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What's new at Links: Australia, utopia, Swaziland, S. Africa strike, Pakistan floods, Philippines, sport, Gramsci, DSP, NT indigenous struggle, Venezuela & food * * * *For more reliable delivery of new content, please 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 or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 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: Swing to Greens a shift to left as neither major capitalist party wins a mandate <http://links.org.au/node/1854> By *Peter Boyle * August 24, 2010 -- By denying both the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the opposition Liberal Party-National Party coalition an outright majority, in primary votes and in federal House of Representatives (lower house) and Senate (upper house), Australian electors on August 21 voted "neither of the above" for the traditional parties of government. The result after election night was a hung parliament, with several rural independent MPs and one Greens MP to decide which party will form the next government. This followed an election campaign in which the major parties conducted an ugly race to the right, most notoriously by scapegoating the few thousand desperate refugees who attempt to get to Australia on boats. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1854> Rehabilitating utopia and saving the future <http://links.org.au/node/1864> By *Ben Courtice* August 29, 2010 -- Socialism was conceived as a creative and idealistic movement, but lost its way for most of the 20th century. Recapturing this imaginative energy can help find solutions to such huge threats as climate change. This article started as a short impromptu speech I gave to launch the third edition of the Australian Socialist Alliance's /Climate Charter <http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=674%22%3E>/. Socialism used to be a rallying point for idealists, utopians, dreamers and those who were simply hopeful. It carried an almost millenarian promise of redemption and salvation. More importantly, it allowed its advocates to exercise their imagination. If socialism was to democratically realise the wishes of the common working people, why should they be restrained in their wishes? * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1864> Swaziland: Small country, big struggle -- global day of action for democracy <http://links.org.au/node/1857> [The Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC), formed by trade unions, political parties, civil society groups and churches, has called for a global day of action on September 7, 2010. It will include a mass protest and show of "defiance" in Swaziland.] By *Mike Marqusee* August 23, 2010 -- Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world's last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1857> Pakistan: The flood disaster and the way out <http://links.org.au/node/1853> By the *Labour Party Pakistan* (Karachi) and the *National Trade Union Federation* August 20, 2010 -- The recent floods represent the worst disaster in Pakistan's history. The country has been devastated from the northern areas to its southern tip. The state, stripped of its capacity to meet peoples' needs by neoliberalism and militarism alike, has been found wanting---both in its longstanding failure to maintain existing infrastructure, and in its response to the calamity. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1853> South Africa: COSATU calls `total shutdown', condemns state `scabbing', violence <http://links.org.au/node/1858> August 26, 2010 -- Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi on August 24 announced that its affiliated unions will launch a solidarity "secondary strike" on September 2 in support of the country's 1.3 million public servants and teachers, who are on strike for better wages and allowances. "All COSATU unions, in both the public and private sectors, will embark on a sympathy strike. No member of COSATU will be at work next week", Vavi warned. According to the August 25 Johannesburg /Times/, Vavi told a press conference following a COSATU executive meeting (see statement below) that the African National Congress (ANC) government was being "disingenuous"."We do need a total shutdown until government comes to its senses and accede to the legitimate demands of the working class." He likened ANC cabinet ministers who lived "caviar lifestyles" to "the shepherd feeding himself, forgetting about the lambs". * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1858> Philippines: PLM calls for an independent inquiry on the hostage killings <http://links.org.au/node/1863> By *Sonny Melencio*, Partido Lakas ng Masa August 28, 2010 -- The Philippines Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring Masses) commiserates with the families of the eight Chinese nationals killed in the tour-bus hijacking in Manila on August 23. The blunders of the Philippines police and officials in the hijacking crisis, which led to the deaths of the eight tourists, are indefensible from many aspects. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1863> Estallan tensiones sociales en Bolivia <http://links.org.au/node/1862> Escrito por *Federico Fuentes* (/Green Left Weekly/), traducido por *Robert Cavooris* y *Janina Suárez-Pinzón* (/Upside Down World/) Agusto 24, 2010 -- Las escenas recientes de bloqueos de carreteras, huelgas e incluso un atentado con dinamita en la casa de un vice-ministerio en el departamento boliviano de Potosí, recuerdan los tiempos de los anteriores gobiernos neoliberales y han dejado a muchos preguntándose qué está sucediendo realmente en la "nueva" Bolivia del presidente indígena Evo Morales. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1862> Sport and capitalism -- Would Gramsci go to the footy? <http://links.org.au/node/1861> Review by *Phil Shannon* Sport tells lies. According to Jim McKay, sport is a social prop to the domination of capitalist ideas and values. Fundamental to the maintenance of this dominance are the mass media, which ``selectively articulate capitalist rationality, masculine hegemony, Eurocentric racism, militaristic nationalism and liberal values'' -- a toxic mix of ideological viruses. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1861> Video: Antonio Gramsci -- Life of a revolutionary <http://links.org.au/node/1860> By *Paul D'Amato* June 18, 2010 -- A talk presented at the *International Socialist Organization* of the United States' Socialism 2010, in Chicago. This talk was first posted at Wearemany.org. Paul D'Amato is a leader of the ISO, publisher of /Socialist Worker/. Australia: The DSP in the 1980s <http://links.org.au/node/1859> [This first appeared as the introduction to /Building the Revolutionary Party: Jim Percy Selected Writings 1980-87/ (Resistance Books: Chippendale, 2008).] By *Dave Holmes* This is the second volume of writings and speeches by Jim Percy, one of the founders of Australia's Democratic Socialist Perspective and its longtime central leader until his death in 1992. These seven items --- reports given by Jim to conferences and leadership gatherings of the DSP (or SWP, Socialist Workers Party, as it was known in this period) --- span the years 1980 to 1987. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1859> Australia: Film -- `Alyawarr walk-off protest vs Northern Territory intervention <http://links.org.au/node/1856> By *Actively Radical TV* August 25, 2010 -- In July 2009, the Alyawarr people in the township of Ampilatwatja, approximately 350 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, in Central Australia, walked out of the government "proscribed area" and into the desert to set up a protest camp. This protest action was in defiance of the /Northern Territory Intervention Act 2007/, brought in under the conservative Coalition government of then-prime minister John Howard. The intervention was and continued under the Australia Labor Party governments of prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. The Alyawarr community and others are calling for the intervention to be abolished and reinstatment of the Racial Discrimiation Act, which was suspended in order to bring in the racist /Northern Territory Intervention Act/. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1856> Venezuela: Land reform, food sovereignty and agroecology <http://links.org.au/node/1855> By *Alan Broughton* August 20, 2010 -- A massive transformation of agriculture is occurring in Venezuela, a transformation that has lessons for every other country in the world. The /Law of the Land and Agrarian Development/, the /Law of Food Sovereignty and Security/ and the /Law of Integrated Agricultural Health/ set out the agenda (they can be found on www.mat.gob.ve, in Spanish). The policies are based on the premises that farmers should have control of their land and product, that the country should produce its own food, and that chemical fertilisers and pesticides should not be part of agriculture. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1855> * * * 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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