[A-List] What's new at Links: Obama; Thailand; Kanaky; Sri Lanka; Venezuela; Cuba; Palestine; Lenin; El Salvador

[glparramatta]

What's new at Links: Obama; Thailand; Kanaky; Sri Lanka; Venezuela; 
Cuba; Palestine; Lenin; El Salvador

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* * *


    Black president in the White House: Not the `same old white
    supremacy' but ...
    <http://links.org.au/node/867>

By Mike Ely
For literally millions of people, for many of a new generation, the 
awakening to politics starts in these moments. This is the world, the 
arguments, the summations, the claims, the promises that they hear and 
that they will see unfold in the days ahead. We need to understand this 
moment, we need to also inhabit this world that they are seeing -- in 
order to craft from among them a revolutionary force that can actually 
connect with and represent their highest hopes.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/867>


    Kanaky (New Caledonia): Anti-capitalism and independence
    <http://links.org.au/node/872>

By Bernard Alleton, translated by Sam Wainwright for Links International 
Journal of Socialist Renewal
The balance sheet of first year of the Kanaky PT (Workers Party) is 
largely positive. In the municipal elections in March, four months after 
it was formed, the PT ran candidates in fourteen of the territory's 
thirty-three communes resulting in thirty elected representatives. This 
demonstrates its genuine implantation. More generally, the PT knew how 
to take on the lethargy of the other parties that claim to struggle for 
independence.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/872>


    Thailand: Petition for freedom of speech; Interview with Giles Ji
    Ungpakorn on the use of `lese majeste' laws
    <http://links.org.au/node/859>

Please sign the petition (below the videos 
<http://links.org.au/node/859>) and ask others to sign.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/859>


    What does Obama mean for the world? <http://links.org.au/node/874>

By Barry Sheppard, San Francisco
January 23, 2009 -- More than 1 million people gathered in bitter cold 
in Washington DC to witness the historical inauguration of an African 
American as president. The crowd was disproportionately Black, but 
majority white -- and jubilant. Celebrations were held in Black 
communities throughout the country, and in other sectors of the population.
He was sworn in by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, itself historic. 
In the aftermath of the election, he enjoys overwhelming support 
according to polls, far higher than his margin of votes. This indicates 
a large swing of whites among those who voted for the Republican 
candidate John McCain.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/874>


    Obama and the change the world demands <http://links.org.au/node/873>

By Kavita Krishnan
The United States - and the world - has just witnessed Bush's exit from 
and Barack Obama's entry into the White House. The mood at Obama's 
inauguration - an event replete with symbolic resonances, situating the 
Obama presidency in the history of the civil rights movement against 
racism in the US - indicates the endurance of that groundswell of 
popular hope in the US which powered Obama's election campaign. For a US 
people reeling from financial crisis and the highly unpopular Bush 
presidency, Obama has offered a promise of ``change''.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/873>


    Sri Lanka: Behind the genocidal war against the Tamils
    <http://links.org.au/node/870>

By Tony Iltis
January 17, 2009 -- The January 14 announcement by the Sri Lankan 
government that its forces had completed the capture of the Jaffna 
Peninsular, effectively bringing all of the historic Tamil nation in Sri 
Lanka's north-east under military occupation, was a grim reminder that 
the Israeli assault on the Gaza ghetto is not the only holocaust at the 
start of the new year.
The Tamil people have been fighting for independence from Sri Lanka 
since 1983 when an island-wide pogrom (the most violent of several that 
had regularly occurred since 1956) convinced Tamils that they would not 
attain equality or security under the Sinhala-chauvinist state that has 
ruled Sri Lanka since independence in 1948.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/870>


    Venezuela: Mass support for constitutional reform campaign
    <http://links.org.au/node/869>

By Tamara Pearson
Over the January 17-18 weekend, committees from various sectors of 
society swore to campaign hard to win the approval by public vote of the 
amendment to the constitution to get rid of the two-term limit on all 
elected offices in Venezuela. More than 20,000 people attended the 
swearing in of the heads of logistical and operational patrols of the 
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Caracas on January 17. 
Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez stated at the event that there are now 
about 100,000 "Yes committees" organised, or in formation, to campaign 
in favour of changing the five articles of constitution so that all 
popularly elected positions are not limited to two terms.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/869>


    African American students discuss Cuba's healthcare revolution
    <http://links.org.au/node/868>

Radio Open Source carried this interview with three medical students 
from the United States studying in Cuba.

    But the core of our long conversations is medicine, the Cuban way.
    This is aggressive, free, hands-on healthcare that makes house
    calls, and lingers for the feel of emotions and homelife. Doctors'
    training -- like doctors' care -- is free: the payback required of
    the students here from all over the hemisphere is only that they
    return to under served areas of their home countries...Their
    thinking on social determinants of health, on the primacy of public
    health and the vital role of prevention strategies are unmatched in
    the world. With spending of less than US$200 per person per year for
    health care, they have achieved health outcomes no different than in
    the USA where expenditures now exceed $7000 per person annually!". 

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/868>


    `What we expect from President Obama on Palestine' (+COSATU
    solidarity message to the people of Gaza) <http://links.org.au/node/866>

Joint statement by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa) and 
the Congress of South African Trade Unions

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/866>


    Thailand: Activist Giles Ji Ungpakorn charged with `insulting'
    monarchy <http://links.org.au/node/865>

[Please sign the petition HERE <http://links.org.au/node/859> against 
the attack on freedom of speech in Thailand, which the use of lese 
majeste represents.]
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
January 20, 2009 -- Today, the police informed me that I have been 
charged with lese majeste because of eight paragraphs in Chapter 1 of my 
book A Coup for the Rich. The paragraphs are listed below. According to 
the police charge sheet, the charges arise from the fact that the 
director of Chulalongkorn University bookshop decided to inform the 
police Special Branch that my book "insulted the Monarchy". The bookshop 
is managed by the academic management of the university. So much for 
academic freedom!

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/865>


    Good riddance, Dubya! <http://links.org.au/node/864>

    * Street art/photo essay, see more <http://links.org.au/node/864>


    Lenin on liquidationism <http://links.org.au/node/863>

By Chris Slee
In recent years there have been a number of cases where revolutionary 
Marxist parties have initiated or participated in attempts at building 
broad left parties. Examples include the Scottish Socialist Party; the 
Socialist Alliance and later Respect in England; the Socialist Alliance 
in Australia; Papernas in Indonesia; the participation of Italian 
Trotskyists in the Party of Communist Refoundation; and the New 
Anti-Capitalist Party initiated by the Revolutionary Communist League 
(Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire) in France. Sometimes Marxist groups 
that participate in such broad formations are accused of 
"liquidationism". This was a term used by Lenin to refer to the policy 
of certain members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party who 
wished to dissolve ("liquidate") the RSDLP after the crushing of the 
1905 revolution.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/863>


    El Salvador: Election results add to tension as presidential race
    heats up <http://links.org.au/node/862>

January 20, 2009 -- Amanda Peters was on the spot as an official 
observer, and as part of a delegation from CISPES (Committee in 
Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). She spoke with community 
radio's Latin Radical as the first results started coming in, and gives 
her nervous prognosis for the presidential round coming up on March 15. 
Also CISPES' assessment of the municipal and legislative elections.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/862>

* * *

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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