International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Senegal
  

  Senegal: Debt fuels authoritarian drift

  18 March, by Paul Martial

  Senegal has entered a zone of strong turbulence. Audits of the west African country’s economic situation show that the figures published by the former government led by Macky Sall were false.

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• Iran
  

  The Iranian nuclear bomb: a devastating boomerang

  17 March, by Houshang Sepehr

  In the aftermath of January 2026’s crackdown, voices within and close to the Islamic Republic renewed calls for Iran to complete a nuclear deterrent, claiming the bomb would have prevented the current existential crisis. Houshang Sepehr, exiled Iranian Marxist and editor of Solidarité Socialiste avec les Travailleurs en Iran, challenges this on structural grounds. Drawing on the cases of India, Pakistan, and North Korea, he argues that nuclear deterrence only functions within security architectures backed by a great power patron --- a guarantee Iran never had. Neither Russia nor China was willing to absorb the risks of a nuclearised Islamic Republic contesting US hegemony. The bomb, he concludes, would have deepened Iran’s isolation rather than protecting it.

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• USA
  

  The American People and the U.S.-Israeli War on Iran

  16 March, by Dan La Botz

  As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran goes into its third week, the people of the United States are still figuring out what they think about the conflict. Since the war began, most polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the war, something unseen in modern American history. A majority of Americans approved of World War II, the Korean War, and initially of the Vietnam War. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2000—the American government, anxious for revenge—was backed by huge majorities when it made war on Afghanistan in 2001. When in 2003 the George W. Bush administration wanted to make war on Iraq, it fabricated false evidence that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction, and, bamboozled by Bush, nearly three-quarters of the American people supported the war.

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• France
  

  “A united and militant movement can prevent the RN from winning”

  15 March, by Ugo Palheta

  The first round of the French local elections will take place on Sunday 15 March, the second on 22 March. There is a real possibility that the “traditional” right, which is increasingly radicalizing in a far right direction, will win in Paris, under Socialist Party government since 1995, and that the Rassemblement National could win in France’s second, and very multi-racial, city, Marseilles.

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• Brazil
  

  The courts convict those who ordered the murder of Marielle Franco

  14 March, by Revista Movimiento

  “This landmark ruling highlights the links between institutional politics, militias and economic interests in Rio de Janeiro.”

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...and the rest of the current issue

• USA

  Growing Convergence of the Anti-Trump movement in the US

• Greece

  In Greece, we do not forget, we do not forgive Tèmbi

• Italy

  Italian steel bosses do you think workers can fly!

• Iran

  Iran on the Brink of the Abyss: War Drums, the Death Knell of the People

• USA

  US Antiwar Movement Grows Slowly Amid Political Confusion

Recently posted Features

• Marxism

  “The Hammer Blow of the Revolution”

  31 July 2016, by Michael Löwy

  Rosa Luxemburg’s defense of socialist democracy and her critique of the Bolsheviks in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution (1918) are well known. Less well known and often forgotten is her critique of bourgeois democracy, its limits, its contradictions, and its narrow and partial character. We propose to examine this critical line of thought in some of her political writings without any pretentions to completeness.

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• Our History

  Remembering the riots of spring 1976 in China

  14 June 2016, by Charlie Hore

  It’s 40 years since workers, students and school-students broke the oppressive regime that had come out of the Cultural Revolution in China and forced a change of direction on their rulers with mass protests in the spring of 1976.

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• Part Two of the series “Greece and debt: two centuries of interference from creditors”

  Continued debt slavery from the late 19th century to the Second World War

  13 June 2016, by Éric Toussaint

  This series of articles analyses Greece’s major debt crises by placing them in the international economic and political context, an approach that is systematically absent from the dominant narrative and very rarely present in critical analyses. Since 1826, a series of major debt crises have profoundly marked the lives of the Greek people. Each time, European Powers formed a coalition to impose new debts in order to repay the earlier ones. This coalition of Powers dictated policies to Greece that corresponded to their own interests and those of the few big private banks and large fortunes. Each time, those policies were aimed at extracting the tax resources necessary for repayment of the debt and entailed a reduction in social spending as well as decreased public investments. In a variety of ways, Greece and the Greek people were denied the exercise of their own sovereignty. With the complicity of the Greek ruling classes, this kept Greece in a subordinate, peripheral condition.

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• Part I of the series “Greece and debt: two centuries of interference from creditors”

  Newly Independent Greece had an Odious Debt round her Neck

  11 June 2016, by Éric Toussaint

  Since 2010, Greece has been the centre of attention. Yet this debt crisis, mainly the work of private banks, is nothing new in the history of independent Greece. The lives of Greeks have been blighted by major debt crises no less than four times since 1826. Each time, the European powers have connived together to force Greece to contract new debts to repay the previous ones. This coalition of powers dictated policies to Greece that served their own interests and those of a few big private banks they favoured. Each time, those policies were designed to free up enough fiscal resources to service the debt by reducing social spending and public investment. Thus Greece and her people have, in a variety of ways, been denied the exercise of their sovereign rights, keeping Greece down with the status of a subordinate, peripheral country. The local ruling classes complied with this.

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