International Viewpoint

On 18 August, the Palestinian Police Force issued an official statement banning the activities of alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society. The announcement followed an unprecedented attack on alQaws in social media channels. The statement promotes incitement against alQaws - and LGBTQ Palestinians - by encouraging members of society to report on alQaws activities.

On Saturday, August 17th, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority police, Louai Irzeqat, issued a statement concerning alQaws' activities in the West Bank. This first-ever statement about alQaws declared that the PA police would prohibit any event organized or held by alQaws for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Palestinian Society. The police claimed it goes against “traditional Palestinian values” accusing us as “foreign agents.” The statement went further, calling on citizens to complain about any “suspicious” activities and for the persecution of alQaws staff and activists.

It was indeed Beijing and the head of the local Government Executive, Carrie Lam, who took responsibility, almost four months ago, for opening up this crisis by calling into question the status enjoyed by this territory as a Special Administrative Region, a status that stems from the handover agreements of the former British colony. This ensures it a significant degree of autonomy in many fields. This status was due to remain in force until 2047 at least.

The Sudanese Revolution has won major victories. But it still needs to wrestle control from the military to popular forces.

Marking its 50th anniversary, Vincent Doherty looks at one of the most significant episodes in modern Irish history

As the Indian government resorts to annexation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir at gunpoint, detaining its political leaders and cutting off all means of communication, we extend our solidarity to the people of Jammu and Kashmir as they struggle for their most basic rights and freedoms.

With Parliament neutralised by the summer recess, battle lines are being drawn for the biggest constitutional crisis in modern times when it comes back next month. With his ‘War Cabinet' rammed with hard-line Brexiteers, and with Nigel Farage looking over his shoulder, Johnson is on a single-minded mission to crash Britain out of the EU on October 31 – as he says ‘come what may'.

On August 4, 2019, the Sudanese military council signed an agreement with Freedom and Change, a body representing the country's mass protest movement. The agreement establishes the structures and powers of a transitional government that will lead the country out of almost three decades of authoritarian rule, with the expectation of elections in three years. It has been hailed as a major victory by protest leaders, who secured their terms on three key sticking points in several tense months of negotiations: limiting the participation of the military council in transitional structures, stripping military leaders of absolute immunity from prosecution, and subordinating the infamous Janjaweed militia to the general command of the armed forces.

Was Marx an ecologist and does Marx's theory offer a coherent theoretical and practical approach for ecologists in the 21st century? The publication, in the original language (mostly German), of Marx's excerpts and notes on ecology from the mid-1860s may help to answer that question.

In Portugal there is an old, very old, popular saying, that “from Spain, there is neither good wind, nor good marriage”. Readers living in the Spanish state will, as I hope, understand the existence of some caution based on the history and popular perceptions of the only Iberian nationality that has not been subjected to the power of Madrid throughout the history of the last millennium. And also, what this saying manifests. Literally, it means that the winds coming from the Spanish state (from the east) are rare, but harmful for agriculture. Also, that weddings between the royal houses of the two states resulted in dynastic, diplomatic and military problems. Issues that, in fact, led to the only period in which Portugal was integrated into the kingdom of Castile, between 1580 and 1640. Hence the phrase “neither good wind, nor good marriage”.

Modi's decision to revoke Article 35-A and Article 370 of the Indian constitution has fulfilled one of the cornerstones of Hindutva ideology – the forceful assimilation of Kashmir. The audacity of ambition combined with unprecedented secrecy amplified the menacing character of this event. Couching the operation as part of the fight against terror, arresting the entire political leadership of Kashmir, and cutting off communications throughout the valley indicates the colossal nature of the legal and political rupture taking place in the region.

Do you find International Viewpoint, the English language magazine of the Fourth International, a valuable resource? Do we bring you analysis and news from corners of the globe that the mainstream media ignores, from struggles and debates your usual sources of information don't cover? That's certainly our aim.

In most other countries the news that more than 10.2 million citizens are unemployed would lead to mass calls for the President and Finance minister's resignations. Instead, the reality that more than 10 million South Africans are condemned to hunger, inadequate housing, a failed transport system, violent and unsafe neighborhoods is met with further calls for neoliberal orthodoxy from the mainstream.

The body of 24-year-old Steve has been identified. The young man died, drowned in the Loire River after a police charge on the evening of the Fête de la Musique in Nantes. Our thoughts are obviously with his family, his loved ones, and all those who almost lost their lives that night.

Hong Kong has justified its existence as an interface between Western neoliberal globalism and China's statist authoritarian capitalism. China no longer needs the city to play that role; Hong Kongers desperately need an alternative.

The days of July 2019 have restored, or, perhaps, have given to the country a sense of possibility: the feeling that things can change, that things can be changed, that people, mobilizing in the street, can change them.

Radical Socialist resolutely and unequivocally oppose and condemn the effective abrogation of the fundamental meaning and purpose of Article 370 and the overturning of Article 35A. This was carried out through anti-democratic, unconstitutional legal manoeuvrings and accompanied by the deliberate armed intimidation of the people of Kashmir. What has taken place is dishonest and a fraud on both the letter and spirit of the relevant Constitutional provisions.

Strikes have spread to more than 200 emergency rooms across France, as nurses and health-care assistants call out the neglect of public hospitals. The striking workers don't want to disrupt vital services — they're acting to stop Emmanuel Macron from running them into the ground.

“But what do they want?” was the question since the first Feminist Conference in June 2018 held in Lausanne and its call for a Women*'s / Feminist strike to be held a year later. On the 14th of June 2019, exactly 28 years after the first-ever women*'s strike in Switzerland, more than half a million women* and supportive men took part in mobilizations all over the country. Thousands more, from midnight on, occupied public spaces, and several workplaces or simply showed their solidarity with the strike by wearing purple clothing or the strike's ad hoc badge.

DSA Convention 2019—Overcoming Divisions—Votes to Maintain Strong National Organization, Takes up Ambitious Organizing Agenda.