International Viewpoint

International Viewpoint

Tanzania: Masai evicted from their land on the altar of profit

21 hours 56 minutes ago

The Tanzanian government's policy, with the complicity of major Western NGOs, is to replace herders with tourists, who bring in more money. Joseph Oleshangay has embarked on a European tour to alert the authorities and NGOs to the situation of the Masai of Tanzania. A lawyer from this community of herders, he is committed, despite threats and pressure, to fighting the mass expulsions of the Masai from their ancestral lands, particularly in the Ngorongoro region.

- IV597 - October 2024 / Ecology and the Environment, Tanzania
Paul Martial

Is AMLO's latest reform a poisoned chalice?

1 day 20 hours ago

On 15 September, a Mexican bank holiday, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave a ‘farewell' speech in front of 300,000 enthusiastic people gathered on the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is stepping down from office on 1 October, giving way to the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was triumphantly elected in June.

- IV597 - October 2024 / Mexico
Latin America Commission, New Anti-Capitalist Party

France in the grip of multiple crises

2 days 23 hours ago

“The formation of the NFP, and the unexpected success of its electoral campaign, have rekindled hope. But we know that this is only a reprieve. The rise of the National Rally continues, and the dynamic of popular mobilisation remains fragile, but the time gained can be put to good use.”

- IV597 - October 2024 / France
Pierre Rousset

National elections in Austria: A disaster for democracy and the welfare state – and for the left

3 days 20 hours ago

The right-wing extremist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) under Herbert Kickl received 29% of the vote and was elected by 1.4 million, almost twice as many voters as five years ago. This is the best result for the FPÖ since its founding in 1955; in 2019, it was 770,000. Compared to the last election for the National Council (the parliament of the Federal Republic of Austria), where did the voters come from? 76% voted for the FPÖ again, 443,000 came from the conservative party ÖVP and 258,000 from non-voters.

- IV597 - October 2024 / Austria
EF, WH and PS

Harris and Trump Campaign Amidst Strikes and Protests

6 days ago

Former president Donald Trump and Vice-president Kamala Harris continue to campaign in a neck-and-neck race, both holding large rallies in swing states in an attempt to pull ahead. Trump continues his racist rants against immigrants, whom he calls “stone-cold killers,” and his vicious insults against Harris, now calling her “mentally disabled.” He has blamed immigrants, released from other countries' prisons and mental hospitals, for an invasion of the country that has “poisoned our blood” and destroyed the economy, taking jobs from American Blacks and Latinos. “And if you think about it,” says Trump, “only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

- IV597 - October 2024 / United States (USA)
Dan La Botz

Comrade President? Change and Continuity in Sri Lanka

1 week ago

Anura Kumara Dissanayake's (AKD) victory on 21 September as the candidate of the centre-left National People's Power (NPP) coalition is highly significant for symbolic and substantive reasons. His predecessors have been from the social and political elite that has mis-ruled Sri Lanka since independence from Britain in 1948. Some were born into that elite, while a couple (Ranasinghe Premadasa, Maithripala Sirisena) made their way into it through the business of politics before they occupied the presidency. In contrast, Dissanayaka's political life has been as an outsider and critic of that elite.

- IV596-September 2024 / Sri Lanka
B. Skanthakumar

Gender and sexualities: the reactionary offensive of the far right

1 week 1 day ago

The French publishing house Editions Amsterdam has just published the first book from the La Boétie Institute , entitled Extrême droite: la résistible ascension. Coordinated by Ugo Palheta , with a preface by the historian Johann Chapoutot and an afterword by Clémence Guetté, this work aims to provide intellectual weapons, rooted in contemporary research ,on the far right, in order to understand and combat the rise of the FN/RN (National Front/National Rally).

- IV596-September 2024 / France, Women, LGBT, Far Right
Cassandre Begous , Fanny Gallot

Ukraine under Russian occupation

1 week 2 days ago

Since the fall of President Yanukovych in 2014, all Russian interventions in Ukraine - from the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in the Donbass to the February 2022 invasion - have been presented by Putin as responses to an ‘anti-Russian, NATO-backed fascist coup'. A part of the international left has embraced this narrative, unlike the small Ukrainian left in the making.

- IV596-September 2024 / Russia, Ukraine
Catherine Samary

The Ukrainian left is building on several fronts

1 week 2 days ago

“The aim here is to shed light on the specific profile of this young left, based on its activist practice at the heart of Ukrainian society and breaking with the dominant contradictory interpretations of the ‘Euro-Maidan' (2013-2014) that divide the left and are exploited by Putin.”

- Features / Ukraine
Catherine Samary

The Populist Threat and the Response of the Left

1 week 2 days ago

The need is greater than ever for a consolidated voice of the working class and the poor. On the one hand, daily community protests seem to indicate a population that is not by any means apathetic. But when it comes to elections, the majority don't participate. No political party has been able to capture the imagination of the mass of people who experience unemployment, sewage in the street, erratic water supply, unaffordable electricity and intolerable levels of gender-based violence. Yet enough of those people are desperate and sufficiently concerned to protest.

There are a number of candidates vying to capture this imagination. The field is becoming crowded. But they are by no means genuine supporters of the interests of the working class and the poor.

- IV596-September 2024 / South Africa
Amandla!

Strategic Reflections on the Escalation of Israeli Intimidation in Lebanon

1 week 3 days ago

Not even an hour had passed after I wrote my article of a week ago (“Lebanon and the Israeli Strategy of Intimidation”) when the Israeli intelligence agencies launched a mass terror operation in Lebanon by blowing up individual communication devices in two successive waves over two days, killing more than 40 people and wounding more than 3,500.

- IV596-September 2024 / Israel, Lebanon
Gilbert Achcar

Brandenburg elections - a black eye?

1 week 4 days ago

The 2024 cycle of German regional elections finished with the elections to the Brandenburg Landtag on 21 September. As was the case on 1 September in Saxony and Thuringia, the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party achieved historic results and can feel a winner. Co-president Alice Weidel can be jubilant: ‘The East is blue' (the AfD's colour scheme).

- IV596-September 2024 / Germany
Manuel Kellner

Portugal: Deadly forest fires

1 week 6 days ago

Seven people have died and 118 have been injured in the fires that have been raging since September 15 in the north and centre of the country. In just three days, 2024 has become the year with the fourth-largest area burned in the last decade.

- IV596-September 2024 / Portugal
Bloco de Esquerda

Winter Fuel Allowance: ecosocialism versus ageism, austerity and poverty

2 weeks 1 day ago

On 10 September 2024 348 MPs (overwhelmingly Labour MPs) voted through regulations to cut the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners except those in receipt of means-tested benefits such as pension credit. In this article Liz Lawrence explores what this suggests for the direction of the Labour government and what remains of the Labour Left. She also discusses pensioners' poverty and resistance and how ecosocialists respond.

- IV596-September 2024 / Britain
Liz Lawrence

Brazil is burning

2 weeks 2 days ago

The fires and air pollution across the country demonstrate the insufficiency of government measures and demand popular mobilization for the climate emergency

- IV596-September 2024 / Brazil, Climate
Israel Dutra, Roberto Robaina

The Summer ‘Uni', a barricade against the political right and social demobilisation

2 weeks 3 days ago

The last days of August saw the 14th edition of the Summer University of Anticapitalistas with the slogan ‘A new internationalism in the face of war and climate barbarism' with the just over 750 people attending. This year there was a significant increase in the number of young people as a result of the work to establish the student movement, the role played in promoting solidarity with Palestine and the intervention around the queer question.

- News from around the world / Spanish state, Fourth International
Manuel Garí

Macron scorns popular vote...and puts himself in the hands of the RN

2 weeks 4 days ago

‘The people have, through their own fault, lost the confidence of the government...Wouldn't it then be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?' Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Solution', 1953

- IV596-September 2024 / France
Léon Crémieux
Checked
9 hours 48 minutes ago
International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
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