International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Africa
  

  USA/Africa: privatisation of health aid

  12 February, by Paul Martial

  Recent agreements between the United States and some fifteen African countries are radically reshaping health cooperation on the continent, even as Washington has just left the World Health Organisation (WHO).
  These new partnerships are part of the so-called America First Global Health strategy, which makes aid conditional on US priorities. In December, Washington signed memoranda with some fifteen countries setting specific objectives for epidemic surveillance, laboratory strengthening (…)

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• Syria

  Where is Ahmad al-Chareh’s Syria heading?

  11 February, by Jean Batou, Joseph Daher

  “Daher provides an update on the worrying developments under Ahmad al-Chareh’s new government. He also highlights the opportunities opening up for working people and social movements, provided they prove capable of resisting sectarianism and ethnic discrimination.”

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• Portugal
  

  In the face of climate catastrophe, Portugal mobilizes vote against the far right

  10 February, by Jorge Costa

  António José Seguro was elected President of the Republic of Portugal on Sunday with 67% of the vote, comfortably beating the neo-fascist candidate he faced in the second round, André Ventura (33%).

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• China
  

  Purges and Regime Crisis in China

  9 February, by Pierre Rousset

  The dismissal of General Zhang Youxia was officially announced on January 24. This is another step in the purges that have been taking place within the Chinese army’s general staff. Zhang was considered “untouchable” given his supposed closeness to Xi Jinping. As for the Central Military Commission (CMC), it is now a hollow shell, having lost five of its seven members. Xi continues to clear the field around him, contrary to any form of collegiality.

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• USA
  

  Criticism of Trump by Democrats, Republicans Grows as his Support Falls

  8 February, by Dan La Botz

  “Now things have changed. Republicans have criticized his immigrant deportation policies, his racist posts, and his threat to take over the election process. At the same time support for Trump is declining as shown in polls.”

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Germany/Hungary

  Germany joins Hungary in prosecuting left‑wing activists

• Venezuela

  Redemocratise society and politics to overcome the colonial situation

• Mynamar/India

  Why Myanmar’s Election Matters for India’s Northeast

• Greece

  A historic peasant mobilization in Greece

• Syria

  On the Recent Agreement Between Damascus and the Kurdish Administration

Recently posted Features

• Women workers

  “We Are The Lions, Mr. Manager”

  16 January 2019, by Navendu Mishra, Marcus Barnett

  On the 20th of August in 1976, a group of Asian immigrants in London began a strike that would define an era.

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• DSA Two Years Later: Where Are We At? Where Are We Headed?

  15 January 2019, by Dan La Botz

  It has been two years since the explosive surge of the Democratic Socialists of America, now the largest socialist organization in the United States and the largest since the 1940s. And DSA has had some remarkable successes. Today as the country turns its attention to the presidential election of 2020, we ask: How DSA is doing? What is it accomplishing? And where is it going? What do the various caucuses and political tendencies within DSA propose as a future direction for the group? Is there a genuine left wing of DSA, and if not, what is the alternative?

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• International politics

  Water as a Form of Social Control

  13 January 2019, by Julia Kassem

  From Detroit and Flint, Michigan to Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine, those struggling against institutionalized racism and apartheid are no strangers to water struggles.

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• International

  Building A Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism

  11 January 2019, by Jan Malewski

  Bernie Sanders has so far received little attention for his internationalist positions, even though he spoke out and voted against the war in Iraq, proposed a drastic reduction in US military spending, strongly criticised the coups d’état organised in Latin America by the CIA and opposed US support for the Saudi offensive in Yemen. The US left generally considers that in foreign policy he has not deviated from the consensus between Democrats and Republicans, criticizes him for his lack of involvement in the BDS movement (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions) and recalls that during the decades he has been in the Senate he has sometimes voted in favour of military intervention or spoken of the need to preserve US power. Even if in his youth he applied to be a conscientious objector during the war in Vietnam, he went to Cuba after the revolution and organized diplomatic meetings with the Sandinist revolutionaries, since he has been in the Senate his dissent in the Democratic Party has been limited to domestic political issues, with few exceptions.

  It is also true that since the end of the Vietnam war, there has not been a strong left-wing internationalist current in the United States and that many of those who, on the margins, within the radical left, identify as such, are at the same time bogged down in an alignment with so-called "socialist states" or at least with the "enemies" of American imperialism. Bernie Sanders was therefore not isolated by not promoting internationalist solidarity.

  Since his campaign for the Democratic primaries two years ago - during which he also abstained taking any notable internationalist positions - and with the resurgence of a new left, however, the construction of mass internationalism in the United States seems necessary. Especially since Donald Trump is taking a caricatural chauvinism forward at a great rate. And that on a global scale the dangerous resident of the White House serves as an example for the resurgence of state authoritarianism and a kind of neo-fascism. Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil is only the most recent example of this danger.

  It was precisely in the aftermath of the neo-fascist candidate’s success in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election that Bernie Sanders delivered a speech in Washington calling for "building a global democratic movement against authoritarianism". He picked up and built on what he wrote on 13 September 2018 in an editorial published by the Guardian, where he stated that "It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States," and that "All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power."

  Sanders’ proposal to the global left deserves to be taken seriously. Today, internationalism is not on the rise and the fact that a world-renowned personality is calling for the reconstruction of bonds of solidarity to fight authoritarianism together can have an impact. Faced with the multiplication of authoritarian regimes and the rise of extreme right-wing movements, the resurgence of an internationalist movement is the task of the moment. As Bernie Sanders says in his speech "We need a movement that unites people all over the world who don’t just seek to return to a romanticized past, a past that did not work for so many, but who strive for something better,"; that it is not enough to defend what has been achieved but that we must "reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity," and "reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world." It is a good basis for opening the discussion on how to build an international movement. Jan Malewski

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