The Taiwanese government is whipping up anti-Filipino sentiment in the wake of the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman on May 9 by the Philippine coast guard. Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan are already bearing the brunt of the diplomatic fallout. The past few days have seen angry protests outside the Philippines’ unofficial ‘embassy’ in Taipei and – most alarmingly – a number of vicious street attacks on migrant workers.

Judy Beishon of the Socialist Party executive committee addresses the crucial question: What programme should socialists adopt today on the route towards a Palestinian state and the ending of this protracted national conflict?

It is said that where labour is cheap, life is cheap. This is never more so than in the recent horrific deaths of over 400 garment workers crushed in a collapsed building in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM, CWI in South Africa) is growing at a rapid pace due to leading a mineworkers’ strike and initiating a new political party: the Workers and Socialist Party.

Last week, fear and tension escalated on the Korean peninsula and far beyond, for very understandable reasons. North Korea is a quasi Stalinist regime of a peculiar kind and inherently unstable. The new ‘great leader’ - Kim Jon-un - appears to be even more unpredictable than his father when it comes to threats of sending nuclear weapons into the sky.

Niall Mulholland spoke with Athina Kariati from New Internationalist Left (CWI in Cyprus) about Cyprus’s deal with the Troika, what it will mean for working people and what is the socialist solution to the crisis?

The Marikana massacre, where police armed with automatic weapons opened fire and killed 34 striking miners, was a watershed in post-Apartheid South Africa. Echoing this, one headline covering the launch read “born in post-Marikana anger, Workers & Socialist Party enters SA politics”.

The eurozone crisis has dramatically intensified during the last week. It has blown away the optimism of the Eurpoean ruling class in recent months that they had resolved the crisis. Once again, the continuation of the eurozone, as currently constituted, is seriously threatened. The Cyprus crisis could also dramatically pose the viability of the euro.

Over 500 Tshwane workers, mineworkers’ delegates, trade union and community activists packed Lucas Van Den Bergh Community Hall in Pretoria for the launch of the Workers & Socialist Party.

On Friday 15 March, 500 people attended a public meeting by Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, organised by Syriza’s London branch.

EU ministers and the newly elected right-wing Greek Cypriot president have demanded that small savers, ie Cypriot workers, pay €billions for a banking bailout. But angry workers in Cyprus are refusing to accept these capitalist dictats, with Cypriot CWI members helping to organise mass protests outside parliament. Already, the government is making concessions.

The importance of Chavez’s death Venezuela cannot be underestimated. To understand it, it is necessary to understand the political processes that first brought Chavez to power and the effect of Chavez and ‘Chavism’, nationally and internationally.

In Caracas, more than one million people poured out from the working class barrios and poor districts onto the streets as Hugo Chavez’s coffin was taken through the city.

The workers and youth in Venezuela will be joined by many around the globe who have been inspired to support Hugo Chavez’s regime as offering an alternative to imperialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism. Meanwhile the most pernicious right-wing capitalist commentators have wasted neither time nor ink in their outpourings of hatred of his regime.

The “Tsunami tour” was the name comedian Beppe Grillo gave to his election meetings which filled plazas throughout the country with tens of thousands of ‘spectators’. Now an electoral tsunami has truly rocked the Italian political system with Grillo’s 5 Star Movement, which did not exist at the last election, becoming the biggest single party in the lower house with more than 25% of the vote. Another 25% of the electorate stayed at home, the highest ever post-war abstention rate.