Recent weeks have seen a number of strikes and sucessful strike ballots in the UK

Factory workers strike in Coventry

Hundreds of employees of Meggitt Aircraft Braking Systems in Holbrooks in Coventry took strike action twice at the end of July, after company bosses awarded themselves massive bonuses while at the same time cutting and freezing the wages of their employees.

The past four days have seen widespread protests and rioting against the announcement of the new minimum wage structure for Bangladeshi garment workers.

The industry's monthly minimum wage was last raised after the mass revolt of 2006. The increase, to Taka 1,662[£15/$23/€18], was already inadequate - and since then inflation of basic foodstuffs has risen over 70%.

Noam Chomsky discusses Iran and the prospects for peace in the Middle East.

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. General Petraeus informed the Senate Committee on Armed Services in March 2010 that "the Iranian regime is the primary state-level threat to stability" in the U.S.

Miners at the Batu Hijau mine on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia are on strike over unpaid overtime pay, with the union claiming that the strike is likely to last until the 10th of August.

The strike follows legal wrangling over the company's attempts to withhold overtime pay owed to 1,919 of its employees. In July, the West Nusa Tenggara provincial office of the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry ordered PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, the company which owns the mine, to pay $13.8 million in overtime payments, some of which is owing since 2008.

The Electricity Company union has responded to government pledges to the IMF to sell 40% of power plants by threatening a long-term black-out across the country.

The news came just after the departure of the so-called "troika" reps, the delegates of the IMF-EU-European Bank who had just finished their second round of inspection over the ailing greek economy.

The one strategy open to crisis-ridden capitalism that doesn't risk class antagonism is the creation of artificial scarcity through regimes of intellectual property. Sander explains, however, that the ‘production of innovation' is no replacement for the production of value.

Whether today's global overcapacity is seen as cause or effect of the economic crisis, one thing is certain: it isn't easy to make a profit in a world awash with overproduction. Capitalism is born in conditions of scarcity and is unable to function outside of them. So it seems logical that the crisis creates a tendency to restore these conditions artificially.

In recent days, the battle to stop the destruction of the forest in the Moscow suburb of Khimki has heated up. Activists have been protesting the building of an $8 million high speed toll highway between Moscow and Petersburg. This highway would destroy beautiful forestland around Moscow. Environmentalists say the highway can bypass the old oak forest.

The flashpoint has been in the city which is called Khimki, right outside Moscow. There is a history of violence sponsored by the local authorities in this town. In the most famous case of political terrorism, in November 2008, Mikhail Beketov, outspoken editor-in-chief of the regional «Khimkinskaya Pravda» (Khimki Truth) newspaper, was savagely beaten in front of his home.

If eight hours don't seem enough for you (original title of the article), try to work at an assembly line from ten o'clock at night till six o'clock in the morning with three breaks of ten minutes. With the lunch break taking place during the last half an hour of your shift, unless productive recoveries are needed.

In 11 minutes you cook a plate of spaghetti. In the same time eight Fiata Panda need to be produced. During the day, at night, from Sunday evening at ten o'clock till the same hour on Saturday, so to produce 120 thousands cars by the end of the year.

Underground Rail Transport in Buenos Aires:
Successful Struggles against the consequences of privatisation

by Alix Arnold, from ILA no. 333, March 2010 – translation by friends of The Commune

Just like in 1991, New Zealand's governing National Party is attacking both the waged and unwaged wings of the working class at the same time. The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement interviewed Paul Blair of the Rotorua Welfare Action Group about their response to National’s assault on beneficiaries (for example, by cutting emergency benefits and forcing many sickness and domestic purposes beneficiaries to work). They held an incendiary protest on July 12 in Rotorua.

What is your personal and political background?