IV396 - January 2008

On June 2-3, 2007 the Fifth National Convention of the Left Bloc took place in Lisbon. Since its creation in 1999, this unitary organization of the anti-capitalist Left in Portugal has strongly consolidated itself and has established a presence in the country.

Comrade Abdullah Qureshi (72) is no no longer with us. A member of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) provincial council of LPP died in a suicidal attack in Swat valley. He was one the best known senior Left leaders of the valley.

THE CURRENT CRISIS could well turn out to be the most devastating since the Great Depression. The combination of the weakness of underlying capital accumulation and the meltdown of the banking system has made the downward slide intractable and its potential for disaster serious.

In November 2007, trade unions in Slovenia organised a major demonstration in their capital city, Ljubljana, to protest the effects of inflation, and to demand cost-of-living adjustments to salaries in this former Yugoslav Republic, which joined the European Union in May 2004.

The split in Respect represents a setback for the construction of a radical left alternative.

Nisar Shah elected as new general secretary

More women comrades elected to National Committee

A staggering $ 9500 pledged by 126 delegates

Chris Harman claims that his article The Crisis in Respect is an attempt to locate the politics behind crisis in Respect. It is nothing of the sort.

Of all the words written about the split in Respect, the least important are those dealing with who did what at some meeting or other. Of much more interest are those articles attempting to provide some political explanation of these events.

Two meetings took place in London on 17 November 2007. One was the 360-strong annual conference of Respect, which was attended by 270 delegates from 49 local branches and 17 student groups.

This year is the 40th anniversary of the tumultuous revolutionary year, 1968. First in our series on the events of that year is this article which looks at the January 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam.