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Friday, 26 February 2010
Histories of the four Internationals
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Securing disaster in Haiti
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Friday, 22 January 2010
Haiti, a very brief history
Here’s the briefest summary of Haiti’s inspiring and tragic history I can manage. For more details, check out the links in the previous posts.
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Haiti Links from GPJA
Thursday, 21 January 2010
What’s happening in Haiti?
One of best sources of on-the-ground interviews and reports I’ve seen are coming from US internet radio and TV network Democracy Now, which has several reporters in Haiti.
Speaking to Democracy Now, Dr Evan Lyon – currently working at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital – contradicts mainstream media reports that violence from Hatian people themselves is holding up the relief effort:
One thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that misinformation and rumors and, I think at the bottom of the issue, racism has slowed the recovery efforts of this hospital... And there are no security issues... And there’s also no violence. There is no insecurity.
Also from Democracy Now, reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous, describes why why some Haitians are getting angry at the way they are being treated by US and UN military and some aid agencies:
Yesterday, when we were in Léogâne, we were—we came to an area where a helicopter from a Mormon charity had landed. It was on the ground, and there was Haitians all around, young and old, waiting for food to be handed out. This helicopter took off, off the ground, and began throwing the food down at the Haitians. It did not distribute it when it was on the ground. They threw the food from the air. These were packets of bread that they were throwing.
It ignited just fury and indignation on the ground by the people there. They began screaming. One man started crying. He said, “We are a proud people. We are not dogs for you to throw bones at.”
It was a scene that I will never forget. And it really illustrates the problem with aid distribution here and the relief efforts here, that they are—they are not seen as people. As Haitians keep saying, they say, “This can happen to anybody. How would you like to be treated in this way?”
Writing in UK Times, author and aid specialist Linda Polman sites similar examples and argues ‘Fear of the poor is hampering Haiti rescue’. [Hat tip to www.socialistunity.com].
British blog Lenin’s Tomb has also taken up this issue in a series of posts, here and here.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Protest report: Respect the rights of Tamil refugees
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Monday, 30 November 2009
Talking Seattle, ten years on
Anger, hope and militance grew as in a pressure cooker. Nowhere did this radicalisation go further than in Seattle. The radical IWW and the AFL Metal Trades Council co-operated in sponsoring a Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Workingmen’s Council, taking the soviets of the recent Russian Revolution as their model.[2]This forms a nice backcloth to the events of November and December 1999.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Venezuela’s Chavez calls for '5th International' of Left Parties
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Hugo Chavez: "Universal people's unity to give life to a new internationalism"
Statement by Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela
The International Meeting of Left Parties held last week has a great importance. For two days, November 20 and 21, 53 revolutionary organizations from five continent met in Caracas. I congratulate the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) because it fully performed its role as organizer.
The paths toward socialism have opened again: The left is obliged to deeply think over itself. The debate of ideas is decisive to avoid mistakes that distorted and weakened the socialist cause in the XX century. in the XXI century, socialism should be turned into, as Mariategui foresaw, a heroic and sovereign creation of each people and, of course, the universal people's unity to give life to a new internationalism.
I want to call the attention of my fellow countrymen and women to the unanimity of this meeting regarding the installation of U.S. military bases in Colombia. There is a state of common awareness of the terrible threat they represent to Venezuela, the South American region, and Our America.
This meeting was a reaffirmation: The Bolivarian Venezuela is not alone; we have more company than ever.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Honduras: Uprising defies coup regime as repression grows
Friday, 25 September 2009
Videos: Honduran people rise up, face repression
Honduras: Street battles rage, coup tries to repress pro-democracy uprising
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Caracas to host world meeting of left parties
Monday, 24 August 2009
Service delivery protests rock South Afrcia
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Friday, 24 July 2009
UK wind turbine workers occupy for people & planet
A workers’ occupation to save jobs and the UK’s only wind turbine factory is uniting trade unionists and eco-activists.
The actions of the Vestas workers are challenging two major myths of market capitalism: that there is nothing workers can do in the face of recession, redundancy and economic crisis, and that the free market can solve the climate crisis.
The surge in solidarity from around the world shows where the solution to these crises lie: international solidarity and unity between the workers’ rights and environmental movements.
UNITYblog urges readers to spread news of the occupation far and wide and to send messages of solidarity to: http://www.blogger.com/savevestas@gmail.com
Vestas workers occupy: 'A fight for jobs and the planet'
from Socialist Worker UK
Workers at Vestas, the UK’s only wind turbine manufacturer, occupied their factory in Newport, Isle of Wight on Monday evening against plans to close it.
Dave is one of the occupying workers. He spoke to Socialist Worker on Tuesday.
We’ve occupied our factory to save our jobs -- and to save the planet. Six hundred people work here. That many jobs going will have a devastating effect.
But there’s even more to it than that. We need renewable energy if we’re going to stop global warming. When the government says it wants green energy and green jobs, it’s criminal that it’s closing Vestas.
I’ve worked here for a year and a half but some people have worked here for eight or nine years. We had a meeting on Monday where we talked about what to do.
We decided we were going to go for it. People thought, “It’s now or never”. We went in as two teams, from both sides of the factory. All of the doors were locked – apart from the front door!
We’ve taken over the offices. This is the control base of Vestas on the Isle of Wight and across the south. There are 30 of us in here.
The managers are threatening not to give us any redundancy money at all. They say the payroll is in here and they can’t get to it.
But we’re not going to be intimidated. We can see everyone demonstrating outside. There are about 100 to 150 out there now, which is great. We’ve had messages of support from workers at Visteon and Prisme. Workers from the factory opposite and other factories around here have come over too.
Support messages are coming in from all over the world. We’re really grateful for them all. And if you can get to the Isle of Wight, that’d be even better.’
Profits come first for bosses
Vestas proudly states that, “With a 20 percent market share, and 38,000 wind turbines installed, Vestas is the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions.”
This is not out of concern for the environment. As Vestas chief executive Ditlev Engel said after he took over, “The business had been run by people who were idealists rather than dollar-based.”
In 2008 Vestas’s global profits increased by 51 percent to £575 million.
And the first three months of this year saw a 70 percent increase in profits to £50 million.
The company accounts reveal that last year the 13 directors and executives shared £9.45 million in wages and bonuses.
Links
- Occupation blog: http://savevestas.wordpress.com/
- Vestas dispute: Red and green coalition forms to fight wind plant closure
Monday, 27 April 2009
For international co-operation based on refounding Marxism for the 21st century
Sunday, 22 February 2009
NZ socialists sign-up to Belem Ecosocialist Declaration
Humanity’s Choice
Humanity today faces a stark choice: ecosocialism or barbarism.
Capitalism’s need for growth exists on every level, from the individual enterprise to the system as a whole. The insatiable hunger of corporations is facilitated by imperialist expansion in search of ever greater access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets. Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the earth have accelerated. Quantitative change is giving way to qualitative transformation, bringing the world to a tipping point, to the edge of disaster. A growing body of scientific research has identified many ways in which small temperature increases could trigger irreversible, runaway effects – such as rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of methane buried in permafrost and beneath the ocean – that would make catastrophic climate change inevitable.
Left unchecked, global warming will have devastating effects on human, animal and plant life. Crop yields will drop drastically, leading to famine on a broad scale. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by droughts in some areas and by rising ocean levels in others. Chaotic, unpredictable weather will become the norm. Air, water and soil will be poisoned. Epidemics of malaria, cholera and even deadlier diseases will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of every society.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Ferment in Nepal: A dynamic vortex of revolutionary change
Thursday, 1 January 2009
The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration
2. the transportation system, by drastically reducing the use of private trucks and cars, replacing them with free and efficient public transportation; 3. present patterns of production, consumption, and building, which are based on waste, inbuilt obsolescence, competition and pollution, by producing only sustainable and recyclable goods and developing green architecture; 4. food production and distribution, by defending local food sovereignty as far as this is possible, eliminating polluting industrial agribusinesses, creating sustainable agro-ecosystems and working actively to renew soil fertility. To theorize and to work toward realizing the goal of green socialism does not mean that we should not also fight for concrete and urgent reforms right now. Without any illusions about “clean capitalism,” we must work to impose on the powers that be – governments, corporations, international institutions – some elementary but essential immediate changes:
- drastic and enforceable reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases,
- development of clean energy sources,
- provision of an extensive free public transportation system,
- progressive replacement of trucks by trains,
- creation of pollution clean-up programs,
- elimination of nuclear energy, and war spending.
These and similar demands are at the heart of the agenda of the Global Justice movement and the World Social Forums, which have promoted, since Seattle in 1999, the convergence of social and environmental movements in a common struggle against the capitalist system. Environmental devastation will not be stopped in conference rooms and treaty negotiations: only mass action can make a difference. Urban and rural workers, peoples of the global south and indigenous peoples everywhere are at the forefront of this struggle against environmental and social injustice, fighting exploitative and polluting multinationals, poisonous and disenfranchising agribusinesses, invasive genetically modified seeds, biofuels that only aggravate the current food crisis. We must further these social-environmental movements and build solidarity between anticapitalist ecological mobilizations in the North and the South. This Ecosocialist Declaration is a call to action. The entrenched ruling classes are powerful, yet the capitalist system reveals itself every day more financially and ideologically bankrupt, unable to overcome the economic, ecological, social, food and other crises it engenders. And the forces of radical opposition are alive and vital. On all levels, local, regional and international, we are fighting to create an alternative system based in social and ecological justice.
For more information and to see all current signatories to the Belem Ecosocialist Declaration go to http://www.ecosocialistnetwork.org/
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Maori Party opposes FTA with China
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Press statement: Hone Harawira,
Foreign Affairs spokesperson
1 April 2008
The Maori Party caucus has confirmed that they will oppose the Free Trade Agreement with China.
³There are many reasons why we oppose it,² said Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hone Harawira, ³but I guess you could sum it up by saying we support fair trade, rather than free trade.
³Like everyone else, we¹ve got big concerns about China¹s lack of respect for human rights and the environment, but we¹re also worried about our own government¹s unwillingness to take these issues up with China. Until we see progress, we will oppose this deal,² he said.
³On another level, Free Trade Agreements compromise our sovereignty by overriding domestic law,² said Harawira, ²and if China¹s repression of Tibet is any indication of their respect for the rights of indigenous people, then Maori have every right to be wary of giving them any special privileges here.
³We also recall fighting against other international trade agreements which would have breached the Treaty of Waitangi,² said Harawira, ³and we¹re concerned that the lack of consultation with tangata whenua means that this one will breach the Treaty as well.²
³And I¹m surprised at how quiet the unions seem to be about this, given that these agreements normally lead to a lowering of work standards and wage rates in the smaller nation.
³Although we¹re told there may be benefits for Maori, the downsides in terms of compromises to our sovereignty, threats to the status of the Treaty, the impact on work standards and wage rates, and China's lack of respect for human rights, indigenous rights, and the environment, mean the downsides of any Free Trade Agreement with China are simply unacceptable at this time,² said Mr Harawira.