Time to strike a united blow against EU / Troika austerity! For a European-wide day of general strikes and mobilisations this autumn! Towards a 24-hour all-European general strike!

The Greek working class has put up an incredible struggle against the vicious austerity measures raining down on them. Since 2010 Greece has been rocked by 17 general strikes, three of them lasting 48 hours. A prime minister has been removed and a government brought down. After some quiet months a one-day strike was called for 26 September. The following day Andros Payiatsos, leader of Xekinima spoke to the Socialist Party. Xekinima is the Greek section of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

Only one year ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement began its encampment of Zucotti Park in New York City. A mere two weeks later, the movement exploded to hundreds of cities in every state across the U.S., spreading the struggle against massive wealth inequality in society.

The shocking massacre last on 16 August, of 34 miners at the Lonmin company’s platinum mine in Marikana, exposes in all its brutality the nature of the ‘new’ South Africa dominated politically by the African National Congress (ANC) since the 1994 general election which marked the sweeping away of the barbaric apartheid system.

On 1 July, as Hong Kong marks the 15th anniversary since its return to Chinese rule, a massive anti-government demonstration will take place. Last year more than 200,000 took part in what, since 2003, has become an annual event. This shows how strained are relations between the central government in Beijing and the Hong Kong ‘special administrative region’ it regained from Britain in 1997.

At least 46 workers were shot dead, and many more injured, on 16 August as a massive police and army assault was launched to crush a strike by thousands of workers at platinum miner Lonmin’s shafts in Marikana outside Rustenburg, in addition to at least six mine workers who were killed in clashes earlier on in the strike which began 10 August.

After a month of negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations in New York, the discussions came to an ignominious end last Friday when, first the United States and then Russia and China, pulled the plug on any agreement.

Syria’s agony continues unabated. Across the country there are indiscriminate attacks by the Assad regime forces and their militias, bloody sectarian reprisals by the armed opposition, refugee floods and humanitarian disasters.

It would have been difficult to predict a year ago that a group of “third generation feminist punk rockers” calling themselves “Pussy riot” and dressed in brightly colored balaclavas and wooly stockings would not only become a symbol of the rapidly growing opposition to Putin, but also the subject of his vindictive wrath.

The scandalous fall of Chongqing CCP (Communist Party) kingpin Bo Xilai earlier this year marked a turning point in China’s recent history. The governmental crisis and sharp internal power struggle that Bo’s exit signifies has combined with an abrupt economic slowdown, heightening fears of a so-called ‘hard landing’, to present a massive challenge to the outgoing leadership around president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao.