For the sixth time Benjamin Netanyahu has become Prime Minister of Israel. This time he returned to power by bargaining for a government of the most extreme right: an ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition.
World in View
World in View: Right-wing Brazilians storm the capitol
Days after Lula da Silva had taken office as President of Brazil, right-wing supporters of former President Bolsonaro stormed the Congress, Presidential Office and Supreme Court in Brasilia.
World in View: After Brexit come strikes
January 22, 2023Great 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.
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.
World in View: Saied buries Tunisia’s Arab Spring Revolution
November 12, 2022Tunisia’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.
World in View: Haitians demand self-determination
November 11, 2022When 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.
World in View: Lebanon’s citizens deal with failing state
People are robbing banks in Lebanon as the only way to get to their own money. The economy has experienced a meltdown. Years of war, sectarian violence, and rampant corruption have led to extreme poverty for Lebanon’s citizens and thousands of Middle East refugees there.
World in View: Europe’s racist leaders
In both Sweden and Italy neo-fascist leaders have won great influence: Jimmie Akesson in Sweden and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. They have in common vicious anti-immigrant and other racists beliefs and actions.
World in View: Tunisia retrogression
September 25, 2022A critical note on the post-Arab Spring Tunisia, which has gone back to one-man rule.
World in View: Sierra Leone protests
A view of the Aug. 10 protest in Freetown, Sierra Leone, its causes and its immediate aftermath
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.
World in View: Grave contradictions plague Mexico
September 13, 2022Two ongoing events in Mexico: 1) The state finally admitted its role in the 2014 murder of 43 Ayotzinapa students, and 2) the administration’s construction of an oil refinery in Dos Boscos.
World in View: Progressives elected in Colombia
July 19, 2022The stunning electoral victory of Gustavo Petro as President and Francia Márquez as Vice President marks a new moment for Colombia.
World in View: Militant truckers strike in South Korea
July 12, 2022More than 7,000 truckers took part in an eight-day strike for better pay and fewer hours. A measure dubbed the “Safe Trucking Freight Rate,” which ensures minimum pay, is set to expire this year.
World in View: India’s unemployment stirs youth revolts
Double-digit growth in India’s economy cannot hide the gravest of contradictions—massive unemployment especially among the youth.
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.
World in View: Philippines dictator Jr.
In rejecting a return to liberal capitalism, which presided over the growth of inequality in the Philippines, voters have elected Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., who promised them nothing when campaigning on a blank platform.
World in View: Will Yemenis survive the proxy war?
May 19, 2022After seven years of war in Yemen, the UN estimates that almost 400,000 people, primarily civilians, have died, 60% from hunger and disease, with children being 70% of the deaths. The war has become a proxy for the Saudi Arabia-Iran Middle East conflict.
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.
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.
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.
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.
World in View: Ongoing resistance to coup in Sudan
March 16, 2022More 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
World in View: Iron fist at Olympics
It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.
World in View: Victory for #MeToo
March 15, 2022A new federal law renders binding arbitration clauses in contracts void in cases of sexual assault and harassment. Women’s rights activists and national organizations worked for five years to get legislation introduced to stop the practice. This year it passed by a wide margin in February, and took effect March 3.
World in View: What way will Xiomara Castro take Honduras?
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?
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.
World in View: Africa’s capitalism and Sudan’s revolution
February 7, 2022Congo’s joining the East African Community epitomizes the plans being made over the heads of the African masses. The contradictions between the people, local capitalists and other power brokers, and world imperialism will intensify as these developments go forward. In effect, the elites would like to create a mechanism for mediating social contradictions in the wake of Sudan’s revolution.
World in View: Maxwell’s iceberg
The guilty verdicts in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial don’t end the Jeffrey Epstein story. Prosecutors conducted it to reveal as little as possible about their network and associates—as if “settling family business”—but much has been learned.
World in View: French election shows bourgeois crisis
French President Macron’s calculated use of fascist language marked a new low. He may have felt it necessary in response to the racist, anti-immigrant campaign of Eric Zemmour.
World in View: For a Sudanese Revolution in permanence
November 19, 2021The concrete difficulties of the Sudanese Revolution, which since Oct. 25 has been facing a coup by the state-capitalist militarists who control much of the economy, can be seen in the blockade of Port Sudan.
World in View: Aramesh Dustdar
A remembering of philosopher Aramesh Dustdar (1931-2021), an important critic of the retrogression of the Iranian Revolution.
World in View: Nihilistic ‘science’
Emmett connects the ever-growing surveillance state as part of contemporary capitalism, with the “scientific” expression of the worst kind of nihilism and anti-humanity as expressed in Sebastien Bohler’s book “The Human Bug.”
World in View: China’s and U.S.’s imperial maneuvers
November 17, 2021The front line of the capitalist-imperialist U.S-China confrontation shifts to the Pacific Ocean, with Taiwan in the crosshairs.
Daraa and Free Syria
September 22, 2021In Daraa, the birthplace of the Syrian Revolution, resistance has continued. Fifty Syrian revolutionaries and their families were forced to leave the city to join other revolutionaries in the Free Syrian enclave in the country’s northwest.
World in View: COVID-19, philosophy, and revolution
June 29, 2021The ruling class response to the pandemic was to lie, obfuscate, and manipulate the public in its own interest. The possibility that COVID-19 may have been a lab leak illustrates how capitalism can turn our deepest insights into our own nature towards our own destruction.
World in View: RIP Bunny Wailer
For many, the rhythms of Bunny Wailer’s 1976 Blackheart Man album sounded like the beating heart of a heartless world. Spark lit from embers of a fallen empire, the influence of reggae and Black consciousness remains one of the great moments in popular culture.
World in View: Rogue generals send France a chilling message
A letter to the French government warned of civil war. Signed by 25 retired generals and about 1,000 service personnel, it claimed that the nation’s “civilizational values” are threatened by immigrants , Islamism, “anti-racism” and attacks on the police and military.
World in View: Tunisia youth protest
Youth revolt broke out in Tunisia after police brutalized a 15-year-old. This year over 2,000 youths have been arrested in protests, many having been beaten and some tortured.
World in View: The Syrian Revolution can’t be killed
May 8, 2021It has been said, “The Revolution is an idea; you can’t kill an idea.” The thousands who gathered in Idlib city on March 15, the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, lived that truth.
World in View: COVID-19 decimates India
A second wave of COVID-19 is devastating India. Each day over 300,000 new cases are reported, and over 3,000 people die. In the midst of this, the farmers’ protests continue as thousands remain camped outside Delhi. The Modi government has accused the camps of being “super-spreader” events, while farmers say the government is using the pandemic to demobilize its opponents.
World in View: Africa in the crosshairs of world imperialism
The capitalist world remains in a deep crisis and now faces a crossroads. U.S., Chinese, and European imperialism all have aging populations and mounting debt . They need to find new sources of labor and natural resources to plunder. Africa, with the youngest population of any major region and abundant mineral wealth, is a target.
World in View: Academic tragedies
A wildfire that broke out April 18, 2021, forced the evacuation of the University of Cape Town, South Africa’s campus and destroyed a major part of the library. The Jagger Reading Room housed thousands of historic African films, letters, and manuscripts, many relating to the anti-apartheid struggle. Also lost were thousands of indigenous artworks and over 85,000 books.
World in View: Historic mass strike of India’s farmers
January 30, 2021An estimated 250 million Indian farmers have been on strike since last September in opposition to a series of new laws, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
World in View: Iran: assassination, imperialism, ‘conspiracy’
Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated as his car convoy passed through the town of Absard on Nov. 27. No suspect was apprehended. Speculation fell on Israel, the U.S., and Iranian oppositionists.
World in View: EU contradictions
There is danger of neo-fascist parties gaining or taking control in several European countries including Germany, France, The Netherlands and Italy.
World in view: Massacre in Tigray
Thousands have died—including an undetermined number of civilians—and tens of thousands become refugees in the current conflict between Ethiopia’s central government and the regional government of Tigray. The central government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is being aided in its war by the Eritrean regime of long-time dictator Isaias Afwerki.
World in View: EU enables fascism
November 25, 2020The European Union has once more proved its feckless inability to halt the destruction of democracy by Hungary and Poland, who caused a crisis by vetoing the EU budget, needed to fund the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery plan.
World in View: ISIS in Mozambique
November 24, 2020In early November, terrorists linked to the “Islamic State,” beheaded up to 50 villagers, men and boys, in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado. They are looking to exploit extensive energy resources, along with mineral wealth. High unemployment helps fuel the insurgency.
World in view: Belarus thaws in a world in flames
August 29, 2020President Alexander Lukashenko, “Europe’s last dictator,” has ruled Belarus for 26 years. His time may be up, as hundreds of thousands of protesters have filled the streets of the capital, Minsk.