Estallan tensiones sociales en Bolivia

Escrito por Federico Fuentes (Green Left Weekly), traducido por Robert Cavooris y Janina Suárez-Pinzón (Upside Down World)

Agusto 24, 2010 -- Las escenas recientes de bloqueos de carreteras, huelgas e incluso un atentado con dinamita en la casa de un vice-ministerio en el departamento boliviano de Potosí, recuerdan los tiempos de los anteriores gobiernos neoliberales y han dejado a muchos preguntándose qué está sucediendo realmente en la “nueva” Bolivia del presidente indígena Evo Morales.

Desde el 29 de julio, la ciudad de Potosí, que tiene 160.000 habitantes, se ha parado abruptamente. La gente está enardecida y preparada para luchar por lo que ellos perciben como una falta de apoyo del gobierno nacional para el desarrollo regional.

Potosí es el departamento más pobre del país, pero el más importante para la industria minera, que está a punto de superar al gas como principal producto de exportación, debido a los crecientes precios de los minerales.

Sport and capitalism -- Would Gramsci go to the footy?

Labor PM Bob Hawke laud's tycoon Alan Bond's victory in the 1983 America's Cup.

No Pain, No Gain? Sport and Australian Culture
By Dr Jim McKay
Prentice Hall, 1991. 189 pages.

Review by Phil Shannon

Sport tells lies. According to Jim McKay, sport is a social prop to the domination of capitalist ideas and values. Fundamental to the maintenance of this dominance are the mass media, which ``selectively articulate capitalist rationality, masculine hegemony, Eurocentric racism, militaristic nationalism and liberal values'' -- a toxic mix of ideological viruses.

Australia: The DSP in the 1980s

[This first appeared as the introduction to Building the Revolutionary Party: Jim Percy Selected Writings 1980-87 (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 2008). Dave Holmes is now a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne. This and other writings are also available at Dave Holmes' blog, Arguing for Socialism.]

By Dave Holmes

This is the second volume of writings and speeches by Jim Percy, one of the founders of Australia's Democratic Socialist Perspective and its longtime central leader until his death in 1992. These seven items — reports given by Jim to conferences and leadership gatherings of the DSP (or SWP, Socialist Workers Party, as it was known in this period) — span the years 1980 to 1987.

Swaziland: Small country, big struggle -- global day of action for democracy

In Swaziland you can get locked up for wearing this T-shirt.

[The Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC), formed by trade unions, political par

Venezuela: Land reform, food sovereignty and agroecology

Urban food garden, Caracas.

By Alan Broughton

Australia: Swing to Greens a shift to left as neither major capitalist party wins a mandate

Newly elected Greens MP Adam Bandt with trade unionist supporters during the 2007 federal election.

By Peter Boyle

August 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- By denying both the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the opposition Liberal Party-National Party coalition an outright majority, in primary votes and in federal House of Representatives (lower house) and Senate (upper house), Australian electors on August 21 voted “neither of the above” for the traditional parties of government. The result after election night was a hung parliament, with several rural independent MPs and one Greens MP to decide which party will form the next government.

This followed an election campaign in which the major parties conducted an ugly race to the right, most notoriously by scapegoating the few thousand desperate refugees who attempt to get to Australia on boats.

Pakistan: The flood disaster and the way out


By the Labour Party Pakistan (Karachi) and the National Trade Union Federation