KKE: Solidarity with the people of Turkey against Erdoğan's authoritarianism

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) released a text calling for solidarity against the authoritarianism of Erdoğan and Turkey's intervention in Syria.

International Communist Press, 10th April 2016.

The text which was calling for solidarity by signature, condemned Turkey's interventions in Syria and stated solidarity with the ones who are subject to prosecutions by the AKP government and President Erdoğan himself.

The full text and the initial signatories are as follows:

"AGAINST THE ANTIDEMOCRATIC POLICY OF LAW SUITS AND PROSECUTIONS IMPLEMENTED BY THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT AND PRESIDENT T. ERDOGAN.

Pablo Picasso — Why I became a Communist

By Pablo Picasso

My JOINING the Communist Party is a logical step in my life, my work and gives them their meaning. Through design and color, I have tried to penetrate deeper into a knowledge of the world and of men so that this knowledge might free us. In my own way I have always said what I considered most true, most just and best and, therefore, most beautiful. But during the oppression and the insurrection I felt that that was not enough, that I had to fight not only with painting but with my whole being. Previously, out of a sort of "innocence," I had not understood this. I have become a Communist because our party strives more than any other to know and to build the world, to make men clearer thinkers, more free and more happy. 

I have become a Communist because the Communists are the bravest in France, in the Soviet Union, as they are in my own country, Spain. I have never felt more free, more complete than since I joined. While I wait for the time when Spain can take me back again, the French Communist Party is a fatherland for me. In it I find again all my friends - the great scientists Paul Langevin and Frederick Joliot-Curie, the great writers Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, and so many of the beautiful faces of the insurgents of Paris. I am again among my brothers.

October 1944.

A chronology of the 2011-2012 Greek Steelworkers strike (VIDEO)

         

Video by PAME.

A subtitled video about the 9 months-long strike of the Greek Steelworkers at Helliniki Halivourgia. November 2011, Greece is in the midst of a severe economic crisis. Many strikes in different sectors take place regularly. One of them will last nine months, attracting a wave of domestic and international solidarity. 

Denunciation of Golden Dawn's fascist anti-refugee gathering in Piraeus

Source: 902.gr

Translation: In Defense of Communism.

The local organisation of KKE in Piraeus condemns the fiesta staged by Golden Dawn and calls the working class and the people of the area to reject the fascists's new preaching of hate.

Golden Dawn members gathered outside the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus shouting "against the islamization" of the country, while an anti-fascist rally had been scheduled to take place just on the opposite Korais square. There were clashes between the Neo-Nazis and anarchists and a man from Golden Dawn's block- holding an iron bar- attacked a tv crew. Despite the intervention of police he avoided arrest.

The KKE organisation of Piraeus issued an announcement in which, among others, it states (we underline the most interesting points):

The New Worker- Leave the EU to save our steel

Leave the EU to save our steel.

Republished from "New Worker", the weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain.

SAJID Javid, the Business Secretary, has been running round like mad going to India to plead with the giant company Tata to go slowly with its process of selling off the last remaining working steel plants in Britain. He has been talking about a “responsible sales process”.

And the big steel unions have also been pleading to Tata not to go for a fire sale to asset strippers, who will cherry pick the lucrative bits and ditch the rest, leading quickly to the complete demise of the whole industry.

Che Guevara: “I came to communism because of Stalin”

By Nikos Mottas.

Originally published in atexnos.gr.

Translated from Greek.

Ernesto Che Guevara is undoubtedly a historical figure of the 20^th century's communist movement who attracts the interest of people from a vast range of political ideologies. The years followed his cowardly assassination in Bolivia, Che became a revolutionary symbol for a variety of marxist-oriented, leftist and progressive parties and organisations- from Trotskyists to militant leninists and from Social Democrats to anarcho-libertarians. A significant number of those who admire the argentine revolutionary identify themselves as “anti-stalinists”, hate and curse Stalin while they often refer to the so-called “crimes” of Stalin's era. What is a contradiction and an irony of history is the following: Che Guevara himself was an admirer of Joseph Stalin.

For Capital's sake: SYRIZA government sold Piraeus port to chinese shipping giant COSCO

Sources: Reuters & 902.gr.

The Greek government sealed on Friday the sale of its biggest port to chinese shipping giant COSCO Shipping Corporation, the second major privatization for the bailed out country since late last year.

China COSCO's chairman Xu Lirong, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the head of Greece's privatization agency signed the 368.5 million euro ($419.43 million) contract in Athens. Under the deal, China Cosco will acquire 51 percent of Piraeus Port (OLP) for 280.5 million euros and the remaining 16 percent for 88 million, after five years once it concludes mandatory investments, which will amount to 350 million euros over the next decade.

Prime Minister and SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said that the privatization of Piraeus port is the starting point for upcoming investments in the country. Mr.Tsipras defiantly argued that his government's major concern is the protection of the labour rights of the dockworkers- on the same time the chinese shipping giant already applies "galley-slave" conditions in Piraeus.  

Mikis Theodorakis- East Berlin 1987

          

Mikis Theodorakis, East Berlin 1987.

Open-air concert at Rosa Luxemburgplat.

Theodorakis sings himself three of his songs. The first one is from the collection 'Songs of Andreas' and the other two from the epic 'Romiosini' cycle of poems written by Yannis Ritsos. 

Communist Party of Ireland: Political Statement

Political statement.

National Executive Committee, Communist Party of Ireland.

6 April 2016.

At its regular meeting in early April the National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland evaluated the present political situation and the tasks facing both the communist and the wider working-class movement and progressive forces.

The CPI welcomes the massive turn-out of working people around the country to celebrate the 1916 Rising. Tens of thousands attended both the official government commemoration and the hundreds of locally organised community-sponsored events.

This was a very positive development, considering the decades of sustained criticism and attempts by the political establishment, the establishment media and a large section of academia to undermine and discredit the 1916 Rising as well as the long democratic struggle of the Irish people to achieve independence. Their campaign has failed, and the centenary celebrations have awakened renewed interest in the Rising, those who led it, their motivation, the goal that inspired them, and the legacy of the 1916 Proclamation’s vision of an independent Irish republic.

"Ludlow, Greek Americans in the Colorado coal war" - A documentary by Leonidas Vardaros

         

The trailer of the film.

It's title is "Ludlow, Greek Americans in the Colorado coal war". The documentary by Leonidas Vardaros made it's premiere on April 6, at Alkionis Theater in Athens. The documentary, which received an award at the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, narrates the history of the 1913-14 clash between the United Mine Workers of America and the Coal companies under the leadership of John D.Rockefeller. The workers' descendants remind their fathers and grandfathers' struggle and the injustice they faced.

The class-struggle of 1913-14 led to the Ludlow massacre, on April 20, 1914 the cold-blooded murder of women and children and the assassination of three unionists, among them the leader of the Greek strikers Louis Tikas. 

"Take back the law-guillotine": Mass demonstrations as Greek public sector workers strike over social security disaster

With mass, militant demonstrations in Athens, Thessaloniki and all the major cities, public sector's workers sent their message to the co-coalition government. Thursday's 24-hour walkout called by public sector union ADEDY coincides with a review by lenders of Greece's compliance with terms of an international bailout agreed last year. 

Organised by the All-Militant Workers Front (PAME), the demonstration in central Athens took place in Omonia Square where thousands of workers expressed their condemnation for the government's draft law on social security- an anti-people law that destroys the social security system and any rights derive from it. 

KKE: Condemnation of anti-democratic actions by the authorities in Kazakhstan and Latvia

Source: inter.kke.gr.

Regarding the imprisonment of Vadim Kuramshin:

Vadim Kuramshin.

The Delegation of the KKE in the European Parliament, tabled a question to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy is relation to the persecution in Kazakhstan. The question noted that:

Vadim Kuramshin has been in prison in Kazakhstan for the last 4 years since 2012, when he was condemned to 12 years imprisonment on false and fabricated charges. In reality, he was imprisoned for his activity against the violation of democratic rights and gains by the Kazakhstan regime. It was no accident that his arrest and imprisonment happened immediately after his participation in a OSCE event in Warsaw, where he talked about instances of torture in the prisons of Kazakhstan.

He himself has made accusations that he has been the victim of inhuman treatment in Kazakhstan's prisons.

The current bourgeois regime that emerged in Kazakhstan after the overthrow of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR is constantly showing its anti-democratic and anti-people character, violently and murderously suppressing labour struggles, banning the activity of the CP of Kazakhstan, imposing new anti-democratic laws to control and more strictly manipulate the trade unions and to reduce labour rights and gains, imprisoning defenders of democratic rights.