Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: December 15-21
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
Truman announces US national emergency
100 years ago:
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
