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What's new at Links: S. Africa strike, Green Party, Ruth First, Afghanistan, James P. Cannon, Britain, Pakistan flood, Haiti, Bolivia, Africa looted * * * *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. South Africa: Public sector strike highlights post-apartheid's contradictions <http://links.org.au/node/1852> By *Patrick Bond* August 22, 2010 -- The two major civil service unions on strike against the South African government have vowed to intensify pressure in coming days, in a struggle pitting more than a million members of the middle and lower ranks of society against a confident government leadership fresh from hosting the World Cup. Along with many smaller public sector unions, educators from the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) and nurses from the National Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) continued picketing schools, clinics and hospitals, leading to widespread shutdowns starting on August 18. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1852> Britain: What now for the Green Party? <http://links.org.au/node/1850> By *Peter Shield* August 17, 2010 -- The Green Party of England and Wales has made some major breakthroughs over the couple of years, the election of Caroline Lucas to the British parliament was one of the few bright points on an otherwise dismal election night on May 6, 2010. At a local level the Green Party now has just over 120 councillors and the two members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The problem however is that the election showed up how patchy and locally concentrated its support base actually is. With the Autumn party conference approaching what are challenges facing the Green Party. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1850> South Africa: COSATU's Zwelinzima Vavi's Ruth First Memorial Lecture <http://links.org.au/node/1851> *Zwelinzima Vavi* presented the 2010 Ruth First Memorial Lecture, Wits University, Johannesburg, August 17, 2010. Vavi is secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. *Ruth First* (May 4, 1925--August 17, 1982) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and communist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was killed by the apartheid regime with a parcel bomb in Mozambique in 1982, where she worked in exile from South Africa. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1851> Afghans mark Independence Day with anti-occupation protests <http://links.org.au/node/1849> By *Derrick O'Keefe* August 19, 2010 marks 91 years since Afghanistan gained its freedom from the British empire, following three bloody wars of independence. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has issued a video statement to mark the occasion. It's worth watching or reading the text in full, if only to appreciate the new empire's irony-laden platitudes. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1849> James P. Cannon: An introduction <http://links.org.au/node/1848> By *Dave Holmes* James P. Cannon was a pioneer of the Communist Party of the United States and one of its central leaders in the 1920s. Breaking with the Stalinised CP in 1928 he founded the US Trotskyist movement and played the decisive role in building it for over three decades. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1848> Britain: Build opposition to the `slash and burn' coalition <http://links.org.au/node/1847> By *Alan Thornett* August 18, 2010 -- Britain's first coalition government since the war has completed its first parliamentary session. "Coalition", however, is something of a sick misnomer. What we have is a right-wing Thatcherite, small-state, slash-and-burn Tory government, propped up by the cringing Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems), with a cuts and privatisation agenda which goes well beyond anything Thatcher herself was able to envisage. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1847> Pakistan flood catastrophe: West gives `billions for killing, little for life' <http://links.org.au/node/1846> By *John Passant* August 15, 2010 -- The floods in Pakistan have threatened the lives and safety of more than 20 million people. Millions have lost everything. Now hunger and disease haunt the country. Dysentery and cholera are gaining a foothold as people without homes starve and kids without Western help die. The US gives the Pakistan government US$1 billion a year to fight "militants". It has increased its flood aid contribution from $10 million to $25 million. That's right. Its aid figures is millions, not billions. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1846> Repay historic debt to Haiti: An open letter to French President Nicolas Sarkoz <http://links.org.au/node/1845> By *Derrick O'Keefe * August 16, 2010 -- A Bastille Day hoax on the French government helped to expose the long history of extortion, betrayal and structural injustice that left Haiti so impoverished and vulnerable to devastation by the earthquake that claimed over a quarter of a million lives earlier this year. On August 16, /Libération /published an open letter from social activists, politicians and academics from around the world making the point that the demand for France to pay restitution to Haiti is "unassailable". I hope this letter will circulate widely, keeping this story in the news and raising awareness of the real causes of Haiti's plight. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1845> Bolivia: Warning signs as social tensions erupt <http://links.org.au/node/1844> By *Federico Fuentes* August 15, 2010 -- Recent scenes of roadblocks, strikes and even the dynamiting of a vice-minister's home in the Bolivian department (administrative district) of Potosi, reminiscent of the days of previous neoliberal governments, have left many asking themselves what is really going on in the "new" Bolivia of Indigenous President Evo Morales. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1844> Is Africa still being looted? World Bank dodges its own research <http://links.org.au/node/1843> By *Patrick Bond* August 15, 2010 -- The continent's own elites, together with the West and now China, are still making Africans progressively poorer, thanks to the extraction of raw materials. Reinvestment is negligible and the prices, royalties and taxes paid are inadequate to compensate the wasting away of Africa's natural wealth. Anti-extraction campaigns by (un)civil society are the only hope for a reversal of these neocolonial relations. Though it's easy to prove, even using the World Bank's main study of natural resource economics, the looting allegation is controversial. When I made it during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) interview last week*, the World Bank's chief economist for Africa Shanta Devarajan, immediately contradicted me, claiming (twice) that I am not in command of the "facts".* * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1843> * * * 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
