IV496 - May 2016

International Viewpoint 496 May 2016 PDF magazine
International Viewpoint 496 May 2016 PDF magazine available to download here

A new agreement has been reached between Greece and its creditors regarding the bailout program for the country. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup, described the new deal as “ambitious” and a “major breakthrough”. However, a look at the details shows that it’s anything but. This agreement follows the time-honored tradition of the Eurogroup of kicking the can down the road as political considerations have trumped once again economic logic. This explains why it’s too little, too late: Greece has to continue its commitment to unrealistic fiscal targets while debt relief is expected to take place somewhere and somehow down the line, all the while the future of the country continues to be decided by the political calculations of the Eurogroup. Like its predecessors, this new version of the Brussels fudge will buy some time, but ultimately fail in its stated goal of ensuring growth and stability for Greece.

The negotiation process between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition of the National Coalition was still stalled at the end of May 2016, despite statements of representatives of Russia and the United States in early May to redouble their efforts to achieve a political settlement of the Syrian conflict and extend the cease-fire on all Syrian territory. No date has even been set for new indirect talks in Geneva between the regime and the opposition. Three indirect rounds of talks have been held since the beginning of the year in Geneva without progress. The last round in April was suspended with the resumption of hostilities in Aleppo. The temporary truce in Aleppo announced Thursday, May 5, was violated on Sunday May 23rd 2016 following Russian air strikes hit the only road into occupation held areas of Aleppo city in the heaviest bombing since February.

In the past few years, particularly after the 2007-8 world food price crisis, there has been a lot of attention to the global expansion of large-scale acquisitions of farmland, or what is usually referred to as land grabs. The investors range from transnational corporations and high-class individual investors to governments.

The women’s movement, the environmental cause, the struggle for justice has lost a voice that never flinched from standing up for victims of
exploitation, injustice and violence. Trupti Shah (54) left us on May 26,
2016 in Vadodara after a valiant battle against lung cancer.

The narrow defeat of the far-right Freedom Party highlights the failure of mainstream parties to challenge the politics of fear across Europe.

European municipalities are joining the battle against TTIP to protect sovereignty and public services, demonstrating how to take political initiative and build an alternative economy

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the British Labour Party in August 2015 there has been an unending stream of attacks on him from a combination of the governing Conservative party, the main stream media and the right within the Labour Party itself on almost every imaginable subject. In the run up to extensive elections in Britain on May 5 these attacks focused on the question of supposed antisemitism inside the Labour Party – the strong implication being that such a development was a consequence of Corbyn’s election.

Elections to the Scottish Parliament took place on May 5, along with many other elections in different parts of Britain . The results for the new organisation on the Scottish left, RISE, which brings together a lot of activists who worked for a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum with the Scottish Socialist Party, were disappointing. Prominent RISE activist Johnathan Shafi exlpores some of the reasons and lessons for the future.

“The 49-3 is a brutality. The 49-3 is a denial of democracy.” Despite François Hollande’s opinions on this article of the French constitution in 2006, his government under Manuel Valls (who had himself been among the MPs proposing it be suppressed in 2008) used it to force through the unpopular law proposed by Minister for Labour Myriam El Khomri on May 10. This provoked an immediate reaction from the coordinating committee of workers’ and students unions calling days of national mobilisation and strikes on May 12, May 17, May 19, to continue on May 26 and June 14. This article, originally written just before the government’s decision to use the 49-3, explains the development of the movement against the El Khomri law up to that point. It was updated on 24 May.