Europe

Over the past few months, a rising number of migrants have attempted to cross from Belarus into the EU via Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. The numbers are small – amounting to a few thousand people at most (roughly 4,000 entering Lithuania, 340 Latvia and 870 Poland). What has been the response of the EU, which presents itself as a paragon of democratic humanitarianism? It has given its member states on the Belarussian border the green light to meet the innocent victims of imperialism with barbed wire, the deployment of soldiers, imprisonment in prison camps and the construction of a wall along the border.

The Norwegian state energy company, Statkraft, has attempted to impose an extremely exploitative contract on construction workers involved in the ‘Los Lagos’ hydroelectric project in Chile. The workers of SINACIN union are fighting back. Meanwhile, comrades from the IMT have led efforts to build international solidarity for the workers, whose struggle has found a sympathetic echo in the Norwegian labour movement. We provide a report here by comrades of the IMT in Chile and Norway.

Left-winger Sharon Graham has won the race to become general secretary of one of Britain’s biggest unions, Unite, which has almost 1.3 million members. She did so by appealing to rank-and-file members with a promise to defend jobs and conditions. This early tremor is a sign of the earthquakes that will shake the trade unions from top to bottom.

Otelo Nuno Romão Saraiva de Carvalho died last month. As a young army major, Otelo planned and coordinated the military coup of 25 April 1974 against the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal, despite the fact that the army had previously been one of its main pillars of support. What Otelo could not foresee was that the masses would surge onto the stage of history through the breach that the 25 April coup created at the very core of the bourgeois state. This date therefore also marked the beginning of the Portuguese Revolution.

Four years after the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist and blogger who led the investigation of the Panama Papers leak in Malta, a new inquiry has concluded that the state should “shoulder responsibility for her death”. The 437-page report does not directly blame the Maltese state for the orchestration of her murder, but it deems that an atmosphere of impunity was generated by the highest echelons of the

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The immense destruction caused by the wildfires in Varybobi, Evia and dozens of other areas of Greece is not solely due to the winds, high temperatures and climate change, as the ND government and the bourgeois media claim. The real cause of this catastrophe is the reactionary policies and the criminal indifference of the Greek ruling class.

The 11 July Bulgarian parliamentary elections dislodged the right-wing GERB (“Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria”) party from power. Deep divisions in the ruling class now threaten to transform a crisis of the regime into one of the whole political system.

Socialist Appeal, the Marxist voice of Labour and youth, has been expelled from the British Labour Party, with the right wing saying they are ‘alien’ and ‘toxic’ to the party’s ‘aims and values’. But Marxism has a long history in the British labour movement, and the Labour Party. This article answers the lies, smears, and slanders.

Heavy rain has caused severe flooding in several regions of Central Europe. Scores of people have died, many have been injured, and even more have lost their belongings. It will take years to repair the damage. Climate change has made extreme weather events like this more likely, which in turn expose the mismanagement of society. The bosses and bourgeois politicians – who failed to prepare for this disaster, despite the warnings; and who undermined emergency services through austerity – are squarely to blame.

Whilst Tory ministers celebrate so-called ‘freedom day’, coronavirus is ripping through society, leading to mounting health problems and pressures on the overstretched NHS. Once again, the Tories and bosses are putting profits before lives.