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The date is the
second of November 2007. Trade unionists from the Sinaltrainal food industry union walk into the central
cafeteria of the Universidad Pontificia, to find an envelope addressed to them from the Black Eagles’ Front of the
AUC, the supposedly disbanded right-wing paramilitary organization. The
contents of this letter were as follows...
An analysis of the growing political and social turbulence in Europe,
the United States, Latin America with an emphasis on Venezuela, the
Middle East and Asia with particular emphasis on the explosive
situation in Pakistan and ends with an appeal to help build the
International Marxist Tendency in all countries. At this stage it is a
discussion document.
This is the first part of a draft document on World Perspectives as approved at the recent meeting of the leadership of the 
On Tuesday, February 19, Fidel Castro announced he was no longer going to stand for the position as President of Cuba. All the talk in the bourgeois is
of the need to remove the regime, but there is no mention of the real social
gains of the Cuban Revolution. We do not stand with these vultures. We defend
the Cuban Revolution by working for an all-Latin American and international
revolution.
Before the results had come in, President
Musharraf appeared on the state-run Pakistan Television, calling the vote "the
voice of the nation" and the "mother of elections" must be accepted. But in
fact this was the Mother of all Frauds.
We are in the final stages of the election campaign in Pakistan. The
masses are clearly backing the PPP in large numbers. Reaction is also preparing.
Blatant rigging cannot be ruled out, but this would only serve to enrage the
masses. In this context the Marxists are standing in several constituencies,
where they are running a revolutionary election campaign that is having a big
impact among the workers and poor.
The crisis in the garments sector goes unabated in
Bangladesh. On January 30, 2008 two workers in World Dresses Ltd, Mirpur,
Dhaka, were attacked and beaten by management staff at the end of an evening shift. One died at 3am, the other is still
hospitalised with broken limbs. Fearing unrest
management closed the factory on Thursday. When knowledge of the attack
reached the company's workers, hundreds demonstrated outside the factory.
More than 13,000 tonnes of food have been seized in the last two weeks
in Venezuela as part of the Food Sovereignty Plan launched in order to
fight speculation, hoarding and sabotage in the food distribution
chain. The main lesson is that food soverignty is not compatible with
capitalism.
The big
corporations in North America, Western Europe and Japan are moving more
of their factories abroad in search of lower wages. But in the process
they are tying the interests of the international working class closer together. In North America Ford workers prepare to weather a new round
of closures and layoffs, while their bosses have unveiled
plans for new plants in China, a country with the world’s fastest
growing car market along with rock-bottom wages. Meanwhile, Russian
Ford workers have won an important victory not only against the company
but against the new, repressive Russian Labor Code.
The
Iranian regime has raised the level of repression against many sections
of society, especially against students. To show solidarity with the imprisoned students a
number of Iranian opposition groups are organising pickets outside the
Iranian regime’s diplomatic missions on Saturday 16 February 2008.
Until recently
Kenya
was held up as a glowing example of the success of the free market
economy. It was supposed to be a shining example of democracy, a
beacon of hope for what Europeans used to call "the dark continent."
Now all these dreams lay in ashes. In recent weeks Kenya has been
torn asunder by a wave of ethnic and tribal violence that has claimed
nearly a
thousand lives.
The largest human migration
in the world gets under way every Chinese
New Year, as China's 120
million strong army of migrant workers make
their annual trip home. This
year heavy snows led to railways and
roads being overburdened and
transport bottlenecks wreaked sudden
nationwide chaos.
How do you lose £3.7 billion? Down the back of the sofa? Meet Jerome Kerviel. He lost £3.7 billion of
his employer’s money, Societe Generale, a French
bank. Is it actually a good argument for
capitalism that the whole world can be screwed up because of a solitary rogue
trader? Is the system really so precarious that one crook can send world
financial markets into freefall?
