IV414 - July 2009

"Despite the repression and media blackout organised by the regime the popular mobilisation continues. Demonstrations are attempted in Teheran and in the big cities. The regime seeks to impose a significant degree of violence so as to smother the mobilisation. The big cities are in a quasi permanent state of emergency, with blocking of the main roads and filtering of traffic." - read article...

The principal lessons of the European elections of June 7, 2009 are the following: massive abstention; a progression of the Right flanked by the far Right; a collapse of social democracy; an increase in the votes for the ecologists; the radical Left, left reformist or anti-capitalist, maintains its positions, without making new advances, except in Portugal and in Ireland. - read article...

One week after the coup against President Manuel Zelaya, the popular mobilizations continue and could defeat it. International solidarity must be broadened. Once again, Latin America is at the centre of the international news. Once again, unfortunately, a military coup d’etat affects one of its countries: Honduras. - read article...

On June 5, 2009, world environment day, Awajun and Wami defenders of the environment were massacred in Peru. - read article...

The two “traditional” Communist parties — the CPI and the CPI-M — suffered serious defeats in the Indian parliamentary elections which ended on May 13, 2009 and which were won by the Congress Party. Given the place the CPI-M has today among the parties originating in the pro-Soviet or "Eurocommunist" current this question has an international dimension. - read article...

The recent coup in Honduras is part of a growing trend for the oligarchy in Latin America to resort to sabotage and vioence against popular movements and left leaning governments. - read article...

China’s thirty years of nearly uninterrupted high growth has encountered great challenge as global economic crisis has hit China’s export hard. Since China’s trade as a percentage of GDP is as high as 70%, the export-led growth mode has practically ended. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aware of this. - read article...

Obama attempts to rescue American ’soft power’ from the wreckage of the Bush-Cheney regime - read article...

The current political crisis takes place against the background of the worst economic crisis for at least 80 years, maybe longer. For half a century Marxists debated whether another 1930s type crash and slump was possible. Some thought we might be there in 1987, some with the crash in Russia and East Asia and 1997 and some with the dot.com crash in 2000-1. - read article...

Phil Hearse welcomes an impressive new biography of Ernest Mandel, but questions whether it does justice to the scale of the famous revolutionary’s achievements. - read article...

At dawn on Sunday, June 28 the Honduran army invaded the Presidential Palace. The putschists produced a false letter of resignation by President Zelaya and designated Roberto Micheletti as president. - read article...

Time is money - this proverb is as common as absurd. Absurd, because there is no reliable definition of the term “time” other than the physical one. Therefore it is not at all clear what “money” actually expresses here. The preoccupation with the idea of “time”, which many philosophers and sociologists have already grappled with more or less in vain, may appear somewhat esoteric at first glance in connection with the present combined economic and ecological crisis. - read article...

The electoral coup and the subsequent uprising and suppression of the revolting voters in Iran have prompted all sorts of analyses in Western media from both the Right and the Left. The Right, mostly inspired by the neo-con ideology and reactionary perspectives, dreams of the re-creation of the Shah’s Iran, looks for pro-American/pro-Israeli allies among the disgruntled Iranian public, and seeks an Eastern European type velvet revolution. - read article...

Lalgarh is invaded. Lalgarh is bloody. In the name of stopping Maoist activities, the combined forces acting on behalf of the Indian state have declared war on the people with such alacrity, and have established a nightmare of terrorism in village after village, that words fail us in our attempt to condemn them. - read article...

In his January 2009 speech commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, President Raúl Castro, known popularly as Raúl, repeated Fidel’s oft-quoted 2005 speech to University of Havana students: “This nation can self-destruct… those who can’t destroy it are them [the U.S. imperialists]; we, yes, we can destroy it and it would be our fault.” - read article...

There is a broad consensus on left—from those who actively campaigned on his behalf, through those who sat out the election, to those of us who supported the independent candidacies of Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader—that the election of Barack Obama represents an important opening for anti-capitalists and radicals in the US. - read article...

Right after the June 12 elections in Iran, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a statement expressing our strong support for the masses of Iranians protesting electoral fraud and our horror at the ferocious response of the government. - read article...

The headway made by globalised capitalism, especially in Latin America, has set this region in the eye of the hurricane of social protest and the convergence of different anticapitalist struggles. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...