On Friday 8 July, a few minutes after 5pm local time, Shinzo Abe was pronounced dead. The former PM of Japan, and one of the most influential bourgeois politicians of the last decade, not only in his country but in East Asia generally, was assassinated while making an electoral speech in favour of one of his fellow Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members.

On Saturday 9 July, tens of thousands of ordinary Sri Lankans overcame transport chaos to descend on the capital, Colombo. Police barricades were swept aside like matchsticks, and the masses stood before the steps of the president’s official residence. And then, they surged forward. The masses, in the floodtide of their ‘aragalaya’ (struggle) suddenly overflowed the safe channels that the ruling class had erected to keep them out of politics. Within minutes, thousands of people had taken over the presidential residence. Within hours, the president-in-hiding was forced to name the date of his resignation.

Yesterday in Myanmar, we saw a spontaneous outbreak of industrial workers’ protest against wage cuts, worsening conditions in the workplace and the intensification of work at the A Dream of Kind (ADK) garment factory in Mingalardon township, Yangon. Around 2,000 women workers are demanding labour rights, guarantee of sick leave, casual leave, social welfare, and a wage increase.

In July 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated the 90th anniversary of its founding with a blitz of propaganda boasting about how the party’s rule had led to a prosperous, confident and happy China. Yet a year later, the discontent among the Chinese masses towards the regime has reached unprecedented levels, while those at the top of the byzantine party-state bureaucracy are showing clear differences about how to proceed. What does this reveal, and what is its significance for Marxist revolutionaries?

On Saturday 4 June 2022, a fire followed by a large explosion occurred at the Dutch-Bangladeshi-owned BM Inland Container Depot in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh, killing at least 49 people and injuring around 300 others. As details emerge of how this tragedy occurred, it is becoming clear that this was another case of workers dying for bosses’ profit.

While a lot of attention is being dedicated to the war in Ukraine, an equally important conflict is developing in the Pacific, and it is about who is to dominate this key region: the United States or China? In fact, the main pivot of US foreign policy is against the growing influence of China.

In 2001 US President George W Bush sent American troops into Afghanistan, and soon afterwards the Taliban regime fell. This was followed by years of fighting, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. After twenty years of fighting, the Taliban are now back in power.

Forty-two years ago this week, South Korea was engulfed in the flames of class struggle. Amidst the fight by the masses for democracy and to bring down the military, a heroic episode took place in Gwangju – a city of nearly one million people. The workers beat back a vicious military, and for a few days the working class de facto took over the running of the city, which was briefly under the control of armed workers’ militias.

On Monday 9 May, dramatic events rocked Sri Lanka. After months of economic turmoil, and weeks of mass mobilisations on the streets, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa made a desperate gamble to establish order and save his own political skin. But his brutal crackdown backfired in dramatic style. By nightfall, Mahinda was hiding in a naval base, whilst dozens of MPs’ residences were in flames. By the end of the day, eight people were dead including one MP and two police officers, and the hospitals were flooded with the injured.

On 25 February 1986, the infamously corrupt and brutal dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, fled the country with his family from a revolutionary mass revolt. Yet on 9 May 2022, another Ferdinand Marcos was voted in as president: the son of the senior Marcos also known as “Bongbong.”

Not long ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime was proudly flaunting its successes in containing the COVID-19 pandemic compared to much of the rest of the world. Now, however, one of its major economic centres, Shanghai, is suffering from a surge of the Omicron variant, made worse by bureaucratic blunders.

The IMT is delighted to present the following interviews with leading unionists in India, representing radical, casualised care workers and militant farmers. Workers and farmers: unite and fight!

A month has now passed since nationwide anger erupted in Sri Lanka, leaving the ruling class shell-shocked. The movement has shown remarkable resilience. Neither monsoon rains, nor the Sinhala Tamil New Year festivities, nor the shenanigans of a government that knows every dirty trick in the book have succeeded in defusing the rage of the masses. And yet, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa remains stubbornly entrenched in power, mocking the masses by his presence.

In Pakistan, the government has changed but the political crisis continues, reflecting a deep economic and social crisis. Imran Khan has been ousted. The cracks within the ruling class are widening and the fighting among various factions of the state has now reached levels never seen before, with each side attacking the other publicly and on social media.

The most spectacular struggle of the Sri Lankan people since the 1953 Hartal is presently unfolding. The power of this struggle has forced the resignation of the cabinet. The government’s allies had declared their ‘independence’ in parliament. Meanwhile, Cabraal, the governor of the central bank, has resigned.