What's new at Links: Iran & the left, Marta Harnecker, New Zealand,
Indigenous women in L. America, S. Korea, Adam Smith & Karl Marx,
biofuels, S. Africa, IWW

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Iran: Government neoliberalism, repression fuel mass discontent
<http://links.org.au/node/1113>

By Tony Iltis and Stuart Munckton
June 20, 2009 -- Since the June 12 Iranian presidential election, and
the almost immediate announcement of a landslide victory for incumbent
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran has been convulsed by mass protests alleging
electoral fraud. The protests are occurring despite both Ahmedinejad and
Mousavi emerging from within the same undemocratic regime and holding
similar positions on many issues. Mousavi is presented in the Western
media as a "reformer", however he was prime minister during the 1980s
when the regime committed some of its worst atrocities.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1113>


Comment: A question to the left on Iran: Can the people make history
or not? <http://links.org.au/node/1112>

By Mike Ely
June 19, 2009 -- There is a self-deceptive politics (among some
leftists) that seeks to prettify all kinds of reactionary forces that
(for one reason or another) are in opposition to US imperialism --
including Islamic reactionaries, Kim Jung Il, "hardline" revisionists of
the Li Peng and Eric Honecker type and so on. And in the process they
have a real, almost startling, hostility toward sections of the people
who rise up in important if still-inarticulate ways.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1112>


Trade unions and New Zealand's economic crisis
<http://links.org.au/node/1111>

By Grant Brookes
Unity, May 2009 -- Comparisons now abound between the global economic
crisis of 2009 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Naturally, there
are similarities and differences.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1111>


Latin America: Manifesto of the First Continental Summit of
Indigenous Women <http://links.org.au/node/1110>

Puno, Peru -- May 27-28, 2009 -- We, indigenous women gathered in the
sacred lands of Lake Titicaca, after two days of discussions and
deliberation raise our voices in these times when Abya Yala's[1] womb is
once more with childbirth pains, to give birth to the new Pachakutik [2]
for a better life on our planet. We, indigenous women, have had a direct
input into the historical process of transformation of our peoples
through our proposals and actions in the various struggles taking place
and engendered from the indigenous movements.
We are the carriers, conduits of our cultural and genetic make-up; we
gestate and brood life; together with men, we are the axis of the family
unit and society. We join our wombs to our mother earth's womb to give
birth to new times in this Latin American continent where in many
countries millions of people, impoverished by the neoliberal system,
raise their voices to say ENOUGH to oppression, exploitation and the
looting of our wealth. We therefore join in the liberation struggles
taking place throughout our continent.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1110>


Marta Harnecker: Ideas for the struggle #9 -- Respect differences
and be flexible in regards to activism <http://links.org.au/node/1109>

[This is the ninth in a series of regular articles. Click HERE for other
articles in the series <http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/368>. Please
return to Links regularly read the next articles in the series.]
By Marta Harnecker
1. Among the left, there continues to be a difficulty to work together
while respecting differences. In the past, the tendency of political
organisations, especially parties that self-declare themselves as
parties of the working class, was always towards homogenising the social
base within which they carried out political work. If this attitude was
once justified due to the past identity and homogeneity of the working
class, today it is anachronistic when confronted with a working class
that is quite differentiated, and with the emergence of a diversity of
new social actors. Today, we increasingly have to deal with a unity
based on diversity, on respect for ethnic and cultural differences, for
gender and for the sense of belonging of specific collectives.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1109>


South Korea's rollback of democracy <http://links.org.au/node/1108>

By George Katsiaficas
May 25, 2009 -- The suicide of former South Korean president Roh
Moo-hyun on May 23, 2009, left South Korea in shock. All over the
country, tens of thousands of tearful people sought to eulogise and
memorialise Roh -- to find ways to express their grief and anger.
Conservative government politicians were blocked by local residents from
joining tens of thousands people who made the journey to Roh's small
hometown the day he died. Not only were they refused admittance, many
people splashed them with water and chanted that they should get out --
shaming them into leaving. Opposition party spokesperson Kim Yu-jeong
expressed what is in many people's hearts when he blamed Roh's tragic
death on the conservative government's relentless and disrespectful
offensive against him: "The people and history know what made the former
president do something so tragic."

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1108>


Adam Smith was closer to Karl Marx than those showering praise on
Smith today <http://links.org.au/node/1107>

By Eric Toussaint
In the following citations, we discover that what Adam Smith wrote in
the 1770s is not so distant from what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
would write 70 years later in the famous Communist Manifesto.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1107>


Biofuels and sustainable transport -- Can biofuels be produced and
used responsibly? <http://links.org.au/node/1106>

By Renfrey Clarke
June 16, 2009 -- For governments and vehicle corporations, the charm of
biofuels used to be the promise they held out of a ready-made solution
to transport-related greenhouse gas emissions -- a solution that might
simply be dropped in, while changing almost nothing else. Freeways,
suburban sprawl, four-wheel-drive family cars -- everything could
remain. Only the fuel on sale at service stations would be different.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1106>


South Africa: Political balance shifts left -- though not enough to
quell grassroots' anger <http://links.org.au/node/1105>

By Patrick Bond
June 13, 2009 -- With high-volume class strife heard in the rumbling of
wage demands and the friction of township ``service delivery'' protests,
rhetorical and real conflicts are bursting open in every nook and cranny
of South Africa. The big splits in society are clearer now. Distracting
internecine rivalries within the main left bloc have subsided. From
2005-09, the ruling African National Congress' huge wedge between camps
allied to Thabo Mbeki and to the new president, Jacob Zuma, cleaved the
ANC in two, but Zuma's troops have mostly flushed out the former's from
the state and party.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1105>


The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia: achievements and
limitations <http://links.org.au/node/1104>

[This talk was presented at the Laborism and the radical alternative:
Lessons for today conference, held in Melbourne, Australia, on May 30,
2009. It was organised by Socialist Alliance]
By Verity Burgmann

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1104>


New book preview: Global Fight for Climate Justice
<http://links.org.au/node/1103>

"Essential reading for everyone who is serious about confronting the
climate emergency." -- Emma Murphy, co-editor, Green Left Weekly

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1103>


Marta Harnecker: Ideas for the struggle #8 -- The left must attempt
to set the agenda for struggle <http://links.org.au/node/1102>

[This is the eighth in a series of regular articles. Click HERE for
other articles in the series <http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/368>.
Please return to Links regularly read the next articles in the series.]

By Marta Harnecker
1. In the previous article, we stated that a large section of the party
left has found it very difficult to work with social movements and
develop ties with the new social forces in recent decades. This has been
due to several factors.

* Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1102>

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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