The announcement at the recent BRICS summit that this bloc of countries would be expanded to include six new countries generated a wave of optimistic, almost pious statements from prominent leaders of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), extolling the virtues of this enlarged group of countries from the so-called ‘Global South’.

Meta, the social media giant that owns Facebook and Instagram, began blocking all news from its platforms in Canada in August. The news ban followed the federal government’s passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which required big tech to pay media outlets for content they use or repurpose on their platforms. Google also planned to begin blocking news in Canada by the end of the year, when C-18 comes into effect. For communists, the banning of news on platforms owned by billionaires underscores the need for an independent workers’ press through the production and distribution of a physical newspaper.