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

• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF :70th anniversary (Part 10)

  The World Bank’s support of the dictatorship in Turkey (1980-1983)

  23 October 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  "The World Bank tried very hard to make the the Turkish military appear salutary, and to avoid criticising their interventions.The official comments from the Bank, that the 1980 coup d’état would not jeopardise the Bank’s intention to lend, were very courteous". [1]

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• Series: Governments submit to “Too Big to Fail” banks (part 5)

  BCE / LTRO : what’s that ?

  23 October 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  In 2010 institutional investors (including banks) and hedge funds attacked Greece, the weak link in the European chain of debt, before turning their attention to Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. In so doing, they made juicy profits by forcing these countries to increase their interest-rate on their bond issues in order to refinance their debts. Among investors, private banks made the biggest profits, by directly obtaining funds from the ECB at 1%, while at the same time making quarterly loans at 4% or 5%. As far as securities are concerned, they only agreed to buy Irish and Portuguese ten-year bonds if the interest-rate rose to 10%.

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF : 70th anniversary (Part 9)

  The World Bank and the Philippines

  8 October 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The 1946 US decision to grant the Philippines its independence inaugurated a period of prosperity in the country. For a number of geo-strategic reasons, in the wake of the Second World War the Americans were willing to let the Philippine government pursue policies that they ruled out elsewhere.

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• Environment

  Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection and its Decline

  8 October 2014, by Kunal Chattopadhyay

  This paper argues that while the environmentalist movements have often charged that Marxism has been productivist and has ignored the ecological concerns, the reality is more complex. The focus has actually been on Stalinist industrialisation and similar processes. It will be necessary to look at the early Soviet period, when a wide ranging attempt was made at conservationism.

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