IV430 - November 2010

The People’s Republic of China has been established for 60 years, there are tremendous changes in different aspects, particularly in the economy. It is said that China will exceed Japan and even USA within ten years and become the most powerful economic entity.

In preparing, for April 2011, its Sixth Congress, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) has published a document on economic and social questions which, for friends of the Cuban revolution, gives rise to strong concerns, and for the population of island is a brutal and demoralizing blow. Unfortunately, outside of the enemies of the revolutionary process, who have welcomed the difficulties it is experiencing, it is hard to find any analysis or opinions about the course being taken by the Cuban revolution, whose role is decisive for the process of liberation of all Latin America. That is why, within the limits of a short article, I would like to put forward some general considerations, a rapid examination of what seems to me to be most dangerous in the document of the CCP and also some brief thoughts on what could be an alternative orientation to this document.

November 24th was a great day for the Portuguese workers’ movement in mobilizing against austerity and social cuts. The first general strike organized by both trade unions (CGTP and UGT) since 1988 mobilized more than 3 million workers. The transportation sector gave the example with closed seaports, no air traffic and massive participation in the public and private transport companies, in all major cities and across the whole country. In Autoeuropa (Ford/Volkswagen, the biggest factory in the country), not one car was built in that day, despite of these workers had previously achieved a company agreement for 2011 of 3,9% salary raise, no firing and integration of workers without contract.

PAKISTAN IN RECENT years has found itself in the headlights of the international press with increasingly regularity. As Obama’s surge into Af-Pak has taken shape over the last 12 months, the country and its people have been thrust to the forefront of political discussion for forces left, right and center.

“FREEDOM” REPRESENTS MANY things across rural and urban spaces in India-ruled Kashmir. These divergent meanings are steadfastly united on one point: freedom always signifies an end to India’s authoritarian governance.

The Alliance of People’s Struggle (ARM), a coalition of womens’, students’, labour and peasant organisations, based in Yogyakarta is appealing for emergency aid to help people affected by the eruptions from Mount Merapi which is having its most violent eruptions in more than one hundred years. The most recent eruption on the morning of November 5 has already killed 58 people, injured dozens more and completely incinerated the village of Argomulya.

In Burma, more than twenty years have passed since the last election on May 27, 1990. The military junta refused to recognize the outcome of the elections, won overwhelmingly by the National League for Democracy (NLD) party formed two years earlier by the Burmese oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi.

BUSHRA KHALIQ IS general secretary of the Women Workers Help Line (www.wwhl.org.pk) and a member of Labour Party Pakistan. She visited the United States in June, 2010 to speak at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, and spoke in several cities at meetings organized by Solidarity and the International Socialist Organization. While in Detroit, she spoke with Dianne Feeley and David Finkel from the ATC editorial board. We began by asking Bushra about her perspective on the World Social Forum and the USSF, then about her own political work.

We have already published a report on the second congress of the Revolutionary Workers Party (Mindanao) and a message of solidarity underlining the international interest of its experience. We now publish an article situating the original place that the RPM-M occupies in the Filipino Left . The article also briefly presents the development of international links between radical parties in Asia.

Since the military coup of September 12, 1980, two underlying processes have structured Turkey’s political and social evolution: the development of Turkish capitalism in the direction of greater integration in globalized capitalism, and the sharpening of the Kurdish national question.