The Flame, March 2010 -- Green Left Weekly's Arabic-language supplement
The electoral debacle of the Philippines left
By Reihana Mohideen
[The first two in a series of commentaries in the lead-up to the May 10, 2010 elections in the Philippines.]
Bolivia creates a new opportunity for climate talks that failed at Copenhagen
By Pablo Solón Romero
March 19, 2010 -- http://pwccc.wordpress.com/ -- In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a “step in the right direction”. This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change cannot be addressed by half measures. We can’t make compromises with nature.
Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from April 19 to 22, 2010. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to “betray our people for 30 pieces of silver”.
TAKE ACTION! Help Copenhagen climate change activists falsely accused of terrorism
By Kieran Adair
March 23, 2010 -- In Copenhagen, Sydney-based climate justice advocate Natasha Verco, as well as US activist Noah Weiss, faces charges under Denmark’s “terrorism” laws. Verco faces up to 12-and-a-half years' jail for her role in organising protests against the United Nations Copemnhagen climate summit in December.
The two activists appeared in court on March 18 (see report below).
Verco was arrested while riding her bike on December the 13 ahead of a national day of action she was helping organise the following day. She said: “A plainclothed police women jumped out at me and ... took me to an unmarked police van. I asked them, ‘Are you randomly picking me up?’ and they said ‘No, we hunted you’.”
Venezuela: New moves to build workers' power; Revolution in the electricity industry
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
March 22, 2010 -- The free, sovereign and independent homeland of our dreams will only come true if we radicalise the process and speed up the transition to socialism”, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez wrote in his March 14 weekly column “Chavez Lines”.
The Venezuelan government has launched a number of initiatives in recent weeks aimed to tackle threats to the revolutionary process — including from elements within the pro-Chavez camp that seek to undermine plans to deepen the revolution.
Central to this are new measures aimed at speeding up the transfer of power to organised communities.
Chavez wrote in his February 21 column: “The time has come for communities to assume the powers of state, which will lead administratively to the total transformation of the Venezuelan state and socially to the real exercise of sovereignty by society through communal powers.”
Participatory democracy
The previous day, Chavez announced the creation of the federal government council in front of thousands of armed peasants that are part of the newly created peasant battalions in the Bolivarian militia.
Venezuela: neue Schritte für den Aufbau der Volksmacht
Federico Fuentes, Green Left Weekly
22.März 2010
„Die freie, souveräne und unabhängige Heimat unserer Träume wird nur wahr werden, wenn wir den Prozess radikalisieren und den Übergang zum Sozialismus beschleunigen“, schrieb der venezolanische Präsident am 14.März in seiner Kolumne „Las Lineas de Chavez“.
Die venezolanische Regierung hat in den letzten Wochen mehrere Initiativen gestartet, um Gefährdungen des revolutionären Prozesses zu bewältigen – einschliesslich solche, die vom Pro-Chavez Lager ausgehen und versuchen, Pläne zur Vertiefung der Revolution zu untergraben.
Zentral dabei sind neue Massnahmen die darauf abzielen, die Übergabe der Macht an organisierte Comunidades zu beschleunigen.
`For Venezuela, there is no going back’: A discussion with Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke
By Ali Mustafa
March 23, 2010 -- As Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution enters a new decade of struggle and defiantly advances towards its goal of “21st century socialism”, serious challenges to the future of the process emerging from both inside and outside the country still abound. As a result, key questions surrounding Venezuela's mounting tensions with the West, the role played by its fiery and outspoken leader Hugo Chavez and the future of the process itself remain as relevant today as ever before. Australian-based journalists and long-time Venezuela solidarity activists Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke have been carefully following Venezuela's ongoing political transformation for several years now, countering mainstream media spin and providing invaluable on-the-ground coverage and analysis about the process as it unfolds. I had the fortunate opportunity to sit down and speak with them in Toronto before they returned to Caracas, following a 10-day solidarity tour of Canada.
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Malaysia's Socialist Party: `People's power politics in practice'
Nepal: Ben Peterson, eyewitness to Nepal’s revolution, tours New Zealand
March 21, 2010 -- UNITYblog -- Ben Peterson is a young Australian socialist who spent four and half months in Nepal last year. Ben is crossing the Tasman for a speaking tour of New Zealand from March 21-26. Ben was kind enough to answer some questions for UNITYblog about his experiences in Nepal.
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When did you go to Nepal? How long were you there for?
I was in Nepal last year from the beginning of March to July, about four and half months in total.
Why did you go to Nepal?
Afghanistan: Exiled members of the former People's Democratic Party return to refound party
By John Bachtell
March 17, 2010 -- People's World -- In a potentially important development, exiled members of the former People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan are returning to the country to re-found the organisation. They plan to hold a congress in Kabul later this year and rename the organisation the Democratic Party of Afghanistan.
The PDPA was the ruling party that led the country on a path of socialism before being ousted from power in 1992 by the US government-backed Taliban. Thousands of PDPA members were slaughtered or driven into exile where they have functioned over the years as scattered groups.
Exiled members met recently in Germany to unite their ranks and agree on an approach to reestablishing a legal political party on Afghanistan soil.
"The main goal is to return to Afghanistan and bring a situation of peace and stability in the region", said Dr. Zalmay Gulzad, professor of social sciences at Harold Washington Community College in Chicago. Gulzad was born in Afghanistan and came to the US as a student in 1971 and stayed. "Once peace is achieved the movement will evolve into different stages."
Indonesia: Slum dwellers protest against eviction order
[See "The Peoples Democratic Party and Indonesia's poor majority" for background to this story.]
By Peter Boyle, photos by Ulfa Ilyas
March 19, 2010 -- Hundreds residents of the urban slum village of Kampung Guji Baru in West Jakarta besieged office of Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo from early in the morning on March 18 to reject the planned their eviction of their settlement. The residents demanded that the governor immediately stop the eviction plans which would rob the poor residents of their rights of occupancy and ownership.