In late December the United Socialist Party (USP) in Sri Lanka launched its presidential election campaign by distributing their election manifesto in the North, East, and Central Provinces. This incorporated most major cities in these provinces including Jaffna.

Representatives of sections of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) from Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa are meeting in Belgium, this week, to discuss the world situation in a period of deep capitalist crisis and when working people are facing intense attacks against their living standards.

Barack Obama has decided to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 21,000 additional soldiers he ordered there earlier this year. This will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to over 100,000. Millions in the U.S. and around the globe are undoubtedly asking why Obama, who was elected with what many viewed as an anti-war mandate, has decided to escalate what is an increasingly unpopular and seemingly unwinnable war.

Among the maladies that inflict Pakistan at this time, the crisis in Baluchistan is, arguably, the most critical. Some analysts might contend that the problems of religious extremism and militancy in the tribal areas and NWFP (North Western Frontier Province) and the recent wave of suicide attacks and bombings are bigger problems than Baluchistan. However, in large parts of Pakistan’s FATA (Federal Administered Tribal Area), where the state has lost control to Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, the population is not fundamentally opposed to the Pakistani state.

In recent weeks, a new wave of attacks, carried out by Taliban fighters, and a new ground offensive by the Pakistani government in the Waziristan region on the Afghan border, has deepened Pakistan’s devastating crisis. Below we publish an article by Khalid Bhatti (Socialist Movement Pakistan – CWI) which gives an analysis of recent events and outlines the perspective for an independent movement of the working class and poor in Pakistan, the only force capable of solving the problems of war, terror and poverty in Pakistan and throughout the region.

It is being billed, inaccurately, as the "largest celebration the country has ever witnessed" (Telegraph, UK). When China's nominally 'communist' regime stages grandiose celebrations of 60 years in power on Thursday, 1 October, it will have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep out "the people" in whose name it claims to rule. "It's the People's Parade, but you'd better stay home to watch it unless you are one of the lucky few with a ticket to the festivities at Tiananmen Square," commented the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong (25 September). Only 180,000 tickets have been issued to hand-picked guests. Ten years ago the crowd was around 500,000, and in the 1989 over a million people participated.

Article by Chinaworker.info

On 2 September, a demonstration through the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, was proceeding peacefully until it reached a police blockade. After a standoff, sections of the police moved in on specific targets.

Reading Arundhati Roy's collection of lectures and articles about India could make you want to weep, or to emit the 'feral howl' she herself is tempted to resort to. Her main aim is to reveal the sordid truth about the death, destruction and devastating injustice that underlies the so-called 'democracy' and 'progress' of which India's 'leaders' and friends abroad (especially Washington) tend to boast.

President Hamid Karzai is likely to emerge victorious from1 the controversial and violence-ridden Afghani presidential elections held on 20 August. The elections were marred by allegations of fraud, violence and irregularities. The Taliban struck at 73 locations all over Afghanistan, demonstrating their increased reach and influence. It is not yet clear if Karzai will be able to get more than 50% of votes and avoid a second ballot.

Seventy years ago, the major powers plunged humanity into the horror of world war.

Peter Taaffe, from Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party, cwi in England and Wales

On 22 June 2009, the Pakistani government announced that it would carry out military action against Pakistani Taliban militants in the Swat district in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), primarily aimed at defeating the Maulana Fazlullah’s TNSM (Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi) who are in coalition with Baitullah Mehsud's TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan).


Article by Khalid Bhatti, Socialist Movement Pakistan (CWI) and Senan, Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales)

US and British military chiefs have been quick to label their July offensive against the Taliban in south east Afghanistan a "success". In reality the main achievement of the British "Operation Panther’s Claw" and the US "Operation Thrust of the Sword" has been to refocus the attention of an increasingly sceptical public at home on the military quagmire and political impasse that is present day Afghanistan.

A peaceful sit-down protest in the capital city Ürümqi by around 300 Uighurs, the Turkic-speaking minority that is the dominant population group in Xinjiang, was transformed by trigger-happy police into perhaps the most serious ethnic clashes seen in decades. Xinjiang, known as East Turkestan to many Uighurs, has seen ethnic tensions rise as a result of Chinese state repression that went into overdrive after “9/11” and the global “war on terror”, discrimination of non-Chinese speakers, and a yawning wealth gap that puts the indigenous population at the bottom.

Mass protests and demonstration have erupted in Iran in protest at the apparent rigging of the Presidential elections by the Mahmoud Ahmedinejad regime. According to reports, the largest anti-government demonstration of over one million people took place in the capital Tehran. Reports coming out of Iran claim that over a dozen have been killed in clashes with the police and hated Basij militia.

Article by Tony Saunois, CWI

Hundreds and thousands of workers took to the streets across the country to celebrate May Day. Workers from different sectors of economy, nationalities, ethnic backgrounds and religions marched together in the streets, cutting across the rising religious, national and ethnic tensions in the country. The workers showed their class unity and brotherhood in practice and rejected the politics of hatred and communalism. They also rejected the neo liberal economic policies of the present government and demanded better living conditions and services.

Report by Syed Fazal Abbas Shah, TURCP National Organiser