International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Nigeria

  Nigeria: against oil industry impunity

  3 May, by Paul Martial

  The Niger Delta has been totally devastated by decades of oil exploitation in Nigeria by the major Western oil companies. Huge tracts of land and mangrove swamps have been totally contaminated by oil, destroying all living things. People’s livelihoods, such as fishing and farming, have been wiped out. There is no longer any drinking water, and the air is polluted by the dozens of flares that burn continuously.

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• Mexico

  Mexico: “The right-wing parties are practically in the worst phase of their history”

  2 May, by Fabrice Thomas, José Luis

  José Luis is an activist in the Fourth International and a member of the Mexican electricians’ union. He spoke to Fabrice Thomas while visiting Europe for the world congress of the Fourth International.

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• Zambia

  Zambia: people are victims of extractivism

  1 May, by Paul Martial

  Despite recurring environmental disasters and the dangers to the population, the government of Zambia continues its extractivist policy. The southern African country has once again been hit by major pollution. 50 million tonnes of acidic sludge were discharged into the watercourse running alongside the Chinese company Sino Metals in Chambishi, which processes copper ores.

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• USA

  Trump and America: One-hundred days in the waiting room of fascism

  30 April, by Dan La Botz

  Since taking office 100 days ago, President Donald Trump has been engaged in destroying America’s liberal, democratic state and its social welfare systems, taking away citizens’ and non-citizens’ rights, and attacking the institutions of civil society such as universities and the media. Trump’s attack on our government and our society has shocked, disoriented, and disconcerted the American people. The resistance has been growing, but is still too divided, small, and weak to stop Trump

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• Argentina

  Argentina: opposition to Milei revives

  29 April, by Elias Vola

  After many months without a significant opposition movement to the government of President Javier Milei on the streets of Argentina, the 36-hour cross-industry strike of 9-10 April and the social reality of the country have brought the movement back to life.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Greece

  Greece: anger in the streets

• USA

  Trump reinvents war capitalism

• Palestine

  We need to talk about Gaza more than ever

• Sudan

  The Other Catastrophe: Genocide and Famine in Sudan

• Ecology

  Agriculture: Our proposals for small-scale farming

Recently posted Features

• Part 9 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Soviet counter-attack: the Treaty of Rapallo, 1922

  7 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  The London report presented in the previous chapter was such a deliberate provocation on the part of Western powers that the Soviet delegation immediately got in touch with the German delegation, which Paris and London had somehow prevented from fully attending the Genoa Conference. France and Britain were hoping that they could coax the Soviet Russians into accepting the conditions mentioned above or, at least some of them, to strengthen their position when negotiating with Germany afterwards. The Russian issue clearly was a priority.

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• Part 5 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The French press in the pay of the Tsar

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  With the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917 and the seizing of power by the Bolsheviks and their Socialist Revolutionary allies in October, numerous previously confidential documents were made public (see further on). This allowed Boris Souvarine, a Franco-Russian communist activist to consult Russian imperial archives. He discovered a vast organisation of complicity with the French press that pre-dated the First World War, aimed at promoting Tsarist bond issues to French investors. This affair, in which influential people were corrupted and became accomplices, was denounced by the communist daily L’Humanité in a series of daily articles entitled ’The abominable venality of the French press’ that appeared over a period of several months during 1923 and 1924.

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• Part 4 of the series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Russian Revolution, Peoples’ Right to Self-determination, and Debt Repudiation

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  The Versailles Treaty was eventually signed on 28 June 1919 without Soviet Russia being involved. Even so, this treaty cancelled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Under Article 116 of the Versailles Treaty, Russia could claim compensation from Germany;yet, consistent with its demand for peace without any annexation or any claim for compensation, it did not do so. What mattered most to Soviet Russia was that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk should be cancelled and the territories that Germany had annexed in March 1918 be given back to the peoples to whom they had belonged (the Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian peoples), in accordance with the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination upheld by the new Soviet government.

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• Part 3 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Russian Revolution, Debt Repudiation, War and Peace

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  In early January 1918, the Soviet government suspended payment on foreign debt, and in early February 1918 it decreed that all Tsarist debts were repudiated as were those contracted to continue the war by the provisional government between February and November 1917. At the same time, it decided that all assets of foreign capitalists in Russia would be confiscated and returned to the national heritage. In repudiating these debts, the Soviet government was implementing a decision made in 1905 by the soviet (people’s council) of Petrograd (St Petersburg) and the various parties that supported it. This triggered a wave of unanimous protest from the capitals of the major allied powers.

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