LINKS Update - 19th September 2011

LINKS UPDATE – 19th SEPTEMBER 2011

What's new at Links: Thailand, Pakistan, ecosocialism, 9/11, Sudan, Egypt, GCC, Venezuela, Palestine, Swaziland, Blacks & Comintern, Australian left

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Thailand: Why aren’t the generals in jail?
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
September 19, 2011 -- On the fifth anniversary of the September 19, 2006, military coup in Thailand, General Sonti Boonyaratgalin should be facing charges for staging an illegal coup and tearing up a democratic constitution. General Prayut Junocha should also be facing charges for ordering the killings of nearly 90 unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators last year.

Pakistan: Arrested, tortured for assisting climate change victims
[Urgent: Please send messages calling for the release of Baba Jan and his comrades c/- farooqtariq@hotmail.com. Farooq Tariq will be a guest speaker at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne, over September 30 to October 3.]
By Farooq Tariq

September 15, 2011 -- Baba Jan, a federal committee member of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), has been taken from jail ... and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is torturing him on the name of investigation”, fears the LPP.

Derek Wall: 'Ecosocialism places Marx at the centre of its analysis'
September 10, 2011 -- Economist, activist and writer Derek Wall is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales (and the Green Left grouping within it) and is the author of several books on ecology and politics. Wall will speak via video link at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne,r September 30 to October 3. He maintains the ecosocialist blog Another Green World. He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Simon Butler about the politics of ecosocialism.


US rulers turned 9/11 outrage into blank cheque for endless war
By Rupen Savoulian
September 17, 2011 -- Near where I live in Sydney, there is a war memorial commemorating all those people from the area who have died serving the Australian armed forces in wars overseas. There are columns for each war Australians have participated in, followed by the names of those who never returned. For instance, there are columns for World War I (1914-1918), World War II (1939-1945), the Korean War (1950-53), and also the "International Campaign against Terrorism (2001– )". Notice that last one? Unlike the others, the war on terror has no end date.


Sudan: Secret police target Communist Party press
September 15, 2011 -- The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm at the growing censorship of opposition newspapers in Sudan. The regime's secret police, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), halted the distribution of four different opposition newspapers without cause.


Dateline Egypt: Everything up for grabs in ongoing revolt
By Raul Bassi, Cairo
September 11, 2011 -- After the overthrow of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, a new chapter in Egyptian history is being written and its authors are the people themselves. Anything could happen and everything is up for grabs given the profound political, social and economic crisis in which Egypt's neoliberal system finds itself in.


Thailand: Free Somyot Prueksakasemsuk!
September 17, 2011 -- Australia Asia Worker Links reports that jailed trade union activist Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was denied bail on September 12. Somyot is in jail for allegedly insulting the Thai king, under the country's notorious lèse majesté law.


New book: Adam Hanieh's 'Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States'; Modern slaves in the GCC
Long-time friend of Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Adam Hanieh, has just released a book that is essential reading for all those following developments in the Middle East. With Hanieh's permission, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes an interview with the author, conducted by Jadaliyya, and a short excerpt from the book.


Venezuela: Communes in Caracas
September 7, 2011 -- Translated by Owen Richards -- Among the aims of community organisation is that of building the communal state, where power is exercised directly by the people, through self-government, with an economic model of social property and local self-development. Based on this premise, 236 communes and more than 9000 communal councils have been established, according to information from the Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes.


Palestine: Ilan Pappe -- At the UN, the funeral of the two-state solution
By Ilan Pappe
September 12, 2011 -- We are all going to be invited to the funeral of the two-state solution if and when the UN General Assembly announces the acceptance of Palestine as a member state.


Black liberation and the Communist International
By John Riddell
September 11, 2011 -- The influence of the Communist International was decisive in the early 1920s in winning a generation of black revolutionaries to Marxism. On this the historians agree. But what did this influence consist of, and how was it exerted?


Eyewitness Swaziland: The birth of ‘Liberation Friday!’; 'The struggle for a democratic Swaziland continues'
By the Swaziland Democracy Campaign
September 10, 2011 -- Friday, September 9, marked the last day in the second Global Week of Action on Swaziland, culminating in a large protest march in Mbabane that resulted in pitched battles between a heavily armed and aggressive security detachment, and mostly poor workers, students and the unemployed, who gathered legally and peacefully as they have done all week.


On the Australian left: 'Let’s unite behind Green Left Weekly'
September 8, 2011 -- For many years we were regular contributors to Green Left Weekly and proud supporters of the paper. We’ve now decided to resume writing for GLW and we urge other former contributors to consider doing the same.

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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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