World news

By Niall Mulholland (Committee for a Workers International – CWI) On Sunday 15 August, Taliban militiamen, packed onto their trademark pick-up trucks, drove unopposed into Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, ousting the US-backed government of Ashraf Ghani. Thousands of fearful residents, many with bitter memories of the last Taliban regime, tried desperately to board planes to flee the hardline Islamic force. Ghani ...

By Tony Saunois, secretary of the Committee For A Workers’ International (CWI) Amid unprecedented events, thousands of supporters of Donald Trump supporters rallied in Washington on 6 January. Hundreds, some armed, then stormed the congress buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Donald Trump, promising a “wild” protest had summoned his supporters to come together, with far-right militias like the ...

By Robert Bechert, Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) In the US, and around the world, millions greeted Trump’s defeat in the US elections. His probable removal from office, notwithstanding his legal claims, will be widely welcomed. Clearly, there will be changes within the US and international repercussions – although many of the US foreign policy changes will be in ...

By Hannah Sell, Socialist Party General Secretary A decade ago, following the worldwide financial crash, a Financial Times editorial congratulated capitalism on a bit of luck that “the left” was “missing in action in what should have been its finest hour. In the deepest global downturn since the second world war, no blueprint for a fundamentally different method of organising ...

Statement by the International Secretariat of the Committee for a Workers’ International The words of W.B Yeats, from his poem ‘Easter 1916’, sum up the current world situation: “All changed, changed utterly.” 2020 is the opening of a new era, as we have explained in the previous CWI analysis. Fundamental changes are taking place in the world economy, geo-political relations, ...

By Jai Chavis and Nicholas Wurst, Independent Socialist Group (US) On 25 May, police in Minneapolis choked George Floyd, an unarmed black man, who subsequently died. His death was disturbingly reminiscent of the NYPD killing of Eric Garner in 2014. A released video recorded by bystanders shows Floyd repeatedly pleading, “I can’t breathe”,  as officer Derek Chauvin crushes his neck ...

Statement from the International Secretariat of the Committee For A Workers International On the other side of the coronavirus pandemic crisis, things will never be the same again. This will be similar to the situation after the two world wars of the twentieth century. The general situation has already unmistakably “changed, changed utterly!” Moreover, it is the rapid speed of ...

By Robert Bechert on the CWI website  Shockwaves went around the world, and outrage spread in the Middle East, as news broke of Trump’s unilateral decision to assassinate Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and a key Iranian leader. Suleimani had a legendary status, particularly amongst Shias, throughout the Middle East. He was a labourer’s son ...

Socialist Party Scotland Unions must organise for action to defend the NHS, public services, the environment, benefits and workers’ rights Build a new mass working class party Fight for an independent socialist Scotland Boris Johnson and the Tories’ election victory will have angered and disappointed many workers and young people. He may have been elected promising ‘an end to austerity’ ...

By Clare Doyle The mass movement in Hong Kong against the local stooges of the Beijing regime appears to be an unstoppable force coming up against an immovable object. Over the past nine weeks, around 600 people have been arrested, over forty of them on charges of riot that can carry a ten year prison sentence. On Saturday (10 August) ...