INTERNATIONAL
 At the height of the Greek crash in 2011, staff at Viome clocked in to confront an existential quandary. The owners of their parent company had gone bust and abandoned the site. The workers’ chances of getting another job were close to nil. So they decided to occupy their own plant. theguardian.com/
This week saw massive mobilisations in Turkey, highlighting how the social situation is continuing to alternate between repression and resistance. The protest march led by opposition Parliamentary leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu culminated in a huge rally in Istanbul attended by an estimated one million people. aawl.org.au/
The presidency of Rodrigo Duterte has been characterised by the murderous campaign against working class communities on the pretext of a ‘War on Drugs’, as well as the recent declaration of Martial Law in the southern island of Mindana. aawl.org.au/
Old preconceptions and terms must be challenged in order to have an accurate view of the present international situation. Russia today, as a capitalist country, is not even a fifth-rate economic power. workers.org/
Two of the highest profile athletes in their respective sports, boxing and MMA, coming together for the first time to promote their upcoming non-title bout, set to take place under Marquis of Queensberry – i.e. boxing – rules is not a serious fight. It is not even an event. Instead it is a spectacle of unfettered vulgarity and greed that has little if anything to do with sport. counterpunch.org/
 American slavery was technically abolished in 1865, but a loophole in the 13th Amendment has allowed it to continue “as a punishment for crimes” well into the 21st century. Not surprisingly, corporations have lobbied for a broader and broader definition of “crime” in the last 150 years. As a result, there are more (mostly dark-skinned) people performing mandatory, essentially unpaid, hard labor in America today than there were in 1830. returntonow.net/
While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71 percent. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet. theguardian.com/
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Over 700,000 South Africans rely on a train to get them to work everyday, yet their journeys are often derailed by late trains. Trains are not safe and dreams are deferred by journeys that go off track. The pain of the passengers is not caused by a shortage of money. South Africa spends almost R100-billion a year on transport with a significant chunk going to subsidise train travel. But the Passenger Rail Agency of SA is paralysed by corruption. 
On 30 September, 2013 Nqobile Nzuza was murdered by the South African police in Cato Crest. She was shot from behind while participating in a protest organised around a road blockade. She was seventeen years old when she was murdered. The court found that the cause of Nzuza’s death was traceable to the gun belonging to the accused officer. 
Two million Gazans face a growing manmade disaster that is largely invisible. After 50 years of occupation, a decade of strangulating siege, and multiple high and low-intensity Israeli assaults on an almost daily basis, a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, aided and abetted by the Israeli government, now threatens the very lives of these beleaguered people. 
