A mass movement of strikes and protests has developed in Belarus, protesting the corrupt authoritarian rule of Aleksander Lukashenko. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets. There are strikes in manufacturing plants, the energy sector, steel works, mining, petrochemicals, the media and other sectors. Lukashenko and his allies have responded with repression, unleashing state forces to attack protests and arresting strike leaders, which has further radicalised and broadened the movement.

We stand in solidarity with the struggle in Belarus. It is part of a new wave of protests—also encompassing Lebanon, Bolivia, Mali and Thailand—demanding political and social change. This follows a wave of revolts in 2019 that was interrupted by the Coronavirus pandemic, but which is now re-emerging, in many cases deepened by the impact of the pandemic and the associated economic collapse.

The movement in Belarus has been compared to the so-called “Colour Revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia ...

1. The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is generally presented as a “natural disaster”, an “external shock” to the normal functioning of the capitalist system. But this is quite untrue. There have been various novel coronavirus and influenza outbreaks (SARS, MERS, H5N1): epidemiologists warned posed the threat of a global pandemic.. The conditions for these outbreaks have been created, as the work of Marxist biologists such as Rob Wallace have shown, by the spread of intensive factory farming and the penetration by the market and capital of remote areas where new viruses develop among wild animal and bird populations.¹ It is a good example of what Marx called the “irreparable rift in the interdependent process between social metabolism and natural metabolism” created by capitalist agriculture – and, more broadly, of the destruction of nature driving climate change. This is a thoroughly capitalist pandemic that, if not combated, would take ...

The refugees are being made to pay the price for the war in the Middle East. While the governments of Turkey and Greece are trying to benefit from the conflict between the imperialist blocks, they are both doing their best to get rid of the refugees within their borders and to block the entry of people fleeing the horrors of war.

Facing the Russian armed forces and the Assad regime in Idlib, Turkey declared that it would no longer prevent refugees from crossing the border into Europe. Upon hearing this, tens of thousands of refugees, sick and tired of the poverty, exploitation and racism they have been suffering in Turkey, began to make their way to the West in order to cross by sea or by land.

While thousands of refugees remain stuck along the Turkish border, the Greek security forces, in co-operation with the European Border and Coast ...

1. Donald Trump, in ordering the assassination of Qassem Soleimani along with other Iranian and Iraqi military leaders, has committed an act of war that could set the Middle East on fire.

2. The killings no doubt were motivated by short-term political calculations on Trump’s part, but they belong to the latest phase in the crisis of US domination of the region.

3. This crisis can be traced back to the US and British Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The removal of Saddam Hussein and the defeat of the occupation created a power vacuum that both states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region – Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates – and outside powers, above all Russia, have sought to exploit. Their rivalries have provoked a series of dangerous and bloody conflicts – in Syria, Yemen, and Libya. The US-backed pipeline deal between ...