World in View: Thousands protest Argentina’s Milei

February 6, 2024

Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?

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World in View: Immigration: the view from Mexico

January 9, 2024

The situation for migrants in Mexico is dire: the National Guard is used against newly arrived immigrants; gang members kidnap them and demand ransom from relatives in the U.S.; Mexican and U.S. authorities make the journey to the border excruciating.

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World in View: Argentina’s president imposes austerity

December 21, 2023

Argentina’s new President Javier Milei quickly imposed social welfare cuts, while threatening protests. Still, mass resistance from below is developing. Is that enough to break out of the political-economic-social straitjacket that Argentine masses have been living through for decades?

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World in View: Garment workers protest in Bangladesh

November 16, 2023

Garment workers poured out of factories in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh to demand a wage of about $200 a month. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Bangladesh is the second largest garment-producing country in the world after China.

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World in View: Blood on Saudi Arabia’s hands

September 13, 2023

There is an “Eastern route” for migrants from Africa that crosses Yemen and lands in Saudi Arabia. A new report from Human Rights Watch documents the violence of Saudi border guards against Ethiopian migrants. The U.S. has chosen not to raise the issue publicly.

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World in View: Protests erupt in Syria against Bashar al-Assad

September 12, 2023

On Aug. 25, the flag of revolution flew high in villages, towns and cities across Syria. The Syrian revolutionary process of the second decade of the 21st Century was one of the most important developments to arise from the Arab Spring. Now is the time to solidarize with it, a solidarity that has been sorely missing.

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World in View: After the Niger coup

August 25, 2023

The crucial question after the military coup in Niger is what will it mean for Niger’s 25 million plus people? What is their attitude to the present moment? This is the difficult question which few seem interested in exploring.

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Hugo Blanco (1934-2023), Peruvian Revolutionary

July 19, 2023

Marxist, activist and defender of the Indigenous movement, Peruvian revolutionary Hugo Blanco (1934-2023) died in June. His history shines a light on the needed exploration of the conflictive, contradictory story of Marxism and the Indigenous movement in Latin America today.

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World in View: Mexico Notes, May-June 2023

June 16, 2023

Takes up: how Mexico has increased the number of migrants it has detained five-fold, most at the behest of the U.S.–from 88,000 a year a decade ago to 450,000 now; and that Lopez Obrador is pushing the mega-project “Mayan train” that is invading Indigenous communities, as well as a new airport outside Mexico City, a huge oil refinery, a thermo-electric plant.

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Readers’ Views: May-June 2023

June 15, 2023

Readers’ Views on: Violence and Racism Still Put U.S. in the Dock; American Civilization on Trial; Critical Race Theory; Critical Thinking and Education; 2SLGBTQIA+ Good and Bad News; Is Covid Over?; Remembering the Vietnam War; Syria Genocide Whitewashed; Fanaticism of Reactionaries

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World in View: Haiti citizens fight gangs

June 14, 2023

Haiti in general, and Port-Au-Prince in particular, have come under increasing gang siege. Several hundred Haitians have been killed by the gangs, and over 130,000 have fled their homes. Now residents in scattered neighborhoods are taking the situation into their own hands.

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World in View: Sudanese killed by feuding generals

Sudanese generals—Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on one side and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “Hemedti,” on the other—are sending soldiers against each other in Khartoum making the masses fair game to be bombed, shot, and forced to flee. Hundreds have been killed since the fighting erupted on April 16. It is the Sudanese revolution that both armed factions fear and aim to suppress.

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World in View: Chile moves to the right

June 2, 2023

In a stunning reversal on May 7, voters in Chile elected a majority of far-right candidates responsible for drafting a new constitution. The first draft, written by a progressive coalition of elected representatives from below, had insisted on gender equality and Indigenous rights. It was rejected after an extensive negative campaign of misinformation and right-wing media manipulation.

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World in View: Turkey’s president

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after 20 years in power—first as Prime Minister, and then with a constitutional change as President—faced a challenging election and failed to receive a majority in the first round, before winning the second round runoff.

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World in View: Ortega attacks Nicaraguan human rights

March 21, 2023

Fearing defeat in the 2021 Presidential elections, Ortega’s solution was to jail or deport every possible presidential candidate, along with others opposing his rule, including ex-Sandinistas from the revolution like well-known Sandinista Comandante Dora María Téllez.

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World in View: ‘Peace’ rallies spurn Ukrainian freedom

While tens of thousands across the globe marked the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with support rallies for Ukraine’s fight for self-determination, there were a few disturbing “anti-war” rallies bringing together far-right with Left groups calling for an end to supplying arms to Ukraine.

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Peru’s Congress targets Indigenous

January 25, 2023

A popular rebellion by Peruvian Indigenous and peasants demands self-determination and opposes plutocracy but faces repression under the reactionary Congress and the establishment’s president who replaced the elected president.

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Readers’ Views: Azadkar (Tooraj Haji Moradi), 1952-2022

From the January-February 2023 issue of News & Letters

It hurts to hear that Azadkar has passed. He was slightly built, but a giant in making the Iranian Revolution indigenous to Marxist-Humanism, and Marxist-Humanism indigenous to the Iranian Revolution. He and I participated in an international summit of farmers in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, [=>]

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World in View: After Brexit come strikes

January 22, 2023

Great Britain is in a cost of living crisis. Newspapers are publishing “Heat or Eat Diaries.” Brexit has been an important catalyst for Britain’s dire economic situation. Hopefully the labor militancy now taking place can show a way forward.

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World in View: Migrants die in Qatar

Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, runs on sweated migrant labor. Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup over 6,500 migrant workers have died there building the infrastructure for the games.

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World in View: Saied buries Tunisia’s Arab Spring Revolution

November 12, 2022

Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has completed a counter-revolution aimed at ending the Arab Spring that the Tunisian masses launched in December 2010. He has gotten rid of Parliament and ended judicial oversight, and now has maneuvered a new constitution for the country. This gives him almost total power.

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Indigenous Resistance in Mexico

November 11, 2022

The Xonacatlan Indigenous Council (Juanacatlán, Jalisco State) issued a declaration establishing their territory “free of industry, free of megaprojects, free of mining and material banks.”

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World in View: Haitians demand self-determination

When the U.S.-imposed non-elected, illegitimate government of Ariel Henry decided to raise highly subsidized fuel prices in September, all hell broke loose in Haiti. Mass protests occurred everywhere, particularly on the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Tigray war and famine

September 25, 2022

A critical update after the collapse of the five-month “truce” between Ethiopian government troops and the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. Even before the ceasefire breakdown, the specter of mass starvation loomed over the people of Tigray.

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World in View: Korea’s labor camps

From the mid-1960s through the 1980s, South Korea’s military dictators created “welfare centers,” which were more like concentration camps. One of those was Brothers Home, in which grave human rights violations took place.

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