IV339 - April 2002

THREE million people, workers, youth, those in insecure employment, students, pensioners, immigrants, descended on Rome on Saturday March 23, 2002 for the biggest demonstration in the history of the Italian Republic. - read article...

With nearly 20,000 more votes than it won in the parliamentary elections in 2000, the Left Bloc was the only left current to increase its strength in Portugal’s early general elections on March 17, 2002. - read article...

Francisco Louca (’Chico’, leader of the PSR, Portuguese section of the Fourth International) and Luis Fazenda (secretary general of the UDP, ex-Maoist) were re-elected to the Portuguese parliament as Left Bloc deputies. - read article...

ON Saturday March 23, 2002 the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, French section of the Fourth International) deposited at the Constitutional Council the 500 "sponsorships" that will enable its candidate, Olivier Besancenot, to be on the ballot in the first round of the presidential election on April 21. - read article...

Over half a million people mobilized in Barcelona against the meeting of European Union Heads of State and Government on March 15-16, 2002. It marks a watershed in the development of the movement against capitalist globalisation in the Spanish state, and could lead to the opening of a new cycle of mobilizations in the Spanish state and Catalonia. - read article...

"THIS is an International that isn’t controlled by anyone". That’s how the Peruvian Trotskyist and veteran peasant leader Hugo Blanco described the World Social Forum held for a second time in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 31 to February 5, 2002. - read article...

THE second World Social Forum at Porto Alegre opens a new phase in the anti-globalisation movement. Both in political and media terms, the event was a success, with about 15,000 thousand delegates, 5,000 organizations and more than 50,000 participants. - read article...

ONE source of friction at the II WSF in Porto Alegre was the decision taken by the organisers to exclude the political parties of the Sao Paulo Forum, on the grounds that the gathering was one of social movements and not political parties. - read article...

THE 2002 Word Social Forum in Porto Alegre was a triumph on three levels: in terms of participation, much bigger than in 2001, depth of political and theoretical reflection on the main problems of our epoch and definition of forthcoming events and future objectives. - read article...

Numerous members of sections or organizations with links to the Fourth International participated actively in the Forum in Porto Alegre. - read article...

AS IV went to press the imperialist war drive orchestrated by the US and its allies following the events of September 11, 2001 was shifting up a gear, with increasingly vocal threats against Iraq and new and savage Israeli incursions into the West Bank. - read article...

THE US is not only preparing to launch all-out war against Iraq, without anything that can be claimed as new justification from the Iraqi side, but has decided to use nuclear weapons in that war if necessary. - read article...

AS we went to press the Israeli army was continuing its siege of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Jenin and many other Palestinian towns. - read article...

Peter Gowan is a long-time editor of New Left Review and author of The Global Gamble - America’s Faustian Bid for World Domination (Verso 2000. In the light of the events since September 11, his argument that the US is trying to establish absolute world domination seems remarkably prescient. - read article...

Harry Tubongbanwa of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of Mindanao looks at the background to the current US military intervention in his country. - read article...

The Mindanao People’s Peace movement is a long-term grass roots movement fighting for peace in Mindanao which continued its work after September 11. - read article...

THE ’’all-out-peace’’ declaration of Philippine President Arroyo, aimed at a resolution of the conflict in Mindanao, has now turned into an all-out US-backed military campaign. - read article...

At last, and just as the United States had been demanding, the reactionary and neo-liberal government of Andres Pastrana has opted for all-out war. - read article...

BY a vote of 1.69 million for Robert Mugabe to 1.28 million for Morgan Tsvangirai, the people of Zimbabwe re-elected the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) president in early March. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), founded in September 1999, lost by more than in the last national election, in June 2000 when Zanu gained a small majority of parliamentary seats. - read article...

On February 27 2002, several compartments of a train were set on fire near Godhra in Gujarat. The train was carrying many "kar sevaks" or cadres of the Viswa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council). - read article...

FOR one and a half decades, the Ram temple at Ayodhya has been at the centre of the fascist drive for power. Between 1987 and 1992, a massive campaign was waged, to "prove" the claim that Ram, the hero of the myth Ramayana, had been born in Ayodhya, on the spot where Mir Baqi, a general of Babar, had built a mosque. - read article...

Liu Yufan concludes his analysis of the state and civil society in contemporary China (see IV 338 for part one). - read article...

IN this book, Stephen Cohen presents a devastating critique of American policy towards Russia since the fall of USSR. - 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...