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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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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