[A-List] What's new at Links: G20 Toronto, World Cup, Venezuela, Tariq Ali on Afghanistan, revo party, Asia solidarity with Palestine, Thailand book excerpt, People's Climate Agreement

[glparramatta]

What's new at Links: G20 Toronto, World Cup, Venezuela, Tariq Ali on 
Afghanistan, revo party, Asia solidarity with Palestine, Thailand book 
excerpt, People's Climate Agreement

* * *
*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 links at dsp.org.au

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


    Toronto is burning! Or is it? Black bloc tactics play into the
    state's hands <http://links.org.au/node/1763>

By *Judy Rebick*
June 27, 2010 -- For people sitting at home and watching TV news last 
night, Toronto was burning. The same police car on Queen St West burned 
and blew up over and over again. The same image of a young man very 
violently smashing Starbucks windows appeared over and over again. 
Windows smashed all along Yonge Street. None of us had ever seen Toronto 
like this. It was shocking.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1763>


    South Africa: FIFA, not migrants, are the real tsotsis
    <http://links.org.au/node/1759>

By *Patrick Bond*, Durban
June 25, 2010 -- South Africa's soccer-loving critics have long 
predicted the problems now growing worse here because of its World Cup 
hosting duties. Soon, it seems, we may also add to this list a problem 
that terrifies progressives here and everywhere: another dose of 
xenophobia from both state and society.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1759>


    Tariq Ali: Afghanistan -- `Obama's war' <http://links.org.au/node/1756>

By *Tariq Ali*
Afghanistan now is at a critical stage. And now I'm very glad to say 
that the /London Review of Books/, whose thirtieth anniversary we are 
commemorating, has over the years published myself and others on this 
subject, taking essentially a critical stance to this war because, as 
many of you will recall, it became fashionable all over the world, not 
just in the United States, to think of Iraq and Afghanistan as two very 
different wars.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1756>


    The socialist revolution and the mass revolutionary party
    <http://links.org.au/node/1762>

By *Dave Holmes*
Today humanity faces a global crisis stemming from the incredible 
rapacity of the capitalist system. In the first place, there is 
catastrophic climate change which threatens to end life on our planet, 
then there is endemic war and conflict, mass poverty in the Third World 
and neoliberalism's ever more ruthless assault on working people 
everywhere.The only way out is the abolition of capitalism and its 
replacement by socialism. And the only means to do this is 
anti-imperialist revolutions in the Third World and proletarian 
socialist revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1762>


    Venezuela: Workers' control and the contradictions of the Bolivarian
    process <http://links.org.au/node/1761>

/ /

*Gustavo Martínez* interviewed by *Susan Spronk* and *Jeffery R. Webber*
June 21, 2010 -- On June 10, 2010, we caught up with Gustavo Martinez, a 
union leader in the worker-controlled, nationalised coffee company, Fama 
de América, in Caracas, Venezuela. The company has 350 workers at the 
national level, with two separate plants -- one in Caracas and one in 
Valencia. We sat down with Martínez to discuss the centrality of 
workers' control in the ongoing struggle to transition toward socialism 
and some of the most pressing contradictions of the Bolivarian process 
in Venezuela today.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1761>


    Eric Toussaint: Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution at the crossroads?
    <http://links.org.au/node/1760>

By *Eric Toussaint*
Part 1: Nationalisation, workers' control: achievements and limitations
The economic, social and political situation in Venezuela has changed a 
lot since the failure of the constitutional reform in December 2007, 
which acted as a warning to President Hugo Chávez's government. |This 
failure had the effect however of reviving the debate on the need to 
have a socialist perspective. The debate revolves around several key 
questions: further nationalisation, workers' control, the place of the 
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), people's participation, etc.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1760>


    Asian left: `Lift the siege on Gaza! Support boycott, divestment and
    sanctions on apartheid Israel' <http://links.org.au/node/1758>

*Statement by Asian left organisations*
[To add your organisation's endorsement, please email: 
international at socialist-alliance.org 
<mailto:international at socialist-alliance.org>.]
June 25, 2010 -- As Israel stands increasingly isolated following its 
manufactured confrontation on May 31, 2010, with the peace flotilla in 
which nine Turkish activists on the /Mavi Marmara/ were murdered, now is 
the time to increase the pressure on Israel to lift the siege of Gaza.
Israel's criminal blockade of Gaza is aimed to collectively punish 1.5 
million Gazans for their choice of government.
The attack on the flotilla was aimed at demoralising Palestinians and 
their supporters. But, as we've seen from the global protests -- 
particularly in Turkey and the Arab world -- it has backfired on the 
Netanyahu government. Turkey, once a close political and military ally, 
has now distanced itself from Israel and supports attempts to break the 
Gaza blockade.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1758>


    Football, sport and capitalism: Terry Eagleton 1 -- Dave Zirin 1?
    <http://links.org.au/node/1755>

*Terry Eagleton: `Football -- a dear friend to capitalism'*
If the [new British] government is bad news for those seeking radical 
change, the soccer World Cup is even worse. It reminds us of what is 
still likely to hold back such change long after the coalition is dead. 
If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to distract the 
populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard 
labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football. No finer 
way of resolving the problems of capitalism has been dreamed up, bar 
socialism. And in the tussle between them, football is several light 
years ahead.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1755>


    Class and politics in Thailand <http://links.org.au/node/1754>

Below is an excerpt from Thai socialist Giles Ji Ungpakorn's latest 
book, /Thailand's Crisis and the Fight for Democracy/. It provides an 
historical background to Thai politics from the pre-capitalist era, 
through the turmoil of the 1930s and 1970s, up to the present day. This 
historical understanding is important in locating the dynamics of the 
ruling class and the changing politics of revolt from the time of the 
Communist Party through to the creation of the NGOs.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1754>


    World People's Conference on Climate Change: Some critical comments
    on the People's Agreement <http://links.org.au/node/1753>

By *Daniel Tanuro* and *Sandra Invernizzi*
June 2010 -- The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the 
Rights of Mother Earth, which met in Cochabamba (Bolivia) from April 
20-22, 2010, at the invitation of Bolivia's President Evo Morales, was 
an enormous success. Thirty-thousand participants discussed for several 
days the various facets of the climate crisis and adopted a series of 
very interesting documents, from a resolutely anti-capitalist standpoint.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1753>


    Comparision of the Cochabamba People's Agreement and the Copenhagen
    Accord <http://links.org.au/node/1752>

June 16, 2010 -- The People's Agreement stems from an integral vision of 
climate change, incorporating the issue of the structural causes of the 
climate crisis, the rupture of harmony with nature, the need to 
recognise the rights of Mother Earth in order to guarantee human rights, 
the importance of creating a Tribunal of Climate and Environmental 
Justice, the development of global democracy so that the people can 
decide on this issue affecting and the planet and all of humanity.
On the other hand, the Copenhagen Accord represents a step backward with 
relation to the Kyoto Protocol by proposing a methodology of voluntary 
commitments for the industrialised countries that are principally 
responsible for climate change.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1752>

* * *
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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 14923 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20100629/2425b38d/attachment.txt>