IV419 - December 2009

Since AIDS was first identified among gay men in the USA in 1981, the association of HIV has led to global stigmatization of sex between men, and a repathologizing of homosexuality. - read article...

On September 12-13, 2009 a Forum of Resistances took place in Sarajevo, on the initiative of DOSTA. The DOSTA movement was started by young people in Sarajevo who had organized two radical demonstrations protesting against the inertia of the government in the face of criminality and the assassination of a teenager by petty criminals. The participants who were invited to the Forum of Resistances came from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as from France, Greece and Poland. Activists in Croatia, involved at the same time in a demonstration against the government, sent a message of sympathy. - read article...

On Saturday Dec 12, 100,000 demonstrated in the streets of Copenhagen outside the COP 15 summit demanding urgent action against global warming - more than double the numbers that organisers had predicted - or even dared expect. While of course a high percentage of demonstrators came from Denmark itself and from neighbouring countries Sweden and Germany (where there is somewhat of a tradition of mobilising for each other’s events) - this was a truly international demonstration. - read article...

System Change, not Climate Change! Statement issued by Klimaform09 in Copenhagen, December 10, 2009 - read article...

We knew the United Nations summit in Copenhagen would not conclude with a new international treaty but a simple statement of intent – just one more. But the text adopted at the end of the meeting is worse than anything we could imagine: no quantified objectives for emissions reduction, no reference year for measuring them, no deadlines, no date! - read article...

The climate summit is over and the Danish presidency must be left with a bitter taste on their lips. What was called the meeting to save the world have been a complete failure. Even towards the end negotiations where going on about a document, that would have allowed a concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere almost twice the level that have been recommended by science - threatening global rises in temperature of at least 3° C. Obviously a scandalous conclusion for millions of people as well as countless bio-systems and species. - read article...

We have lost our four most brilliant comrades Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar and Wahid Baloch in a road accident on 13th December 2009 near Ormara, Baloachistan. They were in the coastal region, one of the most deprived areas of the country, to organize the home based women workers (HBWW) on one platform. - read article...

The German elections of August 30 and September 27 — regional in five Länder and legislative at the federal level — marked a significant break. The bourgeois parties did not win the general election; they even lost a few votes. However, the new left wing party, Die Linke, obtained an excellent score and established itself on a lasting basis as fifth biggest party in the German parliament, while the social democrats (SPD) fell back into the “ghetto of 30%” of the 1950s. - read article...

Despite the significant losses of the SPD and the gains of the FDP, the government is not in a comfortable situation. For one thing, because of its very high dependence on exports (more than 28% of GDP) and the comparatively low share of internal consumption, the German economy will end 2009 having shrunk by around 5%. - read article...

Elected to the Bundestag on September 27, 2009, Andrej Hunko is active in Die Linke in Aix-la-Chapelle, in the land de North Rhine-Westphalia. He belongs to the “Antikapitalistische Linke” (“Anti-capitalist Left”) current. He was interviewed for IV by Friedrich Dorn, a member of the internationale sozislistische linke (isl, international socialist left, one of the two parts of the German section of the Fourth International). The interview took place on October 19, 2009. - read article...

The recent elections in Germany and Portugal have confirmed the emergence of a new radical Left in a number of countries across Europe. In Germany, Die Linke won 11.9 percent of the vote and 76 seats in the Bundestag. In Portugal, the Left Bloc received 9.86 percent of the vote and doubled its number of seats to 16. - read article...

Robert Service has written, to great acclaim, a new biography of Leon Trotsky. “Trotsky moved like a bright comet across the political sky,” Service tells us. - read article...

World congresses are always significant moments in the history of the Fourth International. Delegates from all the organisations, currents, and militants meet to discuss the international situation, key questions of the revolutionary Marxist programme, and the significant and diverse experiences of construction of anti-capitalist, socialist and revolutionary parties. - 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...