DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Israel’s killing must stop! End ties with the racist Israeli state!

The Socialist Alliance condemns the Israeli massacre in the Gaza strip, which has left at least 400 people dead and 2000 more injured. We call on the Rudd government to also condemn this slaughter and to break Australian economic, diplomatic, military and cultural ties with the Israeli apartheid state.

By Duroyan Fertl and Dick Nichols

Over the weekend of 5-7 December, more than 150 people attended the Sixth Socialist Alliance national conference, held in the Geelong Trades Hall. The conference opened against the backdrop of the Alliance’s promising results in the November 29 Victorian local government elections, in which its candidates scored up to 18.9%.

• View a video of the conference
• SA conference highlights
  

The conference began with a special public seminar, "Financial meltdown: what working class response?", addressed by David Spratt, from Carbon Equity and co-author of Climate Code Red, economist and Victorian National Tertiary Education Union president Jamie Doughney and Pip Hinman, from the Socialist Alliance.

The DSP sent a delegation of three comrades to an international conference on socialism on November 7-9 hosted by the Socialist Party Malaysia (PSM) in Kuala Lumpur.The conference attracted socialists from different political tendencies and several countries. The DSP delegation comprised DSP Assistant National Secretary Lisa Macdonald, Links editor Terry Townsend and Merrilyn Treasure. Below is a report by Choo Chon Kai of the International Bureau of the PSM.
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By Peter Boyle

“This strategy is designed to help pensioners, carers and families, and first home buyers”, declared Australia’s Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his October 14 address to the nation. Rudd was announcing a $10.4 billion “economic security strategy” in response to the global financial crisis.

“Will my superannuation fund be next?” “Are my savings safe?” As working people in the developed economies watch the assets of one financial institution after another vaporise into nothingness, tens of millions are asking these dreadful questions.

• For more reading on the capitalist crisis see Links
  

Yesterday’s AAA assets are now junk and yesterday’s “risk-free” investments are losing money. No-one, not even the world’s central bankers, who are spending sleepless nights arranging rescue bailouts and emergency injections of trillions of dollars into a financial system frozen with fear and distrust, can answer them with 100% certainty.

Preliminary estimates by Cuba and the United Nations indicate that hurricanes Gustav and Ike did $5 billion worth of damage to Cuba’s economy. This colossal cost for the tiny socialist nation is compounded by the United States government’s criminal economic blockade.

To: The National Executive
Communist Party Nepal (Maoist)

Dear Comrades,

The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), a Marxist tendency within the Socialist Alliance in Australia, and the socialist youth organisation Resistance, would like to extend our greetings and congratulations to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) following the recent election of Comrade Prachanda as Prime Minister of Nepal and the formation of a CPN(M)-led government. As a youth organisation, Resistance would also like to send greetings to the Young Communist League. The youth have been playing a leading role in the movements in Nepal, inspiring Resistance members and other young people in Australia.

August 21, 2008

President Alvaro Uribe Velez
Vice-president Dr Francisco Santos Calderon

Dear Srs President and Vice-President,

The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) in Australia is writing to protest in the strongest possible terms the arrest and detention on August 8 of workers’ and human rights advocate Liliany Obando.

The DSP has met with Liliany Obando during two of her visits to Australia on behalf of trade union federations and human rights organisations in Colombia. We have heard detailed reports from her about the situation of Colombia’s people and the peaceful solutions she always advocated.

Congratulations to the fighting masses in Pakistan for their latest victory! Given the history of Pakistan has been so bloodied by military dictatorships, such a humiliating end to the political career of the latest military dictator is a great victory for people's power.

This was a victory made in the streets by masses that braved the guns, batons and bayonets of the military. The whole world watched this valiant struggle progress, critically around the sustained mass response to Musharraf's removal of the "inconvenient" top judges who refused to keep doing his bidding.

Dear President Evo Morales,

We are writing this letter from the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia as a public statement of solidarity for your democratically-elected government and the struggle of the Bolivian people for true justice.

We offer our full support and best wishes for the campaign in the recall referendums to be held on August 10, knowing full well that your presidency and the process of change that your government is leading enjoys the support of the majority of Bolivian people, especially the poor and oppressed.

We know that the Bolivian oligarchy, directed by Washington, cannot stand to have an indigenous man from a humble background occupy the presidency. We realise that this oligarchy is directing a disgustingly racist and violent campaign, mobilising fascist forces, in order to attempt to impose by force what they have failed to win majority support for — the subjugation of Bolivia to a racist elite that sells the country to US and European interests.

We believe, at a time when powerful internal and external enemies are determined to use what ever means possible to destroy the democratic revolution underway, it is important to state that even half way around the world, the Bolivian struggle is being enthusiastically supported.

We know the corporate media lies about Bolivia's struggle, as it does to all struggles of ordinary people for justice. This is the case in Australia, where, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald on August 9 regurgitated the same distortions seen in corporate media globally about events in Bolivia. We will continue to use the newspaper we produce, Green Left Weekly, to counter these lies and get the real story out.

We believe the example of Bolivia is important for Australian people. Here, we are struggling against attempts to privatise essential services, while in Bolivia your government is nationalising important sectors to be run for the common good.

In Australia, the most oppressed section of our population comprise the indigenous people, who have never ceded sovereignty over their land and whose rights and dignity are violated daily. Bolivia today shows a way forward for justice for all indigenous peoples.

We have full confidence that Bolivia's oppressed - who have been in the global vanguard in the fight against neoliberalism; who bought Bechtel to its knees; who brought down the US embassy's puppet Goni; who placed a leader of the indigenous peoples in the presidential palace for the first time ever; who achieved the nationalisation of hydrocarbons over the opposition of the multinationals; who, despite every attempt to sabotage it, carried out the constituent assembly process to draft a document for a new, just Bolivia that respects the indigenous nations and reverse neoliberialism - will win their historic battle.

In solidarity,

Peter Boyle
for the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Perspective