World in View: Why Haiti is so poor

A new series by the New York Times paints a picture of Haiti’s stark, painful, preventable history of more than 200 years. Slaves who freed themselves in revolution were subverted first by Napoleon’s France—supported by the U.S.—demanding outlandish sums of money as ransom.

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War, climate chaos, capitalism, COVID: World food crisis spreads

July 7, 2022

With Russia’s war on Ukraine, a food crisis is emerging globally with lightning speed. Capitalism, with its agricultural-industrial system of commodity food production for the world market, is the cause of, and suffers from the consequences of, multiple, linked crises of war, COVID, and climate. There is radical opposition to this perfect storm of capitalist crises.

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World in View: Latin American Notes

El Salvador: President Bukele’s response to a spike in gang violence was to arrest 18,000 people, mostly youth, and suspend civil liberties.
Peru: a state of emergency was declared at the Cuajone copper mine, where nearby residents shut down the mine’s water supply, demanding compensation and a share of future profits.

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World in View: Citizens’ revolt erupts across Sri Lanka

A massive citizens’ revolt is taking place in Sri Lanka. It is focused against the authoritarian President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family members, who occupy many government posts. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have taken to the streets in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the President leave.

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World in View: Tunisia in turmoil

Ever since Tunisian President Kais Saied suspended parliament in July 2021, followed in March 2022 by the dissolution of parliament, Tunisia has been in turmoil. Masses in the street protest the lack of jobs and a shortage of basic food items, especially bread for lack of wheat, massive corruption with black markets and Saied’s single-handed decision-making.

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World in View: Resistance in Myanmar

The military junta is detaining 10,000 political prisoners while at the same time there is a growing resistance movement. Tens of thousands of youth from the cities have left for the countryside to join the hundreds of civilian militias across Myanmar, organized loosely into what are called the People’s Defense Forces.

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Climate change report

March 16, 2022

A new report issued by a body of scientists convened by the UN, gives the most detailed description of the dangers posed by the climate crisis: a frightening future of flooding, fire and famine which will displace millions, species extinctions and the earth irreparably damaged.

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World in View: Ongoing resistance to coup in Sudan

More than four months after the military coup in Sudan last October destroyed the transition to civil rule, dozens of resistance committees continue to launch demonstrations, marches and protest meetings, issue manifestos, and hold assemblies to debate how to defeat military rule

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World in View: What way will Xiomara Castro take Honduras?

March 15, 2022

The first woman president elected in Honduras, Xiomara Castro, took office after a 12-year rule by the corrupt, conservative National Party. Will she focus her attention on the powerful grassroots movement which brought her to the presidency allowing its actions to be a determining new beginning for Honduras?

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World in View: IMF loan scam

The International Monetary Fund, which is supposed to lend money to struggling nations in time of need, ends up just like any private capital money-grubbing bank: charging extra fees for the “privilege” of getting a large loan.

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Brazil: floods and inequality

A Brazilian city of over a quarter of a million people close to Rio de Janeiro, was hit in February by a huge rainstorm, the heaviest in nearly a century—almost 10 inches in two hours. It caused 26 landslides which killed 176 people, with more than 100 still missing.

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Readers’ Views: January-February 2022, Part One

February 5, 2022

Readers’ Views on: Labor: Teachers Face Politician Bosses; Labor: Automation and the New Humanism; Socialism, Statism and Philosophy; Fake ‘Right to Life’; Eviction Tsunami; Agribusiness vs. Planet; Afghanistan Exploited; Taiwan Faces China and U.S.; Desmond Tutu; With the Migrant Caravan; U.S. vs. Palestinians

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Chile’s final break with Pinochet-ism?

January 26, 2022

The decisive victory of the leftist presidential candidate Boric in December’s election put one more nail in the coffin of Chilean dictator Pinochet’s fascist legacy. There is a vast difference between a Left electoral power and the powerful Left movement that has grown in the streets.

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Mapuche people fight for their land in Chile

November 19, 2021

In October, right-wing Chilean President Sebastián Piñera twice decreed a 15-day state of emergency for several provinces which directs the armed forces to provide support for policing and surveillance of the Mapuche people. We include part of the Mapuche people’s declaration.

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U.S.-Mexico collusion against immigrants

Once again a migrant caravan—primarily Central Americans and Haitians—is proceeding from southern Mexico towards Mexico City, with hopes of reaching the U.S. While Mexico has historically been a safe haven for exiles the Haitians are facing Mexican government hostility, including National Guard soldiers who have attacked caravans near Mexico’s southern border.

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Ocotlán residents defy criminal mine company

September 20, 2021

Community authorities and residents of the Ocotlán Valley, Oaxaca, are demanding that the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources not give in to pressure from Compañía Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of Canada’s Fortuna Silver Mines, to expand their San José II mining project.

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Abiy Ahmed’s bloodbath in Tigray

July 5, 2021

Ahead of parliamentary elections, Ethiopia’s President Abiy Ahmed proclaimed that he was aiming for a country “where every Ethiopian moves around relaxed, works and prospers.” but instead he launched a brutal civil war against the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray.

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Ortega jails dissidents

July 3, 2021

Nicaragua’s President (for life?) Daniel Ortega, who has won three consecutive terms since returning to office 14 years ago, ruthlessly moved to consolidate his absolute hold on power in advance of the November elections by jailing four of his possible opponents, including Cristiana Chamorro.

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Peru: Election conflict during COVID

A Peruvian post-presidential election battle is raging between Pedro Castillo, a union activist and former schoolteacher, and Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing neoliberal and daughter of the jailed authoritarian former President Alberto Fujimori.

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Russia threatens Ukraine invasion

A seven-year-old war in Ukraine–involving Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists, with Russia’s ominous, close presence–recently underwent an escalation. Ukrainians are caught within this developing new Cold War, subject to competing powers, West and East, far away from any genuine self-determination.

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Pompeo worsens war on Yemen’s masses

In huge swaths of Yemen—particularly in areas controlled by Houthi rebels—famine and mass starvation are rampant. To add to this tragedy, U.S. President Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s parting shot before leaving office was to declare the Houthis a terrorist organization, thus creating draconian difficulties for food aid to reach famine-suffering masses.

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Latin America Notes: January-February 2021

Honduran migrants from the first caravan since Joseph Biden’s election speak about why they are leaving their homeland; and São Paulo, Brazil residents, thrown out of work by the pandemic, are occupying buildings in order to have a place to live.

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News from Mexico: January-February 2021

While the U.S. and Mexico argue whether General Salvador Cienfuegos and former Mexican President Peña Nieto were involved in abetting a narco-trafficking cartel, the Mexican army and navy have a despicable history of human rights violations never honestly investigated. The Zapatistas issued a “Declaration for Life” and intercontinental call for meetings.

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Argentine women win abortion rights

January 29, 2021

After years of struggle by women, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. Abortion will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.

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Argentina’s feminist revolution

January 10, 2021

At four in the morning on Dec. 30, the Argentine Senate finally passed an abortion rights bill, making it legal to terminate a pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. The procedure will be free in government hospitals, crucially important for poor women.

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Ethiopia civil war fears

November 29, 2020

Armed conflict broke out in Ethiopia, two years in the making. It remains to be seen whether it will become a full-blown civil war, and possibly engulf other countries of the region.

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News from Mexico: November-December 2020

Guanajuato has 2,587 missing persons, and 3,438 intentional homicides in the first nine months of 2020; President López Obrador claims to be against neoliberalism, but combines it with state-capitalism in developmentalist projects; many states and communities are COVID-19 hot spots with high levels of deaths, particularly in maquiladoras; and the Zapatistas report on their situation vis-a-vis COVID-19, and their resistance along with CNI against developmentalist projects.

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Latin America Notes

November 25, 2020

Chileans voted by 80% to get rid of the 1980 Constitution and begin the process of writing a new one; Bolivia’s presidential election repudiated the right wing that had taken over the government when Evo Morales was forced to flee last year; and in Colombia, thousands of Indigenous people marched hundreds of miles to Bogotá demanding a meeting with the president to protest extreme violence against their peoples.

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World in view: Massive student-led protests cover Thailand

November 24, 2020

Tens of thousands of Thai students, many from high schools, have been carrying on massive demonstrations for months demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha; rewriting the Constitution that Prayut foisted on the country, including a Senate appointed by the military; and reining in the vast privileges and protections of the monarchy.

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Mexico News: The clandestine graves of Guanajuato

October 31, 2020

‘Mexico news’ takes up the thousands of missing people in Mexico and the found clandestine graves; the resistance to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s developmentalist capitalism; how COVID-19 affects Mexico; and how fare the Zapatistas and their future plans.

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