The recent agreement between Australia, the UK and the US has caused a crisis in international relations. With France temporarily recalling its ambassador from Washington and China issuing a protest, the new agreement has upset feelings across the board. This deal, however, merely constituted one more step in a wider realignment among the imperialist powers.

Senior officials within the CIA and the Trump administration plotted to kidnap, and even assassinate, Julian Assange: whistle-blower and founder of WikiLeaks, as revealed by a shocking report in Yahoo News, published last Sunday.

In a historic and unanimous vote by ten ministers, the Supreme Court of Mexico has declared the penalisation of women who decide to get an abortion unconstitutional. That this vote has taken place now is clearly the result of our struggle in the streets, which has made it impossible for women’s rights to be ignored any longer. Without this struggle, the vote simply never would have happened.

Last week, in a desperate gamble the Bukele government in El Salvador introduced a new Bitcoin Law that will make the volatile cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation. The measure has been extremely unpopular and has met with all manner of technical and political problems. Since the first of these two articles was written, a massive protest of 10,000 people against the Bukele regime took place on 15 September, marking El Salvador’s 200 years of independence. The comrades from the Bloque Popular Juvenil (Salvadorean section of the IMT) participated actively.

On 7 September, competing demonstrations were held in Brazil, both for and against the Bolsonaro government. We publish two reports from our Brazilian comrades about these protests and what they indicate about the political situation in the country.

The US Supreme Court has voted to uphold a new Texas state law that drastically limits access to legal abortions. This scandalous attack on reproductive rights must be met with working-class resistance in defence of fundamental democratic freedoms, which are under threat from the rotten US capitalist system.

Twenty years ago today, the United States witnessed the biggest and bloodiest attack on its soil in modern history. At least 2,977 men and women died and at least 25,000 were injured after a gang of terrorists crashed a series of commercial aircraft into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, leaving the American people in a state of shock and disbelief. Across the world, millions of people looked on in horror at devastating scenes of desperate people trapped in the upper floors of the towers, some of whom jumped to their deaths rather than face being burnt alive, shortly before the towers collapsed, leaving thousands buried under the rubble.

Under pressure from the big landlords, the Supreme Court has nullified an extended moratorium on evictions, implemented in the interest of slowing the spread of COVID. Some seven million Americans are behind on rent and millions of working-class families now face

Our US website received the following letter from one of our comrades in New Orleans who is experiencing first-hand the devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. Ida’s fury once again exposed the lack of preparedness and planning that is inherent in private ownership of the means of production.

For years the massive mobilisation of the Venezuelan masses cast aside the repression of the state apparatus. However, the failure to complete the socialist revolution has created economic chaos. As the Maduro government has attempted to make workers pay for the crisis and the bureaucracy has become bolder in asserting its own interests, it has met the resistance of working-class activists with increasing state repression, arrests, and victimisation.

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.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has turned into utter humiliation for US imperialism. It has not only exposed a relative military and economic decline, it has also exposed a growing mood of war-weariness at home. Workers in the US have become sick and tired of the ruling class’ endless military adventures, whilst the basic needs of US citizens at home are going unmet. This article was written one week ago, before the Taliban had taken Kabul. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest developments.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in early July. Many of the details surrounding his assassination are still shrouded in mystery. While 27 suspects have been arrested and a total of 44 have been detained—including four police officers and 18 former Colombian soldiers—there remain many questions, including who organized the assassination and why.

For years, a toxic culture of rampant sexism has permeated Activision Blizzard, the video game development company behind titles including World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. This was blown open publicly on 20 July when California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging widespread sexism in the workplace, and calling the company “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination.” The suit also alleges that women were paid less than men for the same roles, often forced into lower-rank positions, and were promoted less frequently than their male peers.

Jorge Martin, editor for In Defence of Marxism, appeared on Rupture Radio talking about the Cuban Revolution, the recent protests that have broken out in the country, the imperialist blockade, and the tasks facing revolutionaries. You can listen to the entire thought-provoking discussion here.