A group of 113 professors, teachers,
lawyers, writers, artists and trade unionists, among them members of the Black
Socialist Movement and the Esquerda Marxista tendency, have signed an open
letter expressing their concern at the Federal Supreme Court's latest proposals
on "racial quotas".
The Movement of the Occupied Factories in Brazil is a
glorious chapter in the struggle of the working class. Last year the courts and
the police intervened in an attempt to smash the movement. In spite of
everything it still survives at the Flaskô plastics factory in Sumaré, Sao Paulo. Here we
provide an account of the struggle of the Flaskô workers and background to the
movement as a whole.
Opposition students in Venezuela are depicted as poor
victims of an authoritarian regime. The world media pick up on this and repeat
the fairy tale until people start to believe it. But these students are such
victims that they receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of the
"Milton Friedman Liberty Prize". Friedman's Chicago Boys were also
advisers to Pinochet, no doubt also seen as a "victim" by these people.