We received from the International Desk of the Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring Masses) in the Philippines this request to publish an appeal for help in the rescue efforts being organized by the party. We are publishing it as a small step in helping these comrades in their efforts.

On Thursday, August 20, 2009, Afghanistan held its provincial and presidential elections. This is the second presidential election since the occupation of the country began in 2001. While a winner has yet to be declared, many predicted that incumbent Hamid Karzai would win outright in the first round of the election, although recent reports suggest a second round of voting is possible. Regardless of who is elected, they will be backed by the US-led NATO occupation forces, who aren’t planning on leaving any time soon.

Afghanistan is entering a period of acute crisis that could put the final nail in the coffin of the imperialist intervention there. Contradictions in the military and political situation have been building beneath the surface for years. The inability of NATO to defeat the Taliban is a direct reflection of the corruption, nepotism, and incompetence of the Karzai regime.

The workers of PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunications Corporation Limited) have been protesting and staging a sit-in at PTCL Headquarter, Islamabad, for the last 12 days on the issue of the fulfillment of the commitments made to them by the management. Their protest has been brutally supressed by the state and management.

On August 14^th, 2009 when the ruling classes were celebrating Independence Day the unemployed youth movement held protests throughout the country under the main slogan “jab tak janta bhooki hay, yeh azadi jhooti hay” which means ‘While the people are hungry, there is no real independence!’

Prime Minister Taro Aso recently dissolved the Japanese parliament, and has called for elections to be held on the 30 August. All signs point to the ruling party, the bourgeois Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), losing power for the first time since 1955 - excluding a 10-month period at the beginning of the 1990s. Right-wing observers are now talking about a ”political revolution” in Japan.

The drive to consolidate capitalism in China has provoked deep industrial unrest amongst the country’s working class. In the last few weeks we have witnessed violent workers’ struggles against the privatisation of two steel mills.

The Unemployed Youth Movement (BNT) in Pakistan held a nationwide campaign of recruitment camps for unemployed youth. Huge numbers participated.

Several tragic accidents have taken place at the Delhi Metro railway building site, involving the death of a number of workers. This has now turned into a full-scale scandal, revealing collusion, in cutting corners and turning a blind eye to the application of safety regulations, between government officials and the companies involved. It reveals how barbaric the capitalist system is.

A case of rape and murder of two young women in the Kashmiri town of Shopian at the hands of a group of police officers, and the subsequent attempted cover-up has brought to the surface the simmering anger of the masses.

The present crisis of capitalism is creating appalling conditions for workers in countries like Bangladesh. What happened recently in the textile industry is symptomatic. After months of not receiving any wages, workers have gone on the warpath, and in desperation have taken extreme measures.

The war in Afghanistan has re-emerged in the headlines as casualty rates for American and British forces have now reached their highest since the invasion of Afghanistan. Already more than one hundred American troops have been killed since the beginning of this year alone, whilst in Britain the news has been dominated by the deaths of eight soldiers who were killed in twenty four hours over the weekend.

A bitter struggle has broken out at the Merck Marker in Quetta, Pakistan. Workers demanding decent wages and conditions have come up against brutal repression, arrests and beatings. We are appealing for solidarity from workers of all countries.

We received this interesting comment on the recent brutal crushing of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. It highlights the responsibilities firstly of the Sri Lankan ruling elite and its imperialist backers, but also of the leaders of the labour movement in failing to offer an alternative in the past, and of the LTTE leaders, who organised their war from a purely nationalist point of view, offering nothing concrete to the workers and peasants.

The latest edition of the Asian Marxist Review is shortly coming out. Here we provide the editorial statement, which outlines the plight of the workers and poor of the South Asian subcontinent, but also points to the movement in Iran as confirmation of the enormous potential for revolt among the masses.