Iran: Interview -- Trade union activists face repression as regime imposes austerity
January 19, 2010 -- Labor Notes -- Iran has seen incredible tumult in the last few months, with massive street protests challenging the government, even as the US and allied nations continue to threaten the Iranian government under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But most people in the US know little about Iranian society, and especially its working class. Iranian workers have been organising for more than a century but today largely have to function in a secretive, underground way. It is therefore very fortunate that we have obtained an interview with a labour organiser (whom we shall call Homayoun Poorzad), who is based in Tehran, the capital city of Iran.
Labor Notes: How has the Iranian labour movement fared under the Ahmadinejad regime?
Homayoun Poorzad: This has been the most anti-labour government of the Islamic Republic over the last 30 years. The 1979 revolution was not regressive in every sense; it nationalised 70 per cent of the economy and passed a labour law that was one of the best in terms of limiting the firing of workers. This is a target for change by capitalists, both private and those in the government bureaucracy.
Audio: The militarisation of 'aid' and the recolonisation of Haiti
January 19, 2010 – Radio Basics via LeftClick – In this show, Canada's Radio Basics discusses the social and historical context in which a natural dis
New Zealand: Socialists cooperate in defence of refugees
By Grant Morgan, Socialist Worker-New Zealand
January 19, 2010 -- The refugee issue is almost certain to rise from near invisibility in New Zealand politics to become a strategic battleground. Waves of refugees will be thrown up by the poverty, strife and ecotastrophes of global capitalism's end times.
The right, centre and much of the left in New Zealand politics will seek to portray these waves of refugees as threats to "our way of life". This could open the way towards authoritarian nationalism which jackboots the New Zealand working class as well as offshore refugees.
New Zealand socialists and our allies must show that offshore refugees are a resource, not a threat, to the majority of Kiwis under the thumb of corporate bosses and politicians.
Refugees are a resource for our side because they are fleeing the poverty, wars and other calamities caused by the same world system which kicks most Kiwis around. They are our natural allies against the unnatural forces of global capitalism.
In defence of Hugo Chavez’ call for a Fifth Socialist International
By Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer
January 15, 2010 -- Critics who have planted themselves firmly on the sidelines have been lobbing all kinds of disapproving missives at Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez’ call for a new international, urging others who have been carried away by enthusiastic support to join them on the sidelines. The laundry list of complaints is extensive: Chavez is the head of a bourgeois government; Chavez only pursues reformism, not genuine revolution; he made his call in the presence of an audience that included avowed supporters of capitalism; and so on.
Martin Luther King Jr in the age of Obama: Why we can't wait
By Billy Wharton
January 17, 2010 -- Albert Boutwell's election as Birmingham, Alabama, mayor in 1963 might have signaled the end of the modern civil rights movement. As a moderate Democrat, Boutwell promised to temper the harsh repression unleashed by the city’s notorious chief of police and his mayoral opponent Eugene “Bull” Connor. Mainstream leaders of the black community were told to wait it out –- let the storm pass and incremental changes could begin. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. refused to wait. Instead, he launched Plan “C” (confrontation), a large-scale protest campaign that broke the back of Southern segregation.
Haitians plead: `Where is the help?'
January 15, 2010 -- Evidence of monstrous neglect of the Haitian people is mounting following the catastrophic earthquake three days ago. As life-saving medical supplies, food, water purification chemicals and vehicles pile up at the airport in Port-au-Prince, and as news networks report a massive international effort to deliver emergency aid, the people in the shattered city are wondering when they will see help.
United States: Blacks still taking the hit
January 2010 -- Against The Current -- It took 10 months before the US Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) stood up and challenged President Barack Obama. In a surprise move, 10 CBC leaders refused to participate in a key House of Representatives financial committee vote in December 2010 until some more relief is provided to Black businesses.
Black politicians and civil rights leaders have been understandably careful about criticising the first Black president. Yet facts on the ground, especially the super high unemployment in the Black communities, forced their hand. While their challenge is mild, it is significant.
The impact of the Great Recession has been greatest on Blacks as well as on other ethnic minorities. Official unemployment is nearly 50% higher for African Americans than for whites. What’s most striking is that the Black middle class, including those with Ivy League educations, are having a hard time finding jobs.
The issue of “race” once again is becoming a hot topic in the Black community as qualified professionals and skilled workers with equal or better résumés than whites are being turned down for jobs — going instead to whites with lesser qualifications. It is a reminder of the pre-civil rights era.
Fidel Castro: The lesson of Haiti
By Fidel Castro Ruz
January 14, 2010 -- Two days ago [January 12], at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake -– measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale -– had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometres from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.
The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.
Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.
The 350 ppm carbon dioxide challenge and how to achieve it
By Renfrey Clarke
January 14, 2010 -- The target posed by leading NASA climate scientist James Hansen of stabilising atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million (ppm) is increasingly understood in conjunction with the need to keep cumulative emissions within a tight global “budget”. While the point at which budgeted emissions occur is not in theory crucial, in practice there is a need to ensure that emissions peak early and decline swiftly thereafter.
The West’s role in Haiti's plight
By Peter Hallward
[An earlier version of this article first appeared in the British Guardian. This slightly updated version appears in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with Peter Hallward's permission.]
January 14, 2010 -- If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it.
2010: Welcome to the upside-down world of South Africa
By Dale T. McKinley
January 11, 2010 -- SACIS -- Even if the meanings we give to measurements of time are most often overblown, there is something about the mark of a new decade. In the case of South Africa, 1990 marked the beginning of the end of the apartheid system, ushering in a period pregnant with new hopes, possibilities and dreams. When 2000 rolled around it heralded not only a once in a lifetime turn of a century but carried with it the delayed weight of the majority expectation of an age of progress and plenty. So what are our "inheritances" as we begin the new decade? Where do things stand? What is the mark of 2010?