The use of the term “pseudo-left” is not a rhetorical flourish. It is an accurate characterization of reactionary middle class organizations that function as agencies of imperialism. These organizations speak for privileged material interests of the upper-middle class. These class interests are not merely compatible with, but depend upon imperialist war and plunder, which explains why they endorse the imperialist regime-change operation in Syria and the US-NATO war against Russia.
Significantly, Merz began his speech by praising the pro-war and rearmament policies of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. He claimed that the coalition he led with the Greens and Liberal Democrats had “guided Germany through times of extraordinary crisis” and that its response to the war in Ukraine was “groundbreaking” and “historic.”
Merz made it clear that his government would deepen the “new era” proclaimed by Scholz. At the centre of this is the escalation of the war against Russia, the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and the militarization of Europe under German leadership—with the aim of enforcing the geopolitical and economic interests of German imperialism worldwide.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality unequivocally condemns New York University’s blatant act of political censorship against graduating student and actor Logan Rozos. We call on students, workers and youth in the US and around the world to demand that NYU immediately release his diploma, which is being withheld in retaliation for his May 14 commencement address denouncing the US-backed genocide in Gaza.
In the five weeks since the fatal accident, the UAW, the company and MIOSHA have not released any information to the victim’s family, co-workers or the public about its causes and the circumstances behind it.
5. Part Two: A pseudo-left attack on science in Flint, Michigan
Benjamin J. Pauli, Jordan Chariton, and Michael Mascarenhas, authors of books about the poisoning of Flint, Michigan's water, write vaguely anti-capitalist drivel, yet none of them even try to address or explore an alternative to capitalism. In the more than 1,000 combined pages of the books, the word “socialism” does not appear, except once by Mascarenhas in describing a right-wing epithet against Obama. The word “capitalism” isn’t referenced without modifiers, mostly “racial capitalism.”
6. New Jersey Transit commuter rail engineers launch strike
In a sign of the growing class struggle in the United States, around 450 train engineers at New Jersey Transit walked off the job at midnight Friday, shutting down the nation’s third-largest transit system.
NJT, which provides both bus and commuter rail service, transports nearly one million people each day in the New York metropolitan area. The strike has disrupted a significant volume of economic activity in the world’s wealthiest city and center of global finance.
7. Vote for the Action Committee list in the Berlin Transport staff council elections!
The Transport Worker Action Committee warns workers:
"Our rights are more important than profits and rearmament. There is enough money, but just not for us. The federal government is intent on spending a trillion euros on rearming the Bundeswehr, switching to a war economy, and militarizing society."
8. Sri Lanka’s fake-left FSP claims to be socialist while promoting pro-capitalist policies
In a May Day speech, the general secretary of the Frontline Socialist Party in Sri Lanka, Kumar Gunaratnam's reference to “socialism” is just so much holiday speechifying— talking about the struggle for socialism, while engaging day-to-day in futile protest politics and hobnobbing with capitalist parties.
9. Trump administration junks committee on preventing infections in hospitals
The move follows from Trump’s executive orders aimed at gutting the federal workforce, including thousands at the Department of Health and Human Services. The administration’s attack on health programs and promotion of junk science through anti-vaxxers like HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. will have catastrophic impacts on public health.
10. Eurovision 2025— Thousands of cultural workers, music fans condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza
In response to the demonstrations and protest, the organizers of Eurovision 2025 have mounted a large security operation, deploying around 1,300 police officers across the city. Additional support is being provided by the Swiss army, with French and German security forces also in attendance.
11. The Australian prime minister visits Indonesia to push anti-China build-up
Albanese, accompanied by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, flew to Indonesia just one day after his Labor Party government was sworn in on Tuesday. Ahead of the trip, he told reporters in Perth: “There is no country more important to Australia than Indonesia. Together we are setting an ambitious agenda to deepen our ties.”
Oscar Grenfell, Cheryl Crisp, and chair Max Boddy, present a Marxist analysis of Australia's May 3 federal election
13. Buoyed by bipartisan support, corporate profits and immigrant prisons soar in US Midwest
The second Trump administration has rapidly escalated the bipartisan assault on immigrant workers and their families, massively expanding the machinery of detention and deportation.
This offensive, built upon a foundation of joint Democratic and Republican Party anti-immigrant policies, aims to divide the working class and scapegoat immigrants for the systemic crises of capitalism. It is also generating immense profits for private prison corporations like The GEO Group and CoreCivic.
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The for-profit caging of human beings is an abomination, an inevitable product of a capitalist system that commodifies all aspects of life. The bipartisan assault on immigrants serves to divide the working class, scapegoating a vulnerable population for the failures of capitalism.
The working class must come forward to defend immigrants, halt the destruction of democratic rights, and demand the dismantling of the prison gulag and the entire deportation machine. This requires an independent political struggle against both the Democrats and Republicans, parties irredeemably tied to the interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy.
14. Glen Rogers’ execution in Florida and the “pure evil” rationale for state killings
To consider what in society stands behind the depraved acts of an individual like Glen Rogers is not to discount the suffering of victims of crime. In a rational society, it should assist in finding answers to why such heinous acts are perpetrated and serve as motivation for social change—improvements in mental health treatment, measures to end poverty, reform of the judicial system. But the political establishment, driven by its maintenance of class rule by means of violence and repression, is incapable of such considerations.
Workers and students in several states, including Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, spoke to World Socialist Web Site reporters and expressed their anger and opposition to the war.
16. Capitulating to Modi’s war-mongering, India’s unions cancel May 20 general strike
Capitulating to the anti-Pakistan war frenzy whipped up by the Hindu-supremacist BJP-led government and the entire Indian ruling class, the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Sectoral Federations/Association has cancelled a one-day general strike planned for next Tuesday.
The May 20 nationwide strike would have brought tens of millions of workers across India onto the streets in opposition to the class war assault that the government of the would-be Hindu strongman Narendra Modi is mounting on behalf of the Indian bourgeoisie and foreign capital.
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Workers in India, as around the world, cannot assert their class interests in opposition to the capitalist ruling elite unless they oppose all its reactionary great-power interests and predatory actions on the world stage, and seek to unite their struggles with workers internationally.
17. Romania goes to second round of presidential election
Regardless of Sunday’s election result, the breakdown of democratic rights will intensify, as both candidates have laid out programs of war and austerity.
A critical role was played, Brotherton explained, by Democratic Party administrations, especially the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who he noted earned the title “Deporter in Chief”. He said of Clinton that the president admitted the 1996 Act was “the worst piece of legislation he ever signed off on. But he didn’t have to sign off on it.” Various promises to repeal or change the legislation ultimately translated into Congress upping the penalties associated on three occasions.
Coming to the “very, very harrowing” present, Brotherton described the situation for the migrant community as “devastating”. Many “are not coming to work, lots of migrant kids are not coming to school, they’re certainly not reporting any illnesses to the hospital. There’s a diminution of their ability to partake in civil society.”
In a chilling conclusion, he posed the question, “What’s the plan? Where are we headed?” arguing, “I don’t think that [El Salvadorian dictator Nayib] Bukele… is the instrument, I think Bukele is the model for Trump. He passed three states of exception in order to get where he is today, and that’s basically the only thing we’re missing in the United States.” Brotherton flagged the implementation of the Alien and Sedition Acts as a particular danger.
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Members of the Socialist Equality Party attended the meeting to participate in the discussion and raise with Brotherton and attendees the SEP’s May 31 meeting in London, “Trump versus democratic rights: The case of Momodou Taal”.
20. Portugal snap general election prepares rightward lurch by ruling elites amid mounting social crisis
Portugal will go to the polls Sunday in a snap general election, for the third time in three years. This marks the country’s longest period of political instability since the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which ended the four-decade Estado Novo fascist dictatorship.
The election takes place under explosive social conditions. Since 2014, house prices have soared by 135 percent, fuelled by a speculative bubble driven by tax breaks for wealthy foreign investors, mass tourism, and decades of austerity.
21. Police send file on British independent journalist Richard Medhurst to Crown Prosecution Service
Independent journalist Richard Medhurst remains under threat of draconian terrorism charges, nine months after being arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Syrian-born Medhurst, a British citizen and son of Nobel Peace Prize winners, opposes Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Netanyahu’s war against Lebanon, backed by US and British imperialism. Operating a YouTube channel since 2006, he has more than one million followers on social media.
22. The murder of Turkish worker Erol Eğrek demands an independent investigation
Erol Eğrek died on Friday, May 9 after being beaten by bodyguards and security guards in front of the Çalık Holding company headquarters in Şişli, Istanbul. Eğrek had gone there to demand his compensation, which he had not received from Çalık Holding for 10 years, despite court rulings.
Eğrek's murder is a crime against the entire working class and an indictment of the capitalist system. His death, which must be considered beyond the company's specific hatred and animosity towards one worker, confirms that the lives of workers have no value in the eyes of the ruling class.
The meeting will outline a strategy on which the working class in America and internationally can mobilize to defeat not just Trump but the turn by capitalist governments the world over to state repression, savage austerity and military violence. They will also explain why it is that Starmer’s Labour government in the UK has emerged as the chief accomplice of Trump’s repression of anti-genocide protests.
24. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
South Korea:
Seoul bus drivers threaten to strike over pay
India:
Food processing workers in Bihar strike over unpaid bonus and poor conditions
Tamil Nadu power plant workers demand better wages and conditions
Ludhiana Municipal Corporation sanitation workers demand permanent jobs
West Bengal teachers protest at Kolkata's Salt Lake
Bangladesh:
Apparel workers protest to demand arrears
Tannery workers strike for revised minimum wage
Sri Lanka:
Port workers strike over unpaid allowances
LP gas terminal workers strike for pay rise
25. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan
Syrotiuk
