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.
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 (…)
“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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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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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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“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.”
read article...Observers speak of the “New Cold War” as a self-evident and incontrovertible reality. Already in the spring, the new contours of international politics, demarcated by sanctions and mutual rhetorical incursions, were fully recognized by the broadest segments of the public in Russia, Europe and the United States—including those who were very far from decision-making processes—as a return to the familiar and frightening principles of the second half of the twentieth century.
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.
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.
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.
After 59 days of unjust imprisonment, Lyes Touati has finally been acquitted - 59 days of waiting, mobilization, solidarity and determination.
- read article...20 January by Eric Toussaint, CADTM International, Walden Bello, Sushovan Dhar, Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis, Rafael Bernabe, Zoe Konstantopoulou, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Gilbert Achcar, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser, Michael Roberts, Vijay Prashad, Achin Vanaik, Zarah Sultana, Manon Aubry, Annie Ernaux, Ada Colau, Bhaskar Sunkara.
- read article...The International Trade Union Network of Solidarity and Struggles is passing on information received from trade union comrades in Venezuela. With Venezuela, as with Palestine, as with Ukraine, as with Sudan, as everywhere else in the world, nothing can replace direct contact between workers. For our social class, it is the best source of information and the best way to build common struggles.
- read article...International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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