IV400 - May 2008

The articles in the May 2008 issue of International Viewpoint can be downloaded in PDF format.

Hezbollah and its allies have resorted to military means in order to take control of West Beirut. it is a further blatant defeat for Washington, since the governmental majority is an ally of the United States, supported by Arab allies of the United States, like the Saudi kingdom and Egypt.

Looking at the picture that Vietnam presents in 2008 (rule of the bureaucracy, unrestrained corruption and worship of the dollar) it is difficult to imagine that 40 years earlier, the eyes of the young generation and of revolutionaries were turned towards this small country which was conducting an exemplary struggle against the American colossus.

Student demonstrations, meetings, petitions, occupations of faculties, beatings-up and arrests, official anti-Semitism - the beginning of the year 1968 in Poland seemed to be an integral part of the vast revolt against the powers in place which was shaking the world.

Despite some defeats — the crushing of the student revolt in Yugoslavia, Poland and Mexico and the “normalisation” of Czechoslovakia — the year 1968 sounded the death knell for the stability of the authoritarian regimes. It opened a period of renewal of anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic resistance.

Media reports have neglected the most important source of aid to victims
of cyclone Nargis - spontaneous donations from their fellow citizens.

It’s not a lack of food that’s killing people but agribusiness and finance capital - and the institutions that support them like the World Bank and IMF.

Empty shelves in Managua. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods reveal not a lack of food but a lack of logic and humanity in international capitalism.

Response to the tropical cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar on 3 May 2008
has been hijacked by vested interests on all sides, leaving millions of
Asia’s poorest people without any effective aid.

French youth continue to show their potential for mobilising against education reforms. This time it is the turn of high school students, who, during the last weeks, have been on the streets against the suppression of teachers’ jobs in high schools.