell you it's a crime to violate order." He insisted, once again, that he and the AKP had a clear mandate to govern. Oguz Kaan Salici, Istanbul president of the main opposition People's Republican Party, said: "The police brutality aims at clearing the streets of Istanbul to make way for Erdogan's meeting tomorrow. Yet it will backfire. People feel betrayed." Solidarity with all there on the ground I’m following this very carefully indeed. References Sunday Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/turkey-police-clear-gezi-park?guni=Keyword:news-grid

Solidarity with the mass protests in Turkey

From www.paulmurphymep.eu, website of Paul Murphy, MEP, Socialist Party (CWI Ireland) Socialist Party MEP, Paul Murphy, is currently visiting Istanbul in a solidarity visit with the protest movement that has erupted from Gezi Park, from the evening of Friday 7th June until the evening of Sunday 9th June. During the visit, Paul will be meeting with activists in Taksim Square, trade unionists and an MP from the BDP [Party for Peace and Democracy, left-wing and the main pro-Kurdish party]. Paul commented on the visit: “The visit is to extend the solidarity of working people and activists across Europe, who are watching events in Turkey with sympathy for the protesters and are appalled by the brutality used by the state forces.” As a member of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament, Paul initiated a message of support, signed by 15 MEPs, with the Gezi Park protests: “We the undersigned, Members of the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European Parliament would like to extend our solidarity to those who have been involved in peaceful mass protest movements across Turkey in the recent days and weeks. Working people and activists across Europe are watching events in Turkey with sympathy for the protesters and are appalled by the brutality used by the state forces. We support the call by the public sector trade union KESK who have called warning strikes in light of the brutal use of state violence against protesters. The right wing Turkish regime, a NATO ally with its own ambitions to become a regional power, is challenged by an uprising of anger and opposition. As left wing Members of the European Parliament, we defend the democratic right of all people in Turkey and indeed across the world to protest and to freedom of expression. We are appalled by the reports in the media that quote Premier Erdogan saying that the “protests are undemocratic” and that “the social media are a severe threat to society". We are enraged by the reports of mass arrests of more than 1,700 people and equally enraged about the 1,500 or so people that have been injured as a result of the police violence, some of them very seriously as we understand. We call on the Turkish government to end the police violence and support the call for an independent investigation into the use of state violence and demand that the findings will be made public and perpetrators be brought to justice. Many of us are actively involved in protest movements against the brutal austerity policies in our own countries which are imposed by the so called Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, with the agreement and support of the national governments that have led to misery and poverty for many working class people and youth in particular. We witness how the democratic right to protest is increasingly threatened as the anger of people against neo-liberal and anti-social policies increases. That is why we need to stand together to defend our right to protest and to stand for a policy that defends the interests and living standards of the majority of the people and not the interests of a tiny rich minority. We say “Enough is enough!” the government has long violated democratic rights, the rights of workers, trade unions and minorities. Your courage and struggle is an inspiration to us and we will do everything in our power to highlight your struggle in the European Parliament and in the trade union and social movements that we are involved in. Yours in solidarity, Paul Murphy MEP, Ireland Martina Anderson MEP, Ireland Nikolaos Chountis MEP, Greece Takis Hadjigeorgiou MEP, Cyprus Jacky Hénin MEP, France Sabine Lösing MEP, Germany Marisa Matias MEP,Portugal Willy Meyer MEP, Spain Helmut Scholz MEP, Germany Soren Sondergaard MEP, Denmark Alda Sousa MEP, Portugal Kyriacos Triantaphyllides MEP, Cyprus Sabine Wils MEP, Germany Gabi Zimmer MEP, Germany"