International Viewpoint


On 6 November, our friend and comrade Paul Mepschen passed away, far too young. For many years, Paul had been one of the central people in SAP, the Dutch section of the Fourth International. He was a dedicated socialist and scholar whose work and life revolved around emancipation. Paul's warm and sympathetic personality will be missed by many.

Exhausted by over three years of Russian attacks, Ukrainians are increasingly ready to accept unfair political compromises and harsh territorial concessions to end the war. Yet it's far from clear that this hard choice will actually bring lasting peace.

“In Britain, the various shades of the far right can continue to content themselves with continuing and prospering the work of political formations that have long been hegemonic and are now both in the grip of a crisis of legitimacy of unprecedented gravity. ”

Since August, at least 70 people have been killed by strikes by the U.S. armed forces on boats mainly from the Venezuelan coast, in the Caribbean Sea, under the pretext of the fight against narcoterrorism.

The media hype in Portugal about the “survival” of the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) has the same function as the anti-gypsy posters of André Ventura (president of the far-right Chega party), namely, to distract through a gesture with one hand, while the other takes care of more lucrative tasks.

“For nearly four years, Ukrainian defenders have fought not only Russian imperialism but also their own state's failures in mobilisation, welfare, and accountability.”

The common weal versus capitalist modernity.
Free public transport can open cities to all. It combats social injustice and can also help to tackle climate change, by moving away from car-centred urban transport systems.
Public transport has been made free in more than 130 municipalities in Brazil – and, in Europe, Luxembourg; Tallinn, Estonia; Belgrade, Serbia and several French cities.
In this interview, the writer and activist Denys Gorbach talks with Dr Simon Pirani about Kryvyi (…)

“The Zapatista Army of National Liberation chose differently. From the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico's Indigenous revolutionaries issued an uncompromising condemnation of the invasion that prioritised solidarity with grassroots resistance over geopolitical convenience. Their position—supporting Ukrainian resistance and Russian anti-war movements whilst rejecting both Putin and NATO—offered a radical alternative to the campist logic that dominated leftist discourse across Latin America and in Spain. When Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023, the Zapatistas applied the same ethical framework, condemning those who "justified Putin's invasion of Ukraine citing 'self-defense' but now invalidate that argument against Israel, and vice versa."”

What does it mean to be left-wing and find yourself facing an invasion that you didn't choose or want, that forces you to revise your principles, while continuing to defend a more just society? A Discussion with the Ukrainian anti-authoritarian group Solidarity Collectives.

“They come from different generations, have different life experiences, and hold different political views. This diversity demonstrates that, despite the absence of public demonstrations and the lack of any real possibility of organizing an open anti-war movement in Russia, an anti-war movement does exist there.”

“In Russia and occupied Ukraine, many thousands of civilians have been jailed or forcibly disappeared for speaking out against the invasion. The numbers reflect a crackdown on dissent worse than at any point since the 1950s.”

The East African country of Tanzania has been going through the most serious political crisis in its history since gaining independence in 1961, following the disputed re-election of Samia Suluhu Hassan as president. There is now talk of thousands of deaths, an estimate corroborated by diplomatic sources.

One of the most famous sayings about revolutions is attributed to Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767-1794): “Those who make revolution halfway only dig their own graves.” This saying also applies to armed conflicts ...

While empty promises are repeated in Belém, a plurality of social, indigenous and environmental movements are promoting an internationalist agenda against extractivism and for climate justice from various meeting spaces.

President Donald Trump appears for the first time in his second term to be facing serious challenges that threaten his until now nearly absolute domination of government. First and foremost, is the sense that he is not fulfilling his promise to make the economy affordable for most Americans.

With each passing day, the evidence—not only scientific but also empirical, as seen in [the floods in] Valencia last year—confirms the ecological emergency. Not as a phenomenon of a grim future, but as a present reality. The UN Secretary-General himself, António Guterres, stated that 2024 was "a masterclass in climate destruction." This statement was part of his opening address at the COP29 global climate summit in Baku, exactly one year ago.

Despite dramatic warning signs, global politicians continued to back the fossil fuel-based economic order.

For nearly two years, Israel has waged a livestreamed genocide against Indigenous Palestinians in Gaza and across historic Palestine, devastating lives, land, and ecosystems. UN experts have described Israel's crimes as including domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and ecocide. In September 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

In a recent interview, Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights reporting to the President of the Russian Federation, admitted to having ‘taken in' and ‘re-educated' a Ukrainian teenager. At the time, she mentioned around 20,000 similar cases.

The Trump administration fired Carla Hayden, the first African American and first woman librarian of Congress, by text message.