IV459 - April 2013

The PDF magazine of IV459 April 2013 can be downloaded here
The PDF magazine of IV459 April 2013 can be downloaded here

This manifesto was adopted by the meeting of progressive organisations from the Mediterranean, held just before the World Socialist Forum in Tunisia.

The South African magazine Amandla spoke to Gilbert Achcar about the implications of the uprising in Syria within the country and in the region.

On 24 April 2013 in the morning a tragic incident took place in Savar near the capital of Dhaka that claimed around 293 lives of garment workers, most of whom are women.

In Kashmir, the scale of human rights violations—from collective punishment and assassinations, to custodial deaths and disappearances—is staggering. Yet little of what goes on in that Himalayan region reaches the outside. Those who resist Indian rule, the Indian government tells the world, are fundamentalist jihadis backed by Pakistan. But the reality is quite different. Kashmir is an unsettled issue, dating back to the disastrous 1947 British partition plan to divide the subcontinent in two: a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. Today, Kashmir is one of the most volatile places on the planet.

The depth of the capitalist crisis poses the question of power in general terms – to break with austerity requires a radical change of policy and another government - but the Greek crisis, combining as it does socio-economic collapse, political crisis and social resistance, thrusts it directly in the forefront of the social and political scene.

Newly elected Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro set as his objective equalling and even exceeding the vote scored by Hugo Chávez by getting 10 million votes, but he succeeded in obtaining only 7,505,338, losing 600,000 votes in relation to Chavez’s vote at the last election and winning by only 300,000 votes, with 50.6% against 49.07% for his opponent Capriles. Abstention was only a little higher, rising from 20 to 22%, which shows that the majority of votes lost by Maduro went directly to the opposition which, imitating Chávez and disputing his heritage, succeeded in winning over a sector of the previously Chavista middle class and even some working class sectors.

On 23 April the second vote in the National Assembly passed this proposal into law. The radicalisation of the opponents to “Marriage for all” had continued apace since the article below was written. Demonstrations saw the “parliamentary right” alongside leading members of the far-right National Front, although not Marine Le Pen herself. Homophobia became frighteningly visible, including in attacks on people leaving gay bars in a number of cities. The demonstrations by partisans of the draft law, although supported by the Socialist Party and the other parties to its left (Front de Gauche including the Parti de Gauche and Communist Party, the NPA...), did not mobilise as broadly. This is no doubt due to the general disillusion with the Socialist Party government. International Viewpoint will publish more in the future on the polarisation around this question. [International Viewpoint]

A “state of war” declared, deployment of missiles, threats of pre-emptive attacks, warnings to foreign embassies… The (dictatorial) North Korean regime has raised its provocative gestures to an unusually high level. In the eyes of a number of experts, this is about Kim Jong-un consolidating his authority over the army, militarizing the population still more and improving his hand in negotiations with the USA, notably as concerns the civilian nuclear programme. Certainly, but they forget a bit too easily the very recent US provocation: the participation in late March of B52 bombers and F22 stealth fighters (with nuclear capacities) in military exercises in South Korea simulating an operation against the North. Washington has certainly poured oil on the fire of the Korean crisis.

The growing corruption scandals which envelop Catalan politics, the intra and inter party spying and the imminent new wave of cuts in social expenditure by the government of Artur Mas indicate without equivocation that social and political instability will be the dominant note as the process of Catalan “national transition” advances. A process permanently intertwined with a durable economic crisis.