In this exclusive interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Daszak recounts the story of his persecution and that of other principled scientists falsely accused of bearing responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.
This policy marks a major departure from previous policy. It is being promoted as a way to further normalize the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and treat SARS-CoV-2 as just another respiratory virus among the many that sicken the population each year.
2. Trump’s Big Lie about “white genocide” in South Africa
The social demagogy of Trump, including his racism and xenophobia, aims at diverting attention from the real and growing crisis of this government. The nonstop circuses and scapegoating in the Oval Office, with full-scale press conferences, have replaced what were largely ceremonial meetings in the past. These are Trump’s answer to the tremors on the stock and bond markets, and above all to the growing resistance and class struggle, as workers see what trade wars, the dismantling of social spending and defiance of the Constitution mean for themselves and their families.
Autoworkers during the shift change Friday afternoon at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada expressed support for the rank-and-file investigation into the death of fellow Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan on April 7.
*****
“These companies do everything they can to divide us and make us fight against each other,” a Windsor worker told the World Socialist Web Site. “But we’re all connected, not only in the North American economy but the global economy. We need to come together not let these employers divide us and take up the real issues at hand, including safety,” he said.
Addressing himself to the family of Ronald Adams, Sr., another worker said, “I am very sorry for your loss.” He continued, “This is the first I heard about this, that is why I grabbed your flyer. We are all brothers and sisters. This is concerning. I’m very interested in learning more details. I read about him being crushed in a machine. I want to look deeper into that.
4. A week of state killings in America: Executions in Indiana, Texas and Tennessee
The three men executed this week all died by lethal injection. As is so often the case, their lives were plagued by either mental illness, mental disability, substance abuse, or a combination of these conditions.
Legal avenues to halt their executions had been closed by the judicial system, despite arguments by their attorneys that they deserved to have their cases reexamined based on new evidence, they posed no danger to society if their sentences were commuted to life in prison, or their mental condition was such that they were unable to understand either the gravity of their crimes or their punishment.
5. Pennsylvania’s governor, local Democrats posture over closure of Chester’s hospital system
The closures also resulted in over over 2,600 layoffs, the most in Pennsylvania since the mass job cuts at Bethlehem Steel in the 1980s. This event has revealed the socially criminal mechanics of the American capitalist system, in which billionaires, under Republican and Democrat alike at every level of government, view society as their piggy bank. Such forces suck all the known value dry from essential social services and commodities and toss away what remains.
Lithuania in particular was a central scene of Nazi atrocities. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in June 1941, local collaborators actively participated in the extermination of the Jewish population. Within a few months, around 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were murdered. Of the approximately 210,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, around 195,000 were murdered by the end of the war in 1945. The majority of them had already been killed at the end of 1941.
The SS Einsatzgruppen, supported by Lithuanian militias, not only killed tens of thousands of people in massacres such as the one in Ponary, but also brutally targeted communists, trade unionists and other members of the opposition. Now, German combat troops are once again being permanently stationed on Lithuanian soil. History is either being ignored or actively rewritten in order to justify new wars.
8. 100,000 join Netherlands’ largest anti-war protest in two
decades against Gaza genocide
The mass protest followed countless events in Dutch cities and towns for this year’s 80th anniversary of Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day) on May 5, commemorating the end of Nazi occupation and honoring the estimated 300,000 resistance fighters— with up to 1 million affiliated supporters— who safeguarded tens of thousands of Jewish people from deportation to concentration camps.
The attack on Harvard lies at the intersection of the Trump administration’s drive to establish a political dictatorship and its preparations for war. The executive order explicitly accuses Harvard of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party— a fabricated charge aimed at branding all Chinese students and scholars as spies and conditioning the American population for war with China.
10. Trump Department of Justice dropping police reform agreement with Minneapolis and Louisville
The Biden administration originally filed the lawsuits at practically the last minute, in December and January respectively, more than four years after the killing of [George] Floyd and [Breonna] Taylor.
The traveling exhibition Rift through Europe seeks to replace the working class’s memory of fascist crimes with a nationalist narrative promoted by Eastern European and Baltic states. It falsely presents this as the collective memory of entire societies. In reality, it reflects the “culture of remembrance” of right-wing and fascist forces that glorify and trace their heritage to those who collaborated with the Wehrmacht and SS in their campaigns against the Soviet Union, and in the mass murder of Jews and other national minorities in their respective countries.
12. Ford Germany: IG Metall union calls off second, indefinite strike against Cologne plant closure
The 11,500 workers are prepared to fight to defend their jobs, but the union has limited them to a single 24-hour strike.
13. ICE Gestapo ambushes and imprisons Mississippi father at immigration hearing
*****
Prior to Trump’s inauguration, Democrats in the House and Senate provided the necessary votes to fast-track the anti-immigrant Laken Riley Act which further empowers the immigration Gestapo while requiring mandatory detainment for alleged petty crimes. Both parties have overseen the massive expansion of ICE detention capacity, funneling billions to private prison corporations that profit from human misery.
14. National strike by Canada Post workers sabotaged by CUPW bureaucracy
The 55,000 postal workers confront an onslaught by management and the Liberal government, with the full backing of corporate Canada, against their wages, working conditions and jobs. The goal of this assault is to turn Canada Post into a profit-making concern by “Amazonifying” the postal service. As the World Socialist Web Site has explained in previous articles, the sweeping restructuring that they are demanding includes a vast expansion of gig work, the introduction of dynamic routing to ratchet up worker exploitation, the elimination of thousands of full-time positions, and below-inflation pay “increases.”
15. Five killed and thousands affected by latest Australian floods
This disaster follows a series of extreme weather events, including the northern Queensland floods in February, and Cyclone Alfred in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales in March. This is a pattern of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, for which the state and federal Australian governments have done nothing to adequately prepare.
16. Unite’s Sharon Graham admits ACAS talks over Birmingham bin strike were a fraud
The World Socialist Web Site warned when Unite entered talks that the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service is a government funded mechanism for suppressing workers’ struggles in favor of the employer. Moreover, “There is no compromise on offer. Unite entered ACAS talks despite the council insisting that it would impose its original plans against the loaders but also slash the pay rate of refuse truck drivers by a fifth.”
Graham now writes that a “fair and reasonable offer” never existed, after keeping Birmingham strikers in the dark for three weeks. The wall of silence has been broken only to complain that no proposal has been forthcoming which could justify a sellout.
In a related development, Brian Eno, the renowned composer and music producer, recently issued a public statement sharply criticizing Microsoft for providing artificial intelligence and cloud services to the Israeli military amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Writing on social media about his own history with the software monopoly— Eno created the iconic Windows 95 startup sound— he expressed dismay that a project once symbolizing technological optimism is now linked to what he describes as “the machinery of oppression and warfare.”
18. Opposing Gaza genocide demands a socialist political struggle against Starmer Labour government
The millions of workers and young people who have mobilized in defense of the Palestinians must now recognize that protest marches are not enough. No appeal to the Labour government or moral pressure placed on it and other world governments will stop the genocide.
The working class can no longer tolerate the political rule of Starmer’s government, paid for with donations from the trade unions who have stood by as tens of thousands, mostly women and children, are murdered. There must be a turn to a political and class struggle against Starmer’s war criminals: a mass anti-genocide and anti-war movement, as the spearhead of a struggle to build a new and genuinely socialist party.
19. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Bangladesh:
Bangladeshi garment workers demand unpaid wages
India:
Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences support workers’ protest over outstanding wages
ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists) workers in Uttarakhand hold a state-wide protest
Chandigarh state Anganwadi workers protest harassment by both central and state governments
Uttar Pradesh power utility workers protest privatization
New Zealand:
More than 1,500 staff members at the Ministry of Education held a one-hour strike
Pakistan:
Retired non-teaching staff at Federal Urdu University demand pensions
Punjab sanitary workers protest salary delays
Philippines:
Kawasaki Motors factory workers strike for pay rise
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
Bogdan, who is 26 years old and in poor health, is being held in a
prison in Nikolaev under atrocious conditions on fraudulent charges of
serving the interests of Russia. In fact, Bogdan is an intransigent
opponent of the capitalist Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine. He
fights for the unity of the working class in Ukraine, Russia and
throughout the former Soviet Union.
