As Julian Assange and Bradley Manning have discovered, being a whistle-blower is not for the faint hearted. Now Edward Snowden has become the latest fugitive of US imperialism, his only crime being that he told embarrassing truths about the US government.

What started as a small demonstration against an increase of 20 cents (barely 9 pence) in the price of public transport fares in Sao Paulo became a national mass movement which mobilised more than a million people in 80 cities. Jorge Martin analyses the protests and demonstrations that have rocked Brazil over the last week.

The Polish economy was the only European economy to avoid a technical recession in the wake of the global collapse in 2008. But the whirlpool of capitalist crisis continues to grow and as its pull on the creaking ship of the Polish economy intensifies, the strain is beginning to show. From the capitalist point of view, the Polish ship of state appears to be in good working order – the Polish left is weak and neo-liberalism dominates. But below the waterline social unrest and eye-watering inequality reveal the real state of the rotting capitalist system.