IV426 - July 2010

Following the provocations of the Colombian regime, which threatens an armed intervention on Venezuelan territory under the false pretext that the latter was sheltering FARC guerrilla bases, President Hugo Chavez has decided to suspend all diplomatic relations with Colombia. It is clear that once again the Colombian regime is acting as a perfect satellite of the United States which is moreover currently dramatically increasing militarist manoeuvres and tensions all around the globe. We publish below a statement by the Venezuelan revolutionary Marxist organisation Marea Socialista, with which the Fourth International has fraternal relations.

This afternoon (22nd July), after 17 days of strike by over 20,000 power looms workers in the Jhang district, the bosses agreed to meet the demands. The district coordination officer (DCO) announced at the textile workers’ strike camp that all workers would be issued social security cards. At a meeting the director of social security, the district administration and employers jointly agreed. This will be first time that industrial workers in the Jhang district will be able to receive the benefits of social security, including free health service, special marriage and death grants and free education for their children at social security schools.

Since May 8, 2010 - i.e. the emergency meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB), ECOFIN (finance ministers of the EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held in order to establish a rescue plan for various countries of the EU - all the governments are announcing plans for budgetary austerity “to save the eurozone”. A class war on a new scale has been declared in Europe: what remains of the social state, resulting from the period following the Second World War, must be dismantled, except for a “social safety net” of the World Bank kind.

BERTA LANGSTON (1922-2010), a founder and member of Solidarity, died of lung cancer at age 84 in Norwalk, Connecticut on June 23. Born Berta Green on the Lower East Side of New York City, she was one of four sisters. She joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the mid-1940s and throughout nearly four decades of activity she was widely esteemed on the Left as one of the party’s most devoted and capable militants, a person who could work with sundry individuals to develop coalitions and political defense committees of national and international import. From time to time she used the party name “Berta Graham,” and she received a Marxist education at the “Trotsky School” at Mountain Spring Camp in New Jersey. During the mid-1960s she served briefly on the SWP National Committee.

In the Faisalabad region of Pakistan, the Labour Qaumi movement called a strike starting on 19th July to press the 17% wage rise accorded to private sector workers under the latest agreement.

Farooq Tariq of the Labour Party of Pakistan has sent us these daily reports on the movement.

On 6th July while Mustansar Randhawa was listening to a worker who had not been paid his wages by a textile boss, an unknown person with a Kalashnikov entered the front room and fired. Mustansar tried to save his life by running to the next room but 10 people were determined to finish him off

A polemic on the rate of profit has developed over the last few months. This article seeks to review this debate which turns around four essential questions.

This year’s ESF in Istanbul was a success - not only because some months ago it was still not clear, if it would happen. But also because there were lots of good and intensive discussions going on and because the final assembly called for broad Europe-wide mobilisations against the crisis in the autumn.

During the two days before the European Social Forum opened in Istanbul at the beginning of July, the World March of Women held its own but linked initiative. International Viewpoint received this short report.

In terms of its political charter (approved in January 2009 during the World Social Forum in Belém, Brazil), CADTM, as an international organization, does not appear to focus on feminism or on specific work with women. However, all its work regarding debt cancellation implicitly aims for women’s emancipation. For CADTM debt cancellation is merely a means to achieve a goal; the liberation of all human beings – women and men – from all forms of oppression.