The campaign for the Greek parliamentary elections of October 4, 2009 was without great interest: as always, it was based on a sea of money (the right and far right spent a fortune on advertising posters) and on the monopolisation of the media by the parliamentary parties alone, from LAOS (far right) to Syriza (radical left) and the environmentalists. The first result to note is that on the basis of a rampant crisis, with distrust for the institutional parties offset by relation to the great challenges of the period, abstention is growing in a country where voting remains mandatory in theory
Significant election year
26 October 2009, byThe year 2009 has been a significant one for elections in Indonesia. In April, 171 million voters participated in national, provincial and district assembly elections. Then, on July 8th, for the second time since the end of Suharto’s military dictatorship, they elected their president by universal suffrage.
Marxist leader killed in suicidal attack
21 October 2009, byA prominent labour leader Master Khudad Khan was killed in suicidal
attack in Peshawar on 15 October. He was on his way for a meeting and
was passing by an intelligence center when a religious fanatic blew
himself killing him and several others on the spot.
YES to BDS!
13 October 2009, byThe call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capitals from Israeli corporations involved in settlement buildings made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign.
A systematic biography of Ernest Mandel
10 October 2009, byThis is the first systematic biography of the main leader and theorist of the Fourth International after 1945, who was, as noted by Tariq Ali in his preface, one of the most creative and independent revolutionary thinkers of our time.
Social democracy punished
10 October 2009, by ,At the centre and south of Europe — in Germany and Portugal — parliamentary elections on September 27, 2009 marked a historic electoral setback for social democracy. In Germany the SPD lost a third of its electorate, or more than 4.5 million votes, in five years, and with 23% of those voting obtained its lowest score since 1949. In Portugal, the PSP of the outgoing prime minister José Sócrates lost a fifth of its electorate, or more than 500,000 votes, and with 35.56% of the votes it no longer has an absolute majority in Parliament. This was its worst result since 1991.
