IV501 - October 2016

International Viewpoint 501 PDF magazine

The Partido Revolucionario de las y los Trabajadores (PRT – Workers’ Revolutionary Party) salutes and welcomes the announcement by the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI – National Indigenous Congress) and the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional – Zapatista National Liberation Army) of the initiation of a consultation on a possible participation in the presidential elections of 2018 with an indigenous woman, a spokeswoman for the CNI.

Radical Socialist condemns the mass killing of at least 24 Maoists or alleged Maoists, in what the police are calling an encounter, in the Odisha side of the Andhra – Odisha border area. From the reports issued by the police, it is evident that they had surrounded a meeting of the Maoists, at best.

This statement was published by the LCR-SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth Internation on 24 October 2016, after the vote in the Wallonia parliament refused the CETA thus blocking the signing of this deal planned for 27 October. Finally on 27 October an intra-Belgium agreement broke the deadlock. [1]

The South Korean government wants to liquidate once and for all the militant trade-union tradition that has its historic roots in the resistance to the dictatorships of Park Chung-hee (1961-1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987). The National Council of Trade Unions (NCTU, founded in 1990) and afterwards the Korean Confederation of Trade Union (KCTU, which succeeded it in 1995) have embodied this tradition. Not without difficulties and crises, this tradition has sought to adapt to changing conditions of struggle.

The king is dead, long live the king? The Thai royal family legitimates power more than actually possessing it. This function could be endangered with the coming to the throne of the crown prince. The death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej was officially announced on October 13, 2016. He had long been hospitalised, incapable of speech and probably of much else. This did not stop him from officially “signing” whatever the ruling military junta required to consecrate its political decisions.

“We are housewives, workers, business, workers, unemployed, activists, artists, mothers and daughters, maids ... that you see on the street, those in your neighborhood ... those who walk alone or accompanied, those who decide to abort or not ..., those who decide how and with whom their sexuality ... We are many ... and we shout tgether together: not one woman less! We want to be alive!

“This is why we are on strike (#Nosotras Paramos). And our appeal is regional: Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. In all Latin America we walk together because Latin America will be feminist or it will not exist. Against femicide and against the precariousness of our lives.

“Not one less woman. We want us alive! ”

The Corbyn movement is the most significant development on the left in British politics that has occurred in the course of most of our political lives. It is certainly the radicalisation with the best possibility of a breakthrough in reshaping politics on the left and making a difference at the level of government

A wave of protest in Ethiopia highlights the country’s history of exploitation and dispossession. This summer, when marathon runner Feyisa Lelisa crossed the Rio finish line with his hands crossed above his head, he expressed his solidarity with a protest movement in Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state.

The election to the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte revealed and amplified the crisis of the political system in the Philippines, opening a period of uncertainty which is still far from over. Before and after the elections of May 9, 2016, the various forces of the left had to take a position regarding a marginal candidate whose victory seemed for a long time inconceivable, but who received massive popular support, to the point of completely transforming the electoral contest. In fact, the future of the left is to a large extent being determined today.