IV343 - September 2002

In a referendum held on Sunday May 26, 2002, Tunisian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, in power since 1987, won the right to run for re-election in 2004 and 2009.

The US military response to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had much more behind it than imperial hubris - although there was plenty of that. Bush and the recycled Reaganite team around him launched a military-political offensive whose central aim was to forcefully extend the hegemony of US capitalism

hose who hold up capitalist globalisation as the model of a world without inequality, without want, without classes are the very ones who also show in practice that this is no more than a mirage. When people want to come to Europe, they say that we are full up, there is no room at the inn or the table....

Supposedly, the idea behind policies towards asylum seekers is some small, even token degree of compassion towards those forced to leave their countries because of circumstances beyond their control. But the new right-wing Balkenende government in the Netherlands (made up of Christian Democrats, Liberals and right-wing populists) is taking the existing asylum policy, which was already in intensive care and carrying it to its grave.

It’s really too early to make any kind of qualified assessment of the longer term effects of the new laws on Foreigners and Refugees that came into force in Denmark on July 1, 2002. July is the holiday month in Denmark, most people and the political establishment are off to the beach with their buckets and spades and the newspapers are full of stories about Elvis being sighted (or the Danish equivalent thereof).

The first ever Immigration Act in Spain was passed in 1985. Before that, the big waves of migration had either been outwards (first to the ex-colonies in Latin America, then into exile following the defeat of the Republic in the Civil War and finally in search of work in Europe) or internal (with hundreds of thousands moving from rural Andalusia to work in the factories of Catalonia).

During the ESF, there will be a forum ’Migrants against Fortress Europe’. We will discuss the following subjects: freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum; citizenship; independence of immigrant women; equal rights. On each of these points, we will seek to formulate joint demands which would encourage Europe-wide mobilizations.

The alliance of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) with the conservative and evangelical Partido Liberal (PL) and with a sector of the Partido Movimiento Democratico de Brazil (PMBD) has generated deep internal debate in the party and strong resistance from its militants.

"If a government led by Lula remains hostage to the IMF, it won’t be able to bring forward the policies that the country needs and that we have been saying we will implement."

In the context of an ongoing process of crisis and mobilization that has continued in Argentina since the revolutionary days of December 2001, the anti-capitalist left is faced with considerable challenges. It must also surmount its own limitations.