Globalisation

World Social Forum: Arundhati Roy

“On a quiet day I can hear another world breathing” Prize-winning Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy spoke at the closing session of the World Social Forum on 27 January, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I’ve been asked to speak about “How to confront Empire?” It’s a huge question, and I have no easy answers. When we speak of confronting “Empire,” we need to identify what “Empire” means. Does it mean the US Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that...

The new world disorder: war and imperialism

Number 2/3 of Workers' Liberty magazine is a special issue on "The new world disorder: war and imperialism". For contents, and links to download articles from the magazine as pdf files, read on.

Norway: anti-war revival

Bjarke Friborg writes: As in the rest of Europe the left and the antiwar movement in Norway have both been on the offensive the last few years, or at least they have grown in both size and influence. However, there is still much work to do to renew both of them, not least a thorough ideological renovation. The alternative is stagnation or even retrogression. The biggest antiwar demos in the capital Oslo have had an attendance from 300-500 and up to about 2000. This is certainly more than the average under the Nato war against Yugoslavia, and testifies that there is a generally higher level of...

Fourteen million face starvation

Starve or accept GM blackmail Fourteen million people are now facing starvation in southern Africa, according to new United Nations figures. The organisation had previously put the number at 12.8 million. In Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, droughts and floods - combined with political crisis in Zimbabwe in particular - have led to disaster. The impact of the crisis is made worse by the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the region. The UN has so far received only a third of the aid it says is needed. In Zambia opposition to genetically-modified food has led to the...

Earth Summit

Business as usual By Hannah Wood and Matt Cooper Early September saw a disgusting spectacle. Sixty thousand delegates descended on the rich centre of Johannesburg. They said they had come to "save the earth". In fact government leaders and business leaders crammed the market restaurants. Only the marginalised NGOs had any kind of claim to represent us, the workers and poor of the world. This was the ruling classes of the world getting together to talk about its problems and demonstrating its inability to solve them The Johannesburg summit was the follow up to a 1992 conference held in Rio. And...

Two critiques on globalisation

Downloadable from the Workers' Liberty website are two documents about the development of the world economy: "Marx backwards, Lenin forwards. Two critiques: 'Empire' and 'new imperialism'" ; and "The world economy in upswing and turbulence: a discussion of the debate around Robert Brenner's 'Global Turbulence'" . The discussion on 'Empire" will be taken further at a session on that subject at the "Ideas for Freedom 2002" summer school on 13-14 July, at Caxton House, 129 St John's Way, London N19. Speakers: Massimo De Angelis, Alan Johnson, Martin Thomas. For a guide to some further reading on...

India-Pakistan peace movement launched

War between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory in Kashmir is still a possibility. India has been pressing for Pakistan to act against Kashmiri "militants" - the Pakistani trained and supported Islamic jihadi groups, one of which attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001. A visit by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld backed up Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf's promise to act against the Islamists. India has now pulled back some of its war ships. Kashmir has been a focus for Indian and Pakistan rivalry since 1947. The countries have gone to war three times...

An Idiot's Guide To Globalisation

by our very own idiot * The top three billionaires have assets greater than the GDP* of the 600 million people who live in the 48 least developed states. * 20% of the world's richest people living in the world's richest countries control 86% of the world's wealth. * On the world's money markets a small number of traders change $1.5 trillion every day. Meanwhile incomes in Africa south of the Safara have actually gone down in the last 20 years. 40% are below the poverty line. [* what do these initials mean? don't despair, it all becomes clear in the explanations a few paragraphs further down...

Politics in Pakistan - an interview with Farooq Tariq

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party of Pakistan, visited London on 25 January and spoke to Faz Velmi from Action for Solidarity about the political situation in Pakistan after the Afghanistan war and the activity and views of the LPP. Most of the fundamentalists in Pakistan are quite frustrated and bitter by the Taliban's defeat. They saw the Taliban leaders run away from Kabul and Kandahar, and leave the Pakistani and Libyan Taliban to be butchered. Some administrative measures against the fundamentalists have been taken by the Musharraf regime, but as long as the economic...

Review: Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Toni Negri was the most celebrated intellectual of Italy’s “ultra-left” in the 1970s. He was jailed in 1979 for “armed insurrection against the powers of the State”; won freedom in 1983 by getting elected to Parliament; fled to France in 1983; and has been back in jail, in Italy, since 1997. His new book, Empire written with an American academic, Michael Hardt, analyses the world of “globalisation”. They see it as all-encompassing, oppressive, but containing potentials for liberation. “The strategy of local resistance misidentifies and thus masks the enemy. We are by no means opposed to the...

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