By Ben Courtice

August 29, 2010 -- Blind Carbon Copy [BCC] -- Socialism was conceived as a creative and idealistic movement, but lost its way for most of the 20th century. Recapturing this imaginative energy can help find solutions to such huge threats as climate change. This article started as a short impromptu speech I gave to launch the third edition of the Australian Socialist Alliance's Climate Charter.

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Socialism used to be a rallying point for idealists, utopians, dreamers and those who were simply hopeful. It carried an almost millenarian promise of redemption and salvation. More importantly, it allowed its advocates to exercise their imagination. If socialism was to democratically realise the wishes of the common working people, why should they be restrained in their wishes?

By Sonny Melencio, Partido Lakas ng Masa

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.

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.

[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.]

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.

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

Alyawarr walk-off protest vs Northern Territory intervention from

By Alan Broughton

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.

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