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Global Left Midweek - May 22, 2019

Portside
Elections: India, Philippines, South Africa, EU * Europe's Social Democrats * Gay Marriage in Taiwan * Brazil vs Bolisaro * Iran's Working Class

As EU Elections Approach, Europe Confronts a Cliff

Conn Hallinan Foreign Policy in Focus
With the hard right running left and the center-left abdicating, Euroskeptics could accelerate a continent-wide crisis. Global migration is on the rise as climate change drowns coastlines, river deltas and drought drives people out of arid climates.

“This European Union is a Project by and for Powerful Multinationals”

Marc Botenga spectrezine
Against the self-serving behavior of the elite, we are seeing the rise of two currents. One of them bases its decisions on fear. They want us to direct our anger downwards, to spit on the unemployed, refugees, people who have things even tougher. It’s a trick. By spitting on those below, they are protecting the elite above. In doing so they avoid the question of power. But there is also another current. It is led not by fear but by hope.

In Austria’s Rust Belt, Workers Swing Toward Right-Wing Populism

Angela Mayr Il Manifesto
Many workers in Austria's rust belt, once a center of Socialist and Communist strength, are supporting a far right candidate for president. Many express disappointment with the E.U., immigrants, the government’s stalemate locked in an eternal grand coalition, the desire to change the system.

Radical Internationalism: What Europe & the Left Need

Yanis Varoufakis The New Statesman
The left has been in disarray since 1991 - it never fully recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite widespread opposition to Stalinism and -authoritarianism. In the past two decades, we have witnessed a major spasm of global capitalism that has triggered a long deflationary period across the United States and Europe. Just as the Great Depression did in the 1930s, this has created a breeding ground for xenophobia, racism and scapegoating.

labor

Free Trade Winners and Losers

Gary Herman Union Solidarity International
The Canada-European Union "Free" Trade Pact, due to be signed on October 27, like other such agreements, favors corporate power and profits at the expense of working people. Dock workers action last July shows resistance is possible.

Hello, This is Capitalism

Walter Baier transform!europe
How then do we navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, between a naïve pro-Europeanism and assimilation to nationalism? The EU must be democratised or it will be discredited; it will be peaceful or it will perish. We have to dare not to break with the idea off European unity but with the neoliberal and authoritarian framework of the institutions and treaties through which this idea has been actualised.
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