International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Italy

  Italy votes on removing anti‑working class laws

  7 June, by Dave Kellaway, Sinistra Anticapitalista

  Italy votes this weekend in 5 referendums. Four are all about the existing restrictive, anti-working class labour laws and one is about the length of time involved in claiming citizenship. Meloni’s post-fascist led government defends the repressive labour legislation and the current citizenship law which means you have to have lived in Italy for 10 years before becoming Italian. A Yes in the referendum would halve that period.

  read article...
• Palestine

  Pity the people of Gaza!

  6 June, by Gilbert Achcar

  What we have witnessed in recent days in the negotiations between Hamas and the Zionist state under American and Arab auspices, following the Islamic movement’s rejection of the seventy-day truce accompanied by mutual prisoner releases and the entry of humanitarian aid, proposed by US envoy Steve Witkoff and accepted by Benjamin Netanyahu, is in fact a repetition of what we have been witnessing since the beginning of last year.

  read article...
• Belgium

  Fabian, 11-years-old, dead: this was no accident - this is the police

  5 June, by Elena Fernandez Fernandez

  On Monday afternoon, 2 June, in Elisabeth Park in Ganshoren, an 11-year-old child was struck and killed by a police vehicle. Another one. Once again, a young person has lost their life in a police operation. Once again, run over by a police officer. And once again, the institutions react coldly, relaying a version of events that incriminates the victim, while those responsible hide behind complicit investigations that generally lead nowhere.

  read article...
• USA

  Five Years Since George Floyd’s Murder

  4 June, by Malik Miah

  “His murder led to nationwide and international protests and a reexamination of societal and institutional racism, including policing. Five years later what is the legacy of Floyd’s death and movement for justice and police accountability?”

  read article...
• Panama

  Panama is the epicenter of the struggle in Latin America

  3 June, by José Cambra, Luís Bonilla-Molina

  A small country of four million 200 thousand inhabitants is showing Latin America and the world that it is possible to confront the interests of financial capital and vulture funds in the third decade of the 21st century.

  read article...

...and the rest of the current issue

• USA

  Trump’s Repression: “Worse than McCarthyism”

• Kurdistan

  Dissolution of the PKK and new perspectives

• Mali

  A dictatorship without complexes in Mali

• Britain

  Labour panders to racism – playing the far right’s game

• Portugal

  Hard questions for Left Bloc after a terrible parliamentary election

Recently posted Features

• Series: Banks and the “Too big to jail” doctrine (Part 8)

  Complicity of Dexia in very serious Human Rights violations in the Israeli occupied territories

  1 September 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  In 2001, the Dexia Group (Dexia SA) took over the Israeli bank Otzar Hashilton Hamekomi. It has been disclosed that this subsidiary – now called Dexia Israel – finances Israeli colonies in the Palestinian territories [1]which means Dexia is involved in the occupation of Palestine. As the platform “Palestine occupée – Dexia impliquée( Occupied Palestine - Dexia Involved)” says, “financing these colonies contravenes international law, in particular article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention, which states, ’The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies.’” [2]

  read article...
• Series: The banks and the “Too Big to Jail” doctrine (Part 7)

  The Big Banks Organise Massive Tax Evasion on an International Scale

  31 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  Another example of the “Too Big to Jail” doctrine: International tax evasion and fraud organised by UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank.
  UBS, which had to be saved from failure in October 2008 by massive injections of Swiss public money, was involved in the LIBOR manipulation scandal, the currency markets manipulation scandal (UBS is the subject of several inquiries by controlling authorities in Hong Kong, US, the UK, and in Switzerland) and the abusive sale of structured Mortgage-Backed (…)

  read article...
• Series : The banks and the “too big to jail” doctrine (Part 5)

  Big banks’ tampering with interest rates

  31 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The extremely tolerant approach to the manipulation of interest rates by the governments of the main industrialised countries shows the extent to which the ’Too Big to Jail’ principle is applied. In 2010 the media revealed that a group of eighteen banks had been manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) from 2005 to 2010. LIBOR is a benchmark rate used for a market of $350 trillion, in assets and financial derivatives, which means it is the second most important benchmark rate in the world after the dollar exchange rate. The rate is based on information provided by eighteen banks about their funding costs in interbank markets. In 2012 evidence was provided of collusion among big banks such as UBS, Barclays, Rabobank, or Royal Bank of Scotland in order to manipulate LIBOR in their own interests.

  read article...
• Series : The banks and the “too big to jail” doctrine (Part 4)

  HSBC: the bank with a shameful past and scandalous present

  31 August 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The British bank HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) employs 260, 000 people, has offices in 75 countries, and 54 million customers. [3]
  From its earliest days, it has been involved in the international narcotics trade. It was founded in the wake of the British victories in the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) against China. These two wars were very important to the strengthening of the British Empire and the century and a half waning of China. Through the Opium Wars, the British Empire forced China to accept opium importations coming from British India. China tried to oppose this commerce, but British arms, backed by Washington, proved stronger. London established a colony in Hong Kong in 1865, where HSBC was created by a Scottish merchant specializing in the opium trade— the basis of 70% of Hong Kong trade with the Indies.

  read article...

• 1
• …
• 120
• 121
• 122
• 123
• 124
• 125
• 126
• 127
• 128
• …
• 169