International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

IV488 - September 2015 PDF

robm — 2015-09-30T11:11:00Z

IVP 488 September 2015 PDF magazine

- IV488 - September 2015 / PDF

An upsurge of solidarity - Refugees, welcome! Something new in Germany...

Manuel Kellner — 2015-09-30T08:06:08Z

In recent weeks, the influx of refugees into Germany has generated a mass movement of welcome, support and solidarity. On the front page of German newspapers and in the German and international electronic media, we can see the new culture of "welcome". Hundreds of people gather in the railway stations in Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne and in many other cities. They applaud the refugees who arrive by train. They bring flowers, food and drink. They make cash donations. A large number of people volunteer to sort and distribute clothing, to care for the children, to give German classes and to render a thousand and one other services.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Germany, Migration

Turkey resumes its war against the Kurds

Phil Hearse, Sarah Parker — 2015-09-29T13:21:17Z

After two years of de facto ceasefire, Turkey has resumed its aerial attacks against the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) fighters on its borders, but also launched a new wave of repression against the Kurdish population in the south east of the country. Phil Hearse asked Sarah Parker, a long time Kurdish solidarity activist, to explain.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Turkey, National question, Kurdistan

Catalonia vs. the Spanish State, or the failure of the federalist alternative

Jaime Pastor — 2015-09-29T11:41:49Z

As a powerful pro-sovereignty movement that advocates withdrawal from the Spanish state has consolidated itself within Catalonia, the majority of Spanish analysts and political leaders, even those on the left, have been habitually belligerent to that aspiration. Generally, they tend to focus their explanation of the rise of the independence movement on the interests and behaviour of the Catalan political and cultural elites, emphasizing their greater or lesser capacity of manipulation of the middle classes of this country against the “common enemy”, i.e. Spain or the Spanish state.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Spanish state, National question, Catalonia

Climate: disaster is on its way!

Fourth International Bureau — 2015-09-28T16:59:31Z

The earth's climate is changing quickly, much faster than experts thought.
There is no doubt what is causing this: the warming of the atmosphere as a result of emissions by greenhouse gases, mainly CO2 from the burning of oil, coal and natural gas.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Ecology and the Environment, Climate, Ecosocialism

Tsipras' Pyrrhic victory and the struggle ahead

DEA — 2015-09-27T20:21:17Z

Alexis Tsipras' SYRIZA won a resounding victory in general elections on September 20, winning nearly as many seats in parliament as it did in the January 2015 election that first brought it to power. The strong showing came despite Tsipras negotiating another so-called Memorandum of harsh austerity measures demanded by the European governments and financial institutions in return for bailing out the ailing Greek financial system.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Greece, Greek discussion

First Thoughts on the Greek Election

Panagiotis Sotiris — 2015-09-27T15:29:58Z

This was not a good election night. I am not talking mainly about the fact that Popular Unity failed to pass the 3 percent threshold necessary to gain parliamentary representation, but rather that the election results seem like a vindication of Syriza's capitulation to the European Union and the signing of the new memorandum. The new loan agreement will mean devastating cuts and neoliberal reforms, and we now have a parliament dominated by pro-memoranda forces to see it all through.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Greece, Greek discussion

Ten years on: Katrina, militarisation and climate change

Ben Hayes and Nick Buxton — 2015-09-25T15:58:31Z

A security-led approach to climate change and complex emergencies not only fails to address the fundamental causes of these crises – it will often exacerbate them.

- IV488 - September 2015 / United States (USA), Climate

Elections, Politics and Tamil Nationalism: Hopeless Impasse and Strivings of the People

Swasthika Arulingam and Ahilan Kadirgamar — 2015-09-24T10:54:24Z

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has swept the 2015 parliamentary elections in its Tamil constituencies. This victory further consolidates the power of the TNA and particularly the Federal Party (ITAK). However, this is also the weakness of Tamil nationalist politics. Historically, Tamil politics dominated by the Federal Party has done little other than win elections. Politics should be much more, building alliances with other political forces and mobilising society and finding solutions to people's social, economic and political problems. Tamil nationalist politics neither seems to have the capacity to govern as with the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) nor does it seem to have a vision to recover Tamil society out of the post-war crisis in the North and East. This article addresses the future of Tamil politics given this problematic political trajectory.

- IV488 - September 2015 / Sri Lanka

Racist Terror, Then and Now

Martin Oppenheimer — 2015-09-23T16:04:02Z

African-Americans have been murdered by white mobs, vigilantes, and “law enforcement” from the time of slavery to, quite possibly, this morning. The fundamental reason for the killing of African-Americans by whites has been fear by many whites of all classes that the existing rules of racial hierarchy, that is, white supremacy, are endangered—whether by slave uprisings, Blacks threatening white job monopolies, taking political power from whites, moving into white neighborhoods, undermining their monopoly on white women by allegedly having “intimate relations” with them, or simply seeming insubordinate.

- IV488 - September 2015 / United States (USA), Racism and Islamophobia