Feature Articles Archives - Lanka Socialist Forum

08 Oct

The Chilean Road to socialism: 50 YEARS AFTER ALLENDE’S DEFEAT

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeature Articles, History, International, Politics

by René Rojas Sep 29, 2023 Amandla 89, International FIFTY YEARS AGO, CHILE’S ROAD TO socialism suffered a devastating defeat. On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, spurred by elites, condoned by middle-class sectors and backed by Washington, toppled Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular (Popular Unity, UP). This was a vibrant coalition government helmed by the Communist Party (CP) and Socialist Party (SP). The coup, which progressives are commemorating the world over, smashed workers’ organisations, popular movements, and democratic institutions. It murdered thousands and sent far more to torture centres, concentration camps, and exile. It ushered in a seventeen-year dictatorship and…

08 Oct

The West no longer World leaders in 84% of critical technologies

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeature Articles, Technology

By Prabir Purkayastha (Posted Mar 18, 2023) Originally published: Peoples Democracy on March 12, 2023 (more by Peoples Democracy) | I MET Prof Thomas Kailath seven years back in Delhi, where he talked about how India was on par if not leading, with countries like China in science and technology in the 90s but falling rapidly behind China today with its much bigger investments. Kailath, originally from Kerala but settled in the U.S., is one of the foremost names in the world in communications, control and signal processing. I remembered his words while reading the recent startling headlines that China…

08 Oct

SRI LANKA: If Tocqueville was to read our proposed Anti-Terrorism Act

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeature Articles, Politics

FOR PUBLICATION AHRC-ART-013-2023October 06, 2023 An Article by the Asian Human Rights Commission SRI LANKA: If Tocqueville was to read our proposed Anti-Terrorism Act By Basil Fernando Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville is the famous author of the book Democracy in America. It is one of the world's best known writings which have been appreciated by many philosophers, writers, thinkers and also people in many countries. It has also been translated into many languages. Tocqueville was a French magistrate, a young man of 30, who, with another friend, visited the United States in 1831. His whole idea was…

05 Oct

GOING BEYOND FAILED LAND AND AGRARIAN REFORM

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by Mazibuko Jara Oct 2, 2023 Amandla 89, COLONIALISM, APARTHEID AND neoliberalism remain foundational in shaping the inherited dualistic, unequal and racially divided land and agrarian structure. And we still have that same structure some 29 years into South Africa’s democratic dispensation. At the heart of this structure is the domination of the food system by a few large capitalist farms and other large players in the entire agricultural value chain. The core features of this inherited land and agrarian structure are a combination of land dispossession, cheap black labour, massive state subsidisation and support of white-controlled, commercialised, and capital-intensive…

01 Oct

Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History

wisidagamage0 CommentsFeature Articles, History

Essay by B. Skanthakumar “It was the class struggle in free flow and it constituted the highest point that the class struggle had yet reached in Ceylon”[i] 70 years ago this month, on 12 August 1953, “a demonstration of the tremendous power of the masses in action”[ii] influenced by Left parties and trade unions, shook the recently independent island of Ceylon. It was not to be repeated until last year’s people’s uprising[iii], to which it is sometimes compared. Direct mass intervention, “the basic factor in the revolutionary process”, emerged as the new political dynamic. The uprising or ‘Great Hartal’ as…