Americas

The much ballyhooed movie There Will Be Blood is supposedly based upon Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, but it surely miscasts Sinclair’s focus and technique. The movie limits itself to a study of a manic, ruthless oil prospector, more a personality study, but the novel is a much wider socialist attack on corporate power and labor suppression, top-to-bottom government corruption, and corporate control of war, universities, and Hollywood . The social and economic concerns read just like the present even though it is set in the World War I and 1920s era, mostly in the early California oil fields. 

A recent screening of Part Two of The Battle of Chile (The Coup d’État) in Bolivar Hall in London highlighted the events that led to the September 11, 1973 coup that removed Allende from power. That experience is full of lessons for today’s revolutions in Bolivia and Venezuela, and beyond.

After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and abroad, many on the “left” in the United States and beyond are desperate for an alternative. For many, that alternative is Barack Obama. Obama, has been careful to portray himself as a “sensible progressive”. However, far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a typical representative of the bosses’ political parties.

Up to the present, the working class in the United States has not yet built its own political party, unlike in most major industrial countries and even in many less industrialized countries. So what are the prospects that the US workers will eventually build such a party?

We publish here this statement signed by all the working class and people's organisations in the city of Santa Cruz on September 13. The statement clearly expresses the anger of the people faced with the fascist attacks organised by the oligarchy and correctly appeals for mobilisation and legitimate defence in order to face up to them.

On Friday, September 12, we reported on the attack on pro-MAS peasants in the department of Pando, in the East of Bolivia. We said at the time that 9 people had been killed by the hired thugs of the opposition regional prefect (governor), Leopoldo Fernández. But only later was the full scale of the massacre revealed, with the death toll currently at 30, and many more still missing.

We publish a statement of the Marxist Left in Brazil (Esquerda Marxista), which is addressed to Lula and the government, condemning their approach to the crisis in Bolivia and calling on them to support the revolution.

A brief statement by supporters of the International Marxist Tendency in Honduras, highlighting the growing militancy in the country and the need to build a genuine revolutionary leadership within the workers' and students' movement.

The situation in Bolivia remains one of confrontation between the oligarchy, backed by U.S. imperialism on the one side, and the masses who support the Evo Morales government on the other. This is no time for words or negotiations. This is the time for action, to put an end once and for all to the power of the oligarchy.

We have met on September 10th, 2008 in the Bolívar Hall in London, for the screening of The Battle of Chile - The Coup d'État, a documentary on the US-backed terrorism in Chile in 1973. The meeting voted in favour of sending a message of internationalist solidarity to Gerardo, Antionio, Ramón, Fernando and René, for the 10th anniversary of their arrest.

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.