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“On 22 November 2017 police officers stopped by my work and asked me to get into their truck. I knew that the Saudi government had put new restrictions on Yemeni migrants and workers but I thought that I would not be affected.

The politics of the centre has come to an end. In last month’s election in Sweden both of the two main parties, the conservative Moderates and the Social Democrats, lost votes, leading to a situation where neither block can proclaim themselves as the winner.

Both blocks are wedded to the neoliberal economic consensus which has meant privatisation, deregulation, no budget deficit and a more insecure labour market. Sweden has the fastest growing income gap of all the OECD countries and is now a haven for the rich. Many voters clearly don’t want more of the same.

Workers in some (but not every) McDonald’s in ten US cities — Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Orlando, San Francisco, and Durham — walked out on strike for 24 hours last month over sexual harassment.

The strikers, inspired by the #MeToo movement, were backed by the Fight for $15 campaign and the Time’s Up legal aid group.

Energy Company Cuadrilla could score a key victory for the government if it succeeds in starting fracking at its site at Little Plumpton, near Blackpool, next month. The company’s activities were halted seven years ago when its fracking caused earth tremors in the area.

The Tory immigration policy is in a mess. They are caught in the bind between their “hostile environment” towards immigrants and the needs of their friends in big business. Sajid Javid, the home secretary with leadership pretensions, has been reportedly forced to act against his instincts and allow EU passport holders to be “waved through” immigration after the March deadline if there is a No-Deal on Brexit.

Samir Amin, who died in August, was a leading Marxist thinker in the Global South. Unlike many of his contemporaries he did not retreat from radicalism with the collapse of the “communist” east. In the period since the millennium he threw himself into the World Social Forum.

Amin was born in Egypt in 1931, to an Egyptian father and a French mother. His parents were both doctors. He went to university in Paris in the 1950s. He returned to Egypt as a member of the Communist Party during the excitement and ferment of radical nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule.

Pressure is building on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party leadership to agree to backing a second referendum on Britain leaving the EU. Several trade unions, including the GMB, are either balloting members over the issue or preparing to take motions to this month’s TUC conference in Manchester calling for Labour to adopt the policy.

In an email sent to GMB members, the general secretary, Tim Roache, wrote: “GMB wants to hear from members about your views on Brexit, and whether you think there should be a public vote when we know what the deal looks like.”

The significant growth of the far-right in various forms is a subject we have highlighted frequently in Socialist Review over the past few months. Now the mainstream media seems to be catching up.

The anti-migrant riots by far-right and fascist thugs in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, at the end of August, were a wake up call for anti-racists.

Soumali Sacko was a member of USB (Unione Sindacale di Base), a grass roots trade union that fights to improve the outrageous working conditions of the farm labourers deployed in the lemon fields in Calabria, Italy.

On 2 June Sacko, a migrant agricultural worker from Mali, was shot in the back while trying to collect metal to rebuild accommodation in the shantytown located on the outskirts of San Ferdinando, where more than 4,000 seasonal workers live in miserable conditions during the harvest season.

The streets of Tel Aviv were adorned with rainbow flags alongside Israeli ones on 8 June as thousands of Israelis took to the streets for their 20th annual pride march.

To those unaware of the ethnic cleansing and genocide carried out by Israel on a daily basis for the past 70 years, the self-proclaimed “gay capital of the Middle East” would have appeared to represent a very tolerant and open society.