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As the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on society, Fred Weston, editor of www.marxist.com, discussed the COVID-19 crisis via livestream last night (16 March), and how this is the product of a sick system. Only a bold socialist response can provide the cure. Join the International Marxist Tendency and help us fight for a revolutionary alternative!

Claudio Bellotti - editor of Rivoluzione - discusses the impact of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, which has the second-most cases after China. Around 24,000 people have been confirmed to have the disease. This emergency has exposed the underlying rot in Italian capitalism. A public health crisis has been brewing for decades, due to massive cuts to the Italian health system over the course of 30 years. Meanwhile, the erratic reaction of the government reflects the weakness and divisions in the ruling class.

On 14 March, in Moscow, near the FSB building, a series of peaceful pickets was to be held against the “Network Case” and new constitutional amendments introduced by the regime. But the authorities decided that, on this day, they would prevent even legal protests – at any cost. Several special police units were deployed in order to arrest not only the protesters, but also the journalists covering the protests. As a result, more than 50 people were arrested.

Events on a world scale are moving at breakneck speed. The new coronavirus (COVID-19) has set in motion a chain reaction, which is upending any semblance of stability in one country after another. All of the contradictions of the capitalist system are coming crashing to the surface.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, Hamid Alizadeh (editor of www.marxist.com) discusses how capitalism and the ruling class are completely incapable of addressing the crisis.

In the past three weeks, stock markets such as the Dow Jones and the FTSE in London have lost more than 25 percent of their values. Meanwhile the world economy has been grinding to a halt. Unemployment is creeping up in one country after another. Capitalism is in a crisis on a world scale. The ruling class is blaming the crisis on the novel coronavirus. But this virus is only bringing to the surface contradictions which have been building up for decades within the capitalist system.

The following was written by a comrade whose sister tragically became a victim of femicide, which has become a plague on Mexican society. The comrade demands justice for her sister, and every other victim of the rotten capitalist system, which has violence against women written into its DNA. Not one more woman murdered! Justice for Sara Abigail and all victims of femicide!

Every day, 10 women are murdered on average in Mexico. Yet open violence is only the tip of the iceberg. Mexican women face constant harassment, discrimination and humiliation at home, in the workplace, and in the streets. Women in general, and working-class women in particular, bear the brunt of the crisis of Mexican capitalism and the process of social decomposition that accompanies it. Pent-up anger at this state of affairs has now come to surface as International Women’s Day saw unprecedented mobilisations, followed by a women’s strike that paralysed the

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After much delay, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today announced the government’s lacklustre response to the covid-19 pandemic. The labour movement must fight to ensure that workers, the poor, and the vulnerable do not suffer as a result of the outbreak.

Yesterday's Budget announcement by Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak attempted to calm the capitalists’ fears with promises of extra spending and stimulus. But British capitalism faces a perfect storm, and the Tories’ promises will soon turn to dust.