Brexit: cancelled by Britain’s ruling class

21centurymanifesto

Big business has never agreed with the result of the 2016 referendum.

The Bank of England, City banks and bosses’’organisations the CBI, the Institute of Directors and the Engineering Employers Federation wanted us to vote ‘Remain’.

So did most mainstream right-wing politicians.

After losing the referendum, Theresa May’s Cabinet and the EU cooked up a Withdrawal Agreement to keep Britain tied to the EU Single Market.

EU rules would halt a future Labour government’s policies for public investment in industry and infrastructure (including housing and public transport), an end to privatisation and outsourcing, cuts in VAT and a ban on the super-exploitation of migrant workers.

No wonder the British ruling class opposes Brexit!

But MPs can’t agree on whether to accept Theresa May’s half-baked Brexit – or to cancel Brexit with an EU-style second referendum.

When the peoples of Ireland (twice), Denmark, the Netherlands, France and Greece voted against EU…

View original post 228 more words

New French communist leader speaks

21centurymanifesto

Address by Fabien Roussel, elected National Secretary of the French Communist Party on 25 November 2018.

38^th Congress of the French Communist Party

Address by Fabien Roussel

Ivry-sur-Seine

25 November 2018

Dear friends,

Dear Comrades,

Our party has been in motion for weeks, months even. Communists have been discussing, debating, amending … The Communist Party is more alive than ever! And the message that you have all sent together is very clear: stay united and ever more combative!

Yes, stay united, because that is our greatest strength, and has been for nearly a century now. We have always known, as Communists, how to unite around our common ideal, that of a society turned toward all that is human, and not handed over to financial markets.

We come out of this Congress unified, boosted by the many contributions that have given our project a coherence and power that is rarely…

View original post 3,884 more words

Reforming the European Union is an impossible dream

21centurymanifesto

by Rob Griffiths

JEREMY CORBYN told some uncomfortable truths to Europe’s social-democratic parties in Lisbon last Friday.

He urged the congress of the Party of European Socialists to “work together to help build a real social Europe, a people’s Europe, a Europe that will strengthen solidarity across borders, resist the race to the bottom in rights and protections and work together to extend them for all workers, consumers and our environment.”

So far, so good. Even the “free market” fanatics of the European Commission might happily pay lip service to that.

But the Labour leader continued:
“We have to recognise that European Union support for austerity and failed neoliberal economics have caused serious hardship for working people across Europe. In my own country there’s been effectively a wage freeze for 10 years. It’s damaged the credibility of the European social model and social-democratic parties and played a significant role in…

View original post 1,236 more words

The EU is an obstacle to building a people-centred economy for the working people of Ireland

21centurymanifesto

Ruling class figures are using the British border in Ireland as their lever to ensure that Britain leaves the single market and EU customs union, warns EUGENE McCARTAN

Difficulties for the EU continue to intensify. As the time for a final deal between the British state and the European Union draws near, the British government is attempting to push through its minimalist Brexit strategy so as to secure its “special relationship.”

We need to recall that Brexit is the result of a political division within the Conservative Party, the political party of the British ruling class.

This reflects the split within the capitalist class — by no means confined to Britain — generated by the persisting economic crisis.

The settled view of both the British state and the dominant sections of British finance capital was and is to remain within the EU if at all possible.

The British government and…

View original post 1,355 more words

Venezuela: Unitary agreement between PSUV and PCV

21centurymanifesto

UNITARY AGREEMENT BETWEEN PSUV AND PCV:

TO ADDRESS THE CRISIS OF VENEZUELA’S DEPENDENT AND RENTIER CAPITALISM WITH PRO-PEOPLE, PATRIOTIC AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC ACTIONS

1. We, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), as heirs to the legacy of Simón Bolívar and the struggles of the Venezuelan people in their aspirations for independence, sovereign development, and Latin American integration, subscribe to this unitary agreement, with our commitment to honor each of its sections, in the understanding that the immoral, illegal and criminal interventionist aggression of US imperialism and its European allies against the Venezuelan Bolivarian process is increasing, putting at risk the prospects of national liberation which began with the people’s victory headed by Commander Hugo Chávez in the presidential elections of 1998, and even threatening the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country.
2. We, PSUV and PCV, denounce to the World…

View original post 1,423 more words

Apple & the Guardian: Partners in a death spiral

via Apple & the Guardian: Partners in a death spiral

New Year’s Message and Warning from a War Correspondent

via New Year’s Message and Warning from a War Correspondent

Iran: the seventh country on the alleged US list for regime change

via Iran: the seventh country on the alleged US list for regime change

How can we rebuild open-minded debate within the Jewish community today?

21centurymanifesto

The Morning Star published DAVID ROSENBERG’s speech at the public launch of Jewish Voice For Labour, at a conference fringe meeting attended by more than 200 people

---

A few weeks ago I was in Poland. My fifth visit to a country that many describe simply as the biggest Jewish graveyard.

Three million of its 3.3 million pre-war Jewish population were exterminated by the nazis. Today it has a very right-wing government and active far-right groups. You see anti-semitic graffiti on some walls.

And yet in 15 Polish cities Jewish communities are reviving and growing. In Kazimierz, Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, there are several very old synagogues.

Two function as synagogues; others house exhibitions, bookshops, cultural initiatives. Their doors are open. There is no grafitti on them. Yet none of them are bristling with CCTV, high fences, or hyped-up, walkie-talkie-bearing Israeli guards.

A Jewish community centre founded in Krakow in 2009…

View original post 1,956 more words

A Chapter in a Declining Empire

21centurymanifesto

Zoltan Zigedy on the US scene today

Everyone not yet anesthetized by the anti-Russia hysteria, should read Robert Parry’s The Rise of the New McCarthyism. The estimable Parry argues for similarities between today’s overheated political antics and those of an earlier time. He likens the relentless Russia-baiting of 2017 with the red-baiting of the post-war period often identified with Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy.

But that is not quite right. Labelling the post-war delirium, characterizing the anti-Communist frenzy of the period as “McCarthyism” places far too much weight on that sole figure. True, Joe McCarthy exploited the climate, pushing the absurdity of the times to even more absurd levels. Yet we overlook the causes of the poisoned atmosphere just as surely as we would if we labelled this moment we live in as “Maddowism,” after the woman committed to exploiting the mania for ratings, after Rachel Maddow’s prodding anti-Russian sentiment…

View original post 1,147 more words