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What's new at Links: Australia, Asian solidarity with Venezuela, Hiroshima, BDS & left, iPhone, S.Africa, Venezuela, COSATU on SACP, Comintern, Malaysia, S.Korea, water * * * *For more reliable delivery of new content, please subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 * You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to li...@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * Australian socialists: `Vote Socialist & Greens, put Abbott's conservatives last' <http://links.org.au/node/1830> On July 24, 2010, Australia's leading socialist newspaper /Green Left Weekly/ spoke to */Peter Boyle/*, national convener of the Socialist Alliance, about the political climate of the 2010 federal election, to be held on August 21. *Many progressive people are feeling depressed about the federal election. How do you see it?* The Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition are in a "race to the bottom", as Socialist Alliance lead Queensland Senate candidate and Murri [Indigenous] community leader Sam Watson aptly put it. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1830> Asian socialists: `Stop the threats against Venezuela now!' <http://links.org.au/node/1817> Joint statement initiated by *Socialist Party of Malaysia* (PSM), *Working People's Association* (PRP), Indonesia, and *Socialist Alliance,* Australia. See below for latest signatures. [If your organisation would like to sign this statement, please email int....@gmail.com <mailto:int....@gmail.com>.] August 1, 2010 -- We, the undersigned organisations, view with serious concern the possibility of military aggression towards the people of Venezuela by the Colombian government, which could be supported by the United State of America using its seven military bases recently installed in Colombia. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1817> Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Worst single terror attacks in history <http://links.org.au/node/1186> / /By *Norm Dixon* August 6 and August 9 mark the anniversaries of the US atomic-bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In Hiroshima, an estimated 80,000 people were killed in a split second. Some 13 square kilometres of the city were obliterated. By December, at least another 70,000 people had died from radiation and injuries. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1186> Why the left should support the boycott of Israel -- a reply to the US Socialist Workers Party <http://links.org.au/node/1829> By* Art Young *August 6, 2010 -- When Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31, 2010, murdered nine humanitarian aid workers and seized the cargo of badly needed supplies for Gaza, they touched off an international storm of outrage that continues to this day. The widespread anger has galvanised the international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, drawing in new forces and producing new initiatives. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1829> iPhone 4: Capitalism, inbuilt obsolescence and `blood' phones <http://links.org.au/node/1828> By *Stuart Munckton* August 1, 2010 -- "Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4 --- both the device and the iOS4 --- are mostly tweaks", said a June 22 review on the popular site BoingBoing.net. "But what tweaks they are." My eye was caught by the admission that the iPhone 4, launched in Australia on July 29, was almost the same as the iPhone 3. Corporations use "inbuilt obsolescence" as part of artificially creating markets. This means the products they sell are deliberately made to break down --- so we have to keep buying more. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1828> South Africa loses its 'War on Poverty' <http://links.org.au/node/1826> By *Patrick Bond, *Durban August 6, 2010 -- Shortly before Pretoria's presidential power change from Thabo Mbeki to Jacob Zuma two years ago, the South African state announced its War on Poverty. What news from the front, in the immediate wake of World Cup host duties that showed observers how very pleasant life is for the rich and middle class here? * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1826> Venezuela: Defend and deepen the Bolivarian Revolution with an armed and mobilised people <http://links.org.au/node/1824> By *Marea Socialista* July 28, 2010 -- Following the provocations of the Colombian regime, which threatens an armed intervention on Venezuelan territory under the false pretext that the latter was sheltering FARC guerrilla bases, President Hugo Chavez has decided to suspend all diplomatic relations with Colombia. It is clear that once again the Colombian regime is acting as a perfect satellite of the United States which is moreover currently dramatically increasing militarist manoeuvres and tensions all around the globe. We publish below a statement by the Venezuelan revolutionary Marxist organisation Marea Socialista, with which the Fourth International has fraternal relations. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1824> COSATU leader on SACP's 89th anniversary: `Mass power is the best defence' <http://links.org.au/node/1823> By *Zwelinzima Vavi* August 1, 2010 -- July 29, 2010, marks the 89th anniversary of a revolutionary organ of the working class, the South African Communist Party (SACP). Being the only communist party in the African continent, the SACP (or Communist Party of South Africa as it was known then) has been a wagon that advanced and carried working-class struggles in the country and also in the continent. The formation of the CPSA is inseparable from the history of the Great October Revolution of 1917 and the launch of the Communist International in 1919. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1823> John Riddell: (Audio) The Comintern, 1919-1923: The two souls of centralism <http://links.org.au/node/1822> A talk presented by John Riddell to International Socialist Organization's (USA) Marxism 2010 conference in Chicago. John Riddell is co-editor of /Socialist Voice/ (Canada) and editor of /The Communist International in Lenin's Time/, a six-volume anthology of documents, speeches, manifestos and commentary. * Play <http://links.org.au/node/1822> Malaysia: Barricades greet anti-ISA vigils, 36 arrested <http://links.org.au/node/1821> By *Lee Way Loon* and *Hazlan Zakaria* August 1, 2010 -- Riot police barred activists from holding candlelight vigils to commemorate the Internal Security Act's 50th anniversary in eight places around the country. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1821> Report reveals International Trade Union Confederation's pro-Israel bias <http://links.org.au/node/1820> By *Sarah Irving* July 23, 2010 -- Every June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) releases its /Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights/. According to a press release that accompanied the 2010 publication (which reports on events in 2009), "the Middle East remains among the regions of the world where union rights are least protected". The report describes repression meted out to Palestinian workers and trade unionists by both the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian factions. But the ITUC's omissions and brevity both disguise the complexity of life for Palestinian workers, and reveal some of the international union confederation's own biases. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1820> South Korea: Ssangyong trade unionist's appeal <http://links.org.au/node/1819> / /By *Australia Asia Workers Links* August 3, 2010 -- On February 13, 2010, Han Sang Kyun, the chairman of the Ssangyong Motor Company Union, was sentenced to four years in prison. Australia Asia Workers Links* * is campaigning for his release. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1819> `Water is life' -- General Assembly supports Bolivia's call for `the human right to water and sanitation' <http://links.org.au/node/1818> Speech delivered by Ambassador *Pablo Solón* of the Plurinational State of Bolivia before the General Assembly of the United Nations on July 28, 2010. [The historic resolution passed with 122 countries voting for it and 41 abstaining, but with no negative votes. See below for the 41 governments that abstained.] * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1818> * * * 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. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com