The World Socialist Web Site publishes the text of a lecture delivered by David North
in London on November 22 examining the global crisis of capitalism and
the Trump administration’s drive to dictatorship.
(Party of the Revolution—CCM) Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s bloody crackdown after the fraudulent October 29 vote flows from
the class foundations of Julius Nyerere’s African Socialism and
Pan-Africanism, whose rise was paved by Stalinism and Pabloism.
Audiences cannot help but grasp the relevance of the film’s subject—a
population revolting against tyranny and despotism in the name of
equality and inalienable rights.
McCullin’s attraction to socialist ideas was part of a wider ferment,
where photography was understood as means of revealing and indicting
imperialism, exploitation and poverty rather than mere documentation.
*****
The task today is to reconnect art with revolution. In that struggle,
unfolding amid an unprecedented global crisis and the political collapse
of the old Stalinist and social democratic parties, McCullin’s
photographs still provide a searing indictment of a system that must be
overthrown.
The diplomatic row triggered by Japanese prime minister Takaichi’s
provocative remarks on Taiwan on November 7, far from subsiding, has
escalated with mounting economic repercussions.
The ruling class is arming for a global war and preparing to suppress
the inevitable resistance of the working class with violence. The militarization of domestic policy is an integral component of the war
preparations.
Postal workers must immediately move to countermand this sellout through
the formation of independent rank-and-file committees in every postal
sorting plant and depot across Canada.
World Socialist Web Site reporter Nora Diaz, who covers many topics including labor issues and US immigration delivers the first part of a two-part lecture to the the 2025 Socialist Equality Party Summer School. In this lecture, Diaz focuses on the experience of socialist attorney Alan Gelfand after he insisted on getting to the bottom of questions he had about why leaders of the Socialist Workers Party expelled him without any honest explanation. Workers and youth must learn this
history if they are to defend and promote genuine socialism.
The disruption caused by the recent plant fires at Novelis in Oswego
County, New York demonstrate the increasingly fragile character of
supply chains, vulnerabilities exacerbated by Trump’s tariffs.
Trump’s redefinition of “professional” degrees aims to push
working-class students out of healthcare and education specialties and
further undermine science and culture.
The 2010 mine disaster, which killed 29 workers, and the cover-up by
successive governments, demonstrate the urgent need for workers to build
rank-and-file committees, independent of and opposed to the union
bureaucracy and all capitalist parties.
Not a day passes without the Starmer government moving forward its
preparations for the re-armament and conscription necessary for an
extended war with Russia.
This process, conducted through secret diplomacy, is an attempt by the
Turkish and Kurdish bourgeois nationalist leaderships to reach an
agreement in line with US imperialism's efforts to reorganize the Middle
East.
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.
What “shared analysis,” one might ask, would a supposed “democratic
socialist” have with a fascist representative of the capitalist
oligarchy about the “affordability crisis” in New York or anywhere
else?
The answer is to be found not in the armchair psychoanalysis of Jacobin,
but in the class analysis of Marxism. The DSA speaks for privileged
sections of the upper-middle class that are deeply opposed to a
fundamental redistribution of wealth. It is not and has never been
independent from the oligarchy and the state apparatus. Politically, it
is a faction of the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the
military-intelligence agencies.
Indeed, a significant factor in
the gushing of the DSA over Mamdani and his love fest with Trump is a
feeling within these layers that Trump is not so bad after all.
Dictatorship, fascism, genocide, mass deportation might just be ok if
there is a little space for the upper-middle class pseudo-left.
There is precedent for this brand of “left” collaboration with the
far right. In August 1939, Stalin’s Soviet Union signed the infamous
Hitler-Stalin Pact, aligning with Nazi Germany in a temporary
“non-aggression” agreement that disoriented millions of workers and
helped pave the way for World War II. Today’s alliance between Mamdani
and Trump flows from a similar logic. And within the DSA, and Jacobin in particular, there is a very strong influence of Stalinism.
As the WSWS wrote 10 years ago, following the experience of Syriza in Greece, answering the question, “What is the pseudo-left?”:
The
pseudo-left is anti-socialist, opposes class struggle, and denies the
central role of the working class and the necessity of revolution in the
progressive transformation of society. It counterposes supra-class
populism to the independent political organization and mass mobilization
of the working class against the capitalist system. The economic
program of the pseudo-left is, in its essentials, pro-capitalist and
nationalistic.
Mamdani’s actions once again
demonstrate that the use of the term “pseudo-left” is not an epithet or a
throw-away phrase, but a political and class characterization. There is
nothing “left” about these forces.
*****
The events of the past several days must be a turning point for all
those who genuinely oppose fascism and dictatorship and want to fight
for socialism.
For Mamdani, his meeting with Trump, held before
he even takes office, will define him for all time as a political
scoundrel of the lowest order. For the hundreds of thousands of young
people and workers who supported Mamdani in the election, who were drawn
to his rhetoric and viewed his victory as a sign of hope, the lesson
must be drawn.
The fight for genuine socialism, for the interests
of the working class, requires an irreconcilable break with the
Democratic Party and the bankrupt politics of the pseudo-left. Their
strategy leads not to socialism, but to confusion, demoralization and
betrayal.
The announcement of Socialism AI came at the conclusion of an
extensive lecture addressing the fundamental question: “Where is America
going?” North opened by noting that most people would respond, “To
hell”—a judgment he acknowledged as largely justified given the
accelerating political crisis.
Drawing on Marx’s description of
France’s financial aristocracy as the “lumpenproletariat on the heights
of bourgeois society,” North characterized the contemporary American
ruling class as “a super-Mafia at the summit of capitalist society,
flaunting crime and perversion while ordinary people pay the cost in
misery and blood.”
North presented extensive data documenting the unprecedented
concentration of wealth in the United States. Trump’s cabinet and top
appointees possess a collective net worth exceeding $60 billion, with
sixteen of his twenty-five wealthiest appointees ranking among the 813
billionaires in a nation of 341 million people—placing them in the top
0.0001 percent. “This is not symbolic representation,” North stated. “It
is direct rule by the oligarchy.”
The lectures traced the
historical roots of the crisis to the collapse of the Bretton Woods
system in 1971 and the subsequent financialization of the American
economy. North documented how the total value of publicly traded US
stocks now exceeds 220 percent of annual economic output—more than
double the GDP—compared to just 80 percent in 1971. This represents an
economy increasingly detached from real production and built on
“fictitious capital.”
North argued that moral outrage alone cannot provide the foundation
for revolutionary struggle. What is required is a scientific
understanding of capitalism’s contradictions, particularly Marx’s law of
the decline in the rate of profit. The current frenzy of investment in
artificial intelligence under capitalism, while appearing to promise
increased profitability through mass layoffs, will in fact accelerate
the systemic decline in the rate of profit by further reducing the
source of surplus value—living labor.
North concluded with a powerful metaphor:
The
world in which we live is like a sleeping volcano upon whose slopes
civilization builds its monuments, establishes its institutions, and
organizes its daily life. For periods of time, the volcano appears
dormant. But beneath the surface, immense pressures accumulate. The
magma rises. The tremors intensify. And finally, the eruption comes with
catastrophic force, transforming the landscape entirely.
He continued:
The
eruption of class struggle in the United States will destroy the
rotting structures of capitalism but will also open the possibility for a
new world. From the depths of social oppression will arise a force
greater than any army or corporation—the collective power of a class
that produces all wealth yet owns nothing. When that force acts
consciously, guided by scientific socialism and the analysis of
objective reality, it will sweep away the barriers of nationality and
ethnicity and unite humanity in a common struggle for liberation.
*****
In the coming days, the World Socialist Web Site will post the full video recording of the London lecture.
The major European powers have reacted with dismay to the Trump
administration’s proposed peace plan, worked out in US negotiations with
Moscow. Desperate to continue the war with Russia in Ukraine, which
they have made a central justification for their own remilitarization
and cuts to social spending to fund the “war economy,” they rejected the
plan as a “capitulation” to Russia.
*****
It was not a war to preserve Western democracy from Russian
aggression, nor were Russian troops bumbling fools suffering lopsided
losses at the hands of superior, NATO-backed Ukrainian forces. The NATO
imperialist powers armed the Ukrainian regime to the teeth, successfully
goading the reactionary post-Soviet Russian capitalist regime to attack
it. They all competed in a war aiming to crush Russia and secure
domination of Eurasia. This war has now failed, leaving Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky deeply unpopular, and Ukraine bled white.
Trump’s
deal would leave much of eastern Ukraine in Russian hands, rule out
NATO membership for Ukraine and force Zelensky—who has collapsed in the
polls and cancelled elections—to suddenly hold new elections. It would
cement raw material deals that give Washington, not the European powers,
the lion’s share of rare earth minerals in Ukraine. Washington would
get 50 percent of the profits from the reconstruction of Ukraine, which
Europe would have to fund to the tune of $100 billion.
Bitter
conflicts erupted at a meeting last Friday between US and European
diplomats in Kiev, chaired by US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll.
According to transcripts European officials present at the meeting gave
the Financial Times, Driscoll bluntly informed European negotiators they would have no say in the terms of the peace deal.
“We
are not negotiating details,” Driscoll told them in a foul-mouthed
tirade, declaring: “We need to get this shit done.” He said, “The US
Armed Forces love Ukraine and stand behind Ukraine, but it is the honest
US military assessment that Ukraine is in a very bad position and now
is the best time for peace.”
*****
While German Chancellor Friedrich Merz again called last week to give
Ukraine Taurus missiles for long-range strikes on Russia, French
President Emmanuel Macron said he would keep trying to send French or
European ground troops to Ukraine despite mass popular opposition.
French head of the army general staff General Fabien Mandon demanded
that French people be prepared “to sacrifice their children” in a war
against Russia.
Such remarks underscore the enormous danger of military escalation
that still exists, particularly as the Trump administration threatens to
launch new wars, from Iran to Venezuela.
Europe’s hysterical war
propaganda is not driven by any real military threat facing Europe but
by the imperialist interests and antidemocratic political agenda of
European capitalism. The European Union has more than three times
Russia’s population of 143 million and more than seven times its economy
of approximately US$2 trillion. Russian forces have neither the
capacity nor the intention to conquer Europe.
By waging the
Ukraine war, the European powers hope to enforce both their commercial
and military interests in Eurasia, and—inextricably bound up with
this—an ultra-reactionary political climate at home. Fully 89 percent of
Western Europeans opposed sending troops to Ukraine, and there was
explosive social anger at pension cuts and other austerity measures used
to fund the war. Yet the war proceeded, plunging US and European
governments ever deeper into debt, and working class opposition to war
was politically suppressed.
*****
The defense of the interests of the working class in Europe requires
building a socialist anti-war movement in the working class. The
bloodshed and the looting of the working population of the warring
countries must stop. Furthermore, far-reaching political and historical
conclusions must be drawn from this war, which has caused millions of
Ukrainian and Russian casualties.
In the period since the
Stalinist bureaucracies dissolved the Soviet Union and restored
capitalism in Eastern Europe, capitalism has utterly failed to provide
prosperity and peace. The fratricidal Ukrainian-Russian war incited by
NATO exemplifies the catastrophes it has produced. Averting even greater
disasters requires the unification of the struggles of the working
class, bringing down governments across Europe in a struggle to replace
the European Union with the United Socialist States of Europe as part of
an international struggle for socialism.
The Israeli military killed dozens of people in Gaza and Lebanon over
the weekend, continuing its rampage throughout the Middle East under
the cover of “ceasefires” in both Gaza and Lebanon.
The massacres,
which have become customary, have gone largely unreported in major
newspapers, which have accepted the fraudulent proclamation by President
Trump, as he put it on Friday, that “we actually have now for the first
time, peace in the Middle East.”
*****
The attacks on Lebanon are part of an ongoing and developing war in
the Middle East and, in particular, are preparatory to any direct war by
Israel against Iran. The Jerusalem Post commented on Sunday,
“Israel now has tensions with Syria, as well as Lebanon, and in Gaza,
the West Bank, and on other fronts. The Beirut strike may send a message
to Iran.”
On Saturday, Israel killed 24 people and wounded 80
more, including children, in attacks throughout Gaza. This followed a
series of airstrikes in Gaza on Wednesday and Thursday that killed 33
Palestinians.
The strikes bring the number of people killed by
Israel in Gaza since the announcement of a “ceasefire” between Israel
and Hamas a month ago to over 312, with 760 more wounded. It has leveled
1,500 buildings over the past month.
*****
Despite a promise by Israel to allow food and medical supplies into
Gaza, the enclave continues to suffer shortages of all essential
supplies, including critical medical supplies.
Tributes have poured in from across the official political spectrum
following the death on November 8 of former Labor Party powerbroker,
political fixer and bagman Graham Richardson at the age of 76.
Richardson is to be accorded a rare state funeral organised by the
federal Labor government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among those lauding Richardson,
hailing him as a “Labor legend.” He told Sky News that Richardson was
loyal, insightful and a close friend. Albanese was joined by two
right-wing ex-prime ministers—Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison—from the
opposition Liberal Party, who also spoke warmly of their friendship with
Richardson. Former Greens leader Bob Brown joined the praise.
How
can this effusive affection be explained? Richardson was known only as a
Machiavellian Labor Party numbers man and utterly ruthless factional
brawler for the powerful Right faction of Labor’s branch in the
most-populous state, New South Wales (NSW).
*****
Richardson is feted because of the essential role that he played behind
the scenes in keeping the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul
Keating in power federally from 1983 to 1996. That period is widely
regarded in ruling circles as the golden era of pro-market reform, in
which Labor rammed through the anti-working class agenda identified with
US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher.
*****
Across the corporate media following his death, Richardson has generally
been portrayed as a likeable rogue. He was in fact a ruthless political
operator and Labor bureaucrat who, by his own admission, did “whatever
it takes,” not only to advance his own career, power and wealth, but to
refashion the Labor Party into an instrument of social regression and
war.
Capitulating to a ruling-class campaign of intimidation and
repression, the leaders of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux
(CSN) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) ended walkouts
by two separate groups of Société de transport de Montréal (STM) workers
earlier this month.
For weeks, employers, the corporate media
and the political establishment—federalist and Quebec sovereignist
alike—joined forces to demonize the Montreal transit workers, accusing
bus and subway (Metro) drivers and maintenance workers of “holding the
population hostage.”
This campaign was led by Quebec Labor Minister Jean Boulet, the right-wing populist tabloid Le Journal de Montréal,
Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, and the newly
elected mayor of Montreal, former Trudeau Liberal government minister
Soraya Martinez Ferrada.
After denouncing the Administrative Labor
Tribunal (TAT, Tribunal administratif du travail) for not being strict
enough in limiting STM workers’ right to strike, Boulet and Quebec
Premier François Legault introduced Bill 8 into the National Assembly on
November 12 with the aim of advancing the entry into force of their
draconian Law 14, originally scheduled for November 30.
This law
(formerly Bill 89) is widely despised among workers because it imposes
severe limitations on the right to strike in both the public and private
sectors. It dramatically broadens the concept of “essential services,”
and gives the Quebec labor minister the power to illegalize strikes on
his say-so and impose contracts through binding arbitration.
*****
In recent years, the federal Liberal government under Justin Trudeau,
and now his successor Mark Carney, has repeatedly intervened to
criminalize strikes using a fraudulent reinterpretation of Section 107
of the Canadian Labor Code. Those directly targeted include Canada Post
workers, railway workers, port workers, and Air Canada flight
attendants. Last month, Alberta’s far-right United Conservative Party
provincial government criminalized a strike by more than 50,000 teachers.
Governments
have been able to systematically intervene in labor disputes to break
strikes with special laws and authoritarian back-to-work orders because
the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Unifor, CUPE and the other unions
have not lifted a finger to oppose them, even when workers were pressing
for defiance despite the threat of fines and other reprisals.
When the Air Canada flight attendants defied the Carney government
and its minions on the Canada Industrial Relations Board, the CUPE
leadership quickly ended their “illegal” walkout and accepted a sellout
agreement that was subsequently rejected by more than 99 percent of the rank and file.
*****
Whether Law 14 is brought forward or only comes into force at the end
of this month is not the real issue for workers. The unions have
effectively sabotaged their struggle, and the law still hangs like a
sword of Damocles over their heads. The unions are advising Legault to
use their services to impose concessions-laden agreements, but they will
submit to binding arbitration should the government impose it.
Workers
must vigorously oppose either alternative by developing a new strategy
based on making their struggle the spearhead of a broader working class
industrial and political struggle.
*****
Workers in Quebec and across Canada must draw critical lessons from the
transit workers’ struggle. It has exposed the class divisions that run
through society and determine the conduct of all the political actors.
In the face of a challenge from below, all the squabbling factions of
the ruling elite—federalists (PLQ), sovereignists (PQ, Québec Solidaire)
and Quebec national-autonomists (CAQ), from the hard right to the
so-called “left”—quickly put aside their tactical differences to attack
their real common enemy: the working class.
*****
The main obstacle to mounting such a struggle is the union
bureaucracy, which time and again isolates different sections of
workers, disarms them politically, and imposes concessions-laden
contracts.
The union bureaucracy is organizing a “Grand public and
inter-union rally” on November 29. They aim not to launch an offensive
against austerity and the anti-strike laws, but to prepare the union
bureaucracy’s intervention in next year’s provincial elections. The
unions intend to use the elections to divert and channel workers’ anger
over the CAQ’s cuts and Bill 14 behind the establishment opposition
parties, principally the Parti Québécois, which they tacitly support.
In
opposition to the efforts of the union apparatuses to divide workers
from their class brothers and sisters in Canada, the United States and
around the world, Quebec workers should seize upon the November 29
demonstration as an opportunity to make an appeal for a cross-Canada and
international mobilization of the working class against capitalist
austerity, authoritarianism and war.
Such a movement will only be
possible if workers take matters into their own hands and form
rank-and-file committees independent of the nationalist, pro-capitalist
union apparatuses. Through such committees workers will give themselves
the means to mobilize their social power; unify their struggles, cutting
across all the attempts of the ruling class to divide them along
national, racial and ethno-linguistic lines; and to develop an
independent industrial and political offensive in opposition to
austerity and war and for the socialist reorganization of society, so
that human needs are prioritized, not enriching the few.
A miner in the town of Cobar has warned that the fatal accident that
claimed the lives of two workers and injured a third in late October
could be repeated, under conditions where the company, Polymetals
Resources Ltd, last week carried out a full resumption of operations at
its Endeavor Mine where the tragedy occurred.
The World Socialist Web Site is protecting the miner’s anonymity to ensure that he is not subjected to victimisation.
The
worker raised specific concerns about the ongoing use of electrical
detonators at the mine in the central west of New South Wales, noting
that there were discussions among workers that the devices could have
been responsible for triggering the unplanned explosion.
The worker knew 24-year-old Holly Clarke, one of the victims of the
October 28 disaster, alongside 59-year-old Patrick Ambrose McMullen.
Mackenzie Stirling, also 24, has reportedly been left with serious
injuries and trauma.
*****
“It’s insane where the world has gotten to. Everything is organized for a few people to make as much money as possible off the backs of all
the workers. Studies have shown that if someone is earning $50,000 a
year, an additional $15,000 could make their lives a lot better. But if
someone is already on a salary of $10 million a year, an extra $5
million doesn’t change anything at all in terms of their lifestyle.
“Twenty
to twenty-five years ago, there were hardly any billionaires. Now we’re
talking about the prospect of the world’s first trillionaire.
Capitalism has gone too far.”
*****
The worker expressed appreciation for the WSWS continuing to report
on the Endeavor tragedy. “You guys are the only people still covering
it. Every other media company that I’ve seen has just moved on. They
covered it for a few days and that was it. I’m glad to see that you guys
are still covering it, it’s really good. And your coverage is quite
thorough. You’re not biased to the mine. You’re there for the workers
from what I’ve seen.”
He concluded: “Everyone around the town
wants justice. We need to know what caused the explosion and who was
responsible and make sure something like this does not happen again.”
Facing mounting discontent among teachers, the Queensland Teachers Union
(QTU) leadership last week announced a second 24-hour strike for this
Tuesday, over the state Liberal National Party (LNP) government’s
continuation of years of real pay cuts, severe staff shortages and
intolerable workloads.
Even in belatedly calling a stoppage, QTU officials pleaded for talks
with right-wing Premier David Crisafulli to prevent the strike and end
the dispute. This must be a sharp warning to teachers that the union is
preparing another sellout agreement, just like the ones it imposed under
the previous state Labor government from 2015 to 2024.
In
announcing the stoppage, QTU vice president Leah Olsson told the media:
“This strike could have been averted, this strike should have been
averted… We need Crisafulli to pick up the phone and start the
dialogue—this can end today.”
Olsson said the union was prepared
to halt strike action if the state delivered an improved offer or
accepted the QTU’s conditions for arbitration in the Queensland
Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC). That arbitration could drag on
for two years.
Similar unrest is brewing among teachers
nationally, including stoppages and protests in Tasmania and Victoria.
But the teacher unions, each affiliated to the Australian Education
Union (AEU), are intent on keeping the struggles isolated to individual
states. The union bureaucrats want to avoid a conflict with the federal
Labor government, which is continuing to systematically underfund public
schools.
*****
In the face of this developing disaffection, a pseudo-left group,
Socialist Alternative’s Queensland Teachers Fightback, is trying to
corral teachers back into the bureaucratic and complicit straitjacket of
the QTU and wider trade union apparatuses.
Despite decades of
betrayals by the QTU, AEU and the Australian Council of Trade Unions
(ACTU), under Liberal-National and Labor governments alike, the
Fightback group is telling teachers to “rebuild class-struggle
unionism.”
That is “not going to happen overnight, but there are
no alternatives,” a “QTU Fightback activist” wrote in Socialist
Alternative’s Red Flag newspaper on November 20.
The
article urged teachers to learn “how the processes of the union work:
meeting procedure and protocol, moving and speaking to a motion.” These
were “all valuable skills” to “give a lead to members who want to see
the union fight for more.”
This is a recipe for keeping teachers’ opposition within the straitjacket of the union apparatus.
Since
the 1970s and 1980s, all the unions, including the QTU, have been
transformed into ruthless industrial policing agencies, to subordinate
the opposition of workers to the “free market” dictates of the corporate
elite and its political servants in parliament.
*****
It is time to draw the political lessons of years of bitter
experiences. Far from “no alternatives” there is definitely an
alternative—an essential one. There must be a breakout of the union
stranglehold. New forms of working-class organisation must be
built—rank-and-file committees that will take up the fight for workers’
rights, amid the assault on workplace and living conditions and the
preparations for war.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE),
the educators’ rank-and-file network, urges teachers to set up their own
committees independent of the trade union machines. Rank-and-file
committees are necessary in schools, across the public sector and
throughout all workplaces.
On August 5, 2025, Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese national, was
found dead at ICE’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center (MVPC) in
Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, run by the private GEO Group. In its initial
news release on Ge’s death, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
claimed he was found “hanging by the neck” in the “shower room” but
neglected to note that he was also found with his hands and feet bound
together.
ICE’s Detainee Death Report simply stated
that Ge was found “with a cloth ligature around his neck in a shower
stall.” However, according to an autopsy report obtained by David B.
Rankin, a lawyer for the Ge family, he was found with a bedsheet and
linens tied around his wrists and ankles in what the report describes as
a “hog-tied” position. Chillingly, the medical examiner noted that
there had been other reported incidents of people who had been found
hanged in a similar fashion. Whether these incidents also involved ICE
detainees is not clear.
*****
According to attorney Rankin, there has been no investigation into Ge’s
death. A “Notice to Preserve” was sent to MVCP on August 18, 2025,
requesting all information and material related to Mr. Ge’s detention
and death be preserved. Ge’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on
September 9, 2025, seeking information about Ge’s detention, the
conditions at MVPC, his treatment by MVPC personnel and the
circumstances of his death. As of this writing, these requests have been
ignored by both ICE and DHS.
In response, Ge’s family filed a FOIA lawsuit in the Southern District
of New York on November 12, 2025. Rankin has stated that Ge was in
extreme distress prior to his death and that no one in the facility
could speak Mandarin. Ge had difficulty communicating his needs and
issues to MVPC staff, being forced to write them as notes and relying on
staff to send them to someone outside of the facility to be translated
and sent back, which could take days. The lawsuit also alleges that the
GEO Group did not provide Ge’s family with an explanation of how his
death occurred. No one at MVPC could speak Mandarin, and facility staff
“refused to even try to communicate with” Ge and did not offer mental
health care to him, the lawsuit states.
There is no question that a major cover-up is underway. Following Ge’s
death, ICE and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem unlawfully blocked both
Pennsylvania Congresswomen Summer Lee’s and Mary Gay Scanlon’s oversight
visits to MVPC on August 25, 2025 and August 28, 2025 respectively, a
routine practice under the Trump regime. Congresswoman Scanlon alluded
to Ge’s death as a reason for her visit to the facility.
*****
A full and accurate number of deaths of ICE detainees is somewhat
difficult to determine. While ICE has been mandated by Congress since
2018 to report deaths in its custody, it does not adequately keep these
lists updated. Chaofeng Ge is only one of at least 25 people in ICE
custody to have died in 2025, the highest number reported in 20 years.
For context, ICE reported 36 deaths during Donald Trump’s entire first
presidency, which includes the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Since
Ge’s death, ICE has reported three other detainee deaths: Lorenzo
Antonio Batrez Vargas on August 31; Oscar Duarte Rascon on September 8;
and Ismael Ayala Uribe on September 22. Notably, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles
died on October 23 at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, though ICE has
not yet listed him on its website detailing detainee deaths.
*****
In response to the record deaths in ICE detention, 45 members of
Congress sent a toothless letter on November 21 to Secretary Noem and
DHS Acting Director Todd Lyons. They “demanded” by December 5 an
explanation of what steps ICE has taken to increase medical staff,
revise its medical policies, track patterns of neglect and address
delays in notifying families when detainees die. The letter gives no
indication of any consequence should Noem or Lyons ignore it. It amounts
to little more than a request that ICE follow its own procedures and
ends with a flaccid appeal for the agency to honor its “legal and moral
obligations.” In the context of the lawless Trump regime, it is almost
laughable.
This outcome is not surprising. The abuse of immigrants by DHS and ICE
spans every presidential administration because it is a deliberate
bipartisan policy aimed at criminalizing migration and terrorizing the
working class. No change of personnel in Washington will end these
crimes. Only the international working class, armed with a socialist
program and united across national boundaries, can defeat this system of
brutalization.
As anger mounts among rank-and-file autoworkers over escalating
layoffs and deteriorating working conditions, there are continuing signs
of deep crisis in the United Auto Workers apparatus, already despised
by a large and growing number of workers.
On November 14, the
court-appointed UAW monitor, Neil Barofsky, released another scathing
status report citing the union’s “toxic culture of division and
retaliation at the highest levels of the organization,” laying
particular blame on UAW President Shawn Fain.
While citing
supposed progress on implementing certain, largely cosmetic, structural
reforms, the reported stated, “As of the date of this Thirteenth Status
Report, for the reasons discussed below, the Union does not appear to be
on the path to sustainable cultural reform. The reality is stark: the
current prioritization of political infighting and settling personal
grievances over meaningful reform are stalling improvement and
undermining good faith attempts to complete the necessary compliance
infrastructure.”
The report went on to state that the UAW
International Executive Board had even excluded the monitor from
meetings of the UAW Culture Committee. This body was created as part of
the federal monitor’s oversight to implement reforms around internal
union culture (ethics, accountability, retaliation, etc.).
*****
Previous reports have revealed that Fain operates an authoritarian
regime and frequently uses threats and profanity directed at
subordinates. At one meeting of hundreds of union officials, the monitor
reported, Fain threatened to “slit the f**king throats” of anyone who
“messed” with members of his staff. “You could hear a pin drop,” one
witness recalled.
The monitor also alleged Fain sought to push
through a no-bid contract with a Washington D.C. consulting firm in
violation of the federal consent decree, which requires a minimum of
three bids.
In addition, the UAW bureaucracy is still refusing to
turn over certain key communications, including text and WhatsApp
messages from central figures, in defiance of court orders. In the
previous filing, Barofsky stated his office had not received requested
documentation related to a separate corruption probe involving an
unnamed UAW regional director.
*****
The effort to bring charges against Fain was derailed by the UAW
monitor on the basis of alleged procedural errors, giving Fain at least a
temporary reprieve.
However, the strong support given to Mock by
the monitor’s report and the corporate media suggests that a plan B is
being prepared ahead of the upcoming 2026 elections for top union
officers in case Fain appears too discredited to win or even seek
reelection.
At a November 6 online town hall,
dozens of rank-and-file workers posted comments denouncing the UAW
apparatus for colluding in the elimination of their jobs. At one point,
an exasperated Fain lashed out at a worker at the Warren Stamping Plant
who had been laid off for more than a year, saying, “Get real, the union
doesn’t lay people off.”
Under conditions of growing popular
opposition to Trump’s attack on immigrants, gutting of food stamps and
other essential programs, and further moves to establish a dictatorship,
Fain has emerged as a critical political supporter of the fascist
president and his trade war policies, which have destroyed the jobs of
workers in the US and internationally.
Fain has shamelessly hailed the decision by Stellantis to shift
production from its plant in Brampton, Ontario in Canada to the idled
Belvidere, Illinois Assembly Plant, potentially costing 3,000 Canadian
autoworkers their jobs. Fain has also said shifting some Dodge Ram
pickup production from Mexico to the Detroit area showed the success of
“targeted tariffs.”
All factions of the UAW apparatus continue to
collude with management in imposing long hours of forced overtime and
covering up the circumstances surrounding the preventable deaths of
Stellantis Toledo Jeep workers Antonio Gaston in August 2024 and
Stellantis Dundee Engine skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr. in April
this year.
*****
The crisis in the UAW apparatus is of acute concern to the ruling
class, since the auto union has long served as a vehicle for suppressing
the struggles of this critical section of the working class. The
years-long federal corruption investigation, the removal and jailing of
leading officials and the imposition of a court appointed monitor in
order to supposedly root out corruption were aimed at restoring the
credibility of the union’s bureaucratic apparatus.
Last month, the
US Department of Labor issued a 36-page document defending the rigged
2022-23 UAW election for top national officers. The election was carried
out amid massive voter suppression by the UAW apparatus, with only 9
percent of the membership voting.
Just like Biden’s labor
department had done before them, Trump’s DOL officials brushed aside
evidence submitted by rank-and-file Mack Trucks autoworker and UAW
presidential candidate Will Lehman that
the UAW bureaucracy deliberately failed to inform members of the
election, refused to update mailing lists and allowed tens of thousands
of ballots to go undelivered.
Lehman, who ran as a socialist
candidate against Fain and other union bureaucrats, called not for the
reform, but the abolition, of the UAW bureaucracy and the transfer of
power and decision-making to workers on the shop floor through the
expansion of a network of rank-and-file committees in every factory.
The
monitor’s report again demonstrates complete imperviousness of the UAW
bureaucracy to attempts at even cosmetic reform. It exists as an arm of
management in the factories whose sole purpose is to prevent a fightback
against speed-up, job cuts and deteriorating safety. In return for this
service, hundreds of UAW officials live the high life off members’
dues.
The conclusion that must be drawn is the need to abolish the whole
corrupt structure through a rebellion by the rank and file. Power must
be wrested from the apparatus and put in the hands of workers
themselves. These committees must mobilize workers to oversee safety and
production in the factories, wage a collective fight to defend all
jobs, and unite with Canadian, Mexican and all workers to defend the
right to a secure and good-paying job.
The fight against
capitalist exploitation must be combined with an industrial and
political counter-offensive to end the threat of dictatorship,
expropriate the oligarchy, and reorganize society to meet social needs,
not corporate profit.
In an appearance on Fox News last week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke
Rollins said a benefit of the longest shutdown in US history was that it
provided Republicans an opportunity to “completely deconstruct” the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP is the largest
federal anti-hunger program in the United States, used by some 42
million people, including 16 million children.
During the shutdown, the Trump administration halted funding for SNAP
for the first time in the program’s history. Even though the shutdown
has ended, there are still many states that have not issued payments due
to technical or budget issues related to funding. The Food Research & Action Center
found that while many states were going to begin issuing payments
starting on November 14, others, such as Illinois, did not resume until
November 20. Other states, such as Florida, have not issued full
payments, only noting that benefits will be “reduced in accordance with
federal guidelines.”
Though benefit payments have started to resume, millions will
soon find themselves permanently removed from SNAP eligibility because
of a tightening of requirements. In July, Congress passed new funding
provisions for the program, which would cut about $186 billion in
federal funding, while at the same time adding new work requirement
stipulations and record keeping aimed at pushing otherwise eligible
people off the program.
In line with this objective, Secretary
Rollins opined during the shutdown that she would require all SNAP
recipients to reapply in an attempt to whittle even more people from
SNAP. However, due to a backlash, the Department of Agriculture (USDA)
has temporarily shelved that proposal.
*****
In addition to rising hunger, corporations are laying off more
workers while hiring at lower rates. The September employment report,
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which was ostensibly held
back for seven weeks by the government shutdown, continues to show
little to no job growth, rising unemployment rates, slowing wage rises
and significant job losses in key productive sectors, such as
manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.
Last month, US-based
employers reported 153,074 job cuts, a rise of 175 percent from October
2024. There have been over 1 million layoffs so far this year, the most
since the pandemic year of 2020 and a 65 percent increase over last
year. The layoffs are across industries as major companies use advances
in artificial intelligence to eliminate entire professions. Amazon, UPS
and Paramount Global have announced plans to lay off at least 50,000
jobs before the end of the year.
As workers and their families find it increasingly impossible to
survive, the rapacious, opulent, luxurious lifestyles of the modern day
capitalist aristocracy proceeds uninterrupted at the other pole of
society. The technology sector, which is also one of the leaders in the
job bloodbath, has seen a year over year increase in its net profit
margin of 27.7 percent and an increase of 2.6 percent over the previous
year’s increase. Only four firms, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet,
account for more than $15 trillion in global market value.
*****
It is not just food insecurity which is on the rise amongst US
workers. Homelessness reached an all-time high in January 2024 with over
771,000 people without a roof over their heads on a single night that
month. This was an 18 percent increase over the previous year and the
highest number since records began being kept. The number includes an
increase in every demographic group, with adults over 55 and children
seeing a significant escalation in their numbers.
The explosion of
homelessness within the American working class is a direct result of
the current restructuring of US industry, which is seeing a jobs
bloodbath in every industry, coupled with an exorbitant increase in
rents since the pandemic.
*****
And while the housing market is increasingly out of reach for
ordinary workers due to high interest rates, not so for the wealthy,
where a large majority of houses are purchased in cash, negating the
need for high interest mortgage rates. While the market for working
class is contracting and foreclosures are increasing, the market for the
rich continues to see strong demand and increasing prices.
There
are two Americas: One is made up of the overwhelming majority of the
population, which has seen its standard of living continually decline
over the course of decades, and the other is made up of a tiny minority
that wallows in isolated luxury that increases on a daily basis.
*****
There is only one answer to end this state of affairs, and that is for
the working class to organize itself independently of the two parties of
big business and those in their orbit. Workers need to create
independent organs of democratic power in rank-and-file committees in
every workplace, school and neighborhood. These organizations need to be
linked with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees (IWA-RFC) and begin making preparations now for a general
strike, which will profoundly change the relationship of forces.
A social counterrevolution is developing in Europe, the likes of which
has not been seen since the 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of well-paid
jobs are being destroyed, alongside the dismantling of pensions,
healthcare and social spending, upon which the livelihoods of millions
of people depend. At the same time, enormous sums are being poured into
armaments and war and into further enriching the already wealthy.
In its latest report
on the economic situation in Europe, the International Monetary Fund
calls for “deep cuts in the European model and the social contract” in
order to plug the budget holes created by increased military spending
and handouts to the banks during the financial and coronavirus crises.
The report is aptly titled: “How Can Europe Pay for Things It Cannot Afford?”
An unprecedented jobs massacre is taking place in
industry and, increasingly, in administration. Advances in electric
mobility, information technology and artificial intelligence, which
could greatly facilitate social life and solve social problems such as
poverty and the climate crisis, are being used to increase profits and
wage a bitter struggle for markets, raw materials and the redivision of
the world—all at the expense of the working class.
This is not an economic downturn that will eventually be followed by
an upswing but rather a structural crisis. The entire capitalist system
is bankrupt. All the symptoms that led to fascism and two world wars in
the last century are back: unrestrained speculation, the bitter struggle
for raw materials and markets, trade wars, wars and dictatorship.
*****
Germany, which accounts for almost a quarter of the economic output of
all 27 EU members with a Gross Domestic Product of €4.3 trillion, is at
the center of the crisis. What was long considered the strength of the
German economy—its large share of exports and high foreign trade
surpluses—is now proving to be its Achilles’ heel. Trump’s punitive
tariffs and China’s rise as a high-tech producer are hitting it
particularly hard.
*****
Since 2019, the German economy has grown by only 0.3 percent. During
the same period, the Chinese economy grew by 27 percent and the US
economy by 12 percent, although growth in the US is largely based on
speculative gains. The German Council of Economic Experts is predicting
growth of just 0.9 percent for the coming year.
Corporations are
passing on the full brunt of this crisis to the working class. In the
industrial sector alone, 160,000 jobs have been destroyed in the last 12
months, or 3,000 per week. The three largest industries—mechanical
engineering, auto and chemicals—which together employ more than 2.5
million people, are particularly affected.
*****
The only industry still growing in Germany is the arms industry. Over
the next five years, Germany will invest a trillion euros into the
business of death. Industry leader Rheinmetall increased its sales by 38
percent last year and by 30 percent this year. Its share price has
risen twelvefold since 2022 and threefold since the beginning of this
year.
While the livelihoods of workers and their families are
being destroyed and entire regions are being deprived of their economic
basis, the rich cannot get enough and continue to enrich themselves
despite the crisis. There are now 3,900 people in Germany with assets in
the hundreds of millions, an increase of 500 persons compared with a
year ago.
*****
Germany’s ruling class is responding to the economic crisis with the
same methods it used in the 1930s: by declaring war on the working class
and returning to its criminal militarist traditions.
Ten years
ago, the government had already announced that Germany sought to play a
military role in the world in line with its weight as the third-largest
economy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, provoked by NATO, then served
as a welcome pretext to put these plans into action.
*****
Germany has spent €76 billion to date solely to support the war in
Ukraine, making it the largest donor after the US. Its aim is not
“defense” and “freedom” but rather economic dominance in Eastern Europe
and Ukraine and the subjugation of Russia with its vast mineral
resources, i.e., the same war aims Germany pursued in the First and
Second World Wars.
*****
The onslaught against jobs, pensions and social gains won by the
working class after World War II is in full swing worldwide and is
meeting with increasing resistance.
In France, President Macron is
sticking to his pension reform, even though mass protests have forced
him to replace his prime minister five times. The hated “president of
the rich” remains in office only because the Socialists are backing him.
In Italy, Belgium and Portugal, general strikes and mass protests
against social cuts and austerity budgets will take place in the coming
weeks.
In the US, President Trump is cutting social benefits on
which millions depend. American companies have announced 1.1 million
layoffs this year. In China, millions of jobs have been lost in recent
years to automation and the crisis in the construction industry, and
youth unemployment in cities stands at 19 percent. In African and Asian
countries, Generation Z has been protesting for three years against the
lack of any prospects for the future.
This movement of the international working class and youth, however, lacks a viable perspective.
The
corporatist trade unions, which used to negotiate social compromises
within the framework of “social partnership,” have become the spearhead
of social cuts and mass layoffs. In Germany, the trade union federation
(DGB) and its works councils develop layoff plans within the framework
of legally regulated “co-determination” and suppress resistance to the
layoffs. Union bureaucrats sit on company supervisory boards and often
move on to the executive.
*****
Jobs and social gains can only be defended on the basis of a
socialist perspective that places the social needs of the working class
above the profit interests of the capitalists and links them to the
struggle against war and capitalism.
The deeper cause of the
capitalist crisis is the incompatibility of modern global production,
which unites hundreds of millions of workers into a single transnational
process, with private ownership of the means of production and the
nation-state, upon which capitalism is based.
The imperialist
powers seek to resolve this conflict by violently redividing the world
at the expense of their rivals, which will inevitably lead to a Third
World War. This is the essence of Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great
Again) movement and all those who emulate it. The working class, which
produces all social wealth, can resolve this conflict by overthrowing
capitalism, overcoming national borders and socializing the large
corporations and fortunes.
*****
Workers and young people must unite in action committees, functioning
independent of the trade unions and all of the parties that defend
capitalism, and build the Socialist Equality Party and its sister
organizations in the International Committee of the Fourth International
into mass socialist parties.
On November 2, an explosion at a rubber-processing factory in the
Kiriporuwa Estate, Yatiyanthota, killed a worker, Rajinikantha, while he
was operating a machine, and left two others injured. The factory is
situated 75 kilometers east of Colombo.
Workers accuse the estate administration of assigning Rajinikantha an
ageing machine with inadequate safety measures and allege that the
estate administration is seeking to cover up the incident and resume
business as usual. They demand a proper investigation into the worker’s
death and urgent action to ensure workplace safety.
On November
16, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters returned to the Kiriporuwa
Estate and met with workers in their line rooms. A line room is the
barrack-style dwelling that many plantation workers are forced to live
in.
A World Socialist Web Site article, “Two Sri Lankan workers die in industrial accidents in one week,” had highlighted Rajinikantha’s death and also
that of another worker, Vijayakumar, three days later. He had been
operating a tea grinding machine at the Maussakelle tea factory in the
central hill district of Sri Lanka.
Rajinikantha’s mother, Muthukumar Subalakshmi,
spoke to World Socialist Web Site reporters about her son, with tears running down her
face. She said her son was “very hard-working” and “friendly with
co-workers in the factory.”
“We lost our son who was looking after
us. The factory won’t tell us what happened. The police have filed a
lawsuit, but we don’t know what will come out of it.
“Officials
are preparing to reopen the factory without even an acceptable
investigation. People are angry about the crime committed against my
son. I want to know what happened to my son,” she said.
*****
[W]orkers, youth and others [are invited] to attend the public meeting on
the death of plantation worker Vijayakumar at the Maussakelle Tea
Factory on Sunday, November 30. It will also discuss the industrial
death of Rajinikantha at Kiriporuwa Estate.
The meeting will also be streamed live on social media.
Date: Sunday, November 30 Time: From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Venue: P.M.D Cultural Hall, Upcot Road, Maskeliya
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.
Mamdani bent over backwards to avoid any mild criticism of Trump.
Asked about past statements calling Trump a despot, Mamdani dodged. “We
are very clear about our positions and views … What I really appreciate
about the president is that the meeting we had was focused not on issues
of disagreements, but also on the shared purpose we have.”
At one
point, Mamdani was asked directly by a reporter about his previous
statements that Trump is a fascist. After fumbling for a reply, Mamdani
allowed Trump to respond for him: “That’s OK, you can just say it. It is
easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.” Trump then patted Mamdani on
the arm, as Mamdani smiled. Thus the pair jointly agreed that Trump was a
fascist, but that this would be no hindrance to their blooming
“partnership.”
Mass layoffs across the U.S. healthcare industry continue to accelerate,
further straining a system already overburdened by workforce shortages.
This is part of a wider jobs massacre, with US employers announcing 1.1
million jobs this year alone.
*****
These layoffs are part of a major escalation of healthcare workforce
reduction. In July, the WCH Service Bureau released a ‘deep dive’ into
the staggering level of healthcare layoffs in 2025, noting that the
industry ‘is experiencing an unprecedented wave of workforce reductions
in 2025, with 51 hospitals and health systems announcing layoffs
affecting tens of thousands of employees.’
Federal workers have
also been a primary target, with roughly 10,000 full-time jobs being cut
in the Department of Health as part of the federal job cuts pursued by
the Trump regime. This includes around 4,300 workers at the Centers for
Disease Control, a third of the workforce.
These layoffs are taking place most of the way through the 5th year of the COVID-19 pandemic
which is estimated to have killed more than 30 million people
worldwide, with hundreds of millions suffering with long covid causing
potentially life long disabilities. The COVID-19 virus continues to rapidly mutate and present a significant threat to public health.
Hospital
closures have also increased this year, bringing devastating
consequences in particular for rural communities. According to a
November report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment
Reform, 27 hospitals have closed or are in the process of closing so far
this year, surpassing the 21 closures recorded in 2024.
*****
The ruling class is stripping away social spending in order to sustain ever-expanding profits. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill,
which was signed into law in July, slashed over $800 billion from
Medicaid over the next decade, with Medicare likely to see $500 billion
of cuts in the period between 2026 and 2034. These cuts will result in
millions of people losing their healthcare, increased healthcare costs
across the board, and an escalation of the mass layoffs among healthcare
workers.
There is no shortage of resistance among healthcare
workers, who are on the front lines of the class struggle, striking over
understaffing, stagnant wages, and ongoing layoffs.
Earlier this week, hospital workers across the University of California (UC) healthcare system held a two-day strike,
confronting the Democratic Party–controlled system that refuses to
provide a livable wage. According to the union, roughly 40,000 workers
participated.
Last week, 600 nurses in New Orleans held a three-day strike
demanding improved staffing ratios and raises that many workers have
not received in over a decade. This marks the fifth strike in two years.
Last
month, 46,000 Kaiser healthcare workers held a limited five-day strike
demanding better working conditions, wages and staffing. A month later,
they are still working under an expired contract.
But in every
case, these struggles are being limited and isolated from each other by
the healthcare union bureaucracy. While workers want to fight to defend
the social right to healthcare, the union bureaucracy is motivated by
protecting its corrupt ties with management and the government. At
Kaiser, the workers in last month’s strike are in the Alliance of Health
Care Unions (AHCU), which participates in the Labor Management Partnership. This corporatist body receives millions of dollars a year from Kaiser, and its explicit aim is to prevent strikes.
*****
Healthcare workers must answer to the call of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
(IWA-RFC) to build rank and file committees as part of a broader
movement of the working class to confront this catastrophe of widespread
layoffs. The far advanced crisis of capitalism can only be resolved by
the international working class in a united struggle against capitalism.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump reposted and endorsed comments
calling for the arrest, prosecution and even death penalty for
Democratic members of Congress—several of them former military and
intelligence officers—for releasing a short, anodyne video reminding
service members that they are legally required to refuse unlawful
orders.
In posts on his social media platform, Trump described the short video
as “seditious behavior,” “seditious conspiracy,” “treason” and
“punishable by DEATH!” He amplified threats from his far-right
supporters that the Democrats be “frog-marched out of their homes at 3
AM” with television cameras present, “hung” or treated as “domestic
terrorists.” Trump’s own posts demanded: “LOCK THEM UP,” “An example
MUST BE SET” and “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Never before in American history has a sitting president spoken the way
Donald Trump did this week. Not even during the Civil War did Abraham
Lincoln demand the execution of the political leaders of the
Confederacy.
*****
The video featured six “CIA Democrats” drawn directly from the
military-intelligence apparatus, including Senator Elissa Slotkin
(Michigan), a former CIA officer; Senator Mark Kelley (Arizona), a
former Navy captain; Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander (New Hampshire), an
intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve from 2010 to 2022;
Representative Chris DeLuzio (Pennsylvania), a former Navy surface
warfare officer; Representative Jason Crow (Colorado), a former Army
Ranger and paratrooper; and Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan
(Pennsylvania).
That these representatives released the
video now raises the basic question: What do they know that they are
not telling the American people?
In the video, the six politicians
addressed “members of the military” and the “intelligence community,”
with Senator Elissa Slotkin opening: “We know you are under enormous
stress and pressure right now.
*****
The video ended with a full-throated affirmation of the CIA,
Army, Navy and Air Force, urging them to “stand up for our laws, our
Constitution, and who we are as Americans” and to “not give up the
ship.”
The Democrats’ defense of the military and
intelligence agencies comes after the same agencies have spent the last
two months carrying out lethal and illegal strikes on small vessels in
the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela. These killings, presented
to the public as routine anti-smuggling operations, have raised internal
legal objections within the military itself. According to multiple
press reports, at least one senior judge advocate at U.S. Southern
Command warned that some strikes may violate US and international law.
Amid
these operations, Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of U.S. Southern
Command, is retiring early after less than a year in the position. His
departure comes in the exact period when these murderous maritime
operations have intensified.
Trump’s unpopularity is currently at
levels unseen except in the immediate aftermath of the failed January 6
coup. In response to mass protests against his administration, Trump has
repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active
duty troops into American cities ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
His administration has already used federal agents against demonstrators
and immigrants.
In North Carolina and around the country, students, workers and
community members are protesting and increasingly organizing
independently to resist federal kidnapping operations targeting
immigrants.
These internal fissures help explain the Democrats’
video. It is not an act of opposition to Trump. It is an attempt by a
faction of the national security establishment to stabilize the
situation and to preserve the legitimacy of capitalist institutions.
Despite Trump’s extraordinary threats, the Democratic Party has
responded with its usual combination of cowardice and complicity. None
of the Democrats featured in the video have called for Trump’s
impeachment. None have called for soldiers or immigration agents to
refuse participation in Trump’s domestic repression. None challenge the
administration’s illegal wars abroad from the genocide in Gaza to the
ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
Independent socialist Ukrainian journalists report on growing resistance to government TRC centers (territorial military recruitment centers) and government operations to recruit cannon fodder in Ukraine. They also report on increasing desertions of Ukrainian soldiers from service.
They sum up their report:
Ukraine’s expected depletion of financial resources “until the end of the first quarter of 2026” can
mean the final act of the war drama due to the lack of money for the
army. In this bloody stalemate, the least illusory solution appears to
be the most negative scenario for Ukraine: some heavy military fail,
which in turn opens the way to some compromise, just as the severe
military defeats in Donbass of 2014 and 2015 paved the way for the
previous peace agreements in Minsk. This might well be why Trump said
“let’s see in six months,” and Putin reacted so calmly to the US
sanctions strike.
To ensure that a new ceasefire does not lead to
the preservation and strengthening of the Maidan-born right-wing regime,
it is necessary to revive the historical memory of the working class
about the revolutionary anti-war legacy of 1917, as well as to elaborate
its horizontal cooperation, both when it comes to social protests
against the hunting down of men by the state on the streets and the
leaving of the fenced prison called a “country of freedom and
democracy.”
The second stage of the three-part official UK COVID Inquiry—dealing
with the response of the four governments of the UK (covering England,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) to the pandemic—has issued
damning findings, including that they were responsible for tens of
thousands of avoidable deaths.
Chaired by a former High Court
judge, Baroness Heather Hallett, the findings are contained in 750 pages
across two volumes. The hearings covering “Core UK decision-making and
political governance” lasted seven months between October 2023 and May
2024.
In findings published Thursday, the inquiry found that the response
of the UK governments to the pandemic was “too little, too late”. The
first lockdown imposed by Boris Johnson’s government was not authorized until March 23, 2020, and began March 26. This was despite 116 confirmed
cases of COVID across the UK having already being recorded—and the
first death on March 5.
The Inquiry accepted evidence “that the
mandatory lockdown should have been imposed one week earlier. Had a
mandatory lockdown been imposed on or immediately after 16 March 2020,
modelling has established that the number of deaths in England in
the first wave up until 1 July 2020 would have been reduced by 48% –
equating to approximately 23,000 fewer deaths.”
*****
This week’s findings argue the pandemic response was conditioned by a
“toxic and chaotic culture” The report states, “By failing to tackle
this chaotic culture—and, at times, actively encouraging it—Mr Johnson
reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views
of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the
detriment of good decision-making.”
Such explanations say nothing of the ferocity with which the Johnson
government pursued its policy of reopening or keeping open the economy,
and circulation of the virus with it. While it notes the interventions
made by Rishi Sunak (the then chancellor, and later prime minister) to
open the economy from the summer of 2020, there is not even a reference
to the infamous statement Johnson made in Downing Street in October that
year, as attested by several witnesses: “No more fucking lockdowns—let
the bodies pile high in their thousands”.
*****
Labour’s nominally left leader Jeremy Corbyn never called for a
lockdown prior to Johnson finally authorizing the first, instead
offering to be “constructively critical” of his government. This was the same policy pursued by Corbyn’s successor as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
While
opposing the stance of right-wing forces—who maintain that the initial
lockdown itself was a mistake—the Inquiry gives ground to such
reactionary positions in stating that had a timely lockdown and other
mitigations been put in place earlier, there would have been no
necessity for later lockdowns. There is no scientific validity for this,
given that the first COVID vaccine was not available in the UK for
deployment until December 2020—almost a full year after COVID was first
detected in the UK.
The Executive Summary states, “While the nationwide lockdowns of 2020
and 2021 undoubtedly saved lives, they also left lasting scars on
society and the economy, brought ordinary childhood to a halt, delayed
the diagnosis and treatment of other health issues and exacerbated
societal inequalities.”
It concludes, “The Covid-19 lockdowns only
became inevitable because of the acts and omissions of the four
governments. They must now learn the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic if
they are to avoid lockdowns in future pandemics.”
And with that
the Inquiry report—despite its damning conclusions, which point the
finger at politicians responsible for social murder on a vast scale—will
be placed in the House of Commons Library to collect dust.
The call by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees (IWA-RFC) for a rank-and-file investigation into the
on-the-job deaths of USPS workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. has
been endorsed by members and supporters of the Postal Workers
Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) at Royal Mail in the UK.
Postal
workers have drawn parallels with the exploitative practices which
inevitably sacrifice workers’ health and endanger their lives at Royal
Mail—privatized more than a decade ago and now under the sole ownership
of Daniel Kretinky’s billionaire equity firm, EP Group. The leaders of
the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Dave Ward and Martin Walsh,
embraced the £3.6 billion takeover in alliance with the Starmer Labour
government to drive forward the downgrading of the mail service and
transform it into a low-wage parcel carrier.
This underscores the need for an international, rank-and-file-led
fightback against the profit-driven dismantling of postal services
worldwide—which are being carved up for privatization and handed over to
the financial oligarchy.
Concerns are mounting for the health of thousands of children,
educators and their families after children’s colored sand products
were recalled because testing revealed that the products contain
asbestos.
Yet, few schools and day care centers using the sand
have been closed for its removal. It is shocking that the only
Australian state or territory to temporarily shut all affected schools
has been the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), centered on Canberra.
Over the past two weeks, about 1,000 schools and early learning centers across Australia have reported using the sand during curriculum
activities, and 87 retailers have been involved in a voluntary recall of
the products.
While some governments and agencies insist there is
a “low risk” of health damage, it is a medical fact that all exposure
to asbestos is potentially dangerous. Consisting of tiny fibers, it can
be inhaled without knowing it. These fibers can get stuck in your lungs.
Even one-time exposure can be harmful, so no amount of asbestos
exposure is safe.
The health risks, especially to workers, were
known to manufacturers for decades, but use of the material was not
completely banned in Australia until 2003. Thousands of people have died
from mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis as a result, often many
years after their exposure.
*****
The crisis first emerged on November 12, when the Australian
Competition Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued recall notices over
children’s sand products that were sold at various retailers. The sand
was brightly coloured and designed for children to play with and for
educational purposes. It was labelled as Kadink Sand, Educational
Colours—Rainbow Sand and Creatistics—Coloured Sand. A voluntary recall
was issued on the same day in New Zealand.
The ACCC urged
customers to stop using the products immediately and place the sand in
heavy-duty plastic bags, double tape them securely and keep them out of
reach of children. The agency advised taking precautions such as a
wearing disposable gloves and a mask and not disposing of the sand in
general waste.
Since then, only some schools, preschools and childcare centers have
undergone searches, and some full and partial closures have occurred.
Multiple schools were temporarily closed in New Zealand
*****
According to a 2025 study, 5 percent to 10 percent of people exposed to
asbestos at work will develop a related cancer. In most cases, these
cancers do not reveal themselves for many years, even decades, as the
history of mesothelioma disease internationally has shown.
*****
An Australian Border Force (ABF) spokesperson said it had strict
requirements in place for imported high-risk goods. For many lower-risk
goods, however, the ABF considered mandatory testing to be inefficient
and costly to industry.
Even the discovery of the asbestos was the
result of a one-off test at a laboratory on a new machine, the ACCC
said. Despite the sand products entering the country for over five
years, they were never previously tested.
An ACCC representative
told the media: “That would be an extremely extensive exercise and it’s
not currently required under Australian regulation. It’s a matter for
suppliers to determine the risk of the products that they’re selling and
to engage in appropriate testing.”
In other words, the deadly
dangers of asbestos have been left in the hands of profit-driven
companies, just as the mining of it was left in the hands of employers
for many decades.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s minority Liberal government pushed its
first budget through the House of Commons last Tuesday in a politically
stage-managed vote that demonstrated the unanimous support of all
sections of the ruling class for sweeping austerity and massive
rearmament in preparation for global war.
Carney’s “Canada
Strong” budget slashes public services while funneling tens of billions
into the military and corporate coffers. The budget and the government
prevailed in Tuesday’s parliamentary “confidence” vote only because of
the calculated intervention of the social democratic New Democratic
Party (NDP), their sponsors in the trade union bureaucracy, and the
Green Party. The role of these forces, representing privileged layers of
the upper middle class, in securing the budget’s passage confirms their
function as props of a right-wing big business government committed to
restructuring class relations in the interests of Canadian capitalism at
a time of rapidly deepening social and economic crisis.
*****
That the budget ultimately passed 170 to 168 was the product of
cross-party abstentions and backroom agreements designed to keep the
former banker Carney in office, while the ruling class tests both him
and far-right Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as instruments for
ratcheting up the exploitation of the working class at home to improve
Canadian imperialism’s “competitiveness” and pay for rearmament.
The
budget’s attacks on public services and federal workers underscore how
Canada’s ruling class is determined to offload the cost of the ongoing
trade war with the US and preparations to participate in a third world
war onto the working class. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost
over recent months in the auto, steel, lumber and other industries
impacted by steep US tariffs.
Behind the bogus “Team Canada” rhetoric, the Carney government has made
clear that it stands on the side of Canadian big business in its drive
to slash workers’ rights and augment profits. It has virtually
criminalized the right to strike, as shown by its aggressive
interventions into labor disputes at Canada Post and Air Canada. In
this it has relied both on the draconian powers that it has arrogated
through a bogus “reinterpretation” of a section of the Canada Labour
Code and the trade union bureaucracy to smother rank-and-file militancy.
*****
In the weeks leading up to the budget, the Carney government used Canada
Post as a proving ground for its broader agenda. The Liberals ordered
the Crown corporation to deliver a “restructuring” plan that will end
daily and home mail delivery and destroy tens of thousands of full-time
jobs over the next decade. Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger in remarks this
week openly boasted that as many as 30,000 positions out of a current
workforce of 68,000 will be eliminated through attrition over the next
decade, with no clarity on what will remain of the public post office or
how many of the surviving jobs will be part time and precarious.
*****
The Globe and Mail’s response to the budget is a clear
expression of ruling-class expectations. In a recent editorial urging
the government to “restore Canada’s fiscal stability,” the paper scolded
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne for failing to match the
brutal austerity imposed by Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin in the
mid-1990s. The editorial hailed the 1995 budget which initiated a
massive years-long assault on public services and social supports, at
both the federal and provincial levels, and eliminated tens of thousands
of public sector jobs as a model for today.
The Globe’s
warnings about credit ratings, debt servicing costs and “generational
inequity” are not neutral financial observations, but ideological
cudgels used to justify a far deeper offensive against workers and
retirees. Behind the handwringing over aging populations and
“unsustainable” benefits lies a demand that the state claw back pensions
from working class retirees while protecting corporate tax cuts and
expanding military spending.
*****
The Globe and Mail’s response to the budget is a clear
expression of ruling-class expectations. In a recent editorial urging
the government to “restore Canada’s fiscal stability,” the paper scolded
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne for failing to match the
brutal austerity imposed by Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin in the
mid-1990s. The editorial hailed the 1995 budget which initiated a
massive years-long assault on public services and social supports, at
both the federal and provincial levels, and eliminated tens of thousands
of public sector jobs as a model for today.
The Globe’s
warnings about credit ratings, debt servicing costs and “generational
inequity” are not neutral financial observations, but ideological
cudgels used to justify a far deeper offensive against workers and
retirees. Behind the handwringing over aging populations and
“unsustainable” benefits lies a demand that the state claw back pensions
from working class retirees while protecting corporate tax cuts and
expanding military spending.
*****
The “Canada Strong” budget must be understood in the context of the
global capitalist crisis. Across North America and Europe, ruling
classes are dismantling social protections to fund military buildup.
Governments are expanding police powers to repress strikes and protests.
The political establishments in all the major countries are
legitimizing far-right forces and incorporating them into governance.
The Carney budget is the Canadian expression of this worldwide turn
toward authoritarianism and imperialist conflict.
The working
class faces a stark choice. It cannot defend its democratic rights, jobs
and future through the NDP, Greens or through the pro-capitalist trade
union apparatuses. These forces serve the ruling class and collaborate
in its assault. What is required is the building of new organizations of
class struggle to mobilize its social power and arm it with a
revolutionary socialist program and strategy—rank-and-file committees,
independent of the unions and rooted in workplaces and working class neighborhoods, and the Socialist Equality Party.
On Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly amended its “Autism and Vaccines” webpage to
state that the familiar assertion—“vaccines do not cause autism”—“is not
an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the
possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The agency further
acknowledged that studies suggesting such a link “have been ignored by
health authorities.”
In so doing, the world’s preeminent public
health institution surrendered to the anti-science agenda of the Trump
administration, enforced by Secretary of Health and Human Services
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most notorious proponent of the myth that
vaccines cause autism.
The updated webpage means that the CDC has
crossed the Rubicon in the ongoing dismantling of science-based public
health in the United States.
*****
Kennedy and his anti-vaccine network have repeatedly called for
stripping long-standing liability protections for vaccine manufacturers,
reshaping the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and rewriting
federal vaccine guidance from the ground up to reflect their
anti-vaccine views. The decades of accumulated scientific evidence
showing no credible association between childhood vaccines and autism
are now being discarded.
In response to the CDC’s falsified and politically altered webpage, the Autism Science Foundation (ASF)
issued an unusually direct statement on Thursday. “We are appalled to
find that the content on the CDC webpage ‘Autism and Vaccines’ has been
changed and distorted and is now filled with anti-vaccine rhetoric and
outright lies about vaccines and autism,” the organization wrote.
ASF
underscored that the scientific consensus on this question is
unequivocal. “The science is clear that vaccines do not cause autism. No
environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of
autism than vaccines. … All this research has determined that there is
no link between autism and vaccines. This is consistent across multiple
studies, repeated in different countries around the world, with
different individuals, at different ages including infancy, and using
different model systems.”
The Foundation also pointed to evidence
of prenatal neurological differences in autistic children—“as early as
the second trimester”—confirming that autism’s developmental origins
precede any exposure to vaccines. Their statement amounts to a direct
repudiation of the CDC’s new language and a stark reminder of how
thoroughly the agency has broken with decades of accumulated scientific
research.
*****
In the United States, childhood vaccination rates have declined
significantly in recent years, a trend closely linked to sustained
anti-vaccine campaigns driven by Kennedy and allied groups such as those
within the Make America Healthy Again movement. For decades, they have
used social media, political platforms and disinformation to erode
public trust in scientific institutions and cast doubt on the
foundations of evidence-based medicine.
Now, these same
figures—having moved from what used to be called the “lunatic fringe”
into positions of federal authority—are using official channels to
legitimize those narratives. Their claims, now published on CDC webpages
that traditionally serve as scientific reference points, do more than
distort specific findings: they rewrite the language of science itself,
replacing established standards of evidence with deliberate
misrepresentation.
Against this backdrop, two policy proposals
now under active consideration—and for which the revised CDC webpages
appear designed to provide justification—are expected to define the
December 4-5, 2025, ACIP meeting. The first is the removal of aluminum
adjuvants from certain vaccines; the second is the dismantling of
established multivalent vaccines, such as the measles-mumps-rubella
(MMR) shot, into separate monovalent doses. Both run directly counter to
decades of scientific evidence showing the safety and efficacy of these
formulations.
*****
What is unfolding at the CDC is the opening phase of a political
project that seeks to dismantle the scientific infrastructure
underpinning modern public health. These changes reflect a much deeper
shift in the political landscape, where mounting economic pressures are
pushing the ruling establishment toward increasingly authoritarian and
anti-scientific solutions. The attack on vaccines and public health is
part of a broader drive to weaken the social protections that were built
to safeguard ordinary people.
In the end, it is the working
class—the families who rely on public hospitals, routine immunizations,
and functioning health systems—who will bear the full cost of this
manufactured crisis. And so it is the working class, allied with
principled doctors and other health professionals, that must lead the
fight back against this attempt to turn back the clock by decades, even
centuries.
The Muziekgebouw concert hall in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven
has canceled a performance scheduled for December 4 by the
Soviet-Austrian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaya (or Leonskaja). The
cancellation is part of the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping European
governments and political and cultural establishments in particular.
In its dishonest and misleading statement, Muziekgebouw officials
claim that the guidelines of the industry association VSCD (Association
of Directors of Theaters and Concert Halls) leave them “no choice.”
These
recommendations, among other things, indicate that Russian and
Belarusian artists are welcome if they have not openly expressed support
for a special military operation on Ukraine.
There
is no indication that Leonskaya, who conspicuously refrains from
commenting on political events, has offered support to the Putin
government or its war effort in Ukraine. Nonetheless, Muziekgebouw
continues:
Despite her Russian background, she was not
born in Russia and also has Austrian citizenship. Although she does not
live in Russia, she has nevertheless chosen to perform in Moscow, where
the theatre where she is performing has now decided to make tickets
available free of charge to members of the army and their families.
The
venue management goes on disingenuously to assert that while it
understands that “this will disappoint music lovers … the grief caused
by the military conflict on Ukraine is our priority at the moment.”
Pardon us if we remain entirely unconvinced.
The cancellation has everything to do with Dutch and European bourgeois politics and machinations.
*****
Leonskaya has merely been caught in the reactionary crossfire.
She
has had an extraordinary life and career, and is often described as
“one of the outstanding representatives of the Soviet piano school.”
One biographer explains that she was born in 1945 in Tbilisi,
the
capital of what was then the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Both
her parents had moved there from Odessa (Ukraine), which had been
occupied by German and Romanian forces from 1941 until 1944. In the
first months of occupation alone some 280,000 people, many of them Jews,
were deported and/or assassinated.
Her mother, who
had studied piano and voice, but gave up thoughts of a musical career
because her parents died and she had to support herself, “was forced to
flee to Georgia, leaving behind little more than a house buried in ashes
and carrying all her papers and personal belongings.” Her half-Russian,
half-Polish father, a lawyer, “also fled from the anti-Semitic crusade.
His first wife died in a concentration camp.”
*****
The decision by the Muziekgebouw is not only vicious and stupid, and
hypocritical, it is dangerous. Whatever the venue’s officials think they
are doing, they have become entangled in the campaign to justify war
against Russia and a new imperialist slaughter with incalculable
consequences.
“We need to be more efficient,” new Postmaster General David Steiner
told a meeting of the USPS (United States Postal Service) Board of
Governors on November 14. “We need to look at innovative methods to
reduce costs and bring artificial intelligence into our logistics
network.”
But, Steiner boasted, “modernization” efforts “have
already dramatically improved our middle mile operations to transform
the postal service into a logistics powerhouse.” The USPS has already
cut 12 million man-hours this fiscal year and hopes to cut another 12
million in the next year.
He added: “Furthermore, the nine
regional processing and distribution centers, 19 regional transfer hubs,
17 local processing centers, and 133 sorting and delivery centers
ensure that we have the space needed to process volume and serve
customers during peak season and year round.”
Neither Steiner nor the Board members said anything about the November 8 death of Nick Acker
at the Detroit Network Distribution Center (in fact, nobody at the
meeting said anything about safety at all). Acker was killed by a mail
sorting machine while performing maintenance, a machine which workers
say had key safety features disabled. His body was not found for another
eight hours.
The day after Steiner’s report, another postal worker, Russell Scruggs, Jr.,
died at a Processing & Distribution Center in Palmetto, Georgia.
Scruggs died after falling and hitting his head and bled out while
management instructed his coworkers to get back to work. Critical delays
in emergency services, made worse by the lack of cell phone coverage
inside the building, were a major contributing factor.
“While we
may change specific initiatives as we move forward, and our execution
needs improvement,” Steiner concluded, “I do not see the need for a
fundamental reassessment of our processing and logistics modernization
strategies at this time.”
*****
The USPS is now in its fifth year of a massive restructuring effort,
“Delivering for America” (DFA). As the USPS Workers Rank-and-File
Committee explained two years ago,
its purpose is to “transform the USPS from a public service, which used
to pay decent wages and pensions, into an entity beholden to … profits,
with a super-exploited, Amazon-style workforce.” This is being
accomplished through the elimination of thousands of local post offices
and delivery routes and the consolidation of the network into a smaller
number of large, highly automated facilities requiring less labor.
On Thursday, the governing body of the Texas State University (TSU)
system voted to uphold the firing of historian Thomas Alter, who was
removed from his position as a professor at TSU’s San Marcos campus in
September for political speech. Alter, who has been battling his
dismissal in court and via administrative processes, had appealed to
the Texas Board of Regents to overturn the action of his college’s
president, Kelly Damphousse.
The Board of Regents, all appointees of far-right Governor Greg Abbott, released a single-line statement this week, declaring,
After
a thorough review of the facts, as well as information provided during
Dr. Thomas Alter’s due process hearing, the Board of Regents has voted
unanimously to uphold President Damphousse’s decision to summarily
dismiss Dr. Alter and revoke his tenure.
The firing
of Alter is an attack on free speech. It sets a precedent for the
systematic dismantling of democratic rights on the campuses and the
initiation of a purge at universities of all those who do not subscribe
to the fascist ideology pushed by the Republican Party.
*****
The political and social character of the Board of Regents makes
clear the absurdity of the appeal issued by Aimee Villarreal, president
of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at TSU, at a
rally in support of Alter the same day that the board made its
decision. “The regents have the power to stop this unraveling, to
restore order, to restore trust, and to protect the integrity of this
institution and to all state employees,” Villarreal said.
There
was never any prospect that the Board of Regents would do anything of
the sort. What is required is not appeals to Abbott’s far-right
political cronies, but the mobilization of students and workers against
Abbott, the Board of Regents, Damphousse, and all attacks against higher
education. This is the position of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).
*****
The eruption of fascist politics at the heights of US society emerges
from the ruling elite’s desperate effort to preserve a capitalist system
that can no longer tolerate any economic or political concessions to
masses of ordinary people. The endless extraction of profit from the
bottom 90 percent of humanity must now be secured by violence and by
silencing opposition, such as that voiced by Alter.
Ellen Mei, a program specialist at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition
Service, which administers SNAP, WIC and vital food aid programs,
appeared on MSNBC on October 2, just a day after the longest partial
shutdown in US history began. The interviewer clearly stated at the
onset that Mei was speaking in a personal capacity and as a chapter
leader of the National Treasury Employees Union, not on behalf of the
agency.
*****
Mei went on to discuss the anxiety felt by many federal workers, whom
Trump targeted with layoffs during the shutdown, and the uncertainty
over the devastating impacts that would be felt if, as ultimately
happened, food aid was delayed to the millions who depend upon it.
The
mere act of giving voice to this undeniable social reality was
sufficient for the Trump administration to issue a notice to Mei the
following day that she would be fired 30 days after the shutdown ended.
She is now on administrative leave and has until early December to
appeal her firing.
The Trump administration’s reaction is indicative of a deeply unpopular
regime, highly sensitive to any expression of opposition and determined
to suppress it. During the course of the shutdown, millions of people
took to the streets in the largest demonstrations in US history under
the banner of “No Kings.” The elections this month were a rout for Trump
and the Republicans. Yet Trump’s biggest strength is the
collaborationist Democratic Party, which quickly moved after their
electoral victory to provide Trump a lifeline and end the shutdown on
his terms.
*****
The victimization of federal workers underscores the criminality of the
Trump administration and the entire social class it represents. Trump’s
withholding of food stamps during the shutdown was itself a historic
social crime, using hunger as a weapon in political warfare. But it
comes atop the systematic violation of constitutional norms, including
the deployment of troops to US cities and unleashing ICE agents to
disappear immigrants.
*****
The destruction of jobs alongside the shuttering of agencies has been
immense. All told, more than 200,000 federal workers have been laid off
or compelled into resignation or retirement so far this year, with many
more threatened.
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive
order aimed at removing collective bargaining rights for a large swath
of federal workers, amounting to the largest union-busting action in US
history. As of September, nine agencies had unilaterally terminated
contracts covering 445,000 workers. It is notable that, faced with an
attack on its very survival, the bureaucrats at the American Federation
of Government Employees, the largest federal union, sided with Trump
during the shutdown, backing the president’s call for a clean continuing
resolution.
*****
The victimization of Mei and others like her is an issue for the entire
working class, with core principles of free speech and democratic rights
at stake. There must be no illusions that these rights can be defended
through the mechanism of the unions and appeals to the Democratic Party.
To defend jobs, social programs and democratic rights, workers must
take the initiative.
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.
