PRAGOTI

 The sudden removal of Bo Xilai from the post of secretary of the Communist Party of China in the Chongqing metropolis and his suspension from the CPC politburo and central committee points not just to a power struggle in the upper echelons of the party but also a rejection of the “Chongqing model” by the leadership. By itself, the Chongqing model was a redistributive, reformative programme that intended to address the failings of neo-liberalism, but its repression has united leftist opinion in favour of Bo Xilai. The article has been republished from the Economic and Political Weekly with the author's consent. 

 This early morning, I came across a news item that mentioned that Wikileaks had now a new smoking gun on its site - the entire tranche of close to 5 million emails exchanged between Stratfor employees internally and externally. Stratfor, is a "private intelligence" company which publishes intelligence information for public consumption ostensibly. But that it seems ..is only a public facade. This agency is more than that; it also uses the tactics adopted by traditional spooks to wheedle out information from paid (or otherwise) informants - in government and out of it - across the globe and have also acted as a some kind of a shady operator in the interests of the US covert agencies as well. 

 Introduction: Iran is presently in centre of international controversy with Israel leading a strong campaign against it. As per the logic of Tel Aviv, nuclear programme of Iran pose an existential threat and it is ready to take all measures to ensure its survival. Similarly, Washington and the European Union are also up in arms and giving several reasons to justify sanctions against Iran.

 Pragoti republishes two articles on the "New Left" in Latin America. The first is an article published in The Marxist, written by Prof. Steve Ellner, Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela that describes the experiences of the socialist parties in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador - their achievements, the challenges they face in building what they call, "21st century socialism" etc. The second is an article by Prof.