Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: December 15-21
Chinese security officials sequester strike leader in psychiatric hospital
Algeria deports 350,000 Moroccans
75 years ago:
Truman announces US national emergency
Fourteenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party formally adopts “socialism in one country”
2. Mass shooting in Sydney exploited to slander anti-genocide protests
The mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach yesterday evening, targeting a
Jewish religious festival, has resulted in the deaths of at least 15
people and injuries to 42 people, some of whom are in critical
condition. One of the alleged shooters has also been killed.
*****
From what the police and intelligence agencies have so far reported,
the shootings were carried out by a father, Sajid Akram, 50, and son,
Naveed Akram, 24, from Sydney’s working-class western suburbs, using
rifles for which the father had held licences for a decade. The father
was reportedly shot dead by police and the son is in a critical
condition in hospital. No evidence has been suggested by the police of
any wider involvement.
Those killed ranged in age from 10 to 87,
including a young girl, a Holocaust survivor and a rabbi. The target was
evidently a “Chanukah by the Sea” event for children that was scheduled
to take place at a beachside playground from 5 p.m., and had begun,
marking the start of the eight-day Rabbinic Jewish festival of lights.
While
the motives of the alleged shooters remain to be determined, this is a
reactionary and tragic event. Jewish people and their children living in
Australia bear no responsibility for the ongoing slaughter by the
Israeli Zionist regime in Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestine.
In fact, many Jewish people have joined the anti-genocide
demonstrations, in Australia and globally, as part of the wider disgust
and outrage.
Police have remained tight-lipped about the two
suspects, refusing to discuss anything about their motives, while saying
that one was known to police and the Australian Security and
Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and previously suspected of links to
an Islamic State group.
As shown on widely broadcast video
footage, further deaths were prevented, in part, by a 43-year-old fruit
shop owner, Ahmed Al Ahmed, who crept up on a shooter and managed to
wrest a rifle from him.
*****
This mass shooting only plays into the hands of those responsible for
the historic crimes in Palestine, including the Australian and other
Western governments that have backed and armed the Netanyahu regime and
slandered and suppressed anti-genocide protests, falsely accusing them
of antisemitism. In fact, Israel does not speak for the Jewish people, a
lie promoted by the Israeli government and the imperialist powers that
have backed the genocide in Gaza.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns last
night declared their intent to take what Minns described as “massive”
action to react to the shootings, including by large police mobilizations and new legislation, adding to the already extensive
battery of “hate crime” and “terrorism” laws.
For more than two years, the NSW Labor government has repeatedly sought to have peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations banned.
*****
The Albanese government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism,
Jillian Segal, a Zionist lobbyist, sought to link the shootings to the
large anti-genocide protests, from an initial one at the Sydney Opera
House on October 9, 2023, to the mass march, joined by some 300,000
people, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this August 3.
This
rhetoric slanders the hundreds of thousands of people who have joined
the Gaza demonstrations against Israeli atrocities and mass murder, and
blames the protesters for the shootings. Segal called for even more
repressive action by the Labor governments, which have repeatedly
denounced the protests and sought to halt them.
Segal’s diatribe
matched that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Overnight he
accused the Albanese government of doing nothing to stop the alleged
spread of antisemitism in Australia. He said it had “replaced weakness
with weakness.”
Netanyahu is a war criminal whose regime has killed more than 60,000
people in Gaza over the past two years, systematically violating
international humanitarian law and committing crimes against humanity,
backed and protected by the United States and other major capitalist
powers.
*****
Many people in Australia are shocked and distressed by what has
happened at Bondi Beach, which is known as a place that attracts
tourists and visitors from around the world. This is the worst mass
shooting in the country since a mentally ill man killed 35 people at
Port Arthur, south of Hobart, in 1996.
But efforts are being made
to twist and manipulate these sentiments to demonize opposition to the
continuing mass killings, displacement and oppression of Palestinians,
and to support police-state measures that will be used more broadly
against all forms of political dissent under conditions of staggering
social inequality, austerity and US-led war preparations.
Under these conditions, it is essential that workers and young people
reject ethnic division and scapegoating, defend Jewish, Islamic and
other targeted communities, and oppose the assault on basic democratic
rights and the plunge toward war.
Reactionary antagonisms are
being generated and magnified by the crisis of global capitalism and
imperialist interventions, such as the Gaza genocide and the underlying
US drive to dominate the Middle East. The only solution is the building
of a unified international working‑class movement for socialism to
expropriate the oligarchs and ruling elites that profit from war,
repression and division.
3. Two dead and nine injured in mass shooting at Brown University
At least two Brown University students are dead and nine 3others are
wounded after a gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the Barus &
Holley engineering building late Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday,
police detained a “person of interest,” a man in his 20s from Wisconsin,
whose identity has been widely reported but not officially confirmed,
as the police investigation continues.
According to Providence
police, the shooting began during an exam period inside a classroom in
the large engineering and physics facility on Brown’s College Hill
campus. Witnesses reported a burst of rapid gunfire as the shooter
opened the classroom door and fired more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm
handgun into students who had no possibility of defending themselves.
Law
enforcement officials later stated that two handguns and loaded
30‑round magazines were recovered when the person of interest was taken
into custody at a hotel roughly 15 to 20 miles from Providence,
indicating preparation for sustained, indiscriminate killing.
*****
Police began receiving 911 calls shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday with
reports of an active shooter and multiple victims inside a classroom.
Brown’s emergency alert system ordered students and staff to “run, hide,
and fight,” locking down the campus and parts of surrounding
neighborhoods as terrified students barricaded themselves in labs,
libraries and dormitories.
Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez told reporters that more than
400 law enforcement officers ultimately responded to the scene and that
the incident produced a multi-agency investigation that extended through
the night and into Sunday.
*****
The person of interest, identified by multiple media outlets as a
24‑year‑old man from Wisconsin, was detained early Sunday at a Hampton
Inn in a Rhode Island community outside Providence, after what officials
described as intensive overnight investigative work. Federal and local
law enforcement used digital and geolocation tools to track the suspect,
with FBI units and U.S. marshals assisting in the arrest in a hotel
room that had become a temporary refuge for the alleged gunman.
While
police have not publicly announced any charges, they have made clear
that the individual is being held in connection with the Brown shooting
and that further information will be released only as it does not
jeopardize the case.
*****
The official reaction to the Brown shooting follows the line of
previous campus mass shootings that have become so frequent that they
now form a grim catalogue stretching back decades. This list includes:
- Virginia Tech in 2007, 32 killed across multiple buildings
- Northern Illinois University in 2008, five killed in a lecture hall
- The University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2010, three killed during a faculty meeting
- Oikos University in Oakland, California in 2012, seven dead
- Santa Monica College in 2013, six killed after the shooter turned a domestic dispute public on campus
- The University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014, six killed in the college town area
- Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon in 2015, nine killed in a writing class
- The University of Virginia in 2022, three killed on a returning charter bus
- Michigan State University in 2023, three students killed across two buildings
- Florida State University in April 2025, two killed and multiple wounded.
Each
new atrocity is briefly described as “unthinkable” and “shocking,” as
families experience the agony of loss and the event is normalized,
training to treat lockdown drills and active-shooter protocols as a
permanent feature of academic life.
Brown’s position in the elite
Ivy League shows that no sector of higher education is immune from the
carnage. Campus shootings have struck institutions ranging from small
religious colleges to large public universities and private research
institutions, indicating that the phenomenon is not rooted in any type
of campus culture but in broader characteristics of American society.
The same government that oversees a vast apparatus of military
violence abroad also presides over a domestic landscape in which young
people cannot go to class or gather at social events without the
ever-present possibility of being shot and killed.
The massacre at
Brown University is also one more episode in the larger epidemic of
mass shootings in the United States, which has no parallel in any other
advanced capitalist country. Year after year, databases compiled by
independent monitors and the media record hundreds of incidents in which
four or more people are shot, with totals routinely exceeding one mass
shooting per day.
*****
Within the mass shooter epidemic, school and campus incidents are
especially revealing because they expose the inability of the existing
order to guarantee even minimal safety for children and young adults.
From Columbine High School in 1999 to Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook,
Parkland, Uvalde, Michigan State and now Brown University, a full
generation has come of age with the knowledge that death by gunfire is a
possibility in the classroom, cafeteria or playground.
The
bankruptcy of the capitalist political system is revealed both by what
it refuses to address and by what it actively promotes. Successive
administrations, Democratic and Republican, have poured trillions into
war, surveillance and repression, while presiding over extreme social
inequality, precarious employment, student debt and a mental health
system gutted by budget cuts and privatization.
4. The backdrop to Putin’s negotiations with Trump: A deepening domestic crisis
Despite the Putin regime’s efforts to hide Russia’s internal
contradictions during the war, doing so grows harder each year.
Increasing censorship shows how desperately it tries to control public
opinion. One of the regime’s main goals is to block access to
information that reveals the political and class conflicts in other
countries, especially in Europe and the US.
Thus, the Russian media writes very little about Trump’s efforts to
establish a fascist dictatorship in the US, the violent crackdown on
immigrants, the military strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and
Pacific or the domestic policies of the European powers. As a result,
Russian workers are prevented from understanding the overall context of
the global situation.
In particular, this also applies to the
so-called “peace plan.” Its prospects are, to put it mildly, murky. The
propaganda gives the impression of superficial prosperity, that peace is
about to be achieved in 24 hours, in a week, etc. These are attempts to
blind the working class. In fact, behind this ostentatious negotiation
process lies an attempt to strike a deal with the devil for the benefit
of Russia’s oligarchs.
The continuation of the war in Ukraine has been increasingly centered on
Europe. The main goal of the European imperialist powers is—if not the
direct continuation of the war (Ukraine is less and less capable of this
due to the crisis of the Zelensky regime and the disintegration of the
Ukrainian army)—then an attempt to preserve Ukraine as a military
springboard for a future war, when Europe’s armament program is more
advanced.
The regime, eager to preserve the illusion of social stability, may
accept a more disadvantageous deal, provoking new tensions within the
Russian oligarchy. The situation as a whole is becoming increasingly
volatile and explosive.
*****
The transition from stagflation to recession is a telling example of
how the Putin regime’s policy of maneuvering has failed to address the
problems facing Russian capitalism. The state injections into the
economy in 2022-2023 could not save it from the long-term consequences
of sanctions and the war in Ukraine. The Central Bank’s policy failed to
reduce inflation to target levels due to the decline of the rest of the
economy.
The vicious circle is now closed. It is no longer a
matter of the Putin regime’s individual maneuvers but of its political
fate. Hence the shift of the Putin regime towards tightening tax policy,
censorship and the repressive apparatus. The state seeks to suppress
the class struggle, and to avoid that it associates itself with the
class struggle in Europe and the US.
The fear of a social
explosion and divisions within the oligarchy under the pressure of the
worsening economic crisis are the principal reasons why Putin is so
eager to negotiate a deal. But whatever may be agreed upon, it will not
be a solution to the structural crisis of Russian capitalism and the
imperialist efforts to carve up the entire former Soviet Union to bring
its resources under the direct control of the imperialist powers.
It
should be noted that, even on the most elementary level, the Kremlin is
completely unprepared for a further escalation of the war and its
impact on the general population. In particular, regions close to the
front line have virtually no bomb shelters. It should be noted that
dozens and sometimes even hundreds of Ukrainian drones are intercepted
on Russian territory each day, and several people have been killed in
Russian regions by Ukrainian drone strikes in recent weeks.
The Putin regime initially invaded Ukraine, believing that it could
secure a quick victory in order to strike a deal with NATO. Clearly, it
underestimated the enormous amount of support provided to Ukraine by the
US and the European imperialist powers. As a result, 150,000 Russian
troops, who were supposed to complete a “special military operation”
back in 2022, found themselves facing a real war. The war dragged on and
took on the character of a war of position, reminiscent of World War I,
with new methods of destroying each other: drones, missiles and other
military equipment.
Today, we are indeed at a turning point. The
initial resources that the parties had at their disposal have
practically dried up. This is pushing them towards negotiations. But it
would be wrong to view these negotiations outside their broader
international context.
The Putin regime invaded Ukraine in response to the systematic
encirclement of Russia by the imperialist powers since the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991 and, specifically, the 2014 coup in Ukraine.
But this encirclement itself has deep objective roots. The imperialist
powers, driven by a profound crisis of world capitalism, are vying for
full control over a territory from which they have been cut off since
the 1917 Revolution and which they failed to bring under their direct
control even after the destruction of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist
bureaucracy.
US imperialism, in particular, is simultaneously
preparing for war against China and seeking to establish its direct
control over Latin America. The war in Ukraine is only one manifestation
of this broader imperialist explosion. In this context, any deal to
settle the war in Ukraine would mark only a shift of the theater of war
on a global level without resolving any of the deeper tendencies that
have led to the war in the first place.
5. Trump says US will start ground attacks “soon” as US surges military assets near Venezuela
Trump’s threat Friday followed his declaration earlier in the week
that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s “days are numbered.” When
asked whether he would send ground troops into Venezuela, he refused to
rule it out. The Wall Street Journal editorial board
characterized Trump’s actions as a pledge to carry out regime change,
writing that Trump is now “obliged to follow through” on his commitment
to oust Maduro.
*****
The US media is actively promoting regime change in Venezuela. In a
fawning interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, María Corina
Machado—the Venezuelan opposition figure who recently fled the country
under US military protection to collect a Nobel Peace Prize in
Norway—openly called for the overthrow of the Maduro government and
praised Trump’s military build-up.
“I absolutely support President
Trump’s strategy,” Machado declared. “We, the Venezuelan people, are
very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a
champion of freedom in this hemisphere.”
When asked whether she
would welcome US military action in Venezuela, Machado replied: “I will
welcome more and more pressure so that Maduro understands that he has to
go, that his time is over.”
Machado dedicated her Nobel Peace
Prize to Trump and stated that she believes “the regime has its days
numbered.” She has previously outlined a $1.7 trillion privatization
plan for Venezuela’s economy.
The Democratic Party has refused to condemn Trump’s moves toward
regime change in Latin America. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the
ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, appeared on ABC’s
“This Week” on Sunday. When host Martha Raddatz asked Warner “do you
agree” with Trump’s “effort to oust the dictator” Maduro, Warner,
replied, “I agree that the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone.”
Warner
also justified the administration’s massacres of civilians on boats.
Since September, US forces have killed at least 87 people in drone and
missile strikes on vessels the administration claims are smuggling
drugs. Democratic Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut said last
weekend on “Face the Nation” that attacking survivors of destroyed boats
“is a violation of the laws of war.”
Yet Warner declared that he
is “reluctant to kind of reach the conclusion that some of my colleagues
have that this was an illegal strike.”
*****
The administration’s claim that it is combating drug trafficking is a
transparent fraud. Trump has threatened Colombian President Gustavo
Petro, declaring “Petro is next”—making clear that the campaign extends
to any Latin American government that fails to submit to Washington’s
dictates.
The administration is also preparing an economic blockade of Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal
reported Friday that the threat of further tanker seizures has already
“paralyzed tanker traffic in and out of Venezuela.” On Thursday, a dozen
ships waited outside Venezuela’s main oil port, but none moved to load
crude. A Venezuelan port official told the Journal that employees around the country are calling in sick or skipping work as tensions escalate.
The
tanker seized Wednesday was carrying roughly $80 million of oil,
equivalent to about 5 percent of what Venezuela spends monthly on
imported goods, “raising the prospect of shortages.” The Journal noted that the seizure “raises an existential crisis for a regime that runs on oil revenue.”
*****
The military buildup must be understood in the context of the
administration’s National Security Strategy, which establishes the goal
of “restoring American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” while
denying China “the ability to position forces or other threatening
capabilities” in the region. Latin America is being targeted as a
captive source of resources and a power base for US imperialism’s
escalating confrontation with China.
6. United States: DHS claims over 400 taken as ICE agents continue lawless kidnapping campaign in Minnesota
In their latest update, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
claimed that over 400 people have been taken in ongoing kidnapping
operations led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in
the Minneapolis, Minnesota area.
As has been the case throughout
the United States, federal immigration agents are not conducting
targeted operations focused on alleged “criminals” but are instead going
on fishing expeditions, targeting workers on the job in public
settings.
In one of several flashpoints in the last week between
ICE agents and local community members, this past Saturday, dozens of
people responded to ICE agents attempting to kidnap construction workers
building homes in Chanhassen, Minnesota, a city located about 15 miles
southwest of Minneapolis. The two workers were trapped on the roof for
hours leading one of them to be hospitalized.
In a video
livestreamed on Facebook, dozens of workers and residents are seen
confronting ICE agents who have surrounded a home currently under
construction. Under sub-freezing temperatures and through bundled
jackets, anti-ICE protesters cursed the agents and lent their support to
two workers trapped on the roof. One man is heard in the video telling
the Gestapo, “You are a fucking monster, you and all you people are
fucking monsters. Putting people in concentration camps for being
brown.”
One of the masked ICE agents replied to the man, “You don’t have to be
like that,” which drew the quick retort, “No! You don’t have to be
here!”
Another woman told agents the workers, “They are our community. They
are a part of us.” She added, “Thank you for building our houses! Thank
you!”
Another man questioned the agents, “What crime did they do? You guys can’t tell us. You are not going after the real criminals.”
*****
Throughout the entire confrontation ICE agents rotated in and out of
their warm vehicles while local police provided crowd control,
protecting the ICE agents while at the same time preventing community
members from providing aid to the trapped workers.
While the
workers trapped by ICE on Saturday appeared to be Hispanic, the Trump
administration has made clear that Somalis, regardless of immigration
status, are being deliberately targeted by the government. For over two
weeks, President Donald Trump and other top officials in his
administration, have used racist and genocidal language to slander all
people of Somali heritage, particularly those in Minneapolis-St. Paul,
the largest concentration of Somali-Americans in the US.
Speaking
from the White House on Friday, Trump said of Somalis, “they don’t have
a country, all they do is kill each other.” Referring to Minnesota
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a frequent target of Trump and the fascists
due to her Somali heritage and Muslim faith, Trump said, “There is
nothing worse than a person who comes in and does nothing but bitch. And
comes from a place where she shouldn’t be telling us what to do.”
That
same day, on one of his many Fox News appearances in the last week,
fascist White House adviser Stephen Miller accused the entire “Somali
community” of engaging in “massive, endemic, systemic fraud against
American taxpayers for years.” Miller claimed that “90 percent” of
Somali households with children “were on federal welfare, the real
number is probably 100 percent.”
Encouraged by the fascists in the White House, immigration agents in
Minnesota have been assaulting and kidnapping Somali Americans. On
December 9, 20-year-old Somali-American citizen Mubashir was assaulted
by ICE agents after he stepped outside during his lunch break while at
work. In security footage, agents are seen grabbing and pulling on
Mubashir for roughly a minute. Soon, members of the community come into
frame and begin filming the ICE agents and blowing whistles.
The
ICE thugs decide to drag Mubashir out into the street. Before shoving
the handcuffed citizen into the back of their SUV with black tinted
windows, one of the ICE thugs is seen putting Mubashir in a headlock and
forcing him to the ground in the snow.
Speaking at press
conference this past Wednesday, Mubashir said he told agents he was a US
citizen and repeatedly asked what was going on. The agents, “didn’t
seem to care.” Mubashir was not accused of any crime before ICE agents
attacked him.
*****
After he was taken into ICE custody, agents demanded Mubashir allow
them to photograph and scan his face, which he refused. Mubashir said he
repeatedly offered the agents multiple ways to verify his citizenship,
including providing his name, date of birth and a photo of his passport.
The agents eventually accepted the fact he was a US citizen at which
point Mubashir asked them, “‘Can you take me back to where you picked me
up from?’ They said ‘No, you have to walk in the snow.’”
*****
In an interview that aired over the weekend, Rep. [Ilhan] Omar revealed that
her son, an American citizen was also recently targeted by ICE. This
past Friday, Omar sent a letter to DHS accusing the agency of engaging
in “blatant racial profiling” and an “egregious level of unnecessary
force.”
In the interview, Omar detailed how her son has already
had two separate interactions with ICE agents. The first occurred last
week when agents menaced a restaurant her 20-year-old frequently eats
at, along with other members of the community. Omar said the agents came
into the restaurant and then left.
Omar then revealed that
roughly a week later, on Saturday, December 13, her son was pulled over
by ICE after stopping at Target. Omar said agents briefly held him, but
that “once he was able to produce his passport ID they did let him go.”
In response to Trump’s attacks on her, her family and other Somalis,
Omar said Trump was “creepy” and accused him of scapegoating the
community to “deflect from the failures of his presidency.”
Omar
said Trump, “doesn’t want to answer for the possible war crimes of
shooting down those boats in the Caribbean. He does not want any
conversations about releasing the Epstein files, he wants to continue to
protect pedophiles.”
The Democratic congresswoman did not propose
any concrete actions to oppose ICE operations or remove Trump from the
White House. In an op-ed published Saturday by MS Now, Omar detailed
some of the many crimes ICE agents have conducted but did not call for
any criminal investigations, much less a mass political struggle to take
down the Trump government.
7. Anheuser-Busch to close 3 breweries in the US, affecting hundreds of jobs
Anheuser-Busch (AB), America’s largest brewing company, has announced
plans to close three facilities across the country. AB will shut down
the 50-year-old complex at Fairfield in the San Francisco area, cutting
238 jobs; its Merrimack, New Hampshire plant, cutting 124 jobs; and its
its 75-year-old facility in Newark, New Jersey will be sold to the
Goodman Group to be repurposed for industrial manufacturing and
logistics, affecting over 110 employees.
Together, around 475 workers will be affected.
Beyond
the immediate loss of jobs there will be ripple effects to other
industries. The workforce development board for Fairfield stated that
the brewery closure will cut more than $10 million in tax revenue to the
city and contribute to an additional 306 job losses. Furthermore, as
the largest water user in the city, local officials expect that the
closure of the plant will disrupt water utility finances and result in
higher rates for the rest of the community.
These brewery closures
come as nationwide job losses for the year surge past 1.2 million in
total. The holidays have seen no letup in the jobs massacre,
three in 10 companies are planning layoffs before the new year,
according to one poll. The capitalist class is using emerging artificial
intelligence technology to lay off vast sections of the workforce, in
an attempt to pay for unsustainable levels of debt and prop up financial
bubbles by intensifying exploitation of the working class.
*****
AB InBev is seeking to pivot to emerging and developing markets,
particularly in Latin America, Africa and China where it can leverage
its market dominance to fuel growth. In developed markets such as North
America and Europe, AB InBev is seeking to consolidate and streamline
its infrastructure to adapt to trends of reduced alcohol consumption,
especially among young people, and preferences for “beyond beer”
products like hard seltzer and non-alcoholic drinks that are growing in
sales.
Part of this strategy is the turn to “premiumization,” the
cooling down of cheap, mass market beers like AB’s flagship Budweiser
brands and increased focus on premium brands like Michelob Ultra. AB
InBev plans to increase Michelob Ultra production at its Van Nuys
facility in Los Angeles. Van Nuys is the target of millions of dollars
in investment to increase production and absorb much of the capacity
from Fairfield.
*****
AB InBev still posted profits in the billions this year, but has seen
reduced profitability compared to recent years. By shedding what it
deems to be suboptimal facilities, paired with modernization of its
larger ones, AB InBev hopes to increase profitability by squeezing out
profit growth and chasing higher yield markets. This will shift the cost
of the transition onto workers who will either lose their jobs or be
forced to move across the country with little to no guarantee of the
quality of the job that awaits them.
Workers at AB InBev must
fight against these closures and the near certainty of more to come.
This fight will take place against both management and the Teamsters
bureaucracy, which is doing nothing to fight layoffs.
To oppose brewery closures and job cuts workers must organize
independently of the union apparatus, building rank-and-file committees
to take matters into their own hands and return power to the shop floor.
This struggle must connect with other sectors of workers facing layoffs
in a global movement. Workers should contact AB InBev workers across
the the company’s global footprint, to prepare for a worldwide counter
offensive against the destruction of jobs and living conditions.
8. The anti–public health agenda and the resurgence of measles in America
The United States is experiencing its most severe measles outbreak in
over 30 years, exposing the consequences of a sustained assault on
public health. The rapid rise in cases in South Carolina, following
earlier explosive outbreaks in Texas, threatens to end the country’s
25-year status of measles elimination—a milestone achieved in 2000
through universal vaccination.
As of mid-December 2025, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed 1,912
measles cases nationwide. This surpasses the peak of the 2019 outbreak
and represents a staggering 571 percent increase over 2024 totals. While
the resurgence is concentrated in areas where vaccination rates have
sharply declined, its implications are national: the reestablishment of
endemic measles in the United States would represent a historic public
health failure.
*****
At its core, the South Carolina crisis is driven by widening immunity
gaps. Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage among students
fell from 96 percent in 2020 to 93.5 percent in the 2024-2025 school
year, below the critical 95 percent threshold required to prevent
sustained transmission. Of 111 cases reported through December 9, 105,
or 95 percent, occurred in unvaccinated individuals.
Children have
borne the brunt of the outbreak. Seventy-five cases, or 60 percent,
involved school-aged children between five and 17 years old,
highlighting the central role schools play in amplifying transmission
when vaccination rates fall. This pattern mirrors what has been observed
repeatedly during COVID-19 and seasonal influenza waves, where policy
decisions sacrificed children’s health to political expediency.
Despite active transmission, public health efforts to increase
vaccination have met stiff resistance. Mobile vaccination clinics
deployed by the state administered only a small number of doses, a
failure Dr. Bell attributed directly to entrenched vaccine hesitancy.
This hesitancy is not simply a matter of individual choice but the
product of years of systematic misinformation, right-wing anti-vaccine
campaigns and the erosion of trust in public health institutions.
*****
The return of measles is especially tragic because it is entirely
preventable. The vaccine, developed and improved in the 1960s, is safe,
effective and has saved millions of lives globally. What is unfolding is
the deliberate assault on science by a social and political system that
subordinates public health to ideology, austerity, and authoritarian
impulses.
As with COVID-19, the danger lies not solely in the
pathogen itself but in the social conditions that allow it to spread
unchecked. The resurgence of measles is a warning. Unless the
anti-public health trajectory is halted and reversed, measles will not
be the last disease to reclaim territory once secured by decades of
collective scientific and social progress.
*****
The Trump administration, in its rampage against science, represents a
qualitative development, but in its assault on public health, as its
assault on social programs and democratic rights, it is acting on behalf
of the capitalist oligarchy. And it is building on decades of policy,
under both Democrats and Republicans, to systematically dismantle
protections against illness. The Biden administration’s “let it rip”
policy during the pandemic—ending masking, testing and even basic data
reporting—paved the way for the further normalization of mass infection
and death.
*****
The tools to prevent catastrophe exist. The science exists. The
resources exist. Indeed, Socialism AI represents the opposite
trajectory. It uses the most advanced technologies to arm workers and
youth with the knowledge and scientific understanding necessary to fight
capitalist exploitation and its consequences. It is a powerful tool for
building a global movement to take control of society out of the hands
of the oligarchy and place it into the hands of the working class.
What
is required is the development of a mass revolutionary movement of the
working class, aimed at ending a social order that subordinates life to
profit—and building a socialist society that places public health, human
need and scientific progress at its foundation.
9. United States: Postal employees say coworker died on the job at Morgan PDC in Midtown Manhattan
A 28-year postal worker died overnight in early December at the
Morgan Processing and Distribution Center (Morgan P&DC) in New York
City while working near an Automated Package Processing System (APPS)
machine, multiple workers at the facility have told the WSWS. At the
time of writing, neither the United States Postal Service nor the postal
unions have issued any public statement acknowledging the worker’s
death or explaining the circumstances surrounding it.
Workers told the World Socialist Web Site
that the death occurred on Tour 1, the overnight shift, sometime around
2:30 a.m. The worker’s name has not been publicly released. Conflicting
accounts circulated among workers as to whether the death was caused by
a heart attack or an aneurysm, underscoring the absence of any
transparent investigation or communication.
The Morgan Processing
and Distribution Center is a major USPS facility serving the New York
metropolitan area, including Wall Street and surrounding financial
districts. Despite the size and strategic importance of the facility,
workers report that the death was not formally announced, no meeting was
held and operations continued as usual.
The death at Morgan
follows a series of recent fatalities at USPS facilities across the
country. On November 8, maintenance mechanic Nick Acker was killed
inside a mail sorting machine at the Detroit Network Distribution Center
in Allen Park, Michigan. His body was not found for another eight
hours. One week later, Russell Scruggs, Jr., a mail handler assistant,
died after falling and hitting his head at the Palmetto Processing and
Distribution Center in Georgia. In each case, union officials have
deferred to management-led or OSHA investigations, which will inevitably
lead to whitewashes.
In response, the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee has launched
its own independent inquiry. In a statement last week urging workers to
come forward with testimony, the committee explained that the inquiry
“will collect testimonies, inspect machine lockout/tagout records,
document the bypassing of safety features, obtain grievance histories
and witness statements, and preserve photographic and video evidence.
*****
Workers report they were given no explanation of what happened, no
opportunity to ask questions, and no acknowledgment of the death beyond
informal word of mouth. “The first thing the union does,” one worker
said, “is take people off the clock. That’s the first thing they care
about. It’s like we’re just numbers.”
Neither the American Postal
Workers Union (APWU) nor the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU)
has issued a statement regarding the death at the Morgan facility. This
silence mirrors the response to recent deaths in Michigan and Georgia,
where union officials called for investigations to be handled by USPS
management and OSHA, institutions workers say have repeatedly failed to
protect them.
*****
The limited information currently available about the death at the
Morgan facility—no confirmed name, no public timeline, no medical
findings and no explanation of working conditions—raises urgent
unanswered questions. Why did a postal worker with nearly three decades
of service die overnight near an APPS operation? What conditions
prevailed on the shop floor that night? What emergency protocols were in
place? And why have postal workers been left to piece together the
facts themselves?
10. United States: GM moves to permanently lay off 1,145 workers at Factory Zero amid record profits and UAW silence
Unless it is halted by collective action by workers themselves, the
coming week could be the last for 1,145 workers at the General Motors
Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit. The automaker plans to slash
production to a single shift beginning January 5, 2026. The permanent
layoffs are being imposed on the eve of the holiday shutdown, which runs
from December 24 through January 4, leaving workers to face
unemployment and the loss of healthcare during the most financially
precarious time of the year.
The job cuts follow a brutal year in
which Factory Zero workers were subjected to extreme levels of overtime,
routinely working between 72 and 80 hours a week for much of 2024.
These conditions were followed by irregular temporary layoffs, creating a
cycle of exhaustion and insecurity. Both shifts were placed on
temporary layoff until November 24, 2025, before GM announced the move
to permanently eliminate more than 1,000 jobs.
The United Auto
Workers bureaucracy has not even made a pretense of opposing the mass
layoffs, which will only deepen the social crisis in the city which
houses the headquarters of both GM and the UAW. The official poverty
rate in the Motor City is already 35 percent, with 51 percent of
children living in poverty, according to the census report.
In the statement “Mobilize to stop GM layoffs at Factory Zero in Detroit—Build rank-and-file committees,”
the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
(IWA-RFC) has called on workers to form independent committees capable
of organizing a real fight, unifying workers across plants and borders
and breaking out of the isolation imposed by the union bureaucracy. Only
the mass, collective action by workers can stop the layoffs and fight
for the right to secure, good-paying jobs for all.
The layoffs
are not the result of any financial losses for GM. In October, the
company raised its projected 2025 net profits to between $12 billion and
$13 billion, up from a prior estimate of $10 billion to $12.5 billion.
This followed record profits of $14.9 billion in 2024. GM stock has
risen approximately 55 percent over the past year.
According to
an investor note published December 12 on the financial website Trevis,
“In the last decade, General Motors (GM) stock has returned $45
[billion] back to its shareholders through cold, hard cash via dividends
and buybacks.” This represents 58.4 percent of GM’s current market
capitalization—more than double the median payout ratio for companies
listed on the S&P 500.
GM is also indefinitely laying off 550
workers at the Lordstown, Ohio Ultium Cells battery plant. An additional
850 workers there will be placed on temporary layoff effective January
5. And 710 workers will be temporarily laid off at the Spring Hill,
Tennessee Ultium Cells battery plant beginning the same day.
Hundreds
of workers at the nearby Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in
Dearborn, Michigan, also remain on layoff, with company executives
considering whether to scrap the F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck
altogether.
This is part of a global jobs massacre in the auto
industry. VW, Bosch, ZF and other German auto and auto parts companies
have announced 50,000 job cuts in the first 10 months of 2025 alone.
Together, these cuts expose the fraudulent character of the claims by
the automakers and the UAW that the electric vehicle transition would
bring stable, high-quality jobs.
*****
Anger over the union’s complicity is widespread. A veteran worker at
the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Plant told the WSWS, “The union just
doesn’t back the people. We had this ‘Stand Up’ strike [in 2023], and
Jeep was one of the few plants that were called out. That was stupid. We
should all have been out at the same time.
“The union gives in to
the company so much. There’s never a 40-hour week. It’s like my life is
Jeep. You can’t plan anything for your family. We’ve got more than
1,000 guys on layoff, and they don’t want to go back to three shifts.
That’s why we’re working all these hours, and guys are getting hurt.
“When
I first hired in there in the late 1990s the union was still strong.
But, man, how things have changed.” He voted against the 2009
concessions, explaining, “I wasn’t going to give up anything.
“I
pay $100 to the UAW every month,” he said. “I don’t call it union dues
anymore. I call it medical insurance. That’s the way you have to look at
it, because it’s gotten so bad, and it’s just going to get worse.”
*****
Hundreds of thousands of workers have viewed World Socialist Web Site featuring Factory Zero workers, reflecting the depth of opposition.
Online comments echo the same concerns. One worker wrote on Reddit, “GM
is going to transfer the laid off workers to St. Louis or Texas and 90%
will decline, resulting in being fired and disqualified from
unemployment.”
*****
The layoffs at Factory Zero are the predictable outcome of capitalist
restructuring driven by investor demands, automation and profit
maximization. Under capitalism, workers’ livelihoods are subordinated
entirely to Wall Street.
The role of the UAW apparatus has been to
facilitate this process. By refusing to mobilize the membership and by
backing nationalist policies that divide workers by country and plant,
the bureaucracy has functioned as an arm of corporate management.
*****
The fight to defend jobs at Factory Zero raises fundamental political
questions. It is not simply a dispute with one company but a
confrontation with the capitalist system itself that sacrifices workers’
lives and livelihoods for private profit. The transformation of the
auto industry—automation, EV production and technological change—must be
placed under democratic workers’ control and reorganized to meet social
needs, not the further enrichment of wealthy shareholders.
The
impending layoffs at Factory Zero are a warning. They demonstrate that
without independent organization and collective action workers will
continue to pay the price for the capitalist crisis. The growing anger
among autoworkers points to the possibility of a broader movement—one
that links the defense of jobs to the fight for political independence
of the working class and the reorganization of society on socialist
foundations.
11. Two longstanding Sri Lankan Trotskyists die
Leela Balasuritya and R.M. Gunathilake
It is with great sadness that the Socialist Equality Party reports that
two longstanding party comrades died on Saturday. We pay tribute to
their intransigent fight over decades for the perspective of Trotskyism
in the Sri Lankan working class. We extend our condolences to their
family members.
*****
Comrade Leela Balasuriya passed away
on Saturday morning, December 13, after losing consciousness. She had
been bedridden for three months after a fall caused by a sudden
complication due to high blood pressure. She was from Dompe, 32
kilometres from Colombo. Her funeral took place yesterday.
*****
Leela joined the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the forerunner of
the SEP, in 1974 and devoted herself to party work until she was
prevented from doing so over the past six months because of her illness.
She was a government employee who lost her job when the right-wing
United National Party (UNP) government sacked 100,000 public sector
workers to crush the 1980 general strike.
She played a significant role in the RCL’s political struggle against
the 1970–1977 coalition government led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP), that included the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the
Stalinist Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL). She was prominent in
opposing the bureaucratic leadership of the All Ceylon Government
Clerical Employees Union, which was dominated by CPSL Stalinists.
*****
Comrade R.M. Gunathilake also died on Saturday after
suffering from chronic illnesses for some time, no doubt compounded a
lifetime of the difficult conditions facing workers in Sri Lanka.
*****
Gunathilake joined the RCL in 1970, just two years after the party
was formed. He was a Ceylon Transport Board worker and faced witch hunts
instigated by LSSP trade union leaders for seeking to mobilise
opposition against the austerity policies of the SLFP-led coalition
government. Gunathilake was a longstanding Central Committee member of
the RCL/SEP.
Gunathilake was also among the 100,000 public sector
employees sacked by the UNP government in its repression of the July
1980 general strike. He was reinstated after 14 years.
12. Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt: Zero net displacement on a flat plane
So, back and forth, back and forth, sometimes interestingly,
sometimes not. Nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong. “Everyone has his
reasons.” And everyone comes across as somewhat shabby, selfish,
underhanded. After the Hunt apparently owes its title to a remark attributed to Bismarck, “There is never as much lying as before an election, during a war and after a
hunt.” It’s odd for filmmakers to choose such a cynical title, which
suggests we are going to watch liars tell lies for two hours.
#MeToo
wasn’t primarily about who was making things up and who wasn’t. Nor was
it about the basic right of women not to be assaulted in the workplace,
classroom or anywhere else. It was an eruption in the upper middle
class, manipulated by the Democratic Party, the New York Times,
etc., as a diversion in 2017 from a genuinely left-wing movement
against Donald Trump and, simultaneously, as a means for already
privileged layers to settle professional scores and reorganize the
executive suite (or staffroom), to gain privileges and milk positions.
Furthermore,
it should be recognized by now that #MeToo’s systematic attacks on due
process and the presumption of innocence, and its resorting to anonymous
sources and unproven allegations to end careers, only smoothed the path
for the extreme right in its assault on elementary constitutional
rights.
13. Aggressive use by Australian Tax Office of private debt collectors
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has referred more than 355,000
people to private debt collector Recoveriescorp since January 2024, the Guardian recently revealed. Among those targeted are low-income workers and welfare recipients with modest tax debts.
*****
During the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid social upheaval
and mass unemployment, the ATO paused some of its debt collection
activities. Although the cost-of-living crisis has only worsened, since
the 2022–2023 financial year the ATO has not only reinstated
pre-existing debt-recovery measures, but stepped up its aggressive
pursuit of debt.
As part of this, the ATO has awarded Recoveriescorp some $42.8 million in contracts since 2022, according to the Guardian.
Initially these were for Recoveriescorp staff to work within the
framework of the ATO, but, since 2024, debts have been directly handed
over to the private collector.
A 2024 Guardian
investigation exposed the insidious methods of collectors like
Recoveriescorp: constant phone calls, pressure on friends and family
members, and even direct threats. One victim said he received incessant
phone calls—sometimes several a day—from Recoveriescorp over a $1,358
ambulance bill for an incident that had left him unable to walk for a
month, let alone work.
*****
The ATO’s crackdown on working-class individuals and small businesses
is occurring amid a historic cost-of-living crisis. A recent national survey
shows a long-term decline in living and working conditions. Between
2019 and 2023, rents rose by 11.5 percent. Over the past decade, average
house rents have soared by nearly 60 percent.
The ATO’s
heavy-handed tactics echo the infamous Robodebt scandal. Introduced in
2016 by the federal Liberal-National government, Robodebt used automated
calculations to allege welfare “overpayments” and issued 900,000 debt
notices by November 2019. Recipients were threatened with penalties and
even jail if they failed to repay supposed debts.
Despite the
exposure of the illegal character of Robodebt, governments have
continued to use similar automated mechanisms to target welfare
recipients and low-income workers. In 2022, the World Socialist Web Site reported that state debt collection agency Revenue NSW had—since
2016—unlawfully used automated systems to forcibly extract funds from
disadvantaged working-class individuals. Banks were directed to identify
and drain accounts to satisfy debts, often leaving people with a zero
balance.
While working-class Australians and struggling small businesses face
aggressive debt collection, major corporations receive a starkly
different treatment. In late 2024, the ATO revealed that more than 1,200
large companies pay no tax in Australia. Its latest corporate
transparency report confirmed that multinational giants—including
Netflix, Apple, Microsoft and Optus—continue to pay little or no income
tax. Brazilian-owned JBS Global Meat Holdings earned $19.7 billion in
Australia in 2023–24 but paid no tax.
The ATO’s punitive measures
against ordinary Australians are part of a broader assault on the
working class, intensifying under the Albanese Labor government. Since
Labor came to power in 2022, wages have nominally increased by 11.5
percent, while official inflation figures show a 13.9 percent rise in
the cost of living. The cost of housing, however, has risen by more than
a third, while electricity bills have increased at an even faster rate.
This will be exacerbated by Labor’s decision to scrap household energy
rebates from December 31.
Multiple rounds of tax changes by the
federal government, including the $300 billion “Stage 3” tax cuts, have favored the wealthy, handing tens of thousands of dollars to
individuals in the richest layers of society, while students,
jobseekers, and low-income workers received meager reductions, far
outweighed by the soaring cost of living.
Simultaneously, Labor governments at federal and state level have
diverted billions of dollars away from education, housing, health, and
welfare to fund corporate subsidies and pay for a massive military
expansion in preparation for a US-led war against China.
The ATO’s
use of private collectors, known for their aggressive tactics, against
individuals with small debts, is a stark expression of how the working
class is being forced to pay for the deepening crisis of capitalism.
Workers are being hit with rising financial stress, declining living
standards and an escalating assault on their basic rights, while
corporations and the wealthy pay little or no tax on their vast profits.
14. Stellantis relies on unions to set pay scales based on nationality at Serbian plant
Under conditions of deepening crisis in the European auto industry,
Stellantis has constructed a multi-tier workforce in the Republic of
Serbia explicitly organized by nationality, residency and legal
jurisdiction. This regime has been established not in opposition to the
unions in Serbia, Italy and elsewhere but with their active
collaboration. This labor policy concentrates in a single workplace the
broader global strategy of driving wages to the bottom by pitting
workers of different nationalities against one another.
At the
center of the operation is the Kragujevac plant, formerly the Zastava
factory, then Fiat Chrysler, now Stellantis. The facility produces the
electric and hybrid Grande Panda as well as the Citröen New C3. The
factory employs roughly 1,000 workers drawn from multiple countries,
each layer paid according to different contracts, laws and currencies.
Before
the breakup of Yugoslavia, Kragujevac was a major hub for heavy
industry, cars, weapons and machinery, employing tens of thousands.
Although the city remains an industrial center, workers have suffered a
massive decline in the living standards and working conditions since the
collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent privatizations.
Stellantis’
initial wage offer to local Serbian workers reportedly stood at
approximately €597 (US$700) per month. Even in Serbia, where average
wages are lower than in Western Europe, this level is inadequate. Living
costs (housing, food, utilities and transportation) have risen sharply
in recent years, driven by inflation and Serbia’s integration into
global markets. For workers in Kragujevac, these wages barely cover
basic necessities, leaving no margin for savings, family support or
emergencies.
The sharp decline in the social position of the
working class was presented as the unavoidable price of
“competitiveness,” with the threat that production would otherwise be
curtailed or relocated. The union apparatus accepts this framework,
treating poverty pay as a given rather than a point of struggle.
In
August, Stellantis escalated this policy by recruiting hundreds of
workers from Morocco, Algeria, Nepal, India and Poland to work in its
Kragujevac plant. In October, this was supplemented with another 200
foreign workers. These workers were hired through agencies and often had
to pay between US$300 and US$800 simply for the chance to obtain the
job, a form of legalized extortion that binds them to the employer
through debt.
Many of these workers receive far less than Serbian
workers. Nepalese workers reportedly earn as little as €300 (US$350) per
month. They are housed in controlled accommodations, dependent on the
employer and intermediaries, and often isolated by language barriers.
This is the most brutal layer of the wage pyramid, designed to exert
downward pressure on all others.
The unions have raised no principled opposition to this system. There
has been no demand for equal pay for equal work, no call for unified
action, and no exposure of the agency system as a mechanism of
super-exploitation.
*****
Crucially, Italian workers are not celebrating the fact that they
earn more than their Serbian, Moroccan or Nepalese colleagues. On the
contrary, they are acutely aware of the injustice. One worker told RAI
tv network that when he saw a Serbian worker’s paycheck, “my heart cried
out.” Another said that the difference in compensation “causes damage,”
referring to resentment and division created by this, which undermines
solidarity on the shop floor.
Italian workers understand that
their higher wages are not a gift from Stellantis but the result of
legal constraints the company is attempting to evade or dismantle.
Despite the treachery of the Italian union bureaucracy, the efforts by
the right-wing Meloni government to eliminate such legal restraints has
been slowed by worker militancy and popular resistance. So Stellantis
simply circumvents current laws by offering temporary jobs abroad, where
it can experiment with lower standards and fragmented contracts.
*****
In Serbia, the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia
(SSSS) plays a parallel role. As the heir to the Stalinist structures of
the Yugoslav state, it has long acted as a stabilizing and
collaborationist force. During mass privatizations, factory closures and
the influx of foreign direct investment, including Fiat/Stellantis in
Kragujevac, it accepted low-wage competitiveness as Serbia’s
“development” model.
At the Kragujevac plant specifically, the
SSSS-affiliated union is the recognized bargaining partner. It accepted
extremely low base wages under the guise of securing production and did
not oppose massive state subsidies, wage stagnation or the introduction
of de facto wage tiers. Despite meetings with Italian unions in October,
it never advanced a demand for international wage parity or joint
action across national lines.
*****
The union bureaucracies have no intention of waging a struggle
against the governments and corporations forcing workers to migrate.
Migrant workers are subjected to prejudice and attacks in host
countries, while artificial divisions are created between nationality
and wage levels. This, of course, is immensely profitable for the
corporations.
The Kragujevac experience demonstrates why workers
must build new organs of struggle: rank-and-file committees independent
of the trade unions and political parties of capital. American
Stellantis workers, like their counterparts in Europe and Asia, have
endured decades of plant closures, mass layoffs, two-tier wage systems,
layoffs and the systematic dismantling of what remained of the postwar
boom.
These attacks were imposed with its active participation of the United Auto Workers bureaucracy, whose corruption scandal
exposed the union as an arm of corporate management and the state. US
workers confront the same essential reality as those in Kragujevac: a
global corporate system that treats workers as wage slaves for
exploitation and profit.
The way forward lies in the development
of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
(IWA-RFC), uniting Serbian, Italian, Moroccan, Nepalese, American and
all Stellantis workers on the basis of common class interests. The
struggle is not against one company alone but against an entire profit
system that depends on wage suppression, forced migration and national
divisions. Only through conscious international unity and independent
organization can workers oppose the race to the bottom imposed by global
capital and assert their collective social power.
15. Uncontrolled global warming causes devastating storms and floods
If there were any doubt that climate change is real and having a
devastating impact on millions of people, this year’s hurricane season
should put that doubt to rest. Only those with a powerful material
interest in doing so will continue denying the reality, along with
those who have fallen victim to the ensuing right-wing, anti-science
propaganda.
Three Category 5 hurricanes were generated in the
Atlantic alone, only the second time this has happened in recorded
history. These included Hurricane Melissa, which ravaged Jamaica, Hispaniola and Cuba, plus hurricanes Erin and Humberto. In the Pacific basin, two major typhoons struck the Philippines in
a week and cyclone Ditwah devastated Sri Lanka. (Note: similar cyclonic
storms in different regions are known under a variety of names:
typhoons in Asia, hurricanes in the Atlantic and tropical cyclones in
the Indian and Pacific Oceans).
What is particularly remarkable is their intensity in both wind speed and quantity of rainfall.
*****
It is clear that the rise in extreme weather is the direct result of
global warming due to the release of greenhouse gases caused primarily
by the burning of fossil fuels. As the oceans warm, more water vapor is
released into the atmosphere. This provides both increased energy
driving the storm and a greater supply of moisture which is subsequently
released as rain, thus increasing the storm’s impact. This link has
been identified in numerous scientific studies, for example, “Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: Part II: Projected Response to Anthropogenic Warming” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, March 01, 2020, Vol. 101, Issue 3).
The extreme weather conditions caused by climate change are not only
evident in the intensification of tropical cyclones but also in rainfall
from non-cyclonic storms. Scientific studies have found that for each
degree C. of global warming, the quantity of rain from a storm will
increase by 14 to 21 percent. The earth has already experienced a rise
of 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels last year and this
will continue unless determined measures are undertaken. The devastating
effects are already evident.
*****
Interior areas, not adjacent to ocean coastlines, are also being
affected by enhanced rainfall due to global warming. For example, the flash flooding in Ingram, Texas early
in July, during which the Guadalupe River rose 31 feet in 90 minutes,
took nearly 300 lives, confirmed dead or missing. This event was not
unforeseen. Indeed, eight years before the disaster, the county’s
application for a federal grant to build a flood warning system had been
rejected by the first Trump administration. This was by no means an
isolated incident. One study found that extreme rainfall events in the
United States could become three times more likely and up to 20 percent
more severe within the next 45 years.
*****
n addition, to torrential rainfall and high winds, storms near
coastal areas can cause tidal surges, especially if the storm’s arrival
coincides with lunar high tide. This is further exacerbated by sea level
rise, due to glacial and continental ice sheet melting, also a
consequence of global warming.
Major urban areas near shorelines
are of especial concern due to high population density, sensitive
infrastructure and poor options for mass evacuation in a short time. One
prime example is New York City. The devastating effects of a major
storm’s impact on the city was already seen when Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012. A new study by First Street, a climate risk group in Manhattan, reported in the New York Times—“The Disaster to Come: New York’s Next Superstorm”—paints a dire picture of what today’s even more powerful storms could cause.
*****
Another dangerous consequence of global warming is catastrophic flooding due to the accelerating melting of mountain glaciers.
Beyond
the immediate impact, flooding also has major longer-term negative
effects on human health. New research estimates that in the year
following major floods, the United States saw more than 22,000 excess
deaths. Among the causes are respiratory illnesses due to residual
dampness which promotes the growth of mold, not to mention loss of
housing, infrastructure and food resources. On a world scale, this
translates into many millions of avoidable deaths.
Paradoxically, global warming can also starve some areas of rainfall, resulting in severe drought.
Trump
has shut down any federal programs addressing climate change and
effectively banned research into global warming. At the same time, he is
doing everything possible to increase the burning of fossil fuels. His
vulgar and ignorant dismissal of climate change as a “hoax” is only the
most overt expression of the world ruling oligarchy’s willful belittling
of the overwhelming evidence of its reality in favor of its own
immediate interests and the system which it supports.
*****
The international capitalist ruling class, which values profit over
human life, is criminally responsible for the mass destruction and
catastrophic loss of life caused by the uncontrolled global warming and
consequential climate change which has already occurred and will
continue to worsen unless the working class takes power and establishes a
rational, socialist world system.
16. Germany’s
Left Party attacks its own youth organisation over Gaza resolution: Why
young people need a genuine socialist alternative
In early November, Linksjugend [Left Youth], the youth organization of Germany’s Left Party, adopted a resolution at its federal congress
under the title “Never again remain silent in the face of genocide.” For
the first time since the beginning of Israel’s war of annihilation
against Gaza, it explicitly described the mass murder of the Palestinian
people as genocide, criticised the “colonial and racist structure” of
the Israeli state project, and described Israel as an apartheid state.
These
formulations describe reality. They correspond to the situation in
Gaza, where Israel has massacred tens of thousands of civilians since
October 2023, and to the assessments of numerous international human
rights organizations.
With this resolution, Linksjugend has not moved “to the left”; it is
merely reacting to the enormous political opposition within the
population, above all among young people, who are becoming radicalized and are being attacked for this by all the establishment parties and the
media.
Hardly had the resolution been adopted when almost all major media outlets—from the tabloid Bild to leading newsweekly Der Spiegel to the pro-Green taz—launched
a hysterical campaign against the youth organization. The resolution
was denounced as “antisemitic,” and the congress was portrayed as a
hotbed of extremist activities, where pro-Israeli delegates were
allegedly openly threatened.
However, at the forefront of this
right-wing campaign was not the extreme right Springer press, but the
Left Party itself. Instead of defending its own youth organization, it
launched a sharp attack and made clear that support for Israel’s war
policy was non-negotiable.
*****
The message is unmistakable: the Left Party tolerates no serious
criticism of Israel—and certainly not the identification of its policies
as genocide. In the days following the youth congress, the party
resorted to aggressive censorship measures:
- In Saxony, the
Left Party parliamentary group denied its own deputy Nam Duy Nguyen
rooms in which to mobilize against arms deliveries to Israel.
- In
Hamburg, it openly defended the censorship of a lecture by political
scientist Helga Baumgarten on the history of the Palestinian liberation
struggle.
- In Berlin, it withdrew a venue at the last minute from its French sister party, La France Insoumise, for a Palestine conference.
This
constitutes a systematic attempt to purge criticism of Israel from the
party, thereby demonstrating that despite occasional cosmetic criticism
of the government, the Left Party fully supports the foreign policy
course of German imperialism.
*****
Young workers and students who want to fight against fascism, militarism
and social austerity face fundamental political questions and tasks.
They need to understand the role of the Left Party and its youth organization, which do not represent their interests and goals, but
instead play a key role in enforcing anti-working-class government
policies.
*****
Workers and young people should draw the necessary conclusions from
this. The struggle against genocide, war and capitalism cannot be waged
within this party. It requires a conscious break with the Left Party and
all its appendages, an orientation to the international working class
and the building of an independent socialist movement against the
capitalist system—the source of war, oppression and social inequality.
The
Socialist Equality Party (SGP) and its youth organisation, the
International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), are the
only political force that consistently fights against all forms of
imperialism and militarism—whether in Gaza, in Ukraine or in the
Indo-Pacific. We stand for:
- the immediate halt to the genocide in Gaza and all arms deliveries,
- the international unification of the working class against war,
- the overthrow of the capitalist system that produces these crimes,
- the building of a socialist society based on equality, freedom and international solidarity.
For
young people seeking an honest, consistent Marxist response to war,
genocide and social injustice, there is no path through the Left Party
or Linksjugend, but only through the conscious building of a
revolutionary movement under the leadership of the SGP and the IYSSE.
17. US-UK medicines deal could lead to over 15,000 deaths per year in the UK
The US-UK trade deal on medicines signed this month is touted by the
Labour government as a “world-beating deal,” under which “tens of
thousands of NHS patients will benefit”. Far from the rosy picture, the
deal could cause over 15,000 deaths a year, leaving the National Health
Service with additional annual debt of up to £3 billion.
US
President Donald Trump’s global trade war threatened to impose tariffs
on drug imports of up to 100 percent, including from UK firms, if the
NHS did not pay higher prices to purchase US drugs and relocate and
invest in US pharma companies. Pharmaceutical giants themselves
threatened to withdraw investment from Britain if Keir Starmer’s
government did not agree to pay more for medicines.
On December 1, the UK agreed a deal which will increase the upper
threshold for which it can buy new medicines by 25 percent. The deal
allows for more expensive drugs to be approved such as breakthrough
cancer medicines, but, without additional funding, will mean non branded
medicines that millions rely on may not be affordable due to
anticipated increase in NHS budgetary demands.
Business and Trade
Secretary Peter Kyle claimed the deal “guarantees UK pharmaceutical
exports worth at least £5 billion a year will enter the US tariff-free”
for a three-year period.
The repayment rates on NHS drug spending will be lowered from 22.9
percent to 15 percent from 2026. This is the amount drug firms pay back
to the NHS to ensure it does not overspend its allocated budget for
branded medicines.
Karl Claxton, professor of health economics, and a National Institute
for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) representative, responded to the
deal stating: “If the NHS ultimately picks up the bill, we can expect
15,971 additional deaths and 352,000 years of life in good health to be
lost each year.”
*****
In his “General Terms for the U.S.-UK Economic Prosperity Deal”
tariff pact agreed to in May 2025 with Trump, Starmer pledged to
“improve the overall environment for pharmaceutical companies”—that is
to funnel more money into the pockets of global corporations at the
expense of patients’ lives and well-being. Trump has now called in
Starmer’s offer, with the pharmaceutical giants sniffing an opportunity
to boost their already vast profits.
Starmer has rejected
repeated protests, opposition and research from the health and
scientific community in order to cement his relations with the Trump
administration. In November, experts from across health, academia, and
civil society penned an open letter to Keir Starmer calling for an
“urgent pause” on the plans.
The signatories stated they were
“extremely concerned that the widely reported relentless pressure from
multiple pharmaceutical corporations and the White House will lead to a
deal that worsens patient outcomes, damages the NHS, and fails to serve
the economic and scientific interests of the UK”.
They continued:
“Big Pharma is attempting to create a false equivalence between the
prices the NHS pays and whether the UK is a good place to invest. The
reality is there is no connection and pharmaceutical companies are using
this as a cynical attempt to drain yet more billions from our NHS. This
money should be invested into our healthcare systems, frontline workers
and staff, and lifesaving research – not used to make rich shareholders
richer.”
For the Starmer government the US trade deal was an attempt to secure
an advantage over Europe in its dealings with America. The
pharmaceuticals scandal makes clear that any favorable treatment
secured by Labour was won by selling the working class down the river.
18. Europe’s governments plot abrogation of immigrant rights
Discussions began on Wednesday in Strasbourg among representatives of
Europe’s governments on abandoning key provisions in the European
Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
From Social Democrats to
fascist parties, all are pushing towards an agreement by the spring of
2026 that will spell the end of any commitment to the universalist
principles proclaimed in the ECHR in the immediate aftermath of the
horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World
War II.
Underlining the unanimity within the political establishment, the
talks were initiated by Denmark’s Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette
Frederiksen and Italy’s fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Melloni. In May,
the pair issued an open letter—signed by seven additional European
Union (EU) member states—that denounced the European Court of Human
Rights for interfering with national political decisions and demanded
freedom from the restraints of the ECHR.
In a manner little
different from the Trump administration’s recent declaration that Europe
faces “civilizational erasure” due to “illegal” migration, the open
letter railed against “criminal foreigners” and “hostile states” seeking
to “instrumentalize” immigrants against Europe.
The letter is one
expression of a decisive shift by Europe’s ruling class to break with
the constraints of international law as it seeks to ruthlessly assert
its interests against the working class and its imperialist rivals. Its
pursuit of a massive rearmament program to enable European imperialism
to fight its global competitors, and support for Israel’s genocide of
the Palestinians and bloody war between Ukraine and Russia, underscore
the criminal character of this agenda. It demands an unrestrained
onslaught on the living standards and rights of the working class, of
which immigrants are a key component.
*****
Europe’s governments have long pursued vicious anti-immigrant
policies to establish “Fortress Europe.” These find their most murderous
expression in the Mediterranean, which has become a mass grave for
thousands of people due to the blocking of all legal routes to reach the
continent and prohibitions on sea rescues. According to the Missing
Migrants Project by the International Organisation for Migration, some
33,220 migrants have been recorded as missing in the Mediterranean since
the project began in 2014. The total for 2025 is approaching 2,000.
However,
the present turn marks something new, with governments of all political
stripes breaking explicitly with even the semblance of international
law. They openly declare that the basic democratic rights the
bourgeoisie was forced to grant in a previous period due to the horrors
of World War II are no longer appropriate and must be abrogated from
national and international legal systems. At the same time, political
parties in all the major European countries are working systematically
to integrate fascist forces into power, a process they have already
achieved in Italy and the Czech Republic.
*****
The attacks on the working class planned by governments across the
continent in the coming years to make European imperialism “war-ready”
are so sweeping that no opposition can be tolerated, even when expressed
through the highly managed framework of bourgeois legality. In Germany,
an all-party coalition has approved €1 trillion in war spending, which
must now be squeezed out of the working class through the destruction of
public spending and social programs, summed up in the declaration by
Merz that the current welfare system is no longer affordable. French
President Emmanuel Macron is committed to tens of billions in spending
cuts to fund a massive increase in the military budget.
EU member
states have agreed to a shared €850 billion military spending program,
funded by austerity measures. In every country, thousands of workers
are being thrown out of their jobs as civilian industry is converted to
war production and the capitalists offload the deepening crisis produced
by decaying capitalism onto the backs of the workers. The same ruthless
methods perfected by the ruling class against immigrants and refugees,
the most vulnerable sections of the working class, are now to be turned
against all workers who try to resist this vicious class-war agenda.
*****
The struggle against imperialist war and militarism requires a socialist
and internationalist program, aimed at the abolition of the obsolete
nation-state borders and repudiation of nationalist tropes employed by
ruling elites in every country to block working-class unity. Workers
must build a mass political and industrial movement against war and
capitalist austerity and make the words of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto their battle-cry: “Workers of the world, unite!”
19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The
fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an
essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide,
dictatorship and fascism.
