IV473 - June 2014

IV 473 June 2014 PDF magazine available to download here

Earlier this week [1] , a number of organizations claiming to support immigration reform—including SEIU (Service Employees International Union), National Immigration Forum, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Sojourners, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights—signed a letter to President Obama asking him to delay executive action against deportations until at least the end of summer, arguing that Congress needs one last chance to pass reform. [2] Within hours, the administration publicly agreed to delay action as “requested.” This is an outrageous and transparent attempt to undue the gains of the powerful movement against deportations.

This resolution was adopted by the political leadership of the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc), Portugal on 1 June 2014. It was translated by Federico Fuentes for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. The original text is Portugal, a Europa e o Bloco depois
das eleições Europeias
Resolução políticada Mesa Nacional - 1/6/2014.

India today is one of the few countries in the world seeking to pursue in an unabashed manner a nuclear programme. Both dimensions of it are damaging and reactionary. On one hand, any nuclear programme, however hidden under rhetoric of peaceful use, covers the potential for a nuclear weapons programme, as shown by Indira Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee in Pokharan I and Pokharan II respectively. On the other hand, as Fukushima has been the latest accident, after Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Hanford, and others, to demonstrate, there is no fool-proof and safe nuclear power programme.

Tens of thousands joined the demonstration in central London on Saturday 21 June against austerity called the People’s Assembly. On the longest and hottest day of the year, trade-union and campaign activists assembled to demand an alternative to austerity based on taxing wealth to invest public services, and a living wage and decent pensions for all.

In April 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) benefitted from a “monumental leak”: 2.5 million documents on operations carried out by two major suppliers of offshore services – Portcullis TrustNet, based in Singapore, and Commonwealth Trust Limited, based in the British Virgin Isles (in the Caribbean). This provided the opportunity for a large scale investigation known as “Offshore-Leaks” on the importance of the role played by tax havens in the world economy. Following these revelations, numerous scandals have broken out, involving politicians and political parties, the wealthy (such as the Rothschilds), banks like Crédit agricole and BNP-Paribas in France, intimates of the Kremlin in Russia and so on.

This statement on the new policy agenda approved at the annual national meeting of the Red-Green Alliance was adopted the national executive committee of SAP (Danish section of the Fourth International) on 23 May 2014.

Support the Struggles of Brazilian Workers, Condemn the Dilma Rousseff Regime’s Patronage of the Rich in the Name of Promoting the World Cup.

The United States has 2.3 million people in prison, a larger proportion of its population (743 per 100,000) than any other nation in the world. While the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prisoners. U.S. federal and state governments spend an enormous $60.3 billion on prisons. But there is in the United States a movement against what has come to be called the “prison-industrial-complex.” And this year the movement against incarceration as the country’s primary response to crime was the theme of the annual Left Forum, the largest and broadest gathering of socialist intellectuals and activists in the United States.

“We have to liberate ourselves from the idea that we caused this,” says Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, referring to the present disaster in Iraq. The first question this raises is why anyone would ask for Tony Blair’s opinion on anything. George W. Bush, at least, seems smart enough to hide out in a bramble patch on his ranch and say nothing.