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`Our struggle knows no borders!' -- South African left, unions
respond to xenophobic attacks <http://links.org.au/node/429>
May 21, 2008 -- According to the UN Integrated Regional Information
Networks, as of May 19, 2008, the death toll in a wave of attacks
targeting foreigners around South Africa's main city of Johannesburg
has risen to at least 32, with an estimated 6000 people seeking
shelter in police stations, churches and community halls. The violence
has spread to Zandspruit, northwest of Johannesburg, and Tembisa,
Primrose, Reiger Park and Thokoza, on the eastern perimeter of the
city, as well as other working-class communities.
Read more <http://links.org.au/node/429>
El Salvador: FMLN's Jorge Schafik Handal Vega discusses the 2009
election <http://links.org.au/node/434>
May 24, 2009 -- *Jorge Schafik Handal Vega* --son of the legendary
FMLN founder ``Comandante Simon''' Jorge Schafik Handal -- joined the
militant left in El Salvador in 1968 as a student. He was a combatant
commander throughout the people=92s war in the 1970s and 1980s and,
following the 1991 peace accords, was integral to the successful
transition of the FMLN=92s combatant structures into the political and
civil institutions of El Salvador. He is currently a deputy for the
FMLN in the Central American Parliament.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/434>
Bolivia: The letter of the law and the law of power
<http://links.org.au/node/433>
By *Guillermo Almeyra*/, La Jornada, /Mexico
//
May 18, 2008 -- The letter of the law is one thing, and quite another
is the power that imposes it and makes it real. For this reason, it is
absurd to fall for the fetish of the written legal text while
forgetting the balance of power which gives it validity and allows its
application. For if said balance is unfavourable, the legal or
constitutional text is nothing more than a dead letter.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/433>
Photo essay: Silicon Valley janitors go on strike against Yahoo!,
Cisco <http://links.org.au/node/432>
Photos and text by *David Bacon*
Mountain View, California, May 20, 2008 -- Silicon Valley janitors,
mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, walked out of Cisco
Systems and Yahoo buildings in the first day of a Bay Area-wide strike
intended to force building service contractors to sign a new agreement
with their union, Service Employees Local 1877.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/432>
Building trade union solidarity with Palestine
<http://links.org.au/node/431>
By *Adam Hanieh*
*/``International solidarity is fundamental to a progressive and
fighting labour movement. It is not an optional part of labour
activism or a form of charity. International solidarity goes to the
heart of what it means to be a labour activist. It means seeing the
struggle of our sisters and brothers in other countries as our own
struggle. Their victories as our victories''/* -- Canadian Union of
Public Employees International Solidarity Committee: /What We Stand
For/.
* * *
May 20, 2008 -- In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian organisations
urged the world to adopt a campaign of boycott, divestment and
sanctions against Israel in the manner of [the campaign against] South
Africa's apartheid regime. This call was signed by all the main
Palestinian trade union federations, as well as refugee, women's and
student organisations from across Palestine and the Arab world. It
represented the broadest political statement in Palestinian history,
precipitating a powerful global solidarity campaign that has grown
dramatically over the last few years.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/431>
How the workers and peasants made the Cuban revolution
<http://links.org.au/node/428>
Review by *Graham Matthews*
May 10, 2008 -- There is a myth perpetrated by some on the left, that
there never really was a revolution in Cuba. The Cuban =93revolution=94,
they claim, was just the result of the collapse of the brutal, US-
backed Batista regime, followed by the filling of the political vacuum
by the few hundred guerrillas that made up the July 26 Movement
(J26M). These fighters simply marched down from the mountains to take
power in Havana, installing the Castro brothers as virtual dictators.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/428>
Indonesia: Anti-communism in the age of reformasi: the case of
Papernas <http://links.org.au/node/427>
By *Vannessa Hearman*
May 20, 2008 -- In 2006, some long-term Indonesian activists in the
People=92s Democratic Party (PRD), such as Dita Sari and Agus ``Jabo=92=92
Priyono, reflected on how the post-1998 /reformasi/ movement would
respond to the 2009 general election. In June 2006, a number of
activists and organisations, including eight national organisations
such as the Indonesian Buddhist Students=92 Association (HikmahBudhi),
the National Students=92 League for Democracy (LMND) and the Urban Poor
Union (SRMK) met in Jakarta to agree to establish Papernas (the
National Liberation Party of Unity). Around 40 local groups of
farmers, workers, students and advocacy groups in Flores, Sumatra,
Maluku, Java and Kalimantan also sup****ted this initiative. PRD
activists have made Papernas their key political project in the last
few years, which also has created debates and splits inside the PRD
over the question of electoral alliances in coming elections.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/427>
Timor Leste - Fretilin's comeback; literacy and governance
<http://links.org.au/node/426>
May 13, 2008 (/Latin Radical <http://vensol.blogspot.com/2008/05/timor-
leste-fretilins-comeback_16.html>/) -- *Estanislau Da Silva *was a
prime minister of Timor Leste (East Timor) when Fretilin was the party
in government. Before that, he was the minister for agriculture. He
was in Australia this week to attend the launching of a book by a
Timorese man, Naldo Rei, who grew up in Indonesian-occupied Timor
Leste, as a committed sup****ter of the Fretilin-led resistance
movement.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/426>
Pakistan: Trade unions under attack -- `We have no option but to
fight back!' <http://links.org.au/node/425>
By *Farooq Tariq*
May 18, 2008 -- The announcement by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)
government lifting restrictions on trade union activities has brought
a new wave of unionisation in many private industries. The bosses are
not used to it. They have made tremendous profits under General Pervez
Musharraf's eight years of dictator****p. Although he is still there as
``president'', there is some breathing space. Wherever workers have
tried to form new unions, the bosses have tried their best to
intimidate union activists with false legal cases, arrest, torture and
kidnapping. The PPP government has yet to take any action against
these bosses.
* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/425>
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in
the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and
social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist
movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of
"actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
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