IV425 - June 2010

Twelve years after one of the bloodiest military regimes worldwide ended, the radical left still faces a hard struggle in Indonesia. An interview with Indonesian activist Paulus Suryanta Ginting.

The above sentence, inscribed on the common banner of DOE and OLME, the two trade unions of primary and secondary education, in a demonstration on May 12, summarizes very well both the analysis of the situation and the only road which is left to workers faced with the social catastrophe inflicted by the PASOK government.

The Moroccan public university and school systems are undergoing a sustained attack on the right of the Moroccan common people to a public, good and free education. This attack is shaped by a document called “National Charter for Education and Training” which was approved by the Moroccan State in 1999 by order of the World Bank and endorsed by the Parliament of the King in March 2000.

The crackdown on the opposition in Thailand and the abuses of the regime have not been met with the solidarity response and the international condemnations which the situation requires. The regime can thus freely operate and stifle the democratic movement.

The Summit of the Peoples on the climate and the rights of Mother Earth, which met in Cochabamba (Bolivia) from 20-22 April, at the invitation of 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.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been slowly but surely emerging as world power for the last 30 years. It has become the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and Japan and it’s leaving behind Germany as the world’s top exporter. Nor is China any longer a manufacturer of low value, low technology items: it has become the world’s largest producer both of wind turbines and solar panels, and last year its auto sales doubled to more than a million vehicles a month surpassing the United States.

The union’s ability to organise resistance and move onto the offensive will in any event be greater now that a majority of its leadership consist of activists who put a premium on militancy and don’t flinch from confrontation. Who knows, they may even set an example for other Dutch unions!

The far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman has demonstrated once more its ability to go even further than earlier Israeli governments in trampling international law and basic human decency under foot. Their murderous attack in international waters on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla is a new escalation of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people. It must be met with a forceful escalation in the response from the solidarity movement and world public opinion.