Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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World Social Forum – Mumbai
TWO YEARS ago, it was a big thing when the then ‘socialist’ French government sent a delegation to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. At this year’s event in Mumbai, attended by 80,000 people, ministers were no longer a sensation. With the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) as one of…
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World Social Forum: Workers Speak Out
AS WE reported in last week’s issue of the socialist, over 120,000 people, mainly from the Indian sub-continent and other Asian countries, attended the fourth World Social Forum in the Indian city of Mumbai. Members of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI – the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated), have sent these…
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World Social Forum 2004 – Mumbai: NGOs Provide No Solutions For The Exploited
OVER 120,000 people attended the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India. The majority came in their tens of thousands from the most poverty stricken areas of India as well as other countries in Asia such as Pakistan, South Korea, Tibet and the Philippines. Also present were hundreds of trade unionists who explained the horrific conditions they…
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World Social Forum: Workers Speak Out
AS WE reported in last week’s issue of the socialist, over 120,000 people, mainly from the Indian sub-continent and other Asian countries, attended the fourth World Social Forum in the Indian city of Mumbai. Members of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI – the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated), have sent these…
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Bomb blasts in Mumbai
“Nine bombings in as many months, almost 100 people dead, and some 200 injured: Bombay is in the midst of … the longest-running terror offensive any major Indian city has ever encountered…” (Editorial in ‘The Hindu’, 26 August 2003). The twin bombs that rocked Mumbai (Bombay) on the 25th of August are the second this…
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The return of the Indian working class
“The country does not mean brick and mortar; the country means its working people”. (Gurazada, the Telugu poet who galvanised millions into action against the British Raj.) FOR A long time, India has been mainly in the news for its political instability, communal and caste pogroms, environmental degradation and so-called ‘natural disasters’, and the nightmarish…
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Bomb blasts in Mumbai
“Nine bombings in as many months, almost 100 people dead, and some 200 injured: Bombay is in the midst of … the longest-running terror offensive any major Indian city has ever encountered…” (Editorial in ‘The Hindu’, 26 August 2003). The twin bombs that rocked Mumbai (Bombay) on the 25th of August are the second this…
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Workers strike with a vengeance
According to V. K. Gupta, one of the joint secretaries of the National Confederation of Bank Employees, 50 million took part in this historic strike. Some of the veterans of the movement say this was the biggest strike since independence. The all-India general strike of 21 May was a resounding success. The country’s press did…
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Thousands march against imperialist conquest of Iraq
Leading up to the planned demonstration of 12 April, in Bangalore, there was a week-long campaign demanding, “No to war”. In spite of the apparent ‘conquest’ of Baghdad, the action was quite successful in terms of reaching a broad layer of people. Members and supporters of New Socialist Alternative (CWI in India) took to the…
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Gujarat Elections, 2002 – Communalists profit from hate
Though hardly any of the political observers predicted a defeat for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), very few foresaw the huge victory that the protagonists of Hindu chauvinism managed to secure in the Gujarat elections of December, 2002, through their hate campaign against Muslims. The BJP increased its strength in the Gujarat assembly from 117…
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