‘Shock therapy’, or rapid mass privatisation, in the former Soviet bloc 1990s was responsible for the early deaths of 1m people. This is the principal conclusion of a paper published in the medical journal 'The Lancet' (15.01.09). Not only did privatisation devastate the economy and the means of feeding, clothing and housing their people; it also shredded the social welfare system and all the social support mechanisms built up over decades. As a result unemployed, desperate people with no hope just went to pieces.

On December 5, 2008 over 200 recently-fired workers at the Republic Window and Doors factory in Chicago occupied their plant, demanding that they be paid their vacation and severance checks. The occupation ended victoriously six days later when the Bank of America and other lenders to Republic agreed to pay the workers the approximately $2 million owed to them.But the workers didn’t stop there. They are now seeking ways to restart the factory and potentially operate it as a worker-run cooperative.

Jesus Pino, a representative of the Revolutionary Front of Steel Workers in Venezuela, visited Britain at the end of November 2008, invited by the Hands Off Venezuela campaign to attend its National Conference in London. Jorge Martin interviewed him.

Read the full report on Hands Off Venezuela.

Following an appeal from LabourStart and Education International on the 26 November many trade unionists throughout the world sent protest emails to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran protesting against Farzad Kamangar's imminent execution. Those writing to Ayatollah Khamenei included Brendan Barber, the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (in Britain).

According to Education International, the international teachers' federation, he was taken from his cell in Tehran's Evin prison on 26 November in preparation for execution. The guards told him he was about to be executed and made fun of him, calling him a martyr.

Five years into the occupation of Iraq and seven years after the war in Afghanistan started the Americans and their allies are bogged down in an unwinnable situation. Even if they withdraw from Iraq in the medium term future, the political and social repercussions of the war will go on for decades. The attempt to carve out a new sphere of influence in the Middle East, and thus guarantee oil supplies has proven to be a lot more difficult than the American Imperialists imagined, and serves to demonstrate the limits to the power that they can wield. The New World Order has become disorder and the economic and financial crisis in America brilliantly confirms Trotsky’s analysis when he explained that the cost of the growth of American Imperialism was to accumulate “dynamite in its foundations”.