Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Why the German government supports the genocide in Gaza
The cruelty with which the Israeli army is treating the civilian population goes almost beyond words. Since the beginning of March, it has blocked the transport of medicines, food and fuel in order to starve two million people. It is bombing the last remaining hospitals and shelters along with tents and groups of fleeing people in the almost completely destroyed region. More than a hundred people are being killed daily, in addition to the 53,000 already registered fatalities, the majority of them women and children. Eyewitnesses report the screams of the wounded who are left to their fate due to the lack of paramedics, hospitals and medicines.
But even though the extent of the war crimes can no longer be concealed, the German government continues to celebrate its unshakeable friendship with Israel.
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Like Germany’s support for Israel in the past, today’s support for the genocide in Gaza is not motivated by responsibility for the Shoah, but by Germany’s imperialist interests. Israel serves Germany, as it does the United States, as a military bridgehead in a region that has huge reserves of raw materials and is of central geo-strategic importance. The resistance of the Palestinians, which enjoys broad support among the Arab masses, stands in the way of imperialist control over the region. That is why it must be eliminated.
For the Palestinians, this means disaster; for Israeli workers, it is a tragedy. The Zionist state, with its right-wing extremist government, increasingly resembles the Nazi regime it was supposed to be the answer to.
2. How the Ukrainian government is trying to ban and erase the Victory Day holiday
The political gravity of the state harassment of banned Soviet symbols cannot be overstated. Technically, fascist symbols are also banned in Ukraine, but in reality, various neo-Nazi groups such as Azov, which are closely integrated into the military apparatus of the Ukrainian state, are allowed to wear various Nazi symbols on their uniforms and bodies any day of the year. Symbols associated with the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists have been integrated into official state symbols, and the fascist salute “Slava Ukraini” [Glory to Ukraine] is routinely used by President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO politicians.
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The attempts of the Ukrainian oligarchy to erase any public memory of the Soviet Union indicate not the strength of its position, but its weakness. The Ukrainian oligarchy is mortally afraid that the Ukrainian working class will return to the traditions of the October Revolution and overthrow it. But this is exactly what is needed.
3. Right-wing Coalition breaks apart after Australian election debacle
While the collapse of the coalition is seemingly a further victory for Labor, it is the opposite. For the past eighty years, the two-party system has served to divert and suppress popular opposition while devising the policies of the capitalist class. In the absence of a Coalition opposition, the ruling class is entirely dependent on Labor to enforce its agenda.
4. Hundreds of nursing home workers go on strike in Western New York
Within the healthcare industry, nursing home workers are some of the lowest paid and work in some of the most challenging and physically difficult and demanding conditions. Apart from simply providing medical care, their work can include dressing, shopping, preparing meals, bathing and physically moving residents who often have limited mobility.
Moreover, COVID-19 has disproportionately hit nursing homes, killing over 200,000 nursing home workers and residents within the United States, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). This disproportionate rate of death within nursing homes is profoundly worsened by understaffing, substandard infection control and overall poor working and medical conditions common throughout long-term nursing home facilities.
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The strike by nursing home workers in Western New York is part of a growing movement of healthcare workers throughout the United States and, in fact, the world who are demanding better wages, staffing and working conditions.
But a real struggle cannot be entrusted to the SEIU bureaucrats, and the struggle must be taken out of their hands. Nursing home and healthcare workers must join autoworkers, educators and others in forming rank-and-file committees democratically elected of the most militant and trusted members to lead these struggles.
Health officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Wednesday that a measles-infected traveler passed through Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal B between 12:30-4:00 p.m. on May 12, potentially exposing thousands of travelers to the highly contagious disease.
6. US Treasury Secretary issues threat in tariff negotiations
Bessent’s threat that countries which do not bow to the US demands for “good faith” negotiations will receive a letter is an indication that far from fading away, as financial markets may have hoped, the tariff war is set to intensify.
7. Trump visits Capitol Hill to whip up votes for military spending and social counterrevolution
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with House Republicans at the Capitol to whip up support for his tax and spending package, officially known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The more than 1,100-page monstrosity is a blueprint for social counterrevolution at home and world war abroad which House Republicans are aiming to advance before the end of the month.
Efforts by the corporate media to present the legislation as a routine policy measure are a deliberate smokescreen, aimed at concealing the historic scale of the assault on social programs. If passed— requiring only a simple majority in both Republican-controlled houses of Congress— the bill will result in millions of people, including children and the elderly, being denied healthcare and food, condemning many to premature death.
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The working class cannot and will not passively endure this historic assault on its social and economic position. Just over 100 days into Trump’s second administration, there have already been nationwide protests and near-daily strike authorization votes from workers across the country. It is this powerful social force—the international working class—that must be mobilized to stop the pillaging of society’s resources for the enrichment of a criminal financial oligarchy.
Trump has put Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and notorious violator of basic workplace safety measures, in charge of removing whatever remains of federal occupational safety and health measures and any other regulations, which the ruling class sees as an unacceptable restriction on corporate profit making.
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It is clear that Trump and Musk are looking to return workers to conditions of industrial slavery that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were depicted in such novels as Émile Zola’s Germinal (1884-85) about French coal miners, and Upton Sinclair’s 1905-06 classic The Jungle, about Chicago meatpackers.
These conditions have been produced by both corporate-controlled parties, including the Democrats, who are now imposing Trump’s savage austerity measures.
If anything is made clear by Musk’s record it is this: the government is no neutral arbiter. It cannot be relied upon to stop the deaths, and is in fact working to ensure ever greater profits for the financial oligarchy at the cost to workers’ safety and lives.
9. Indiana executes Benjamin Ritchie, inmate with “severe brain damage,” and denies media access
Ritchie’s attorneys had fought his death sentence, arguing that information about his intellectual disability had not been considered at his trial. He was diagnosed with Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a form of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder resulting from his mother’s daily alcohol and drug use during pregnancy. Such prenatal exposure can cause “severe brain damage,” which medical professionals say can limit cognitive functioning to a level similar to someone with an intellectual disability.
10. Australian central bank cuts interest rates amid global economic turmoil
Despite being welcomed by the Albanese Labor government as providing cost-of-living relief, the decision will have only a marginal effect on home mortgage payments and rents, which have soared since the government first took office in May 2022.
11. The Correspondent: The frameup and incarceration of Australian journalist Peter Greste
The Correspondent, the latest film by director Kriv Stenders, dramatizes the 2013 frame-up and jailing in Egypt of Australian journalist Peter Greste on bogus “terrorism” charges. The script, written by Peter Duncan, is based on Greste’s book The First Casualty (2017) which recounts his 400-day incarceration, beginning in Cairo’s infamous Tora Prison and ends with his eventual release and deportation to Australia.
12. Trump administration denounces Colombia for joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Striking a delicate balance between China and the US, Lula, Petro and other Latin American leaders want to try to benefit from Trump’s trade war. While Trump is pressuring trading partners to distance themselves from China in exchange for a reduction in tariffs with the US, Latin American leaders want to use growing relations with China to try to attract American investment to the region.
13. Pro-EU candidate Dan wins Romanian presidential elections
The pro-EU candidate and mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, has won the presidential elections in Romania, ostensibly ending a political crisis that began with the annulment of the elections in December 2024. Dan secured over 53 percent of the vote.
With a relatively high turnout of 64.75 percent— an increase of over 10 percent compared to the first round— the result reflects a broad rejection of the Trump-inspired rhetoric espoused by his far-right opponent, George Simion of the fascist AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) party.
“We should not be lining up behind our own ruling classes on the basis of reactionary nationalism. Unfettered by the treacherous union bureaucracies, we could unleash our collective social power to fight for credible demands to defend our jobs, and improve our wages and working conditions. This is why we are here today.”
15. The demoralized pessimism of Chris Hedges’ “New Dark Age”: David North responds:
To blame humanity in general for the genocide is to obfuscate the specific responsibility of the imperialist leaders and the system they represent for the crimes committed against the people of Gaza.
16. UK seeks to shore up relations with Europe at London summit centered on military security alliance
Geopolitically, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU significantly knocked its standing on the world stage, removing it from one of the world’s three major trading blocs, alongside the US and China. Britain also lost much of its usefulness to the US as the most reliably pro-Washington voice among the major EU powers. “Britain is back on the world stage,” [Prime Minister] Starmer announced at Monday’s press conference.
17. Organize rank-and-file resistance to the CWU’s pact with Kretinsky at Royal Mail
The May 16 Communication Workers Union Letter to Branches is another PR exercise defending backroom deals with Royal Mail and billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group, which completed its £3.6 billion buyout on April 30.
Kenya, like all former colonial countries, is not a semi-feudal society but a fully capitalist one, integrated into global markets and dominated by capitalist social relations. Nairobi is a financial hub for East Africa, hosting the African headquarters or regional offices of global banks such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, and JPMorgan Chase, alongside multinational corporations including Google, Microsoft, General Electric, Maersk, and Coca-Cola. Kenya’s agricultural, industrial, and service sectors are oriented toward global export, from horticulture and tea to digital finance and call centers.
Far from being a “petty commodity economy,” Kenya is, despite being a country oppressed by imperialism, a site of intense capital accumulation, speculation, and exploitation, ruled by a bourgeoisie tied to international finance capital. It is not shaped by feudal landholding or subsistence exchange, but by wage labor, commodity production, and the imperatives of profit.
19. The fraud of Starmer, Macron and Carney’s “opposition” to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza
After nineteen months of their colluding with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as tens of thousands were killed and Gaza was destroyed, the three leaders have issued a declaration, both cynical and toothless, that they strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan
Syrotiuk
