| SOUTH AFRICA
 Five years after the Marikana massacre, many of those legally and morally answerable remain unscathed. No police officers or commanders have been held criminally responsible. Lonmin, the platinum-producing multinational that refused to negotiate a peaceful end to the 2012 strike, still operates on the platinum belt and indeed recently secured a renewed 20-year license from the government. lareviewofbooks.org/
While interrogating the former Lonmin chief operating officer, Mahomed Ismail Seedat, at the Farlam Commission on the company’s failure to honour its obligation to build 5,500 houses for workers, Lonmin’s financials came under scrutiny. In particular the Commission was interested in the high number of financial transfers to subsidiaries abroad. Posted on facebook group Justice Now for Marikana Miners
 To this day, the living conditions in Marikana have not improved. The majority of Lonmin’s workers continue to be housed in shacks of corrugated iron built in tight clusters with limited access to piped water, poor or no sanitation facilities, inadequate refuse removal and illegal electricity connections.Justice Now for Marikana Miners
To fully understand Marikana the event, one has to understand Marikana the location, and hence realities and conditions on the ground. Such an analysis is useful because it sheds light on the space of social reproduction and allows us to look at the position of women who are usually ignored when talking about the mines. aidc.org.za/
On 22 June, domestic worker Tamara Marman was allegedly assaulted and kept hostage for six hours by her employers in the Cape Town city centre, after they accused her of stealing 100 US dollars from their cupboard. groundup.org.za/
Although SA’s digital migration project has started, the process has been bogged down by legal battles over the standards of set-top boxes, bribery and corruption allegations relating to the procurement process of government-subsidised decoders, as well as party politics over the amendments to the African National Congress broadcasting digital migration policy. itweb.co.za/ |
The crisis in Venezuela could prompt a US military response, President Donald Trump has told reporters. The Pentagon, however, has reportedly not been directed on any such plans. 
If you want to tackle inequality, the first thing you should do is join a union – a report puts the premium on wages for private sector union workers at 20%. 
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Leon Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution analyses the build-up to and happenings of both the February 1917 and October 1917 revolutions, a critical insight into the overthrow of the bourgeois state and the establishment of a workers’ alternative. 
Some might remember that Eastern bloc women enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time. There’s one advantage that has received little attention: Women under Communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure. 
