DEM VOLKE DIENEN

The following pictures were sent to us

After the first round of the presidential election in France took place on the 10th of April, the second and decisive run-off election between the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron (La République En Marche!) and Marine Le Pen (Rassemblement national) was held last Sunday, the 24th of April. Macron emerged victorious from this election.

Global spending on armaments and the military reached an all-time high last year in 2021. According to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), states spent a combined total of 2.1 trillion dollars on rearmament. The front-runners, as expected, are the Yankees with spending of 801 billion dollars. The USA is followed by China, India, Great Britain and Russia. The FRG is in seventh place with 56 billion dollars.

We reproduce here an article published by Samidoun-Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network on the mass demonstrations in Berlin at the weekend.

Marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Samidoun Deutschland organized a mass demonstration in the streets of Berlin, where large crowds of Palestinian and Arab youth participated in the march, along with representatives of German leftist parties and solidarity organizations. The massive demonstration launched from the Neukölln district’s town hall, proceeding down Sonnenallee, a street packed with Arab and Palestinian shops and restaurants and a central meeting point for the community.

Easter marches took place in several cities in NRW last weekend, including Dortmund, Cologne and many cities in the Ruhr region. A broad spectrum of democratic and progressive forces mobilized in the various cities with participant numbers in the four-digit range in some cases, such as in Düsseldorf. The question of the imperialist aggression of Russian imperialism was omnipresent and the haggling of the different imperialist powers with this situation was denounced in many speeches.

It seems that the security authorities of the old Indian state have again used armed drones and helicopters against the comrades in the state of Chhattisgarh in ongoing People's War.

A recent survey by the bourgeois Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research for the state-run media broadcaster SWR confirms the crisis of parliamentarism in the FRG. The statement "We live in a sham democracy in which citizens have no say" was agreed to by 31% of respondents, and by as many as 45% in eastern Germany.

The mobilisation for May Day, the international day of struggle of the working class, has been going on in Bremerhaven for the whole month of April. Apart from distributed leaflets, paintings were made, banners and dazibaos were hung up, and smaller spontaneous rallies were organised in different places, calling for a demonstration on May 1 in Bremerhaven. The comrades sent us numerous pictures, some of which we would like to publish here.