International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

A country on oil

Thadeus Pato — 2014-10-02T07:39:19Z

On the morning of June 18 2014 a giant cloud of black smoke drifted from Ilora Island, facing Lagos lagoon, towards Victoria Island. A widely visible flame rose into the sky. The night before, a pipeline pumping petrol from an offshore delivery point, across the island to the mainland, had exploded – not for the first time.

- IV477 - October 2014 / Nigeria

Ebola, Poverty and Racism

Thadeus Pato — 2014-08-27T09:01:53Z

In recent weeks, the German and British authorities have publicly expressed an inconvenient truth – without realizing it: Ebola would be not a major problem for them (and other rich industrialized countries) but it is completely different in the (presently) affected countries of Western Africa – for numerous reasons…

- IV475 - August 2014 / Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Public services , Liberia

Health systems in Europe – changes and resistance

Thadeus Pato — 2011-07-04T12:36:20Z

This report opened the European healthworkers conference, held in the International Institute for Research and Education in May 2011.

- IV438 - July 2011 / Public services

Anti Nuclear Movement: Stronger than ever - weaker than before?

Thadeus Pato — 2011-06-06T14:37:59Z

The movement against the nuclear plants has been one of the biggest mass movements of the 1970s and 80s in Germany. After a slowdown in the last 20 years, it has reappeared now like a phoenix from the ashes. Whilst in other European countries unemployment and social cuts are provoking protests and resistance, in Germany nuclear power or, rather, environmental questions are in the centre of the present mobilizations. What are the reasons?

- IV437 - June 2011 / Germany, Ecology and the Environment, Nuclear power

Mobilisations against Nuclear Power Plants

Thadeus Pato — 2011-03-13T18:20:12Z

It was a sad coincidence: The German anti-nuclear movement had long being planning a huge mobilisation against the decision of the German government to extend considerably the life of the country's nuclear plants thus to cancel the law, introduced by the former Labour/Green government that they be decommisioned.

- IV434 - March 2011 / Germany

6th European Social Forum calls for European-wide action

Thadeus Pato — 2010-07-13T15:21:33Z

This year's ESF in Istanbul was a success - not only because some months ago it was still not clear, if it would happen. But also because there were lots of good and intensive discussions going on and because the final assembly called for broad Europe-wide mobilisations against the crisis in the autumn.

- IV426 - July 2010 / Turkey, Global Justice

Time, Acceleration, Crisis and Climate Change

Thadeus Pato — 2009-07-19T15:13:24Z

Time is money - this proverb is as common as absurd. Absurd, because there is no reliable definition of the term “time” other than the physical one. Therefore it is not at all clear what “money” actually expresses here. The preoccupation with the idea of “time”, which many philosophers and sociologists have already grappled with more or less in vain, may appear somewhat esoteric at first glance in connection with the present combined economic and ecological crisis.

- IV414 - July 2009

Epidemiology, economy and racism

Thadeus Pato — 2009-06-04T12:08:30Z

Would one measure the riskiness of diseases by the number of publications in the press, which deal with them, one could come to the conclusion, that the so-called swine-flu is at the moment the worldwide biggest threat to public health. But this is obviously nonsense.

- IV413 - June 2009

Keynes reloaded?

Thadeus Pato — 2009-02-16T23:16:20Z

According to Karl Marx historic tragedies repeat as a farce. Considering, what is nowadays labelled as “Neo-Keynesianism” concerning the official crisis management of the bourgeois state, one gets the impression, that what Keynes intended origi nally, in fact is re-performed as a farce….

- IV409 - February 2009

The European trade union movement today - a rapid overview

Thadeus Pato — 2006-08-07T19:13:52Z

More than 20 years of neoliberalism have had important effects on the trade union movement in Europe. Thadeus Pato unravels the pluses and minuses in the current phase of trade union evolution.

- IV380 - July-August 2006 / Europe, Trade unions/workplace organizing