For the past six months, there has been a movement around the subdivision (small town) of Zira in the North Indian state of Punjab. The movement centres around pollution of groundwater, caused by the Malbros International Private Limited distillery in the area.

In early February of 2023, citizens of the United States – ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ – are told that they have a new menace to fear. Is it a nuclear-armed stealth drone? A killer robot that invades your home? Or a cyber attack that takes away your savings and steals your identity? The truth is far more terrifying: a balloon from China! For weeks, a bright white spy balloon, visible to the naked eye from the ground, loomed above the world’s most powerful empire. Following the lead of the White House, world politics reeled in terror beneath its terrible shadow.

In a bombshell speech, Nicola Sturgeon announced that she will be stepping down as SNP leader and Scottish First Minister. Sturgeon’s resignation comes at a time when her party and government are looking increasingly rudderless: battered by a litany of failures and false starts, and now facing a stormy period of strikes, austerity, and crisis.

On 26 September 2022, news broke of explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany. The blasts rendered three of the four lines inoperable, and released vast quantities of gas into the Baltic Sea. Ukrainian and Western politicians immediately blamed “Russian sabotage”: a claim that was repeated verbatim by all the major media outlets, without a shred of evidence, as part of a relentless slew of war propaganda. Now, a bombshell exposé by a renowned American journalist has accused the US of orchestrating the attack.

Socialists around the globe, beware – the United States Congress has denounced your horrors! Earlier this month, that beacon of freedom and justice overwhelmingly passed H. Con. Res. 9 to denounce “the horrors of socialism.”

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio (IMR) features marxist.com writer and editor Ben Curry speaking about the current crisis in cosmology, which has been deepened by the first images released by the James Webb Space Telescope.

A new report from Oxfam titled ‘Survival of the Richest’, exposes what may be the biggest increase in global poverty and inequality since the Second World War. Such is the extent of the yawning chasm between rich and poor, that Oxfam’s CEO warned in his speech introducing the report that “the entire capitalist system is under threat”.

Ecuadorians went to the polls last Sunday, 5 February, for municipal elections and to vote in an eight-question referendum called by the banker-president Guillermo Lasso. Lasso’s party came out of the municipal elections completely defeated, while ‘Yes’ – defended by Lasso – lost in all eight questions of the referendum. The elections were a hard blow to the capitalist oligarchy and its political representatives.

We are proud to announce the publication of the French translation of Alan Woods’ History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective. The English language edition received a phenomenal reception upon its release in 2021, demonstrating the thirst that exists for serious works of Marxist theory. The appearance of this latest translation is an important advance for Marxist ideas in the Francophone world, and we congratulate the French-speaking comrades of the IMT on this achievement.

A tide of people flooded Madrid on Sunday in protest against the ongoing collapse of Madrid’s public health system due to privatisation and cutbacks by the right-wing Ayuso government. One million people took part, according to the organisers.

The American Civil War is an event of world-historic significance. This revolutionary war, which consumed US society for four long and bloody years, overthrew slavery as a mode of exploitation and laid the ground for the rapid development of US capitalism. This episode in the class struggle graphically demonstrated the dynamics of revolution, and should be studied by all class-conscious workers and youth.

At the end of January, the international leadership of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) met in Italy. This was the leading body’s first in-person meeting in exactly three years, the last having taken place in January 2020, just as COVID-19 was spreading across the globe. Now, at last, comrades from every continent – 27 countries in total – could meet to reflect and discuss.

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio (IMR) features presenter Joe Attard speaking to Socialist Appeal writer Ben Gliniecki about the crisis of liberalism – and specifically about whether this crisis is now abating, as some bourgeois commentators have claimed. This is merely wishful thinking.

Healthcare systems across the world are facing a deep crisis in the face of austerity, rising healthcare needs and mass staff shortages. This is translating into a massive spike in excess deaths. People are perishing pointlessly under this rotten system. Only a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism can liberate public health from the yoke of capitalism.

Early on the morning of Monday 6 February, a devastating earthquake shook the Middle East, ripping the Earth apart and reducing buildings to rubble. The magnitude 7.8 quake, with its epicentre just to the west of Gaziantep in Turkey’s Anatollian region, is the strongest to hit the country in modern times. With the strength of 130 atomic bombs, it was felt as far away as Greenland.

On 5 February, the Danish Trade Union Confederation, consisting of 79 unions, organised a 50,000-strong demonstration in front of the Danish parliament in protest against the government’s plan to remove a public holiday. The newly-formed government – which consists of an alliance between the Social Democratic Party and two bourgeois parties – have planned to carry out major attacks on the Danish working class.

We have received this report from a comrade who participated in one of two demonstrations called in the Basque Country on 28 January. We think it is very significant that thousands of young people participated in these militant demonstrations under the banner of socialist revolution. This movement should be an inspiration for revolutionary Marxists around the world, and we congratulate the comrades of GKS on their success.

90 years ago, on 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, paving the way for the dictatorship of the Nazis. In this extract, Ted Grant analyses and explains the events that enabled the fascists to come to power.

Sector after sector of workers are joining the growing strike wave. Further coordinated walkouts are in store, following Wednesday’s day of action. To strengthen the movement, these struggles need to be united and organised from top to bottom.

1 February was the biggest day of coordinated strike action in over a decade, with half a million out on strike. We spoke to workers at picket lines and demos up and down the country about their fight against the bosses’ attacks and the Tories’ anti-union bill.