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.
Australia: Greens' BDS stance widens debate over boycott of Israel's apartheid
By Pip Hinman and Peter Boyle
May 18, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Samah Sabawi, from Australians for Palestine, addressed a May 13, 2011, community forum in Holy Trinity Church Hall, Dulwich Hill, a suburb in Sydney, which was called by local residents to discuss the controversy (incited by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd media empire) around a December 2010 decision by Marrickville Council to support the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel's apartheid. Samah is introduced by Father Dave Smith, the local Anglican parish priest.
Samah Sabawi, part 2
Former Greens parliamentarian Sylvia Hale dissected the NSW Greens' stand in support of BDS and the struggle around the Marrickville Council position.
Colombia must free Joaquin Perez Becerra
Statement from the Socialist Alliance in Australia
Documentary: Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948
Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 by Benny Brunner and Alexandra Jansse on Vimeo.
Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 (58 minutes, documentary, Israel-Germany-The Netherlands, 1997). Arguably the first film that seriously tackles the historic events that led to the creation of 750,000+ Palestinian refugees at the end of 1948. Based on historian Benny Morris' book, The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-49.
Produced and directed for ARTE by Benny Brunner and Alexandra Jansse.
Swaziland: Urgent action needed: Trade unionists arrested; COSATU condemns arrests
May 14, 2011 -- The Swaziland Democracy Campaign has just received urgent news that a group of leading trade unionists have been arrested by the security police in the Lubombo Region of Swaziland. The comrades were attending a meeting to discuss the establishment of a regional division of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) the new democratic trade union federation that was launched on May Day this year, and which brings together all the trade unions in Swaziland into a historic single organisation.
Those arrested include the following:
Raj Patel: Can the world feed 10 billion people? Yes, but social change needed
Maize farmers in Malawi.
জলবায়ু পরিবর্তন : একটি মার্ক্সবাদী বিশ্লেষণ
মূল: টেরি টাউনসেন্ড
ভাষান্তর: হাসান মেহেদী
[Original English version (2007) at http://www.dsp.org.au/node/166. The Democratic Socialist Perspective has now merged with the Socialist Alliance of Australia. This translation into Bangla appeared at Bangladesh's monthly progressive online journal, Shojashapta, on April 14, 2011.]
R. Palme Dutt's 'Fascism and social revolution'
By Graham Milner
In the present situation in the world, with the intermittent resurgence of fascist and neo-fascist movements in some countries, an avowedly Marxist treatment of the subject of fascism, such as Palme Dutt's Fascism and Social Revolution, deserves the attention of new generations of readers.
Rajani Palme Dutt (1896-1974) was born in England of an Indian father and a Swedish mother.[1] He grew up in a political household, where socialism and Indian independence were familiar subjects of discussion. A brilliant scholar at Oxford University (he took a double first), Dutt was a conscientious objector during the World War I, and was expelled from university in 1917 for disseminating Marxist propaganda.
Scotland: Political climate changes utterly; Voters bring break up of Britain closer?
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
By Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party spokesperson
May 10, 2011 -- As landslides go the 2011 Holyrood election was huge. Scotland has been shaken to its political foundations as voters again voiced their contempt for the Conservative Party [Tories], its coalition partner the Liberal Democratic Party [Lib Dems], and also the Labour Party. The Scotsman newspaper described the result of the May 5 Scottish election as a "victory of hitherto unthinkable proportions" for the Scottish National Party (SNP). Even The Scotsman can be right some of the time!