Americas

Having suffered a clear defeat in the August recall referendum. The reactionary oligarchy of Bolivia is back on the offensive. It has unleashed its gangs, occupying government buildings and terrorising the workers and peasants, but the Morales governmenmet vacillates, not taking the required decisive action to stop what amounts to an attempt at a coup.

Elections can reveal a lot about a country, and the fast-approaching U.S. presidential election is proving to be no exception. Above all, the current election shows just how much working Americans need their own political representation. This fact is expressed and cynically taken advantage of by Barack Obama’s campaign slogan: “Change We Can Believe In.” Even the “old guard” represented by John McCain has had to raise the idea of change in his campaign rhetoric.

Millions have hoped against hope that Barack Obama represents real change. But these sincere hopes were dealt another blow with the selection of Senator Joseph Biden from Delaware as Obama’s vice presidential running mate. Biden has had a long career in politics, and is often portrayed as a “liberal.” However, a brief look at his policies only goes to show the sorry state that bourgeois liberalism finds itself in!

October 14th will be Canada’s 3rd election in just four years. After an entire year of speculation that the government could fall at any minute, it was Stephen Harper who broke his own fixed election date promise and pulled the plug. We are facing harder and harder times but do any of the parties have a solution to the problems workers face?

We have just heard the tragic news of the death in a traffic accident, of Celia Hart Santamaría, 45, and Abel Santamaría Hart, 48, the daughter and son of Armando Hart Davalos and Haydee Santamaría. Celia came from a family of veteran Cuban revolutionaries who fought against the Batista dictatorship together with Fidel Castro. She has been an outspoken defender of the political and revolutionary heritage of Leon Trotsky.

After Evo Morales' massive victory in the recall referendum in August, the pressure has been building up from below to move against the oligarchy. Now Morales has called a referendum on a new Constitution and for elections of the regional governors of Cochabamba and La Paz, steps in the right direction, but in and of themselves not enough to break the deadlock between the classes.

We have just received the news that the meeting the trade union bureaucracy of UTA had called on September 2nd with the aim of expelling the shop stewards representing the Buenos Aires Metro workers has been suspended.

It’s official. Barack Obama is the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. His rapid rise to national prominence and eventual nomination have left millions of American workers and youth dizzy with hope for real change. Many have lamented or attempted to justify his shift to the right since he won the nomination (a shift from the so-called “center” of U.S. politics as he has never been on the “left”). But few have drawn the logical conclusion from this: that as we have explained time and again in the pages of Socialist Appeal, Obama does not represent real change and is organically incapable of changing anything fundamental. How could he? He is a Big...

Workers in the subways are facing an extremely grave situation: the Committee for Ethics of the Transit Workers Union of Argentina has decided to revoke the mandate of our delegates and expel them from the trade union organisation. We ask workers, social organisations, unions and political parties to send us their support and solidarity.

In 2009 there are presidential elections as well as mayoral and deputy elections. El Salvador has a history of electoral fraud. The working class together with the poor from the cities and the countryside must be alert to take the necessary action to fight every attempt of fraud in the forthcoming elections.

After having won a two-thirds majority in the recall referendum, Bolivian president Evo Morales made an appeal to the oligarchy to negotiate and for national unity. As was to be expected, the oligarchy responded by launching a renewed offensive against the democratically elected government using all means at its disposal. But now we are seeing an organised reaction against the oligarchy. Building on the movement that started on May 4th, the mass movement of workers and peasants is being in the streets once again.

For a week now, Montreal has been boiling with rage. The unprovoked murder of 18-year-old Freddy Villanueva, by agents of the Montreal Police Service, catalyzed an explosion that has been building for years. Police attacks on peaceful demonstrators sparked a riot.