NOTES, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND SHORT REVIEWS

Margaret E. Ahrens, a DB subscriber for many years and a long time member of the Socialist Party of Canada, died March 29, 2001. In a recent letter informing the DB of her death, her husband goes on to say, "With her political friends she worked to make the world a better place to live in for everyone-a world without poverty, war, pollution, etc. She wanted to see a real democracy where the means of life belong to everyone. This has never been tried and is long overdue. Yet another voice for a new way of life has been silenced." -- A.J. Ahrens

The New Internationalist is the U.S. Workers Voice Journal and reflects, according to a covering letter, "serious disagreements with our (now former) allies in the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP)." It apparently replaces Internationalist Notes, which had served as the journal of IBRP supporters in the U.S. and continues its numbering. Volume 3, No. 4, the first issue with the new name, carries a revision of "Our Basic Positions" which differs from the earlier version by omitting the reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat, blames the degeneration of the Russian revolution largely on the Bolshevik leadership, and advocates a form of soviet that will prevent the rise of a bureaucracy. The contents include the last in a four-part series, "Marx and Engels on Human Nature" along with articles on the new war: "War on Terrorism or Control of Oil," the Enron scandal, "Peacemakers or Peacefakers?: It's Time to Wake Up and Smell the Kofi," about the role of the United Nations in the present conflict and the ceaseless wars that have followed WWII., articles on the present economic crisis. Single copies $2, a four-issue sub $8 from NI, Box 57483, Los Angeles, CA 90057.

-fg