International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine
International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
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Latin America
The spectre of the far right is haunting Latin America
15 August, byFar-right movements have come to power in numerous countries across the region. They are linked to Trumpism; resisting them requires the broadest possible coordination of these resistance movements at both local and regional levels.
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Spanish State
Ceuta: the boundary of the right to have rights
14 August, byLast Friday [31 July], thousands of people swam across the border to reach the autonomous city of Ceuta. This enclave of some 83,000 people received, in a matter of 24 hours, just over 50,000 more people, exhausted from a migratory journey that has caused the deaths of at least 100 in the last two days. In summer, arrivals in Ceuta and Melilla by sea increase significantly, as sea fog hinders early detection on the coast by the Civil Guard. But no one in the government seemed to foresee a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude, with significant political repercussions that extend far beyond the usual media headlines.
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Ukraine
The Wrong Lever: Europe, Ukraine, and the Refugee Question
13 August, byEU leaders are moving towards removal of asylum rights for Ukrainian men aged 23-60, to improve conscription and functioning of essential services in the fifth year of Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialist aggression. The Zelenskiy government asked for this change. But that does not make the policy right.
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Ukraine
In Kyiv, the street makes its voice heard
12 August, by ,A report from the mobilisations in Ukraine in July.
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Italy
The battle for the beaches in Italy
11 August, byEvery year people in Italy moan about the way the ‘spiaggia libera’ (free access beach) is becoming smaller and smaller. At the same time the private lidos, where you have to pay for a sun umbrella and a couple of loungers, defend their privatised territory with all sorts of barriers and walls to prevent people from moving across their beach. The law says that 5 metres of the foreshore has to remain open to anybody – the privateers cannot put their sun loungers right up to the water. So often they make it difficult to walk from the free beach to the paying beach.
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Recently posted Features
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Economic crisis
Banks versus the People: The Underside of a Rigged Game!
22 January 2013, byread article...Since 2007-2008, the major central banks (the ECB, Bank of England, the “Fed” in the USA, and the Swiss National Bank) have been making it their absolute priority to attempt to avoid a collapse of the private banking system. Contrary to what has been said more or less everywhere, the principal risk threatening the banks is not that a government will suspend payment of sovereign debt. None of the bank failures since 2007 have been caused by that kind of payment default. None of the bank bailouts organized by the various governments has been made necessary by suspension of payment by an over-indebted State.
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Sexual violence
The Current Mobilizations over Rape
21 January 2013, byread article...As a historian, I know that the actions very often have highly unintended consequences. Historical turning points occur, not because deep planning willed them into existence, but at the intersection of many cross-currents. So it is today. Activists of our generation have been campaigning for long over rape, demanding changes in rape laws, changes in attitudes, and a wide range of demands. But it was not our repeated campaigns, nor even the over a decade long epic protest of Irom Sharmila, that managed to shake the entire country. It was, on the surface, a single incident, the Delhi bus gang rape of early December 2012. We are aware of the vast numbers who have come out and demanded punishment, government action, who have protested repeatedly and vigorously.
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Women and party
Sanctions policy in a feminist party
17 January 2013, byread article...The following criteria of internal sanctions in the party, in regard to oppression of women, were approved at the VI National Congress, held from the 1st to the 5th of November 1989 in Mexico.
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India
No Patriarchy, No Police State, No Capital Punishment: A Report on the Rally Against Rape
7 January 2013, byread article...The Delhi gang rape is gruesome. But it does not stand alone. There were 22,000 rapes reported in 2010, and this implies at least 100,000 unreported cases. In the National capital, Delhi, there were around 570 cases reported. West Bengal has about 9,000 cases of rape, where the matter had not begun moving in courts. Rapes, gang rapes, rape as a “political” action (rape of "lower" caste women, rape of minority community women, rape of political opponents) have been taking place continuously. Though India’s political leaders have been claiming stridently that India is forging ahead, that India is one of the new powerhouses of the world, in terms of the violence inflicted on women, in terms of the sheer barbarism of rape, India shows no sign of being a forward looking, civilized country.
