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What's new at Links: US-Colombia, Venezuela, Berlin Wall, queerphobia, green jobs, Karen Silkwood, S. Africa, Honduras, Ireland, US health * * * 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. * * * US-Colombia military deal: Threat of imperialist-backed war on Venezuela <http://links.org.au/node/1346> By *Kiraz Janicke* November 9, 2009 -- The possibility of an imperialist-backed war in the Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United States finalised a 10-year accord allowing the US to massively expand its military presence in the Latin American country. The move comes as the US. seeks to regain its hegemony over Latin America -- which has declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide rebellion against neoliberalism spearheaded by the revolution in Venezuela, led by President Hugo Chavez. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1346> `Freedoms won, freedoms lost' -- left views on the fall of the Berlin Wall <http://links.org.au/node/1354> November 15, 2009 -- For the past few weeks the international capitalist mass media has been awash with triumphalist hoopla about the so-called ``collapse of Communism'' as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Below /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ posts a number of commenatries from the left that deal with facts and fictions of those dramatic events, and how the people most effected are faring today. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1354> Capitalism, sexism and queerphobia's social basis <http://links.org.au/node/1353> By *Jess Moore* There are social expectations on everyone, men and women, to act in particular ways based on our sex. This is bad for everyone because it's stifling, but it's worse for women and queers. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1353> Britain: The Lucas Aerospace workers' plan -- A real Green New Deal <http://links.org.au/node/1350> By *Hilary Wainwright* and *Andy Bowman* October 9, 2009 -- Thirty-five years ago, workers at the Lucas Aerospace company formulated an ``alternative corporate plan'' to convert military production to socially useful and environmentally desirable purposes. We consider what lessons it holds for the greening of the world economy today. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1350> Convert the ailing car industry to socially necessary production! <http://links.org.au/node/1349> With the economic recession and environmental crisis alternative plans for socially useful, sustainable production have never been more relevant argues *Lars Henriksson*. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1349> Karen Silkwood: an inspiration to fighters for environmental justice and workers' rights <http://links.org.au/node/1348> By *Sharyn Jenkins* Thirty-five years ago, on November 13, 1974, US anti-nuclear activist and trade unionist Karen Silkwood was killed in a car crash many suspect was deliberately caused. Karen Silkwood will be remembered as someone who fought an uphill and often unpopular battle against the ruthless nuclear industry. She is an inspiration to all who believe in environmental justice and workers' rights. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1348> What is 'left' about 'the left' in South Africa? <http://links.org.au/node/1347> By *Dale T. McKinley* November 5, 2009 -- For several years now, but particularly since the ascendancy of Jacob Zuma and his South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) allies within both the African National Congress (ANC) and the state, ``the left'' in South Africa has come to be almost completely associated with (and presented as) the SACP, COSATU and, to a lesser extent, the ANC itself. Even though this state of affairs ignores a wide range of organisations and people that can stake a serious claim to being part of ``the left'', the fact is that contemporary politics in South Africa are dominated, in one way or another, by these three alliance partners. As such, it is a good time to pose a critically important question: What is ``left'' about ``the left'' in South Africa? * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1347> Honduras: Why the resistance will boycott the November 29 election; Zelaya on accord <http://links.org.au/node/1345> November 10, 2009 -- *Ricardo Salgado*, an Honduran analyst of the ``crisis'' in Honduras, explains to Australian community radio's *Warwick Fry* the latest developments in Honduras and the postion of the resistance movement. In spite of pressure on the coup regime to recognise the legitimacy of Zelaya as president ten days ago, Zelaya is still trapped inside the Brazilian embassy. The ``agreement'' (designed more to save face for the US and the coup regime rather than the restoration of a democratic solution) has failed. The coup regime has failed to meet the one-week deadline to restore Zelaya to his post as president in a reasonable amount of time to allow a ``clean'' election process. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1345> Ireland: (slideshow) Political murals of West Belfast <http://links.org.au/node/1344> By *Lauren Carrol Harris* November 9, 2009 -- Belfast -- Though Northern Ireland has slipped from the nightly news, "the troubles", including ongoing deep sectarian divisions and low-level violence, are a daily reality for Irish republicans. Just one reminder of the struggle for a united Ireland, and example of the Irish people's creative resistance, is the multitude of political murals that smother the walls of West Belfast, a republican stronghold. Many commemorate the activists and civilians whose lives were taken in the struggle. But the murals don't just discuss Irish politics -- on these walls are messages of international solidarity for other peoples' movements for change and self-determination. Here are just a few. View at http://links.org.au/node/1344 United States: Where's the socialism? The good, the bad and the ugly of health-care reform <http://links.org.au/node/1343> By *Billy Wharton* November 9, 2009 -- Where is the socialism now? Frenetic right-wingers spent a good part of the US summer shouting about the "government takeover of health care" or the "stealth socialist health-care plan". Now that the /Affordable Healthcare for America Act/ has been passed by a slim margin in the US House of Representatives, on November 8, there are few traces of anything even resembling socialism. Instead, Americans will find the good, the bad and the ugly of health-care reform all contained within the 1990-page bill. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1343> Michael Lebowitz on Venezuela: `Socialism requires a new state from below' <http://links.org.au/node/1341> *Michael Lebowitz* interviewed by *José Sant Roz*// <http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/a89208.html>, translated by *Kiraz Janicke * November 5, 2009 -- On the question of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Michael Lebowitz is one of the thinkers who has penetrated deepest into our process. He plunges his scrutinising gaze into its most diverse and conflicting issues, in order to calmly and forcefully reveal its truth with knifelike clarity. He talks like a peasant or a worker who dips into the reality that they experience, that they suffer and feel. * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1341> * * * 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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