International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Britain

  Radicalisation on right and left while centre crumbles in Britain

  4 November, by Dave Kellaway

  Dave Kellaway assesses the political situation where creeping fascism is advancing, the Labour centre is not holding but radicalisation to the left is also significant.

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• USA

  Trump Takes Food from the Poor Poor during Budget Crisis

  3 November, by Dan La Botz

  President Donald Trump has taken advantage of the current budget crisis, which has lasted more than a month, shutting down the federal government, to stop funding food programs that affect tens of million. Trump said the shutdown provided an opportunity to close “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.” By “Democrat programs” he means social welfare programs that provide food and education to low-income people.

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• Indonesia

  “We Are The Working Class”?: Indonesia’s Labour Party and the Limits of Reformist Politics

  2 November, by Mark Johnson

  When more than 50 Indonesian labour unions gathered in Jakarta on 5 October 2021 to establish the Partai Buruh (Labour Party), it appeared to mark a historic moment: workers organising their own political vehicle to challenge an oligarchic system that had stripped away their rights. Yet from its inception, the party embodied a contradiction. Led by union bureaucrats with histories of elite collaboration, the Labour Party promised working-class independence whilst its president courted the very politicians who had passed anti-worker legislation. It claimed to represent the marginalised whilst maintaining "deafening silence" on human rights abuses and democratic backsliding.

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• Venezuela

  Venezuela’s authoritarian turn and the repression of its Left

  1 November, by Edgardo Lander

  Since Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections, Nicolás Maduro’s government has escalated its authoritarian turn. More than 2,000 people were detained in the days following the vote, and targeted persecution has widened to include journalists, trade unionists, academics, and human rights defenders. Human rights activist Marta Lía Grajales was disappeared for two days after denouncing the brutal beating of mothers demanding freedom for their imprisoned children. María Alejandra Díaz, a Chavista lawyer and former Constituent Assembly member, was stripped of her license and harassed after calling for transparency in the vote count. These cases illustrate a broader strategy of intimidation and criminalization.

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• Serbia

  The streets against the regime in Serbia: one year of mobilization in review

  31 October, by Gaëlle Guehennec

  For a year now, young people in Serbia have been continuing their fight for a democratic society in the face of Aleksandar Vučić’s authoritarian regime. On both sides of Serbia, student marches are criss-crossing the country in the direction of Novi Sad to commemorate the collapse of the railway station, responsible for the deaths of 16 people on 1 November 2024. This tragic event triggered a political protest on an unprecedented scale.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Ukraine

  Bruised but determined, the Ukrainian people fight on

• Madagascar

  After Rajoelina’s regime collapses - desire for a radical break

• Brazil

  Oil Speaks Loudest: Environmental backsliding and the limits of Brazil’s energy transition

• USA

  The United States Prepares for War on Venezuela

• Ireland

  Catherine Connolly wins: An historic victory for the left in Ireland

Recently posted Features

• Scotland

  The social movement for independence and the crisis of the British state

  5 December 2014, by Neil Davidson

  The British state and its party structures are in crisis. What new forms of political expressions has the Scottish referendum brought into play? This article examines the social and political forces behind 2014.

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• Series: Governments submit to “Too Big to Fail” banks (part 7)

  The European Central Bank’s true priorities

  4 December 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  We have seen that since the beginning of the 2007-2008 crisis, the ECB has played a vital role in saving the big private banks, their owners and directors, while at the same time guaranteeing the continuity of their privileges. We can clearly see that without the ECB, the big banks would have sunk and that would have forced the authorities to take very severe action against them. Beyond bank bail-outs, the ECB is charged with maintaining an inflation rate of around 2%.

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• Series: Governments submit to “Too Big to Fail” banks (part 6)

  The big private banks run on LTRO

  4 December 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  From 2012, the banks were overflowing with cash and made massive purchases of the bonds issued by their own countries. Sovereign debt securities do not require equity, as they are considered to be non-risk. [1]

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF: 70th anniversary (Part 13)

  South Korea : the miracle unmasked

  4 December 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The supposed South Korean success story has been achieved thanks to policies that run contrary to the economic model advanced by the World Bank. Far from being a virtuous accumulation of wealth through the advantages of free-market forces, the economic development of South Korea came about by "a brutal primitive accumulation achieved by the most coercive methods, in order to produce virtue by force" (J-P Peemans). Korea has obtained its economic results under the yoke of a very repressive regime that had the support of the United States in the framework of its containment of the so called "socialist" regimes. South Korea has adopted a production-driven economic system that has little respect for the environment. The South Korean example is not to be recommended, nor is it repeatable, but it deserves to be analysed.

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