Economy

With the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 drawing closer, hordes of people around the world scrabbled to their computers to place pre-orders. Hundreds lined up on the streets to be the first to get their hands on the most in-demand gadgetry. With the pre-order tally reaching more than 2 million within the first 24 hours, it is no surprise that the mineral mining market is booming. At the heart of the mobile phone production line lies the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); a country that has played host to what is likely the world’s deadliest war since World War II.

As the final weeks of the Venezuelan presidential election campaign unfold, an intense battle of ideas is under way. The poll on October 7 is looming as one of the most important elections in the country´s history.

The murder of 34 miners by the South African police, most of them shot in the back, puts paid to the illusion of post-apartheid democracy and illuminates the new worldwide apartheid of which South Africa is both a historic and contemporary model. In 1894, long before the infamous Afrikaans word foretold “separate development” for the majority people of South Africa, an Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes, oversaw the Glen Grey Act in what was then the Cape Colony.

Chicago's teachers have successfully fought off an assault on their union, school children and public education launched by Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and even pushed him back in some respects. The strike and mass mobilisations of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) ended on September 19 when the teachers went back to work. The evening before, the elected House of Delegates, which represents teachers throughout the system, voted by 98% to end the strike.

It looks as if the Portuguese people have had enough of austerity. People came out in their droves on September 15 across the country under the slogan “Screw the troika, we want our lives!”. Close to a million people protested against the government and the troika of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union and European Central Bank, which are pushing savage austerity.

The Occupy movement held rallies across the United States on September 17 to mark the first anniversary of the protests that attacked the corrupt and abusive rule by the richest 1%.

Special guests Bashana Abeywardane from Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, Karl Hand from Community Action Against Homophobia, plus Carlo Sands takes on Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer!

US: One in five kids live in poverty "New figures have been released by the US census bureau revealing a yearly decline in median household income for Americans, growing inequality and more than one in five children under 18 years old living in poverty.   "In a survey of data for 2011, the census discovered that real median household income in the US had dipped by 1.5% from its level in 2010 to sit at $50,054 a year. The fall is the second consecutive annual decline ...  

On the Catalan National Day, September 11, Spanish politics suffered a huge shock: up to 2 million people ― more than a quarter of the population of Catalonia ― marched through the streets of Barcelona shouting one word, “independencia”. It was a moment when countless Catalans (those from the four provinces that make up Catalonia in Spain's north-east) discovered that others felt the way they did ― it is time to drop Spain for a state of our own.

Sinn Fein TD (member of the Irish parliament) Pearse Doherty speaking to about 100 people in Perth on September 8 about the brutal austerity, to fund huge bank bailouts, in Ireland. This is destroying the lives of working people and driving 76,000 people to emigrate every year.

The article below first appeared at The Conversation on September 11.

The Chicago teachers’ strike entered its third day on September 12. This strike is of national significance for a number of reasons: * It is a militant fightback against the ruling class onslaught to destroy public education being carried out by Democrats and Republicans across the country. * It is aimed at the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party machine in Chicago headed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, longtime aide, advisor and fundraiser for Obama. *It is being organised by a new rank-and file-leaders with a class-struggle perspective.