IV488 - September 2015

In an interview with Indian publication Frontline, Bahu discusses issues ranging from the impact of the elections on the future of Sri Lankan polity, the Tamil question and to the plight of workers in plantations.

In the paroxysmal crisis that Greece is going through, we are witnessing an unleashing of an extremely violent sexist campaign against women. What is more, this is happening on the main political scene in full public view. We believe that this extreme and violent sexism, that is taking epidemic dimensions, differs significantly from the common day-to-day sexism of a more peaceful recent past, before the current debt crisis.

While socialists debate how to relate to the many thousands of progressives attracted to Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the most viable independent left alternative for 2016 needs support from socialists now. The Green Party and its leading presidential candidate, Jill Stein, are best positioned to secure state ballot lines across the country to provide a credible alternative to the candidates of the two major capitalist parties in 2016. What is needed now are (1) donations to the Stein campaign to help with ballot access drives now in 2015 and (2) help petitioning in the states where the Green Party does not yet have a ballot line secured for 2016.

The vast majority of television programs, articles and so called experts talking about millions of refugees from Syria have the same discourse: the problem is the Islamic State (IS). Some even say that we should coordinate with the Assad regime and its allies Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran to resolve and end the problem of the IS and therefore refugees. Without being surprised by these statements, I’m still a little disillusioned.

This statement was issued by Socialist Resistance, British section of the Fourth International, after the election of longstanding left-wing backbench Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn as new leader of the Labour Party. The election was called following the resignation of Ed Miliband after the disastrous general election result in May 2015. [1]

To meet human need, a political revolution must take back the billions diverted to the U.S. war machine and the military-industrial complex. So where does Bernie stand?

Europe has been rocked in recent weeks by two successive tragedies that have shaken public opinion. Firstly, on August 28, the bodies of 71 people, probably Syrian, were found in an abandoned truck on a highway in Austria. Of the 71 individuals, there were 59 men, eight women and four children, a girl of one or two years old and three boys aged 8, 9 or 10 years. A few days later, it was the image of the dead body of AylanKurdi, a Syrian Kurdish child of 3 years old, on a Turkish beach, which sparked massive emotion throughout Europe. His mother and brother, Ghalib, 5 years old, also died in the sinking of the vessel. Only the father survived.

For some years, Canada’s Conservative government has imposed a series of social, political and cultural regressions: concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1%, dismantling of public services, decline of democratic rights and deterioration of the environment. Harper’s austerity policies have perverted the institutions of representative democracy and have strengthened repressive policies against the trade union movement and popular resistance. The Harper government has, in addition, committed Canada to a militaristic course. These policies increasingly reflect ever more closely the interests of the most offensive factions of the dominant class (the financial, extractivist and military-industrial sectors).

Though the campaign is for a national government, the agreement signed by the two bourgeoisie parties is to work together for two years on several selected areas of good governance. They do not include any steps to resolve the national problem, except the fact that there is a tacit agreement to implement the 13 amendment and to implement the LLRC recommendations.

The brutal violence of the Mexican state against its own population, much of it carried out under the cover of the drug war, is inseparably linked to the global capitalist offensive. In Mexico’s case, where the assault is especially rapacious and traditions of collectivity and resistance still very strong, the repression is thereby all the more fierce.