As US president Barack Obama ramped up his rhetoric about Syria's chemical weapons on September 17, US rapper Sole released his latest album, which reflects on his country's chemical weapons attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Green Left's Mat Ward spoke to the prolific political emcee, who started releasing records in 1994, when he was just 16.
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Venezuelans rallied to condemn fascism on September 11, marking the 40th anniversary of the United States-backed coup d’etat in Chile that ousted left-wing president Salvador Allende.
The rally began at Plaza Salvador Allende at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and marched through the city centre to Llaguno Bridge. On the bridge is a memorial to those killed during the 2002 US-backed coup that temporarily removed former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from office. Chavez was restored by an uprising by loyal soldiers and the poor.
The wife and two daughters of folk singer and 1973 coup victim Victor Jara have filed a lawsuit in a US federal court against a former Chilean army officer who they say killed him, Morning Star.
The civil lawsuit, filed on September 4 in Jacksonville, Florida, is a bid by Jara’s family to bring Pedro Barrientos, now a US citizen, to justice under laws that allow US courts to hear allegations of human rights violations committed overseas.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on September 10 that a Venezuelan Armed Forces plane would carry humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon.
The initiative came out of a resolution from the political council of the anti-imperialist bloc Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) meeting in Caracas. The plane will bring blankets, medicine, and food. Established by Venezuela and Cuba in 2004 as an alternative to US domination, ALBA now involves eight nations from the region
Striking Mexican teachers from a dissident union leading popular resistance to the government’s neoliberal reform agenda in recent weeks.
Despite enduring relentless media hostility, the teachers' strike is now starting to broadened out to merge with protests against plans to hand over key national assets, such as Mexico’s state-owned oil industry, to the profit-hungry multinationals.
Thousands of striking teachers seized two of Mexico City's central thoroughfares on a march to the president's residence on September 11 after losing their battle to block new educational reforms less than 24 hours earlier.
The teachers disrupted the centre of the city for at least the 14th time in two months, decrying a plan designed to break union control of Mexico's education system and, they say, damage education in Mexico's poor south in the process.
The secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is about to become even more secret, perhaps seen as a necessity in light of plans to make it easier for tobacco companies to sue while making health care more difficult to obtain.
In a national census held over September 7 and 8, 1150 communes registered in a national census, exceeding expectations.
The communes are forms of “popular power” in Venezuela that unite representatives of local communal councils across a regional area. Community councils in Venezuela are grassroots bodies where local residents manage public funds and undertake projects promoting community development.
Communes, meanwhile, are formed by groups of community councils, and can take on larger scale projects and public works.
The election showed
Most people in our country
Still unwilling to take the plunge
Towards system overhaul
Chosing instead to remain
Blind in the face of climate change
Deaf to the groans of the earth and its poor
Dumb to the call for justice and peace
Heads spinning with doublespeak
And massive media manipulation
Wondering how to cope with this
Collective conservatism and the
Pettiness of political leaders
I wander around the flat
A little bewildered and sad
To find myself in front of
My bedside bookshelves
Metamorphosis
Why Marx was right
Unfinished Animal
Red or Dead
By David Peace
Faber & Faber, August 2013
No socialist in 60 years of British life has had more followers than Bill Shankly; no-one on the left has had greater success.
Taking over as manager of Liverpool Football Club in 1959, with his team struggling in the second division, by his retirement in 1974 Shankly had guided Liverpool to three league titles, two FA cups and the club’s first European trophy, the UEFA cup.
New at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. New pamphlet by Marta Harnecker and The legacy of Salvador Allende.
New Zealand celebrities have joined protests against proposed law changes that will remove the right of public consultation on applications for deep sea oil and gas drilling. Law changes will also remove the right to protest at sea.
Actors Sam Neill, Lucy Lawless and Robyn Malcolm, former Supreme Court judge Sir Ted Thomas and many others have joined Maori and environmental groups to condemn the government’s plans.
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