The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka and the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) will hold a May Day meeting in Colombo on May 1.

Workers and young people around the world are confronting the growing danger of war, along with intensifying attacks on their living conditions and basic democratic rights.

Despite its setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is intensifying its provocative preparations for a military assault on Iran. Such an attack would dramatically heighten tensions throughout the region and internationally, and threaten a broader conflagration.

Driving this eruption of militarism is the historic decline in the world position of US imperialism as graphically expressed in the subprime crisis and deepening global financial crisis. The anarchic character of the capitalist market is being revealed in the wave of speculation that is driving food prices beyond the reach of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Sri Lanka is an acute expression of these global tendencies. Incapable of resolving the social crisis confronting millions, the government has deliberately stirred up communal hatred and plunged the island back to war. In response to rising opposition to the war and its heavy economic burdens, President Mahinda Rajapakse is resorting to censorship, arbitrary detention and state terror.

The only answer to the scourges of war, poverty, disease and hunger is to abolish the outmoded profit system and its division of the world into competing nation states. The unification of the working class around the world on the basis of a common socialist perspective is today an urgent practical necessity. The ISSE and SEP invite workers, young people and intellectuals to join us on this May Day to discuss these burning issues.

Date and time: May 1, 3 p.m.

Venue: New Town Hall, Green Path, Colombo 7.

Main speaker: Wije Dias, SEP general secretary and WSWS International Editorial Board member