World Social Struggles Newswire Archive

Talk given by Sonny Melencio, Chairperson of Partido Lakas ng Masa-Philippines (PLM), during the Socialist Alliance Conference in Sydney, Australia on June 7, 2014

5 short films were made at the People's Assembly National Demonstration in London (21.06.14). People attending were asked to contribute a one sentence message to the government. The messages were collated to produce 5 short films. The films highlight the impact of government cuts on a diverse range of issues affecting our community.

At the risk of oversimplifying the definition of revolution, I dare say it involves three dynamics: critique and destruction of the existing social order, building a new world, and the continuous reinvention of the self.

Those disgusting Tories try to extend 'Universal Credit' on the sly...

This book by Jose Maria Sison is a historical record of the legal struggle for national liberation and democracy against U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism in the 60s and early 70s. It was the principal legal study material in discussion groups and schools of national democracy which educated the youth cadres and militants from 1967 through the First Quarter Storm of 1970 to the declaration of martial law in 1972.

When the original CARP program that was passed under President Corazon Aquino was in danger of unraveling, the peasant movement came together and pushed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms, or CARPER, through Congress in 2009.

This week, I read the first half of one of the most remarkable essays I have ever come across on the subject of Deep Politics. In our first hour, we read Mark Gorton's compelling Fifty Years of the Deep State which traces a secret thread from the assassination of JFK, through the assassinations of RFK & MLK to Watergate, Ford, Carter and up to the Iran hostages affair. Our first hour concludes with Peter Dale Scott speaking on the US "overworld". In our second hour, a deconstruction of the Ford presidency and the Watergate coup from the inimitable Webster Tarpley.

Outnumbered by the country’s rural voters, Thailand’s once vibrantly democratic urban middle class has embraced an elitist, anti-democratic agenda

Tthe self-proclaimed 'civilized' USA is incapable of getting its execution methods right - which have resulted in many botched executions. It's inconceivable that all this is happening in the land that preaches human rights to the rest of the world.

Today's the day when Sarah Sands, the unofficial Boris Johnson Special Adviser and sometime Editor of Two-Beards' Evening Standard is sharing the global Civilisation platform thanks top Angelina Jolie. The ES has got Jolie all over the paper's prints today. In the Editorial, Sarah Sands reiterates her Conservative and Boris Johnson dedications. But comments on the pieces are barred. From a number of London campaigners.

Who was labor leader Romy Castillo to this young activist?

When some commentators termed the numerical outcome of the recent Indian election historical, it reminded a bit of the pompous theatrics of North American democracy: There, every election is of “historical” dimension until the next item in the news cycle kicks in. But one can find a grain of truth in the comparison: Like for the current Unitedstates president, Modi´s biggest achievement is not being his predecessor. And with India having tasted gold austerity and women´s liberation, it is an easy temptation for any empty agitator to keep his loyalists happy with frog-marching “bitter clingers” through the global village until the rest of the world has better things to do with its time, such as it is an obvious clue that this very tactic has arrived at a dead end in Unitedstates where the phoney klan blamefest is over and any appearance of charisma finally spent. The farce set to follow the tragedy would be futile from its very outset. But in a deeper sense, the Indian election rather resembles an European pattern: The “winning candidate” is only the second choice, the religious conservative could take the ballot because the openly fascist “first choice winner” was spoiled out of it, in this case though not by splitting the vote along some virtual fault line but by material force of armed insurgency (see May 29, 2013). The place of the assassinated “Salva Judum” leader was taken by a replacement mirroring the same hierarchy in the state religion. Instead of an organiser of genocide came an apologist of genocide. As history knows when the automatic spy planes of imperialism saw that tactic, the first thing they did was to copy it, targeting their guns along succession speculations. The only remarkable thing about the predicted outcome of the Indian election is that the Naxal decided it a year ago.

Last time we looked at how mass communication technologies were shaped into the propaganda tool that big media is today. This time, a look at how the medical profession has responded to similar systemic pressures, gradually refining technologies and public expectations about physical and mental health so as to buttress the status quo. After Jess Martin's talk on 'disability' we hear Gary Greenberg on the DSM-5. We conclude with an alternative perspective from Tony Wright - that modern society, far from being a healthy norm from which any deviation is suspect, is itself a deeply dysfunctional result of millennia long changes in human brain biochemistry.

Democracy is the most popular word in the vocabulary of politics but also the most brazenly abused.

May 23, 2014 - We, the undersigned organisations, strongly condemn the latest coup d’état staged by Thai military under the leadership of Prayuth Chan-ocha.

The Anarcho Wildlings Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation / International Revolutionary Front have claimed responsibility for torching 3 luxury vehicles in the posh Sydney suburb of Woolahra.

International Revolutionary Front (IRF) cell claim responsibility for arson attack in Melbourne, Australia.

A CALL TO ACTION IN SUPPORT OF THE ZAPATISTAS
Justice for Galeano; Stop the war against the Zapatista communities
Week of action: May 18th-24th

The UK DWP is unravelling - the UK Neo Cons CONDEM regime has been breaking laws, suppressing due process daily. Following Denis Skinner drawing attention at a 2013 PMQs to the Cameron-fronted regime driving the vulnerable and the seriously ill to their deaths, a momentary state of shock prevailed. That appears to have been ‘sedated’ by the ferocious PR by Fleet Street tabloids reinforcing their attacks on the low income, the no-income groups and of course ton the sick, the very sick.....

This week, a look at the CCM, how the corporate media is commercially controlled - how large money successfully shapes its output. We adapt Jean-Phillipe Lemay's Shadows of Liberty, followed by an excerpted speech by Jeremy Scahill on war crimes carried out by the US but unreported in USA by the large media corporations.