For a whole week, demonstrations have taken place across Catalonia and Spain in protest at the jailing of Communist rapper Pablo Hasél, who was arrested on Tuesday 16 February in Lleida for political opinions expressed in his lyrics and tweets. His jailing has unleashed a groundswell of anger, particularly amongst young people, who have met vicious repression at the hands of the state.

The parliamentary elections in Kosovo on 14 February 2021 ended with a sweeping landslide victory for the left-wing "Movement for Self-Determination" Vetevendosje (VV). They scored a 20 percent increase, from 27.7 percent in the last election in 2019 to 47.85 percent according to the latest count. The centre-right PDK (Democratic Party of Kosovo), founded by Hashim Thaci, lagged far behind with 17.41 percent. The bourgeois conservative LDK (Democratic League of Kosovo), which had been in power for many years in the past, only scored 13.08 percent. Another right-wing formation, the AAK (Alliance for the Future of Kosovo), led by former UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army) commander Ramush

The MSF recently held its largest ever national conference, with hundreds of young people from schools and universities across the country taking part. There has never been a better time to get involved and join the revolution!

The scandalous arrest of a left-wing rapper for telling hard truths about the rotten Spanish state has led to furious protests against this assault on freedom of expression.

Following a fortnight of blunders, Keir Starmer and the Labour right wing are on the defensive. Bold calls for a recall conference are clearly making a mark. The left must press forward and take the fight to the right.

The Tories are attempting to whip up hysteria around questions of identity and culture, in an effort to distract from their own failings and divide the working class. The left must fight a class war, not a culture war.

On 2 February, the Ukrainian president issued sanctions on three of the most popular television news channels in the country. Media outlets getting shut down is nothing new in Ukraine, ever since the Euromaidan brought a right-wing government to power in 2014. However, the recent events represent the most concerted move to shut down opposition media in Ukraine’s history.

The inaction of the Giuseppe Conte government in the face of the deepest economic, political and social crisis in Italy since the Second World War had become unbearable for big business. That explains why the figure of Mario Draghi has come to the rescue. It is clear, however, that this bourgeois technocrat has no solutions for the problems facing the Italian workers.

The Marxist Student Federation in Britain invites you to the online MSF Conference 2021 this Saturday! The past six months have seen enormous students struggles emerge, with the biggest University rent strike movement in forty years foremost amongst them. We have also seen the government's attempt to write anti-capitalism out of schools, which the MSF answered with its Tell the Truth campaign. All this and more will be discussed. Buy your ticket now!

Brexit is only a month old. But already, Ireland has been caught in the crossfire as the UK and EU clash. The menace of Protestant sectarianism is rising once again. Only united class struggle can offer a way forward.

The Portuguese presidential election saw a collapse of the left vote. This was due to a number of factors. On the one hand, there was the tacit support given to the centre-right candidate, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, from the right wing of the Socialist Party (PS). On the other, the candidates themselves competed knowing that they would not win. This was the case with Marisa Matias, the candidate for the Left Bloc (BE), who recognised the victory in the first round by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and for that reason applied with the sole “mission” of “defeating fascism.” 

Left-wing groups and trade unions in Britain have come together to launch a united campaign for an immediate recall Labour conference, to fight back against the right wing's attacks on party democracy. We say: Put power in the membership's hands!

On 24 January, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the independent Portuguese presidential candidate, was re-elected in a landslide victory, with 61 percent of the vote. Whilst he was the centre-right candidate, he had the tacit support of the ruling Socialist Party. The election has attracted some interest internationally because of the fact that Chega, the far-right party, won 12 percent of the vote, up from around 1 percent in the parliamentary elections of 2019. The real winner in these elections, however, was not Marcelo, but ‘none of the above’.

Only a month into 2021, this year is turning out to be, if not a turning point in the modern history of Russia, then certainly a year of tremendous importance. No matter how much the authorities may wish it was so, the start of a new year doesn’t herald a new beginning or a fresh slate as far as the accumulated contradictions of Russian capitalism are concerned. On the contrary, these contradictions are being sharpened by the day, raising more and more sharply the question, “socialism or barbarism?”

Britain has officially passed the figure of 100,000 COVID deaths. Despite claims of inevitability and attempts to shift the blame onto ordinary people, this was never inevitable and it is the Tories – and the system they defend – that are to blame. This article was originally published 27 Jan at socialist.net. At the current time, the death toll is closer to 110,000.