Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words. (Shakespeare)

“And when they have created a wilderness, they call it Peace.” (Tacitus)

The announcement at the recent BRICS summit that this bloc of countries would be expanded to include six new countries generated a wave of optimistic, almost pious statements from prominent leaders of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), extolling the virtues of this enlarged group of countries from the so-called ‘Global South’.

NATO’s latest summit in Vilnius is being heralded by its members as a great success and a new step in the process of strengthening the military alliance. But then, they wouldsay that. We need to separate the facts from the press conference statements. If you peek into the goings on behind the scenes, you might get a glimpse of the actual divisions, rifts and challenges facing the imperialist organisation.

The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of the post-USSR world order, which was based on the domination of US imperialism. With the rise of China as a world power, Russia taking an increasingly defiant stance internationally, and the US unable to intervene militarily on a large scale, the world policeman’s stick doesn’t carry the weight, nor guarantee the compliance, that it once did. This has major implications for the balance of power on the world stage.

In early February of 2023, citizens of the United States – ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ – are told that they have a new menace to fear. Is it a nuclear-armed stealth drone? A killer robot that invades your home? Or a cyber attack that takes away your savings and steals your identity? The truth is far more terrifying: a balloon from China! For weeks, a bright white spy balloon, visible to the naked eye from the ground, loomed above the world’s most powerful empire. Following the lead of the White House, world politics reeled in terror beneath its terrible shadow.

“This was the year liberal democracy fought back,” declared Janan Ganesh, a particularly dull-witted columnist for the Financial Times on 15 November. The argument put forward by the FT’s international politics correspondent is that, following a period of chaos in which the ‘sensible political establishment’ was heavily discredited, 2022 has been

Child labour – a horror described by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist, which is still rampant in countries ravaged by imperialism to this day – is returning to the advanced capitalist countries, where it had been regarded as a scourge of the past. As capitalism continues to rot, it is taking the youngest all over the

The impact of the war in Ukraine will be felt far beyond European shores. With Russia and Ukraine together being responsible for 12% of all calories traded, and natural gas forming an important component in fertilisers, the war is exacerbating food inflation. Coming at a time when many of the dominated capitalist countries have built up massive debts in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the war is adding to a perfect storm that will provoke class struggle on a global scale.

The 10 richest people in the world have more than doubled their wealth since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, while over 160 million people have been driven into poverty. Inequality is killing one person every four seconds, and the poor are four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the rich. This is all according to Oxfam’s 2022 report Inequality Kills.

A recent report by UNICEF found that 160 million children — a staggering one-in-ten worldwide — are involved in labour considered to be mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful.

At the dawn of 2022, the cries of “Happy New Year” have an empty ring for most people, because most people are not happy at all. In the past, in troubled times, they looked for consolation in religion. But nowadays, the churches stand empty. Instead, people have tended to take refuge in their local pub, or perhaps in the cinema, which have become something like a modern opium of the people. But given that many of these are closed, many have nowhere else to seek comfort than in their television set.

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.

Another year, another overwhelming vote at the United Nations General Assembly against the US blockade against Cuba. This time it was 184 votes for the motion, two against (the US and Israel), and three abstentions (Brazil, Colombia and Ukraine). This is the 29th time the UNGA votes against Cuba's blockade since the motion was first put to the vote in 1992, and once again, the USA will completely disregard it.

The recent meeting of the G7 nations was heralded as being a comeback for America and its allies, with the aim of stifling the rise of China. But instead, the summit only confirmed the decline and disunity of Western imperialism.

We are 16 months into a pandemic that according to some reports has claimed 6.9m lives and plunged capitalism into its deepest-ever crisis, and the ruling class is still torn by internecine squabbles over patent waivers, export bans and priority-deals.