Zimbabwe: Corporate collaboration lets Mugabe continue abuses
Corporate cash continues to feed Mugabe's rule.
By
Patrick Bond, Zimbabwe
Adam Hanieh on Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood, the military and the continuing revolution
Thousands of Egyptian protesters cross the Kasr al-Nile bridge to attend a rally in Cairo on January 27, 2012, to demand democratic change, a year after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
[For more analysis and discussion on Egypt, click HERE.]
By Adam Hanieh
August 12, 2012 -- Socialist Resistance -- Eighteen months after mass protests and strikes ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak from power, the basic aspirations that drove Egypt’s uprising remain largely unfulfilled. The vast majority of the population has seen little substantive improvement in living conditions. Political decision making continues to be dominated by a military junta closely tied to the United States.
Syria: Assad regime near end amid rising violence
[Click HERE for more analysis of the situation in Syria.]
By Tony Iltis
August 12, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly -- The 50-year rule of the Ba’ath Party in Syria looks to be effectively over. In the past month armed clashes have spread to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the largest city, Aleppo. Armed opposition forces have taken control of several border points. On August 6, Prime Minister Riad Hijab defected to the opposition.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad — who inherited the presidency in 2000 from his father, Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a 1970 military coup — no longer controls the country.
However, an end to the violence, which has claimed 20,000 lives since the uprising that broke out in March last year against Assad, looks far away. So, too, does the realisation of the uprising’s original aims: democratic rights and economic justice.
The regime has indicated it will cling to whatever power it can with counter-offensives in Damascus and Aleppo. Western demands that Assad face an international war crimes trial, and the nastier fate of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi who was brutally murdered after his overthrow and capture by NATO-led forces, has given Assad no incentive to compromise.
Palestinian People's Party's Shamikh Badra: 'Palestinians must unite to tackle occupation'
Shamikh Badra, youth leader of the Palestine People's Party, speaking at a forum in Perth during his Australian tour.
Eyewitness account: SYRIZA and the Greek grassroots challenge to the politics of austerity
Philippines: Lessons from Manila floods -- interview from the climate-change frontline
Sonny Melencio (second from left) distributes flood relief supplies.
Peter Boyle interviews Sonny Melencio
"People’s solidarity is a latent component that exists even in the capitalist system. We have to nurture it and provide an environment for it to fully develop by changing the system."
August 13, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly -- While the Philippines government dithered and made excuses for its grossly inadequate response to the catastrophic floods -- which inundated 80% of the country's capital, Manila -- Sonny Melencio was leading a people's relief effort that brought the first food supplies in days to some of the poorest and most badly effected communities. Together with other activists from the Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM, Party of the Labouring Masses), Melencio went to a string of urban poor communities along the flood-breached Marikina River with supplies collected from ordinary folk, whose upsurge of solidarity was in sharp contrast to the official response.
Communist International's Fourth Congress: revolutionary fulcrum of the modern world
Toward the United Front, Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922
Edited and translated by John Riddell
Eritrean referendum on independence
Philippines flood disaster: A political response is urgently needed
PLM activist Sonny Melencio (right) distributes flood relief.
Statement by the Partido Lakas ng Masa
New book on the history of the Tamil people's struggle for self-determination
Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka
By Ron Ridenour
New Century Book House
Chennai, India
(available from Resistance Books)
Review by Chris Slee
August 9, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Ron Ridenour‘s latest book is a very informative history of the struggle for self-determination by the Tamil people on the island of Sri Lanka. Ridenour explains the reasons why many Tamils took up arms to fight for an independent Tamil state. He shows the history of racism in Sri Lanka and the violent repression carried out by successive governments against peaceful Tamil protests. He denounces the history of mass murder of Tamils, both through government-instigated pogroms and through the bombardment of civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces. He acknowledges that the Tamil independence fighters have also committed atrocities.