International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• USA
  

  What Sort of Electoral Politics? A Debate in the U.S. Left

  8 June, by Dan La Botz

  The left in the United States is once again, as always, debating how to engage in electoral politics. The debate seems more meaningful this year when more voters consider themselves to be independents (45%) than to be either Republicans (27%) or Democrat (27%). Could the left now present the disaffected with a political alternative.

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• Palestine
  

  Israel mistreats Flotilla activists and tortures Palestinian prisoners

  7 June, by An Gwesped

  After the Israeli army’s violent interception of the Gaza flotilla, activists have denounced humiliation and violence — a long-documented glimpse into the torture and sexual violence suffered by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. More than 430 activists from the 50 boats that set out to break the blockade of Gaza were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation army between Monday 18 and Tuesday 19 May, in international waters off the coast of Cyprus, up to 500 km from the coast of Gaza for the most distant boats and about 100 kilometres for the closest.

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• Portugal
  

  General Strike Rejects Labour Reform Package Once Again

  6 June, by Adriano Campos

  “It’s turning out to be a major general strike; the data we have from last night shows workers are determined to treat today as a major day of struggle,” said the CGTP’s General Secretary in the morning outside one of the striking schools in Lisbon.

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• Bolivia
  

  “Until the president resigns...”

  5 June, by Javier Rojas

  In Bolivia, mobilizations against austerity and an agrarian reform favourable to the concentration of land have weakened the government of Rodrigo Paz and his neoliberal policies.

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• Spanish state
  

  A step forward in Andalusia

  4 June, by Daniel Albarracín, Pablo P. Ganfornina

  Is this the beginning of a shift in dynamics? To attempt to formulate an answer, our perspective cannot begin with the latest election results, but rather with an analysis of Andalusian political history. In this regard, we operate on a fundamental premise: there is no electoral victory without a prior social and political victory. In the south of the Spanish state, the right wing did not conquer the institutions by chance in 2018; it did so by first winning the battle for "common sense", displacing collective frames of reference and colonising the public agenda long before the ballot box validated its hegemony.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Colombia

  “Surprise” election result poses new challenges for the left in Colombia

• Spanish State

  Public education comes to a standstill in a historic strike in Valencia

• USA

  Trump, Miller Take away Immigrants’ Rights, Sometimes Their Lives, but Resistance Continues

• Sudan

  France arms the war in Sudan

• Belgium

  Government brutalizes, the street protests in Belgium

Recently posted Features

• Russia

  Who Is Behind the "Trotskyist Conspiracy"?

  16 April 2015, by Ilya Budraitskis

  Speaking at a meeting of his All-Russia People’s Front a couple days ago, Vladimir Putin said, “Trotsky had this [saying]: the movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing. We need an ultimate aim.” Eduard Bernstein’s proposition, misquoted and attributed for some reason to Leon Trotsky, is probably the Russian president’s most common rhetorical standby. He has repeated it for many years to audiences of journalists and functionaries while discussing social policy, construction delays at Olympics sites or the dissatisfaction of the so-called creative class. “Democracy is not anarchism and not Trotskyism,” Putin warned almost two years ago.

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• Mexico

  Ayotzinapa, accelerator of the crisis of the state

  4 April 2015, by Arturo Anguiano

  Mexico seems to exist between terror and horror, always camouflaged by lies, dissimulation and the stage-managed set-ups of the army and the police, as well as of government agencies, which should be responsible for security, investigation and prosecution. From the massacre on June 30 this year at Tlatlaya in the state of Mexico of twenty-two alleged offenders by the army, a massacre falsely presented as a reaction to resistance to the police, to the murder of six people and the forced disappearance of forty-three students of the Normal School perpetrated by officers of the municipality of Iguala in Guerrero during the night of September 26, there has obviously been the same logic at work: abuse of power, arbitrary actions, disregard for human life and the belief that they could do anything, covered by an impunity that is at the heart of the Mexican regime.

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• Daniel Bensaïd

  We Are Alive: A film about the thought, activism and legacy of Daniel Bensaïd

  28 March 2015

  Carmen Castillo was born in Chile, and worked for the Allende government before entering the clandestine resistance together with her partner Miguel Enriquez after the Pinochet coup of 11 September 1973. Arrested and then expelled from her homeland (after an international campaign for her release), she recounted her tragic history in two books and then her 2007 film Calle Santa Fe.

  The director continues to be haunted by a number of questions. How can we pass on the memory of the defeated without suffocating it with nostalgia or bitterness? What can we do today to keep loyal to the ideas of friends, loved ones and comrades who are no longer of this world – a world that they were so passionate about changing? How can we hope, now that we know that nothing is written in advance (as some of us used to believe)?

  Castillo’s next film, We Are Alive, comes to French cinemas on 29 April. Making use of the thought of philosopher Daniel Bensaïd, Castillo portrays the daily struggles of all those across two continents who throw themselves into the ‘joyous passion’ of struggle – despite everything, and however ignored they are by the big media cartels.

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• Pakistan

  “We have lost one of the best women activists”

  26 March 2015, by Farooq Tariq

  One of main icons of the Left movement for over 6 decades, Tahira Mazhar Ali was a shining example to follow. She was active among workers, peasants and also among ordinary citizens to build a left movement.

  When few dared to challenge the West Pakistan military atrocities in Bangladesh, she was among the few in Lahore who dared to come out in the streets saying no to the military operation.

  She successfully built one of the great women’s organisations called “Women’s Democratic Association”. She was never an independent Left. She was always part of the process of party building. She was senior Vice President of the Workers’ Party before it merged to form the Awami Workers’ Party.

  After her funeral, Baji Nasim Shahmim Malik, another long standing women activist, cried contonuously as she was one of the trusted comrades along Tahira Mazhar. Najma Sethi, a former chief minister of Punjab, and one time close associate of Tariq Ali, narrated several incidents about his association with her. As Imtiaz Alam, a radical journalist expressing his deep sorrow over sad demise of Tahira, said “a chapter of left activism is closed”.

  Tahira Mazhar, a daughter of a former chief minister of Punjab rebelled against family tradition and married a revolutionary, Mazhar Ali Khan of View Point. Mother of three including Tariq Ali and Mahir Ali, she was always in the forefront of struggle.

  I would usually receive an early morning call from her up to 2009, when she fell seriously ill. She would urge me to take up issues relating to the working class, although she was not from our party. However, her respect was beyond party boundaries. I always found her a great comrade and some one who was there to help the Left. She donated bundle of books to our library when it was established in 1998. She donated her clothes for flood victims and gave money for the donation.

  We have lost one of the best women activists.

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