News from around the world

The right-wing Felipe Calderón administration’s attempt to destroy the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in order to privatize the electricity industry is causing unprecedented tension in the country between the working class and the government.

Two years after its broad victory, the Right lost the legislative elections. Its percentage of the vote dropped by 8 per cent and the social democrats of PASOK were 10 per cent ahead of it. The Right paid dearly for its attacks on youth and workers.

The coordinator of Portugal’s Left Bloc, Francisco Louçã, last night thanked the 550 thousand Portuguese who voted for the Bloco in yesterday’s parliamentary elections, thus ensuring that it would more than double its parliamentary representation.

This morning organisers Beograd Pride held their final press conference before tomorrows pride parade. Except pride will not be held, due to high security risks and a lack of cooperation on the part of state and police to secure the event. Serbian police have cancelled permission for the pride to be held in its planned location in the centre of the city.

Shabir Ahmad, a Labour Party Pakistan leader at Gojra was able to save the lives of several Christians today with the help of LPP activists when fundamentalists tried to burn the homes of Christians.

We totally condemn the military coup and kidnapping of the democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.

At a rally in Oporto, Portugal on 8th May, Miguel Portas, Alda Sousa, Francisco Louça and Olivier Besancenot presented the common proposals of the Left Bloc (Bloco do Esquerda, BE) and the New Anti-capitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste, NPA) against the crisis and European Union policies. “The capitalists must pay for the crisis” is one of the themes common to the two campaigns.

Olivier Besancenot, spokesperson of the New Anti-capitalist Party in France will participate in a series of public meetings elsewhere in Europe organised by signatories of the Strasborg anti-capitalist left conference.

Our dear Vietnamese comrade Hoang Khoa Khoi has just died at the age of 92, on Thursday April 9. His family and friends gathered a week later in front of the crematorium of Père-Lachaise to pay him a last tribute.

Lichi D’Amelio of the Unites States International Socialist Organization responds to the charge, made by the US Socialist Workers Party, that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid is anti-Semitic.