Asia
China: Capitalist globalisation and its consequences
'China is not stealing jobs from anyone. The globalisation process is erasing jobs everywhere, including in China'
By Martin Hart-Landsberg
June 6, 2011 -- Reports from the Economic Front, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- Although capitalism has always been a global system, the international integration of production and finance and our dependence on cross-border activities seems greater than ever before. At the risk of oversimplifying, we now have a world system within which Latin America, Africa and the Middle East specialise in the production and export of primary commodities, increasingly to East Asia.
East Asia operates as the world’s manufacturing hub, exporting final products to the developed capitalist world, especially the United States.And the United States specialises in providing the finance that underpins the international production system and developed capitalist country consumption.
Why socialists in Thailand call for a vote for Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party
Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister, leads the Pheu Thai.
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Turn Left Thailand
June 16, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Normally, no socialist should ever call for a vote for a capitalist party in any election. To do so would risk making the kind of mistakes that the Stalinists used to make when they adopted the Popular Front strategy, building alliances with the bourgeoisie and making anti-working class concessions. But it is my opinion, that in the July 3, 2011, general election in Thailand, socialists have no choice but to call for a vote for the Pheu Thai Party [also spelled Peua Thai Party]. Pheu Thai is a thoroughly capitalist party.
Imperialismo, fundamentalismo y revolución árabe: Socialismo o terrorismo
[Published first in English at http://links.org.au/node/2297.]
Por: Farooq Tariq
By Norm Dixon
Philippines socialists call for negotiated settlement to Spratly Islands dispute
For more background to the Spratly Islands issue, see "China, Vietnam and the islands dispute: W
A history of oppression: the Tamils of Sri Lanka
By Danielle Sabai
June 2, 2011 -- Asia Left Observer, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- In February 2011, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, celebrated the 63rd anniversary of the island’s independence. In his speech, he stressed the necessity of “protecting the reconstructed nation”, as well as protecting “one of the oldest democracies in Asia”, its unity and its unitary character.
This speech came nearly two years after the end of the war on May 19, 2009, between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The military command of the LTTE was decimated in the last two months of a merciless war that has had led to tens of thousands of deaths since the early 1980s.
Pamphlet: Capitalism and workers’ struggle in China (revised edition)
[For more on China, click HERE.]
By Chris Slee
Preface to the revised edition (2011)
June 6, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- There are a number of changes in this edition compared to the first edition (Resistance Books 2010). Most of these changes merely expand on points made in the original, supplying more detail in the text and/or the footnotes. Others take account of new developments in the year since the first edition was published.
The biggest change is in the discussion of the Great Leap Forward, which has been significantly expanded and rewritten. I felt this was necessary for two reasons. First, I wanted to acknowledge that natural disasters as well as mistaken policies played a role in the reappearance of famine in 1959-61. Second, I wanted to explain in more detail what the policy errors were, and why I consider that Mao was largely responsible for them.
* * *
Thailand: Lèse majesté law cannot be reformed, it must be abolished
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
May 27, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The lèse majesté law [making it illegal to "insult" Thailand's royalty] cannot be reformed into a democratic law any more than a military dictatorship can be reformed or amended into a “democratic military dictatorship”. The lèse majesté law is fundamentally against the freedom of expression and Democracy. It cannot be reformed. It has to be abolished.
Sri Lanka: Will Tamils get justice from the UN?
Tamils are held in miserable conditions in IDP camps.
[For more on the struggle of the Tamil people, click HERE.]
By Ron Ridenour
May 16, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Forty-seven governments on the Untied Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) will discuss and decide, beginning at its May 30 session, what to do about an unusually truthful report in the world of international politics.
The “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” was delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on March 31 concerning: 1) alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the last phases of the 26-year-old civil war, September 2008 to May 19, 2009; 2) consequences for approximately 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and, by extension, for 2.7 million Sri Lankan Tamils, 13% of Sri Lanka's 21 million population.
Joint statement of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) and the Socialist Alliance (Australia)
May 18, 2011 -- The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) and the Socialist Alliance in Australia denounce the recent agreement made between the governments of Malaysia and Australia, whereby Australia will send 800 asylum seekers who have been detained by Australian authorities to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 refugees currently in Malaysia.
The arrangement for this “Malaysian solution” to asylum seekers attempting to arrive in Australia clearly shows that the Australian government is washing its hands of its responsibility to protect refugees and is “off-shoring” or “outsourcing” the violation of refugee rights to Malaysia, a country with no proper legal instruments to protect the rights of refugees. Both the governments of Malaysia and Australia have not taken the plight of refugees and asylum seekers seriously, and only treat them like trade-able commodities.
Bangladesh: Climate change and neoliberal policies
By Danielle Sabai
May 9, 2011 -- Asia Left Observer, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Located in the largest delta at the world, where two Himalayan rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, converge and flow into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh is used to climatic catastrophes. Half of the land area of Bangladesh is less than 10 metres above sea level. It consists mainly of silt deposited by the rivers that flow down from the Himalayan glaciers. When the snow melts it regularly causes large-scale floods. The coast is at the mercy of cyclones and giant waves which submerge the coastal areas.
