International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Eastern Europe faced with the crises of the system

Catherine Samary — 2010-09-29T12:54:29Z

European construction aroused popular aspirations, which were radically opposed to what is actually happening: aspirations for a continent that would resist antisocial policies while being open to the world, according to a democratic, social, ecological and solidarity-based logic… This was in particular what was hoped for in Eastern Europe, where the populations aspired to live better and more freely. Their hopes were profoundly disappointed, preparing the ground for xenophobic currents…
Understanding what were the turns that history took, where things went wrong, understanding the present crisis is essential for the peoples to be able to re-appropriate their choices and thus their future.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Economy, Eastern Europe

"Somehow, we filled a space that did not exist, a political space that had not yet been recognized"

Françisco Louçã, Miguel Romero — 2010-09-24T17:59:50Z

For some years, the political space to the left of “social democracy" has been shifting in Europe. Not always in the right direction: the crisis of Rifondazione in Italy or the Scottish Socialist Party or Respect platform in Britain are clear signs that the road is still steep and it is easy to stumble. But there are also stimulating experiences that appear to open breaches in a very prolonged phase of disorientation and political deadlock: the NPA in France, Die Linke in Germany and the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal are those that have achieved the widest audience and, accordingly, are reference points for other ongoing projects.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Portugal, New parties of the left

Mexican women - then and now

Heather Dashner Monk — 2010-09-22T15:45:54Z

Mexican women's lives â€” their work, their family life, their educational opportunities, the health care they can expect, their social standing, and political participation â€” have changed over the hundred years since the Mexican Revolution. The country has gone from being overwhelmingly rural to mainly urban; between 1930 and 2000 average life expectancy rose from 34 to 75 years; the conditions in which women do housework and care for children and the sick â€” still almost exclusively their responsibility â€” have changed enormously: the majority have running water, gas for cooking, indoor toilets, and homes with flooring.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Women, Latin America, Mexico

Youth camp: La rivoluzione sarÃ mondiale !

Ãge Skovrind — 2010-09-22T12:55:16Z

The Fourth International organised the international youth camp for the 27th time. From the 24th to 31st of July almost 500 youth met in Perugia to discuss experiences from activities and struggles, educate themselves and to party together!

- IV428 - September 2010 / Italy, Youth camp, Fourth International

The green banner of Mohamed and the expansion of world trade

Jean Batou — 2010-09-15T18:27:28Z

“A century after the date when Muhammad, an obscure camel driver, had begun to gather around him in his house a few poor Meccans, his successors dominated the approaches of the Loire and the lands beyond the Indus, from Poitiers to Samarkand”. ... from now on, Islam – which was then the ideology of modernity - would govern the expansion of markets, and do so “from the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire until the rise of Venice, and even of England”.

- IV428 - September 2010 / MENA (Middle East/North Africa), Religion

Conclat, a setback that cannot be hidden

Ernesto Herrera — 2010-09-15T17:52:51Z

The call for a congress for the formation of a new Brazilian trade union federation - the Congress of the Working Class (Conclat) - aroused enthusiasm. The Conclat proposed to unify, in a new class-conscious federation, trade union, popular and student currents resisting the offensive of the Lula Government and the employers. At the same time, this new federation had to confront existing ones (the CUT, Força Sindical and so on) which submit to the Government and the capitalist order.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Brazil

Cars: a time of transformations

Jean-Claude Vessillier — 2010-09-08T22:43:35Z

What was perceptible from the second half of 2008 has been confirmed: the crisis which has hit the car industry at a world level is not a simple depression preceding an inevitable recovery where everything goes back to what it was before, whether concerning the exploitation of the work force or the use of the individual car.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Economy

Voices from Venezuela

Jeffery R Webber, Susan Spronk — 2010-09-06T09:52:22Z

In mid-June 2010, Jeffery R. Webber and Susan Spronk interviewed three revolutionary socialist activists, Gonzalo Gómez, Stalin Pérez Borges, and Luis Primo in Caracas, Venezuela to discuss their views on the contradictions and prospects of the Bolivarian process.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Venezuela

Thousands of Cancuns for climate justice!

Via Campesina — 2010-09-06T09:38:42Z

An appeal from La Via Campesina, the international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers:

- IV428 - September 2010 / Ecology and the Environment, Mexico, Social Forum, Climate

The first month of Labour Relief Campaign Pakistan

Farooq Tariq — 2010-09-03T15:55:33Z

FAROOQ TARIQ has sent us this full report recapitulating the activity of the Labour Relief Campaign in the desperate situation faced by the thousands of Pakistani flood victims. Information on how to contribute is at the end of the article.

- IV428 - September 2010 / Pakistan, Solidarity after disasters