What's new at Links: Australia, Afghanistan, Hugo Blanco, Obama, Iran, Tom Keneally, Greece, W.Sahara, India, Pacific
* * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to li...@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * Australia: Socialist Alliance celebrates its first electoral victory <http://links.org.au/node/1307> October 18, 2009 -- Newly elected local municipal councillor *Sam Wainwright* summarised what he saw as the significance of his election to the Fremantle Council, in the state of Western Australia (WA): "It's a victory for all those like me who believe that the council can and should play an active role in involving people in decision making, protecting the environment, campaigning for workers' rights and making a place in the community for people who are too often left out, such as Indigenous Australians and people with disabilities." * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1307> Malalai Joya: The Afghan people are `squashed between two powerful enemies <http://links.org.au/node/1306> /Film by *Nomad Collective*/ October 18, 2009 -- *Malalai Joya:* ``Now, my people are squashed between two powerful enemies. From the sky, the occupation forces are dropping bombs, even using cluster bombs and white phosphorus and killing innocent civilians in the name of combatting the Taliban. On the ground, the Taliban and also the Northern Alliance fundamentalists continue their fascism against men and women of my country. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1306> Hugo Blanco: Indigenous people are the vanguard of the fight to save the Earth <http://links.org.au/node/1304> October 13, 2009 -- Peruvian peasant leader *Hugo Blanco*, who edits the newspaper /La Lucha Indigena/, was interviewed in Arequipa, in southern Peru. The previous day he gave a presentation at a conference entitled "40 Años de la Reforma Agraria" at the city's Universidad Nacional de San Agustín. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1304> Iran: English edition of underground opposition newspaper, `Khiaban' (`The Street') <http://links.org.au/node/1305> * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1305> Tom Keneally's `The People's Train': Steaming along the tracks of revolution <http://links.org.au/node/1302> /*The People's Train* /By Tom Keneally, Vintage Books, 2009 Review by *Phil Shannon* October 10, 2009 -- When Artem Samsurov first came to Brisbane in 1911, the Russian exile noted that the poor did not eat horse meat like they did in his native country and he wondered whether this did indeed make it true that Australia was a "working man's paradise"? A diet that was no stranger, however, to rabbit, and bread and lard, suggested otherwise. Tom Keneally's latest novel, /The People's Train/, follows the political and romantic adventures of Samsurov, a fictional character closely based on Fedor (``Artem'') Sergeyev, a Bolshevik who escaped from exile in Siberia after the crushing of the 1905 revolution in Russia and who was a political activist in Brisbane for six years. [See the /Australian Dictionary of Biography'/s entry for Fedor``Artem'' Sergeyev below this review.] * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1302> Greece: Right-wing government defeated, deeper radical left unity needed <http://links.org.au/node/1301> / / By *Antonis Davenellos* October 14, 2009 -- The results of the October 4 elections in Greece were a political earthquake that have created a new situation in the country. The crushing defeat of the ruling party has opened up a period of deep political crisis for the right, a crisis that by all indicators will be long lasting. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1301> Polisario Front briefing paper on the question of Western Sahara <http://links.org.au/node/1300> By the *Polisario Front* October 2009 Western Sahara (the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) is located in northwest Africa and covers an area of 266,000 square kilometres. It is bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast and Mauritania to the East and southeast and has a 1,200-kilometre-long Atlantic Ocean coastline. The Saharawi Republic was proclaimed on 27 February 1976; its capital is El Aaiún. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1300> India: Statement condemns government military offensive against the Indigenous people <http://links.org.au/node/1299> October 14, 2009 -- *Sanhati* is a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples' movements in India by providing information and analysis. We have been profoundly disturbed by the Indian government's reported plans to launch an unprecedented military offensive in the huge forested regions of central India, populated by millions of Indigenous tribes (/adivasis/), for stamping out an alleged Maoist insurgency. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1299> Review of `Renegade: The Making of Barack Obama' <http://links.org.au/node/1298> /*Renegade: The Making of Barack Obama*/ By Richard Wolfe, Virgin Books, London 2009 Review by *Jeff Richards* Whatever your views are about Barack Obama, there is no doubt that his campaign for the US presidency was a major milestone in the history of electoral politics in the United States. How did a senatorial rookie who was black, with an alien name and a background in community organising get to the centre of the system of power? It was both a matter of circumstance (the crises and failure of neoconservative project) and the remarkable political skills of Obama and the campaign team led by David Axelrod. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1298> United States: `Birthers', `deathers' and haters -- Right-wing populism and liberal retreat <http://links.org.au/node/1297> By *Malik Miah, *San Francisco October 11, 2009 --- The heat is on the administration of US President Barack Obama. The energised conservative base has taken over town hall meetings on health care. There are "birthers" (those who claim Obama is not a US citizen and ineligible to be president), "deathers" (those who claim Obama's health care reform is a plan to kill old people) and just pure haters. Obama has been personally attacked as a racist, socialist, communist, Stalinist, fascist, Nazi, Pol Potist, foreigner and every other name the right finds in its vocabulary. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1297> Science and empire in the Pacific <http://links.org.au/node/1296> By *Barry Healy* More than 240 years ago, on April 13, 1769, the peace of Tahiti was interrupted by the visit of Captain James Cook, supposedly observing the transit of Venus across the Sun, but really following secret orders to investigate the Pacific Ocean and its islands for the benefit of British colonialism. Mainstream Australian history raises James Cook to a pinnacle because he established a white, British dominion on the Australian continent. However, at the time his fame was eclipsed because on board his ship was gentleman scientist Joseph Banks with a posse of staff. Banks' star outshone Cook's because his work acquired the botanical treasures of Oceania for the British Empire, paving the way for Britain to dominate vital areas of science for its own benefit. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1296> * * * 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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