In his 1957 novel "On the beach", made into a film a couple of years later, Nevil Shute imagined Australia as the last place on Earth where humans survived after a nuclear war had destroyed the northern hemisphere. It was a brief respite as the deadly radioactivity blew towards the south and the story describes how the various characters approached the demise of the planet as well as their own impending doom. Today, rather than being the last knockings of civilisation described by Shute, the continent of Australia is a harbinger and a microcosm - a particularly significant microcosm being as large as the whole of Europe or the United States - of the Earth being turned into a desert through the rapacious and unquenchable thirst of capitalism for profit. Everything about man-made climate change, global warming and capitalism's absolute inability to even begin to deal with this mortal threat to humanity, as well as the phoney solutions proposed by the likes of the Greens, is here in "Oz" today.
We could go into lots of detailed figures about graphs, increasing temperatures, scales, the scope and breadth of the fires currently raging across Australia; details about the numbers of homes lost, deaths and illnesses caused but it's sufficient here to say that they are at record levels and rising every day across increasing parts of the continent, where in some places air pollution levels are higher than those of Beijing or Delhi. And, in the New South Wales capital, they are 11 times higher than normal. In populous Sydney fire alarms are going off, ferries and other transportation systems are grounded and schools closed. People with severe respiratory illnesses are clogging up hospitals and doctor's surgeries and no-one is warned that the Beijing-style face masks that are making an appearance are worse than useless. Even inside their homes people are reporting smoke finding its way in and they are rightly scared for their immediate and longer-term health. Conditions are becoming more and more hazardous for fire-fighters, 85% of whom are volunteers (after the latest round of full-time fire jobs cut), and with little break in activity they are falling into fatigue, smoke-poisoning and danger of death from accidents.
Of course there have always been bush fires in Australia but the scope, duration and intensity of these latest developments take them to a new, dangerous level. Like "there's always been bush fires", there's always been climatic changes and fluctuations in the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event which affects Australian and larger weather patterns, in this case heating up the south-east while dumping record levels of rainfall on Africa. But like other weather patterns globally (El Nino, e.g.) they are being bent out of shape and intensified to "unprecedented" levels according to experts; and this is caused by the increase in global warming brought about by the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.
And, as bad as they are, it's not only bush fires and water shortages that are expressions of the long-term and short-term dangers to the population of Australia and beyond; de-forestation is creating more and more dustbowls. Australia is right up there with all the complicit Brazilian (and other) regimes in the scale and ruthlessness of the exploitation of the land. Vast areas, as far as the eye can see, have been uprooted of every form of vegetation - the iconic koala bears were already being wiped out long before these fires. The massive flatlands created for intensive agriculture demand vast volumes of water and tonnes of fertilizer. They are denuded of all organic growth, leaving little moisture in the ground which further reduces the cloud formations above them. As these plains dry out in the heat what's left is barren dirt decomposing into dust, taken on the wind and laced with pesticides - an additional concern for neighbouring communities. Like Bolsanoro's Brazil, illegal land-clearances and deforestation have been tolerated, even encouraged by the various Australian authorities. All this for the sake of capitalism and its ineluctable drive for greater profits; and given the warnings of experts on future climatic developments, and that nothing is going to change about capitalism's need for profit, it makes you wonder just how long vast swathes of Australia can remain habitable for future generations.
The Coalition Government of "man of the people", Prime Minister Scott Morrison, unlike his predecessor Tony Abbot, has accepted that "global warming" exists but it's "under control"[1] (like it is in Australia at the moment!). His and his government's position is essentially no different from Abbot who said that global warming "was probably doing good", that it was "greening the planet and increasing plant yields making life safer and more pleasant" and there wasn't much chance of stopping it anyway. Morrison won the election on the basis of not being afraid of coal, saying that he wouldn't put climate change before jobs; that it did exist "along with many other factors" but was a "side issue" in relation to the bush fires and "nothing to worry about" more generally. The government and its energy sector have no coherent climate change policies and here they are no different from the vast majority of the major powers. They are currently using carbon credits linked to creative accounting in order to say that they are doing something towards the Australian government's promised emissions reduction. The Federal Government deflects the problem onto the local authorities, state and territorial, "devolving" the question and thus avoiding and undermining any form of responsibility or coherent approach. This "devolution" tactic is an old trick of the democratic state that also facilitates divide and rule. Meanwhile the New South Wales parliament is trying to push through legislation that will weaken any climatic considerations in the production of coal; Australia has very lucrative coal exports totalling £36 billion per annum according to some reports. Seven new open cast mines have been started in Queensland. Fundamentally, like all governments of all hues, the response of the Australian government has been to deny, deflect and obscure the question of climate change while carrying on apace with the despoliation of the territory in the name of the national interest of making profits.
The response of the Greens is to make more noise about climate change, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty they belong squarely in the same sack as the government and its politicians. The "Green movement" is very much like the pacifist movement; in fact in Australia, as in all the other major democracies, the two movements, their structures and personnel, are interchangeable and do interchange at certain points of history. The main similarity in the two movements is that they exist to publicise and plead for what capitalism cannot provide - a system without profit, competition and war. They are not just diversions from the necessity for the proletariat to take on capitalism root and branch; they are important props for the perpetuation of the system and are thus partly responsible for the accumulating effects of its decomposition. For the Greens the struggle of labour against capital is to be avoided in order for their "reforms" to succeed, reforms which have no chance of succeeding as long as capitalism exists.
For the Greens generally the situation "requires government attention" and "intervention" in the "banking" industry[2]. State intervention is also required for "new jobs from carbon neutral energy sources", and parliament (the Greens like the pacifists are very strong on parliament and democracy) should "save the people": that is the same parliament which, in reality, represents the interests of capital against "the people" in general and the working class in particular. For the Greens, the working class should support its enemy, make sacrifices for it and forego its struggle for power.
For some Greens in Australia, and elsewhere no doubt, the fires have been welcomed as "a final wake-up call"(in a long-line of "final wake-up calls"). The idea of these activists is that given the increasing damage from fires and floods, insurance companies will refuse to underwrite these and other critical risks associated with global warming and, consequently, the banks will no longer lend to fossil fuel companies, investing instead in "green outcomes". The fundamental problem with this approach is that it is based on the assumption that capitalism is essentially a system that is "open to reason" and will take a logical approach and do what's best for the world. The weight of evidence that we have from the beginning of last century is that this is not the case, as illustrated by two world wars and numerous irrational and illogical wars since as capitalism sinks into further decay. No matter how "radical" these Greens appear to be, their whole purpose is an attempt to reform the system through banking, insurance companies and "green exploitation". But the main function of the Green ideology, like its pacifist twin, is to confuse and demobilise the working class, to turn it away from its struggle against capital and back into the "national interest".
What really exposes the Green movement (and causes a great deal of infighting within the groups) is capitalism's development of militarism and war. When the Greens are not directly pacifist how do they approach the question of imperialist war? The likely approach, given the Greens support for the national interest of capitalism, is that of the influential Greens in Germany who supported their state's "war on terror" in Afghanistan and its overseas military "expeditions". The Greens in general are going to leave the military/repressive apparatus of the state not only intact but expanding, aggressive and running on fossil fuel.
The Australian bush fires and all the political shenanigans around them are just one more example of capitalism's drive to destruction on a global level. Aside from the frenetic and ultimately complicit response of the Green movement in the descending spiral of decay of this system in the last hundred years or more, there's also the hope, more like a pious dream, that something will turn up to halt this slide, some magic that will reverse the destructive effects of capitalism on the planet and its populations. It isn't going to happen. Capitalism doesn't act for the good of humanity but for the accumulation of capital and military conquest; reason doesn't come into it:
"Capital is a world-wide relation between classes, based on the exploitation of wage labour and production for sale in order to realise profit. The constant search for outlets for its commodities calls forth ruthless competition between nation states for domination of the world market. And this competition demands that every national capital must expand or die. A capitalism that no longer seeks to penetrate the last corner of the planet and grow without limit cannot exist. By the same token, capitalism is utterly incapable of cooperating on a global scale to respond to the ecological crisis, as the abject failure of all the various climate summits and protocols have already proved"[3].
On the "other side" of capital stands labour and this latter has already stormed the heavens once and will be required to do so again as the only force able to provide a fighting alternative to the grim future that capitalism has in store for us.
Baboon. 28.12.2019
[1] All quotes from The Guardian, Australia.
[2] We've seen what "intervention in the banking industry" means following the nationalisation of all the major banks after the "crash" of 2008. For the working class it has meant years of back-breaking austerity in order to pay for it.
[3] "Only the international class struggle can end capitalism's drive towards destruction". ICC leaflet: https://en.internationalism.org/content/16724/only-international-class-s... [2]
According to Emmanuel Macron and his ministers, the December 5 strike is "a mobilisation against the end of special regimes", against "equality and social justice". It couldn't be clearer: railworkers and other sectors of workers that have a "special regime" are irresponsibly egotistic and use it to maintain their so-called "privileges". LIES! The government is trying to put us one against the other in order to divide us and render us unable to fight effectively.
Everywhere, in factories and offices, in every corporation, in every sector, private and public, the bourgeoisie imposes similar conditions of unsustainable workloads. Everywhere workers’ numbers are cut, a process which further increases the workload. Everywhere workers, unemployed, pensioners and youth are threatened by impoverishment. And everywhere, new "reforms" are announcing a harder future still. The attacks from the Macron government are extremely violent. Their objective is to make the French economy as competitive as possible on the international arena, in a period where competition between nations is becoming fiercer and fiercer. In order to increase productivity, the French bourgeoisie, its president, its government and its bosses are about to accelerate the pace of work, cut workers’ numbers, increase flexibility, dismantle the public sector, reduce dole money and pensions, drastically cut teaching budgets, cut social workers (school “reform”, reduction in housing benefit...). They take more and more from the workers in the name of "necessary" profitability or a "duty" to competitiveness, of "unavoidable" balanced budgets, while at the same time the incomes of the capitalists are grossly inflated.
Not a day passes that doesn't see strikes breaking out. In these last weeks, railworkers, hospital workers and students in precarious circumstances have raised their heads; but they are not alone. For months innumerable walk-outs have taken place. In chronological order, strikes in September have included: emergency workers, firefighters, Deliveroo drivers, Transavia pilots, bus drivers of Metz and Caen, post workers in the Alpes Mantimes and Pyrenees Orientales, Metro and bus workers, public finance, nurses, pilots, public sector, teachers of San Quentin, electricity supply workers, bus drivers in Orleans and Lorient, public sector workers again, laboratory workers, etc., etc. Some of these movements have been going on since the Spring! The phenomenon increased in October and November, hitting for example distribution networks. Yes, the strikes are numerous; yes, social anger is great; yes, it's a full-on attack! But all these struggles remain isolated the one from the others, closed in, separated by particular and corporatist demands. But, faced with a bourgeoisie organised behind its state and its government this division is destructive. In order to resist, in order to build-up a balance of force faced with the attacks that are hitting every sector, the workers must fight together in unity and solidarity.
Is December 5th finally the beginning of this unity? That's what the unions say: an unlimited, national strike across all sectors.
Throughout September, the unions have broken up the movement of social contestation into multiple days of corporatist actions (RATP, public finances, National Education, Justice Ministry, EDF, firefighters). At the beginning of October, they finally promised a great day of mobilisation uniting all sectors... for the month of December. And what have they done for two months? Divided us up as they always do! They have kept workers fighting in isolation, all those on strike confined in their own box, with its own, specific slogan, whereas we are all suffering from the same attacks, the same degradation of our living and working conditions.
A caricature of this sabotage by the unions is the call by the collectives of emergency and hospital workers (entirely directed by the union centres) not to join the December 5th strike in the name of the "specificity" of health service demands, to be replaced by a union day of action on November 30; the same strategy of isolation used for the inter-union committee for the interns which has launched an unlimited strike from... December 10! However, at the general assembly of hospital workers which took place November 14 in Paris, after a day of action of the sector regrouping 10,000 demonstrators, a bitter conflict took place between the participants of the GA and the unions on the question of unity. A number of hospital workers put forward the necessity to undertake one and the same combat, beyond sectors, while the unions defended the idea that "we are a collective that is supposed to talk about hospitals", defending tooth and nail "a specific date for hospitals". On France info one could hear nurses coming out of the GA saying: "We were not able to finish because we were divided. The unions have completely disorganised this meeting", and "There is too much disagreement. December 5th is the date for the general strike and we are involved. Outside our problems at the hospital, there are also the pensioners and we will be retiring in the future. I don't see the problem of a demonstration on December 5". But the unions decided otherwise. The unions in the hospital sector, on strike for nine months now and affected by an immense anger faced with more and more untenable working conditions, call for the sector to continue fighting on their own, isolated and impotent in its struggle. And it's the same for the railworkers.
The unions pride themselves on this radicalism by brandishing the threat of rolling strikes; but these strikes remain corporatist, isolated from each other and are thus condemned to failure because they result in the exhaustion of the most combative sectors. Such is the fate that they would like to reserve, notably for the most determined workers of SNCF(railways) after December 5 and the hospital workers after the 10th: they want them to end up fighting on their own during the holidays at the end of the year. We shouldn't be naive: why have they postponed these great demonstrations to the 5th and 10th of December? It's clear that they are betting on a "Christmas truce" in order to bury the movement in case it continues after these days of action.
Under the banner of "all together", the unions are in actual fact organising a real dispersion. During these days of "union unity", the workers don't struggle together. At best they find themselves one behind the others tramping the streets, sliced up by sectors and corporations, separated from each other by banners, balloons and the choice of music according to if it's railworkers, teachers, nursery nurses, secretaries, tax workers, a Renault worker, a Peugeot worker, a worker at Conforama, student, pensioner, unemployed... Everyone in their own box.
The spontaneous strike by railworkers at the end of October showed us in part the way to go forward. At Chatillon, following the announcement of the reorganisation of work involving, amongst other things, the loss of twelve day's holiday, the workers at the centre immediately walked out, declared a strike and didn't wait for union instructions.
The reorganisation plan was withdrawn twenty-four hours later. A few days earlier, following a train collision in Champagne-Ardenne which showed how dangerous it is to have just one worker (the driver) on the train, the workers on the line, again spontaneously, refused to keep the trains running in these conditions. The dispute spread rapidly in the following days along the railways of the I'lle-de-France. It isn't by chance that here it's the railworkers indicating the first steps to take the struggle in hand. It's the consequence of both experience and of the historic combativity of this sector of the working class in France, but it's also based on a process of reflection which has been brewing up for a year over the bitter defeat of the long movement of 2018... by the unions. With their famous "go-slows" they kept the workers locked-up in an isolated struggle until the exhaustion of their forces.
But, today, the striking railworkers haven't understood how to spread the movement beyond their place of work. They remain enclosed within the SNCF. There hasn't been any autonomous general assembly deciding to send massive delegations, all the assembled workers even, to the closest centres of work (a hospital, a factory, an office...) in order to draw them into the struggle so as to geographically spread the movement. It's vital to put forward the view that all workers have the same interests, that it's the same struggle, that we need unity and solidarity; that it's beyond sectors and corporations that the working class finds its strength. Those are difficult steps to take. A necessary unity in the struggle implies recognition of ourselves no longer as railworkers, nurses, bank workers, teachers or IT, but as exploited workers.
Remember, in Spring 2006, the government had to withdraw its "Contrat Première Embauche" faced with the development of solidarity between generations of workers. The students, facing more uncertainty with the CPE law, organised massive general assemblies in the universities open to workers, the unemployed and the retired, putting forward a slogan which expressed the unity of the movement: the struggle against precarious conditions and unemployment. These GA's were the lungs of the movement, debates were undertaken and decisions made. The result? Every weekend the demonstrators regrouped more and more sectors. Workers and retired workers joined up with the students under the slogan "Young bacon, old croutons, all part of the same salad". Faced with the extension and the tendency towards unification of the movement generated by the students, the French bourgeoisie and the government had no other choice but to withdraw the proposed CPE law. That's why today, Macron and his ministers have launched a nauseous campaign around the "Grandfather clause" (new measures not aiming to hit the whole of the class but only the new generation arriving at the workplace). What they want is an enforced division between the generations of workers. In 1968, when the economic crisis returned again and with it the return of unemployment and the impoverishment of the workers, the proletariat in France was united in its struggle. Following immense demonstrations on May 13 against the police repression suffered by the students, walk-outs and general assemblies spread through factories and places of work, ending up with nine million strikers, the largest strike in the history of the international workers' movement. Very often this dynamic of extension and unity developed outside of the union framework and numerous workers tore up their union cards after the "Grenelle Accords" of May 27 between the unions and the bosses which buried the movement.
Today, workers, the unemployed, the retired and students lack the confidence in themselves, in their collective strength, to dare to take their own struggle in hand. But there's no other way. All the "actions" proposed by the unions lead to division, defeat and demoralisation. Only the coming together within open, massive and autonomous general assemblies, really deciding how to conduct the movement, can constitute the basis for a united struggle, carried along by solidarity between all sectors, all generations. GA's which allow nurses, emergency workers, the unemployed, those who can't go on strike, to participate in the movement. GA's which put forward demands which concern everyone: the struggle against precarious conditions, against cutting jobs, against productivity increases, against pauperisation... GA's in which we feel united and confident in our collective strength.
Capitalism, in France as everywhere else in the world, continues to plunge humanity into a more and more dreadful misery. Only the working class represents a force which can put a stop to these attacks. The most combative and determined workers must regroup, discuss, re-appropriate the lessons of the past in order to prepare for the autonomous struggle of the whole class. Only the proletariat will be able, in time, to open the doors of the future for the generations to come faced with a system of decadent capitalism which carries only more misery, exploitation and barbarity and which bears war and massacres like the clouds bear the storm. It's a system which is about to destroy the environment in which humanity lives, threatening the survival of the species.
Only the massive and united struggle of all sectors of the exploited class can halt and push back the present attacks of the bourgeoisie.
Only the development of this struggle can open the way to the historic combat of the working class for the abolition of exploitation and capitalism.
International Communist Current
(December 1, 2019)
Slave market in Libya
Libya continues to make regular appearances in the media since 2011, the year of the liquidation of its now-defunct "guide" Colonel Gaddafi by the forces of Nato (France, UK and USA): "This poor Libya, that the Franco-British war of 2011 has transformed into a paradise for the terrorists of Isis and al-Qaida… The trafficking of arms, drugs and migrants proliferates throughout and rarely comes into conflict with the jihadists. This isn't surprising given that they are fellow businessmen"[1]. It was in the name of "the protection of civilians", after the passing of the "Arab Spring" in Libya (brutally repressed by the ex-dictator), that the western powers declared war on the Libyan leader. Having bombed the population and killed Gaddafi, they left the country in the hands of multiple bloody militias who are still fighting over the moribund Libyan state.
"The fighting rumbles on at the ports of Tripoli, from the regional ‘Godfathers’ feeding the flames to the belligerents stoking up hatred with their propaganda. Since April 4, when the troops of Marshall Haftar attacked Tripoli, the flames of war have been re-ignited in Libya. Eight years after the anti-Gaddafi insurrection (supported by Nato air-strikes) and five years after the civil war of 2014, the giant of North Africa is once again falling into chaos, instability and the risk of extremism (...). It's back to square one".[2]
Today, among the dozen or so militias on the ground, the two most important factions aiming for the status of middle-men with the big powers and the UN are: the "Government of National Accord" (GNA) led by Faise Sarraj, designated by the UN and supported by Turkey and Qatar and the government of the eastern coastal Cyrenaica region, the "Libyan National Army" (ANL) led by Khalifa Haftar who is supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to which can be added (on the quiet), France, Russia and the United States; whereas the government of ex-colonial power Italy supports one or the other faction dependent on the control that they have on the ground, as it did in October when it renewed a contemptible agreement for the formation of Libyan coastguards to hunt down migrants.
Britain, which has done as much as anyone in bringing chaos and destruction to this territory, has been sidelined somewhat and doesn't seem to favour the involvement of Saudi and UAE here at all. Rather it backs Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood. Britain has maintained its links with the Manchester based, al-Qaida-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that travels back and forth under British protection not only to Libya but also to Afghanistan and Syria. It was an element of this jihadi group who is on trial for carrying out the Ariane Grande concert bombing in Manchester, 2017. Along with "aid", the British government, in the form of then Foreign Secretary (and, at the time of writing, Prime Minister) Boris Johnson, committed itself to "fighting terrorism" in Libya in 2017.
In reality, “every man for himself” and hypocrisy dominate the situation and the barbaric spectacle reveals the lying and abject attitude of the major powers that are playing a double game, like the British, and the French government caught red-handed when it shamelessly lied about the missiles provided by its secret services to Marshall Haftar while affirming that "France is in Libya to fight terrorism".
As for the two Libyan war chiefs, their objectives are also villainous: "Thus, standing face to face, the two camps will never dare to admit the truth of their confrontation. The emphatic recourse to rhetorical justification, using terms like ‘revolution’ or ‘anti-terrorism’ cannot cover up the stark character of a rivalry around the appropriation of resources which takes on a very particular sense in this old oil Eldorado which is Libya. Despite some setbacks caused by post-2011 chaos, Libyan oil continues to generate revenues of $70 million (62.5 million euros) per day. Also, control over the lucrative distribution networks sharpens these antagonisms still more"[3]. This is another aspect of the conflict which none of the leaders of the capitalist world talk about in their official speeches! This race to loot oil, opened up by the chaos of 2011, puts a great number of gangsters small and large, local and international, on Libyan soil.
Worse still, for the major capitalist vultures, Libya represents another unmentionable interest: the existence, on their initiative, of the monstrous "camps of welcome" for frustrated migrants or those on stopover waiting for an imaginary boat to take them to Europe.
Further to the bloody chaos provoked by the major imperialist powers, Libya has become a real "market" and cemetery for migrants for which the EU is responsible. Images of a slave market in Libya were broadcast by CNN on November 14 2017, showing human beings auctioned off and sold like beasts. The migrants, whose numbers vary between 700,000 and one million, fall into the traps of the criminal networks and traffickers, with whom the European and African states are accomplices. "What's happening in Libya, a country without leadership and run by armed militias, is a tragedy to which the European Union closes its eyes. African leaders, having opted for hypocrisy, follow the Europeans like sheep. The report by CNN won't change much of the situation on the ground in Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi or Tobruk. In a country devastated by civil war, exploding inflation, a ruined economy where the massive execution of prisoners is practiced, almost everyone works either in the business of contraband and collaboration with the smugglers, or in the fight against contraband and smugglers. The report shows a case of servitude linked to the settlement of debt, but a great number of migrants sold at auction in Libya are detained in the framework of trafficking linked to the payment of ransoms. With the closure of the Libyan route leading to Italy, Sub-Saharan migrants often find themselves cornered with no means to pay the price demanded to return to their homes. The smugglers then sell them to the highest bidder - a militia for example. The buyers then contact their families to demand a ransom which goes from 2000 to 3000 dinars (1200 to 1800 euros) per person”[4]. According to a report published by UNICEF: "The detention centres run by the militias are nothing other than forced work camps, prisons where everyone is robbed under armed force. For the millions of women and children, life in prison consists of rape and violence, sexual exploitation, hunger and endless abuse".
All this illustrates the breadth of the capitalist barbarity that directly implicates the major imperialist powers which, through their policies, are throwing the migrants into the arms of slave-traders from another era. The EU effectively demands that failing and totally corrupt neighbouring states (Niger, Nigeria, etc.,) enact anti-migrant policies through subsidies to build walls and erect death-camps. The EU also takes part in Mafia-type activities and trade between bandits by providing funds and material to the coastguards who are responsible for intercepting migrant vessels and take them to the monstrous detention camps. Today the migrants are still in the same situation of misery, in the middle of the dangers which led them by the million to cross the Mediterranean, as this story shows: "On the beach of Aghir on the island of Djerba, north of Tunisia, there were more bodies than bathers at the beginning of the month. On Monday July 1, a boat sank after leaving the Libyan town of Zuwara, 120 km west of Tripoli with 86 people on board. Three were pulled out alive but the sea took the rest of them. ‘I can't do this any longer. It's just too much’, Chemseddine Marzog, a fisherman who for years has provided a last resting place for the bodies that the sea has thrown up, stated through his anger. ‘I have buried close to 400 bodies and dozens more will arrive in the days to come. It is impossible, it is inhuman and we can't manage alone’, said the desperate guardian of the migrant's cemetery at the town of Zarzis in Tunisia close to the Libyan border”[5].
For some time now the "western democracies" have shut their eyes and turned up their noses faced with this cruel barbarity while continuing their plans for the "security" (i.e., closure) of their borders against "illegal immigrants" while loudly declaring their "universal humanism" and continuing to push forward policies which define their infamous politics[6].
Amina, November 2019
[1] La Canard Enchaîné (April 24, 2019).
[2] Le Monde, (May 12-13, 2019).
[3] Le Monde, (May 3, 2019).
[4] Courrier international, (December 7-13, 2017).
[5] Le Monde, July 10, 2019.
[6] On this matter, we can add that the countries of the EU are not at all alone in their barbaric policies towards migrants. They can also count on their "great friend" and client Saudi Arabia. In fact, Riyadh attacks, imprisons and expels "undesirable" migrants that it finds on its territory. According to The Guardian: "10,00 Ethiopians are expelled each month from Saudi Arabia since 2017, the date which the authorities of this country intensified their merciless campaign to send back migrants who don't have papers. About 300,000 people have been sent back since March this year alone, according to the latest figures from the International Organisation for Migrants (IOM) and special flights of deportation are arriving every week at Addis Ababa international airport (...) Some hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have been deported since the preceding wave of chaotic repression undertaken in 2013-2014". These practices of the bloody Saudi regime towards those fleeing misery and death are a sinister illustration of the fact that all states are participating with the same cynicism in order to assure the perpetration of this dehumanised system.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/australia_image.jpg
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/content/16724/only-international-class-struggle-can-end-capitalisms-drive-towards-destruction
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/en_greve.jpg
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/slave_market_in_libya.jpg