International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

In this interview for the Greek website Ela Liberta at the end of October, Joseph Daher explains his position on the Kurdish movement in Syria in detail.

“Our uprising has nothing to do with the collar-and-tie pantomime artistes who govern us. It was the visible expression of an invisible force. It was the public manifestation of a drive for life. It came from gut feeling and from the heart. You do not subject gut feeling to balance sheets. You do not lock up the heart in accounting columns.”

The media rarely discuss AIDS anymore, and when a news report does appear it usually is about a new drug that helps people stay alive longer or even about “the end of AIDS.” Many doctors and biomedical researchers think that findings in the last five years have opened the way to use antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV transmission and, in addition, see these drugs as prolonging the lives of the HIV-infected indefinitely.

In late summer a sudden surge in the number of couples seeking a divorce was reported in Shanghai. This was not due to a high number of relationships suddenly falling apart. Instead, rumours were being circulated that the municipal government would soon introduce new tougher restrictions for the purchase of property, which favoured first time buyers and so couples were rushing to get a so called “paper divorce” before the changes took effect, in the hope that they would still be able to buy a second home more cheaply. This drastic action by many couples in Shanghai to the potential change in legislation was not the first such response of its kind, but one which once again goes to highlight some of the absurdities of the property market in China.

THE SWIRLING CRAZINESS and bizarre entertainments of the 2016 presidential election sometimes obscure how much the outgoing U.S. administration — and the next one taking office in January 2017 — face a set of global crises on a scale that’s hard to recall in recent history.

For the Left the Brexit vote is absolutely no cause for celebration. We can neither support the motivation of the vast majority of the Brexit voters, nor can we use the outcome of that vote for our political work. Social welfare systems will be increasingly under attack, the flow of workers from Eastern Europe and refugees will diminish, racist class divisions will intensify, not to mention the rise of racist forces in other EU countries spurred on by this vote.

The Communia Network political project in Italy is very much connected to a profound reflection about the crisis of the class struggle left and also what has been defined, somewhat provocatively, as “the end of the workers’ movement”.

We are at a cross roads in terms of the impact of our species on the planet. The actions of modern human beings, ‘homo sapiens’—i.e. us—are set to determine, during the course of the 21st century, whether or not the planet we live on, along with millions of other species, will remain habitable .

At the end of June, the group of Venezuelan revolutionaries who now make up the organisation LUCHAS, began publishing a series of twenty-four theses on the current situation in Venezuela, its causes and its consequences. At the time these first three theses were published, which we published here, they were still members of the organisation Marea Socialista, though increasingly critical of what they saw as MS’s decision to adopt a position of explicit opposition to the Bolivarian government. They presented themselves as Marea Socialista-Original Line. That was still the situation when a second group of four theses were published which we reprint below. Shortly after that, at the end of July, on what would have been Chavez’ 62nd birthday, they announced their decision to break with MS and set up the new organisation. Liga Unitaria Chavista y Socialista (LUCHAS) (IV)