New Zealand is clearly entering into
recession with its economy shrinking in the first quarter of this year.
Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) has provided the figures that confirm what most
of us have known for sometime that indeed we are at the beginning of a
recession.
A major teachers' strike has broken out
in Nigeria over the question of a Teachers' Salary Scale. What is significant
is that 88% of the population is backing the strike. This fact alone reveals
the real feelings of the Nigerian working class and poor masses. It reveals the
potential for a much wider movement involving the whole of the working class.
To look at the Pakistan Army solely as the instrument of the
ruling class would mean ignoring the real contradictions that have developed
within it. On the one hand an important wing of the top military brass are now
involved directly in the economy, both the legal and the black economy ,
including drug running. There is another contradiction, which is that between
the top brass and the lower ranks who are more in touch with the mood of the
masses.
On July 10, to coincide with the start of the trial of the neo-nazi Óscar
Colino Damián, the Gasteiz Antifascist Platform organised a demonstration at
11am in front of the court. The demonstration which attracted more than 40
workers and young people was organised by the Gasteiz Antifascist Platform with
the participation of various trade unions, associations, left parties, student
unions and left and progressive collectives.
Formally speaking Bush has gained control of Iraq, and now
the puppet Iraqi government has been granting oil concessions to the major
multinational oil corporations. But all this comes at a heavy price in
political terms...
What is the most effective way of combating racism? Fred Weston, of the
marxist.com editorial board, spoke at the Marxist Day School held
recently in London on the effects of positive discrimination and the
lessons for the labour movement, touching on the origins of racism,
the Black question in the USA, South Africa and the struggle against
apartheid and Brazil where today the Black Socialist movement is
opposing racial legislation.
Socialist Vice Presidential Candidate Stewart A. Alexander attacked the economic programs of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain; Alexander dismissed the economic proposals of both candidates as "campaign baiting to win votes." Alexander says the U.S. economy needs much more than what either candidate has presented, "the U.S. economy needs a total makeover, and a little makeup will not work."
Read more »The U.S.
is in the worst housing slump since the Great Depression as home prices fell by
a record 15.3 percent from a year ago in the first few months of the year.
Mortgage defaults and home repossessions have skyrocketed as working people are
unable to make ends meet.
On Friday 11 July the Iranian regime's Supreme Court upheld
the death sentence passed against Farzad Kamangar, a teacher, journalist and
civil society activist. He is accused of being a member of the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey. This is a clear case of political discrimination
and Farzad needs the solidarity of workers around the world.
The rising cost of oil, and gasoline in particular, is
having an effect on everything, further stretching the limits of the already
strained wallets of US workers. The oil and energy barons are making big
profits at the expense of US workers. It is time to call for the expropriation
of these parasites.
On June 28-29, an “Open National Antiwar Conference” was held in Cleveland, called by a newly minted National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. Over objections from the conference organizers, centrally Socialist Action, the assembly voted to change the name to include reference to the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize the connection with U.S. backing for the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
Read more »Hedge funds are in the news again. They don't much like
being in the public gaze. We wonder why. Does their speculation cause prices to
go up? Do they drive firms into bankruptcy so workers lose their jobs? These
are the questions being asked. Let's see what they get up to.
On July 9th tens of thousands of workers and
peasants took to the streets in Peru
as part a national strike. The strike had been called to protest against the
right wing economic policies of the government of Alan García.
Jorge Martin talks on Lenin's The State and Revolution, which he
completed just before the October revolution in order to arm the
Bolsheviks ideologically for the tasks of state power. Lenin explains
the historic necessity for the emergence of the state as a tool of
class rule, and that the state grows as economic differentiation in
society grows, requiring the supression of the oppressed majority by
the priviledged minority.
Here we provide the video of Alan Woods speaking to the SIDOR workers (alan-woods-at-sidor.htm) in Venezuela (in four parts).
Read more »Brian Moore, the Socialist Party USA candidate for President of the United States, spoke at the University of Central Florida on Wednesday, 9 July 2008. Moore discussed social, economic and political issues, including the history and future of socialism and capitalism in the US.
Read more »Since the beginning of
this year Belgium has witnessed a wave of wildcat strikes reminiscent of the
1970s. The movement has spread spontaneously from one sector to another.
Significantly it has rekindled class unity across the language divide at the
same time as the bourgeois attempt to divide the working class along national
lines.
By Malik Miah, from Against the Current, July/August 2008, No. 135.
Now that Illinois Senator Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, what does it say about U.S. civil society? What stance should progressives and socialists take?
Read more »On June 26, at around 10.40pm, comrade Ángel Humberto Martínez Cerón
was assassinated just a few metres from his home. He was the General
Coordinator of the January 24 Revolutionary Socialist Students Block (known
as BERS-24). The political activity this revolutionary young militant was
involved in was the reason why the ruling class decided to silence him.
On Sunday, July 6, a
very successful Kashmir regional congress of The Struggle ‑ the International
Marxist Tendency in Pakistan
‑ was held at Rawalakot, in the Poonch district of Azad Kashmir . Over a
thousand delegates, members and close contacts attended the congress.
