Last Saturday, October
20th, hundreds of thousands workers and youth marched through the
streets of Rome, called out by the main left papers to put pressure on
the Prodi government to change its policies in favour of working people.
The Indian Hindustan Times published an interview with Lal Khan in its
Sunday edition of 21st October. In this newspaper, which claims to be
the largest in the world with a circulation of 35 million, Lal Khan
openly defends the ideas of socialist revolution.
The British media has been giving enormous coverage to the manoeuvres of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and former Prime Minister, in seeking to negotiate a return to Pakistan from her comfortable exile in London. In this extract from a wider analysis (see Whither Pakistan on Marxist.com ), Lal Khan, leading figure of the Marxist tendency, The Struggle, explains what is going on.
A critical
comment by Moroccan Marxists on the line of thought developed in the article,
The
victory of Hamas in Gaza and the questions facing Israeli and Palestinian
workers by Yehuda Stern in Jerusalem, that we
published on Wednesday, 11 July 2007. It is the opinion of the Editorial Board
that the Moroccan Marxists are absolutely correct in their criticisms.
More
people have been killed in Myanmar (Burma) as the military try and hold back
the wave of protest. But pressure is building up on the regime. Whether it will
clamp down firmly or move in the direction of negotiations depends on the power
of the movement in the coming days.
On Thursday pickets were
organised outside Mexican embassies around the world, calling for the release
of Adan
Mejia (an APPO activist and supporter of the Marxist Tendency Militante) and of
all the other political prisoners presently being held in Mexican jails. The
campaign will continue until everyone is released and all charges are dropped.
Last year’s war in Lebanon ended in defeat for Israel, but it also
shook up Lebanese society. The general strike that took place shortly
afterwards is testimony to this fact. Luke Wilson interviewed a student
activist in Beirut on how he sees the situation now.
Today the death of nearly 3000 people during the September 11 attacks will
be officially commemorated once again. But will anyone at those commemorations
mention how those deaths were cynically exploited by the Bush administration to
carry out a plan hatched by the US oil lobby for its own greedy interests?
From July 29 until August 3 the International
Marxist Tendency held its World School in Barcelona. Present were 300 comrades
from 26 countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, Brazil,
El Salvador, Mexico, Argentina and most European countries. Over half of the 40-strong British delegation
was youth, most attending for the first time.
Hands Off Venezuela has produced a new podcast that will be available
monthly, containing news from Venezuela as well as the campaign’s
activities around the world. Our first
show contains news on socialist cities, an interview with one of the
film makers of No Volveran, a new documentary on the Venezuelan revolution, along with news from HoV Finland and Brussels, plus
Venezuelan music and lots more.
The commemoration meeting in memory of Leon
Trotsky was an outstanding success. 300 people gathered in the Jose Felix Rivas
hall of the Teresa Carreño Theatre in Caracas to hear the first ever public
event organised by a government ministry on the life of Leon Trotsky.
Authorities in Venezuela have organised a public
meeting to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the assassination of Leon
Trotsky. For the first time since that date, Trotsky’s death is being
commemorated officially by a government institution. Estaban Volkov, Celia
Hart, and Ricardo Napurí are participating in events around the commemoration,
which also include television and radio appearances, where the ideas and life
of Trotsky are discussed.