DEM VOLKE DIENEN

Recently we have been reporting regularly on the economic crisis in which German imperialism is caught up, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, how this is expressing itself and how the ruling classes are trying to offload these heavy burdens of the crisis onto the backs of the working class and the people. Inflation and price increases are taking their toll.

One wave of bankruptcies follows the next.The number of bankruptcies in nursing homes has almost tripled compared to last year, and company bankruptcies are 20 percent higher than last year. In the daycare centers, the staff shortage is piling up, so that for the 100,000 missing daycare places, staff have to be imported from oppressed nations or lateral hires have to be made. There is a shortageof 10 to 25 percent of positions in the foreigners authorities in NRW and migrants are losing their jobs and homes because they have to wait several months and sometimes up to a year for their appointments.

Yesterday, on 19. September, the human rights NGO Amnesty International, under the slogan "Protect the protest", prepared a research report on the international situation regarding the fundamental civil-democratic right of freedom of assembly. The report, shows very clearly the increasing fascist tendencies, which appear worldwide more openly and more frequently. Also in the FRG, according to Amnesty, the right to protest is "under attack".

India:
August 24:
In Palmau district of Jharkhand state, six vehicles were set on fire in a guerrilla attack on a construction company. Among them were two large transport vehicles, two tractors, a motorcycle and a grader. The articles reporting on this attack emphasize that this new attack in no way signifies a major revival of Maoist activity in the region, and that an attack on construction companies would allegedly show that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) there is not capable of carrying out major attacks on other targets. At the same time, the article talks about the fact that this attack succeeded only because these construction companies did not contact the police, which would have allegedly prevented the attack with their protection. It is particularly curious that the article criticizes construction companies for often not contacting the police for fear of the police demanding protection money. These demands for protection money from the police are the lesser of two evils when it comes to the fact that the construction companies allegedly receive security from the police against the Maoists. This open partisanship for the corrupt police, in which the practice of corruption and protection money is not even denounced, shows how desperately the Indian reaction tries to distort the tendency that it is their bankrupt state which is weakening and not the new democratic revolution in India.

As we reported, the "March for Life" was supposed to take place in Cologne for the first time on September 16, a spectacle organized by various reactionaries for the criminalization of abortions. A few hundred people also came together on the Heumarkt in Cologne on Saturday, only nothing much came of the "march", because after only a few hundred meters she show was over due to numerous blockades.

Channel image of the "Einsatz Coach" on YouTube (Source: https://www.youtube.com/@EinsatzCoach)

Parallel to the deepening of the crisis of imperialism, there is a growing number of viral phenomena that, in one way or another, make propaganda on social media or other platforms advocating the reactionarization of the state and trying to score sympathy points for it among the masses.

Since Thursday, 14 September 2023, ver.di is calling for a week of warning strikes in the Hanover region in the course of the currently ongoing collective bargaining in the retail sector. Retail companies such as H&M, Primark, Ikea, Douglas and Edeka are on strike. On Friday, the logistics centre of Rewe in Lehrte near Hanover was also struck by about 100 colleagues, putting the supermarket under great pressure to stock its shops in the region with sufficient food. Already last week, about 1000 retail workers gathered in Hanover for a demonstration in the city centre. However, as the companies remained rigid in their offer, the one-week warning strike was called.

This Saturday, September 16, the so-called "March for Life" is to take place in Cologne for the first time. The "March for Life" is a demonstration of Christian fundamentalists in collaboration with supposedly "more moderate" church institutions in which also politicians and supporters of the CDU and AfD to fascists participate. The aim of this march, which is organized by the so-called "Federal Association Right to Life" ("Bundesverband Lebensrecht"), is to ban by law all possibilities for women to have an abortion. In addition, they are also for a complete ban on pre-implantation diagnostics and assisted dying. According to these reactionaries, the life of the child begins with the sexual act of procreation or the fertilization of the egg. An abortion after this point would then be murder.From a materialistic and scientific point of view this is not tenable, an embryo is first of all only one thing and that is a cluster of cells which can develop into a human being or not.

Last week the International Automobile Exhibition (Ger.: “Internationale Automobilausstellung - IAA”) took place again in Munich. This event is a big fair where the monopolies of the German automotive industry come together and present themselves to the public as particularly "social" and "environmentally friendly". The event was attended not only by public faces of various companies, but also by high German politicians who praised the importance of the Automobile industry for German imperialism, and by numerous policemen to quell protests against the event. As in previous years, protests were not absent this year. Justifiably so, because despite its positive self-description, the IAA stands for exploitation, environmental destruction and war.