What's new at Links: Pakistan, Malaysia, IMF, Arabic, Bolivia, The Sixties, Cars & jobs & environment, Karl Marx, China, Guadeloupe victory
glparramatta
Sixties, Cars & jobs & environment, Karl Marx, China, Guadeloupe victory
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Pakistan: Victory for Pakistan's Long March
<http://links.org.au/node/946>
[Farooq Tariq is a leader of the Labour Party Pakistan. A representative
of the LPP will be attending the World at a Crossroads conference in
Sydney, Australia, April 10-12. For more information, or to book
tickets, visit http://www.worldatacrossroads.org. Below are a collection
of some of Farooq's regular reports on the situation in Pakistan over
the past week. Thanks to Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific
<http://www.asia-pacific-action.org/> for making the reports available
(more are available there) to Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal.]
By Peter Boyle and Farooq Tariq
March 16, 2009 -- Mass resistance to the Peoples Party of Pakistan (PPP)
government's attempt to suppress a massive people's movement for the
restoration of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry appears
to have triumphed after a massive showdown in the streets of Lahore
yesterday.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/946>
Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting
for Socialism in the 21st Century <http://links.org.au/node/756>
World At a Crossroads:
Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/756>
Malaysia: Socialist Party MPs bare all <http://links.org.au/node/948>
[M. Sarawathy, a representative of the Socialist Party of Malaysia, will
be attending the World at a Crossroads conference in Sydney, Australia,
April 10-12, 2009. For more information, or to book tickets, visit
http://www.worldatacrossroads.org.]
March 12, 2009 -- Prior to the March 8, 2008, polls, nobody could have
predicted that the then unregistered Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM,
Socialist Party of Malaysia) would see two of its leaders elected to the
national parliament and the Selangor state assembly respectively.
Not only were they elected, but its candidate for the Sungai Siput
parliamentary seat Dr D Jeyakumar (right) had also defeated the
formidable incumbent of three decades, Malaysian Indian Congress
president S Samy Vellu.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/948>
The doublespeak of the discredited IMF <http://links.org.au/node/947>
By Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, translated by Christine Pagnoulle
and Judith Harris
March 12, 2009 -- The international crisis that erupted in the summer of
2008 demolished all the neoliberal dogmas and exposed the deception
behind them. Unable to deny their failure, the World Bank (WB) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) claim they no longer uphold the set of
neoliberal policies known as the ``Washington Consensus''. Yet,
discredited though they may be, these two institutions are using the
international crisis to return to the limelight.
For decades they have enforced the deregulation measures and structural
adjustment programs that have led to the current impasse. After this
total fiasco the WB and the IMF must now account for their decisions
before world opinion.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/947>
The Flame, March 2009 -- Green Left Weekly's Arabic-language
supplement <http://links.org.au/node/945>
With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading
socialist newspaper -- is publishing a regular Arabic language
supplement. The <http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/319>Flame
<http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/319> will cover news from the
Arabic-speaking world as well as news and issues from within Australia.
The editor-in-chief will be Soubhi Iskander, a comrade who has endured
years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the repressive
government in Sudan.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/945>
Bolivia: `More of the same'? Or a break with `traditions'? The MAS:
a paradoxical case of democratisation <http://links.org.au/node/944>
By Hervi Do Alto, translated for Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal by Gonzalo Villanueva with Do Alto's permission. It
was first published in Le Monde diplomatique (Bolivian edition) Febrero
2009, n: 11, pp. 6-8.
The Santos Ramirez affaire marked, undoubtedly, a shift in the social
perception of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). [In February, Santos
Ramirez, a former head of the state energy company YPFB, and former head
of the Senate from 2006-2007, was charged with corruption and faces a
lengthy prison sentence of up to eight years.]
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/944>
Available for download: Barry Sheppard's The Party: The Socialist
Workers Party 1960-1988: A Political Memoir -- The Sixties
<http://links.org.au/node/943>
Barry Sheppard was a member of the US Socialist Workers Party for 28
years, and a central leader for most of that time. This is the first of
two volumes recounting his life in the party. It is a case study in the
inspiration and difficulties involved in building the nucleus of a
revolutionary socialist party.
This book covers from 1960 to 1973, the period of radicalisation known
as "The Sixties". Walking picket lines for Black civil rights, helping
to organise the anti-Vietnam War movement, interviewing Malcolm X,
meeting with US soldiers in Vietnam, defending the Cuban Revolution,
collaborating with socialists worldwide including in Australia, India,
France and Japan -- Barry Sheppard has lived a life enriched by contact
with and involvement in popular struggles around the world.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/943>
Paul M. Sweezy: Cars and cities -- `automobilisation' and the
`automobile-industrial complex' <http://links.org.au/node/942>
By Paul M. Sweezy
[This classic essay first appeared in Monthly Review, vol. 24, no. 11
(April 1973). It has been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with the permission of Monthly Review.]
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/942>
The best way to protect auto industry jobs is to stop making cars
<http://links.org.au/node/941>
By Don Fitz and Tim Kaminski
In the days when there was an Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union
(OCAW), its St Louis business agent, Bob Tibbs senior, enjoyed coming to
Green Party events. He would tell us that his union knew how bad nuclear
powerplants were and that it would be happy to get rid of them if
workers would be guaranteed jobs of equal pay in other industries.
That's "social unionism". The union looked beyond wages and working
conditions - it asked if what it was producing truly benefited humanity.
Social unionism is most needed in times of crisis. The automobile
industry is truly in crisis. According to the February 14, 2009, Wall
Street Journal, car sales have dropped to a 30-year low. In November and
December, 2008, Ford, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler went to
Washington, whining that without tens of billions of dollars in
government handouts they would go belly up.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/941>
Marx is back! Karl Marx and his contribution to the socialist
tradition <http://links.org.au/node/940>
The ideas of Karl Marx -- that class society creates great wealth for
the few at the expense of the many -- ring truer every day. Brian
Jones, a member of the International Socialist Organization of the
United States, examines Marx's revolutionary ideas in the following
three articles. These articles first appeared in Socialist Worker,
newspaper of the International Socialist Organization of the United
States. They have been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with permission of Socialist Worker.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/940>
China: `We feel like we are serving prison sentences', say factory
workers for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM
<http://links.org.au/node/939>
By Charles Kernaghan
[This is an excerpt from the introduction and executive summary of a
report released by the National Labor Committee in February 2009, High
Tech Misery in China: The Dehumanization of Young Workers Producing Our
Computer Keyboards.]
"I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the
most empowering tools we've ever created. They're tools of
communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped
by their user...The Internet is becoming the town square for the
global village of tomorrow." -- Bill Gates
``We feel like we are serving prison sentences." -- factory worker
making Microsoft keyboards
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/939>
`First Victory' in Guadeloupe general strike; Movement spreads to
other French colonies <http://links.org.au/node/938>
By Richard Fidler
March 8, 2009 -- The general strike in Guadeloupe ended March 4, when an
accord was signed between the LKP Strike Collective and the local
governments, the employers' federation and the French government that
granted the strikers their top 20 immediate demands and provided for
continued negotiations on the remaining 126 mid-term and long-term
demands. The LKP, or Lihannaj Kont Pwofitasyon - Collective Against
Super-exploitation, is a coalition of 49 unions and grassroots
organisations.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/938>
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Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
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