Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump threatens neo-colonial war of plunder against Venezuela
The US plan to seize Venezuela’s oil and natural resources targets both Russia and China. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor, having provided over $62 billion in loans since 2005, largely repaid through guaranteed oil sales, and currently purchases 80 percent of Venezuela’s exports. Russia has invested billions in Venezuelan energy infrastructure.
In its campaign against Venezuela, the Trump administration has dispensed with even the most flimsy pretenses to legality. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was itself criminal, the Bush administration at least attempted to construct some legal justification—however fraudulent—for its actions. No such effort has been made here. The administration has simply declared its right to murder people on the high seas, seize the property of foreign nations, and overthrow governments at will. There is no meaningful difference between the policy the United States is now pursuing toward Venezuela and Hitler’s invasions of neighboring countries in the late 1930s.
2. Predator spying revelations rock Greek ruling elite
The trial proceedings around Greece’s spyware and phone-tapping scandal finally commenced on October 22 after repeated delays. At the center of the scandal is the use of the spyware Predator by Greece’s National Intelligence Agency (EYP) to hack the phones of leading politicians (including ministers of the ruling New Democracy party), journalists, government officials as well as high ranking military, police personnel and even EYP operatives.
With the witness list exceeding 50 people, the trial is expected to continue well into next year.
In June 2022 it was revealed that an attempt had been made to infect with Predator the phone of Nikos Androulakis, leader of the social democratic PASOK. Androulakis was then a candidate in the PASOK leadership election and the surveillance reportedly stopped shortly after he was elected party leader in December 2021.
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Predator was developed by North Macedonian start-up Cytrox in 2017 and was acquired in 2019 by Israeli cyber-security company Intellexa. Insight into how Predator works was provided by a report published this month—based on leaked internal Intellexa documents and a forensic analysis carried out by Amnesty International’s security lab.
The version of Predator at the center of the scandal uses a so-called “1-click” attack method. This requires a malicious link to be sent and then opened on a target’s phone, which installs the spyware. The report outlines the vast amount of data available once infection has occurred “including ability to access encrypted instant messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp, audio recordings, emails, device locations, screenshots and camera photos, stored passwords, contacts and call logs, and also to activate the device’s microphone.”
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Despite efforts to absolve the government of any wrongdoing, the incriminating evidence is so overwhelming it has proved impossible to keep a lid on it during court proceedings.
On December 2, former Intellexa employee Panagiotis Koutsios contradicted the government’s narrative by testifying that Intellexa “collaborated only with state authorities,” given that “police and army officials were always present” in state premises where the company would showcase its products.
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The picture that emerges is of a ruling elite deeply steeped in criminality and rapidly moving towards the dictatorial rule associated with the military junta that ruled Greece between 1967-74. This is a manifestation in Greece of a global phenomenon. Over a decade ago former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed the vast scale of surveillance employed by the US government and its Five Eyes counterparts in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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As opposition grows to war and austerity policies, ruling elites in every major capitalist country are preparing to confront this by dispensing with democratic forms of rule. The spyware industry is tapping the growing demand for surveillance capabilities by governments that don’t have Washington’s resources to develop these in-house. According to a 2020 estimate by Moody’s the industry was worth $12 billion and the market growing at an estimated 25 percent a year. In a December 2021 report, Citizen’s Lab noted that its internet scanning for Predator servers across the world found “likely Predator customers in Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.”
3. Australian governments, media target anti-genocide protests over Bondi Beach shooting
It is now clear from the location, planning and footage that the target of the two alleged gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, and his son, Naveed Akram, 24, was a “Chanukah by the Sea” event for children at a beachside playground, marking the start of the eight-day Rabbinic Jewish festival of lights. Hundreds of children, their carers and volunteers, many elderly, were taking part in the festival.
The World Socialist Web Site has unequivocally condemned this attack, stating yesterday that Jewish people and their children living in Australia bear no responsibility for the ongoing slaughter by the Israeli Zionist regime in Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestine. In fact, many Jewish people have joined the massive, often weekly anti-genocide demonstrations in Australia, as part of the wider disgust and outrage.
Yet, those responsible for the continuing carnage in Gaza, above all the Israeli government and its backers, are seeking to exploit this reactionary and tragic killing spree to insist that all demonstrations and statements of protest against the genocide must be shut down.
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The actual perpetrators of the killings on Bondi Beach—Sajid and Naveed Akram—appear to have been associated with the Islamic extremist organization, Islamic State (IS), which is notorious for its acts of terrorism carried out under the false flag of defending Muslims and their faith.
However, the allegations being drip fed to the establishment media by anonymous police and intelligence sources—an IS flag, Naveed Akram’s past association with an Islamist group, and a trip last month to the Philippines—raise more questions than they answer. Such reports should be treated with suspicion. Naveed Akram remains in hospital under police guard after being wounded by police, while his father was killed.
Whatever the motivations of the two men, the mass shooting only plays into the hands of those responsible for the historic crimes in Palestine. To expose and combat this, workers and young people must reject ethnic division and scapegoating, defend Jewish, Islamic and other targeted communities, and oppose the assault on basic democratic rights and the plunge toward war.
4. “We were in a death trap”: Cyclone victims in central Sri Lanka speak out
On December 10, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters visited the Sogama settlement, located in the Udapalatha Divisional Secretariat (DS) Division, near Gampola—a town in the central hill district of Kandy—to speak with survivors of the disaster caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
The Kandy District is the worst-affected region in the country, with 237 confirmed deaths and 73 reported missing as of December 15. It ranks third in terms of total affected, with 51,168 families and 173,686 individuals impacted, following the Colombo and Puttalam districts.
Gampola, 16 kilometers from Sogama, experienced heavy rainfall and severe flooding that submerged homes and roads in surrounding neighborhoods, rendering key access routes impassable. The Sogama settlement comprises eight villages—including Ihalagama, Hunukotugama, Udagama, Millagaspitiya, Amuhena and Pallegama—and is home to about 500 families, totaling approximately 2,000 people.
Located in a mountainous area with unstable soil and scattered rock formations, the Sogama settlement is entirely unfit for human habitation. WSWS reporters observed that residents were living in constant danger, with their lives and livelihoods devastated—an assessment confirmed by villagers from Ihalagama.
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According to these residents, nearly 500 displaced individuals from 97 families in Ihalagama and two neighboring villages are now sheltering at the Atabage Udagama Maha Vidyalaya (school) in Gampola.
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The reporters witnessed the dangerous conditions in which the people of Sogama live. The area lies on the slopes of the Central Highlands, where heavy rainfall can trigger deadly landslides. Most residents rely on dairy farming, vegetable cultivation and daily wage labor. They told the WSWS that no government has ever supported them. Many expressed the belief that, despite everything, they would rather face death than leave behind what they had built through years of hard work.
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About 10 to 15 people took part in the discussion, listening attentively and participating with interest. The reporters explained the scientific causes of the disaster and the necessity of a socialist program as the only way to put an end to such catastrophes. The participants expressed their agreement and provided contact details for further discussion.
5. New Zealand navy vessel joins US-led provocations against China
The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) reported on December 8 that a NZ navy ship, the HMNZS Aotearoa, supported by a P-8A Poseidon maritime aircraft, carried out “surveillance and deterrence” activities in the international waters of the East China and Yellow Seas during November.
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Defense Minister Judith Collins declared that the provocative transit of the Taiwan Strait was done “in accordance with international law and best practice. By doing this, we are demonstrating our commitment to the international rules-based system in our near region—the Indo-Pacific.”
Collins’s statement was a pack of lies. The Taiwan Strait is not in New Zealand’s “near region,” but on China’s doorstep, some 9,000 kilometers from the southwest Pacific. The so-called “rules-based system” invoked by Collins is the set of post-World War II “rules” established by Washington to ensure its global hegemony.
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The US and its allies have militarized the region in preparation for war with China, deliberately staging exercises to provoke Beijing. Wellington has expanded bilateral and multilateral exercises and operational planning with allied forces, including the top-level Five Eyes spy network that involves the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
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According to the NZDF, the Aotearoa “was shadowed by seven different People’s Liberation Army (Navy) (PLA) warships, which maintained a safe and professional distance throughout.” This admission drove a frenzied response from the New Zealand media, with headlines declaring that the Chinese had “shadowed” the NZ vessel “around East Asia.”
The hypocritical media responses aim to blame Beijing for the rising danger of war. In February, the NZ government and media joined their Australian counterparts in hysterically denouncing the activities of three Chinese naval vessels, using it to demand greater military spending to meet a supposed imminent “Chinese threat.” The Chinese ships were closely monitored by the NZ military as they conducted live-fire exercises in international waters in the Tasman Sea, which separates Australia and New Zealand by 1,500-2,000 kilometers. By contrast, the Taiwan Strait is about 180 kilometers wide.
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Responding to reports of the NZ navy’s activities, Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesman Jiang Bin stated on November 27: “We firmly oppose any country stirring up trouble in the Taiwan Strait or sending wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces.”
China is concerned about growing naval activity in its close waters, particularly in the Taiwan Strait. The US and its allies, including New Zealand, have increasingly been using passages through the Taiwan Strait as one method of undermining the One China policy despite continuing to nominally recognize it. The policy regards Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan. Beijing, which treats Taiwan as a renegade province, has warned that it will use force if Taipei declares formal independence from China.
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For 15 years successive US governments have built up the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The Trump administration, driven by the historic crisis of capitalism, is sharply accelerating the warmongering against China, as it seeks to shore up its dominant global position. In May, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that China posed an “imminent” threat and demanded that US allies in Asia prepare for war over Taiwan by 2027.
New Zealand, a minor imperialist power allied to the US, is closely integrated into these plans—despite the fact that China is New Zealand’s major trading partner.
6. Australia: Tasmanian teachers strike again but unions block a unified fight
The crisis engulfing public education has again been exposed in Tasmania, where teachers and support staff have taken their second strike in two months. Last Friday, educators across the Australian island state walked off the job for half a day, closing most public schools in Hobart, Launceston and Burnie.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) has refused to lead a genuine fight against the minority state Liberal government’s austerity regime, which has driven educators to breaking point. While teachers have stopped work twice since October, the AEU leadership continues to isolate their struggle from those of other public sector workers and similar battles in Queensland and Victoria, blocking a national fight against low pay and onerous workloads.
The stoppage was held in support of school support staff, teachers’ assistants, cleaners, lab technicians, library and admin staff. They are among the lowest-paid workers and head into the Christmas break without a pay rise. These essential workers face weeks of unpaid stand-down over the holidays, unlike their mainland counterparts.
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Tasmanian teachers are now the second-lowest paid in Australia. This did not arise overnight. It is the product of decades of attacks by successive governments, including the Labor-Greens administration formed after the 2010 election, which enforced austerity budgets, closed schools and deepened the erosion of public education.
What is happening in Tasmania is part of a global offensive in which governments cut funding, push privatization and prioritize corporate profit and war spending. Educators from South Korea, the UK and the US are striking over parallel policies.
The core issues driving the strikes are intolerable workloads, under-staffing and unsafe classrooms. Teachers are forced to manage students with complex needs, such as those on the autism spectrum, and students traumatized by family breakdown, often without resources or assistance.
Teaching staff are working beyond school hours catching up on emails, wellbeing referrals, attendance and lesson planning. This is compounded by a rise in violence in schools, reports of which have nearly tripled since 2022, under conditions of a broader cost-of-living and social crisis. Educators report concussions and other injuries from student assaults.
One teacher stated on social media: “[I]t’s not just a pay dispute—it’s about conditions, especially the escalation of violence against staff by students. Things that are making staff leave in droves and that can’t just be fixed with a bit more pay.”
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The AEU bureaucracy is not opposing austerity but pleading for talks that will subordinate teachers’ demands to “budget repair.” Its aim is to dissipate anger through limited actions such as half-day strikes. Genford said AEU members “didn’t want to interrupt school at all” underscoring the bureaucracy’s opposition to any real fight. The union’s claims serve as bargaining chips to steer the dispute back into negotiations within the confines set by the government.
Conditions nationwide are marked by real wage cuts, relentless underfunding and impossible workloads. Labor and Liberal governments, assisted by the union apparatuses, enforce austerity dictated by corporate interests, including cuts affecting thousands of public sector jobs. The AEU and its state affiliates deliberately divide teachers by state, isolating each struggle.
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The lesson, confirmed by the current disputes in Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria, is clear: When teachers are diverted into negotiations and arbitration, pay, staffing and safety are sacrificed. Teachers must build new democratic organizations of struggle—rank-and-file committees in every school, uniting educators and support staff across state lines, and advancing demands based on the real needs of teachers, support staff and students, such as:
- An immediate 40 percent wage increase, indexed to inflation, to make up for past losses.
- Maximum class sizes of 15–20.
- A minimum of eight hours of in-school planning time weekly.
- Psychologists employed in every school.
- Hiring thousands of teachers and support staff to end crushing workloads.
What the governments and union bureaucrats fear most is unified action across all states, a struggle that would challenge the capitalist agenda prioritizing war preparations, including AUKUS, and corporate infrastructure over public education. The fight for fully funded public education is inseparable from a political struggle against the private profit system defended by both major parties and the trade union apparatus.
On Wednesday, 30,000 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) support workers are demonstrating against poverty and exploitation which the district is seeking to deepen in a new contract. The support workers include bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, teacher assistants, special education assistants, playground aides and other classified staff, and are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99.
These workers keep 1,000 schools in the country’s second-largest school district functioning for more than 400,000 students across the region, performing essential labor that makes public education possible on a daily basis. Yet despite their central role, the majority earn near or below $30,000 a year, with many making far less, condemning them to poverty wages in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country.
There is enormous potential for a powerful statewide strike movement uniting educators across California. Workers in virtually every major school district have been working for months without a contract, while talks with the districts have gone nowhere. Recently, San Francisco teachers voted by 99 percent to strike. Educators in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District struck earlier this month, before the union officials abruptly shut the strike down.
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The union bureaucracy knows full well that a strike vote would pass by a landslide, just as it did in February 2023, when 96 percent voted to authorize strike action. Rather than allow workers to exercise their collective power, the union leadership chose to shut down the struggle, fearing that an independent movement would escape their control.
Local 99 has called Wednesday’s rally to let workers blow off steam before things get out of officials’ control. It has been deliberately timed with the tail end of the semester in order to prevent workers from building momentum to take action.
For educators, they must use the rally to start organizing with each other to enforce the will of the membership and prepare for a strike for inflation-busting raises, smaller class sizes, adequate funding for infrastructure, protection from immigration raids and other key demands.
LAUSD began negotiations by proposing a 0 percent wage increase, an open declaration that the district intends to impose further austerity on workers already living in poverty. This, in a city with 56 billionaires and the center of the world’s television and film industry!
The $18.8 billion district budget leaves classrooms without basic supplies. This is the outcome of a political and economic framework that systematically diverts resources away from students and school workers. The district enforces austerity through attendance‑based funding formulas, with layers of bureaucratic overhead and legally restricted spending mechanisms at the school level, particularly in working class communities.
California’s Democratic Party establishment oversees public education while subordinating it to the interests of finance and corporate elites. The union bureaucrats work with them to contain independent resistance and block effective organization by workers. This has produced decades of decline in public education.
While the Trump administration openly moves to dismantle public education at the federal level, Democrats in California pursue the same outcome through austerity, insisting that school districts and public universities “have no money” while refusing to challenge the vast concentration of wealth at the top of society. The same Democrats have readily voted for bloated military budgets that fund imperialist war and repression abroad. There is money for war, but not for schools.
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The SEIU has fully transformed into an instrument of corporate and state management. Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias, responsible for day-to-day operations and bargaining strategy, received $219,955 from membership dues in 2024. A privileged bureaucracy has emerged whose interests are bound up with institutional relationships, political access and budgetary constraints. Its function is to contain struggle, not to wage it.
The immediate priority is to call a strike. This is the essential first step in reclaiming the power that has been usurped by the union bureaucracy and demonstrating the strength of the workers’ collective force. A strike must be organized, sustained, and controlled by the rank and file, not by a leadership that has repeatedly betrayed its own members.
At the same time, rank‑and‑file committees must be established in every school. These committees, elected and controlled by workers themselves, should oversee negotiations and manage strike funds.
Most importantly, coordinate with teachers across the state, the country and the world. They must also link up with other sections of the working class. Their purpose is to link with teachers, parents, students and other public-sector workers to transform a single-district strike into a wider movement of the working class against inequality and oligarchy.
8. United States: New York nurses raise demands as contract expirations loom at year’s end
The contract expirations create the potential for a major, coordinated fight for safe staffing, raises that surpass inflation and the best possible healthcare benefits. They also create an opening for nurses to oppose management retaliation, such as the disciplinary measures taken against three nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital who raised safety demands after an attempted shooting at their workplace.
New York nurses are also facing attacks by the administration of President Donald Trump on their profession and on public health itself. The US Department of Education’s declaration that nursing is no longer a professional degree will slash much-needed financial resources for students and worsen the problem of understaffing.
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A real struggle requires that nurses begin preparing to take the initiative into their own hands. This means forming a rank-and-file committee to formulate nurses’ demands, assert democratic control over bargaining to prevent a sellout, and to prepare for a strike, appealing for support from other healthcare workers and the working class across the city.
Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke to nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital about their contract struggle and the broader political situation in which it is unfolding. Conditions at the hospital have changed greatly over time, according to an experienced catheterization lab nurse who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Our unit used to be very pro-patient,” he said. “And now, it’s all about business.”
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Many nurses are ready to strike, but the danger of a rotten last-minute agreement between management and NYSNA looms. When the union announced a sellout contract in 2023, many nurses objected to it. “But NYSNA went through with it anyway because they said the majority of people agreed to it,” said the the catherization lab nurse, adding that the vote count was never made public. Nurses continued to voice their complaints to the union. “They gave us the runaround, saying this and that. But we felt slighted.”
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To wage their contract struggle, which at bottom is a struggle against the system of for-profit healthcare, the nurses must form rank-and-file committees that are independent of the union and of both capitalist parties. Only by taking initiative from below the nurses can break out of the isolation that NYSNA is attempting to impose and reach out to other healthcare workers, as well as workers in other industries, for support.
The amendments to the police law adopted by the Berlin House of Representatives (state legislature) on December 4, with the votes of the Christian Democrats (CDU), Social Democrats (SPD) and the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), undermine fundamental democratic rights. The more than 700-page revision of the General Security and Order Act (ASOG) was presented by the state Interior Ministry in mid-July this year.
The ASOG reform not only creates expanded powers for observation and video surveillance in public spaces, but also legalises the covert entry into homes to install so-called “state trojans” spying software. This goes far beyond previous practice. With judicial authorization, police officers will in future be permitted to break into dwellings in order to install surveillance software on computers, smartphones and other networked devices.
The state spyware enables access to encrypted messages, the extraction of files, the activation of microphones and cameras, and the monitoring of running applications—all in real time.
At the same time, the reform expands the legal basis for the comprehensive monitoring of telecommunications. With judicial approval, not only ongoing communications but also stored content, metadata and the communications of “contact persons”—so-called bystander collection—can be accessed. In this way, anyone can become a target who happened to be in contact with a person being monitored.
The legislative amendment also grants the police far-reaching technical powers in public spaces. Under the new regulation on mobile phone cell data requests (Section 26e), the police can demand the traffic data of all mobile phones that were present at a specific time within a precisely defined transmission cell from network operators.
This mass data collection allows the retrospective creation of large-scale movement profiles—a measure that can be deployed not only against specific suspects but against thousands of innocent people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as participants in demonstrations.
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Video- and AI-based behavioral analysis, the expansion of biometric data collections and the merging of police and intelligence service databases create instruments with which strikes, demonstrations and critical networks can be criminalised and smashed. The reform therefore not only attacks individual rights, but equips the state in advance against any form of social opposition.
The state government justifies the measures by pointing to the need to combat “threats.” The police state is being expanded in order to suppress the resistance that austerity and pro-war policies will inevitably provoke. This is not a phenomenon isolated to Berlin, but is an international one. The police state is being expanded worldwide and endowed with authoritarian powers.
Particularly revealing is the role played by the AfD in the passage of the ASOG amendment. Although the parties governing the state of Berlin—SPD and CDU—possess a comfortable majority, they relied on AfD votes for the expansion of the police state. The boundaries between the establishment parties and the far right are increasingly disappearing.
Built up by the ruling class to channel growing opposition into nationalist and racist channels, the AfD’s programme has by now become official policy. The attacks on immigrants, the abolition of the right to asylum, the gigantic armaments budget, the reintroduction of conscription and the assaults on the welfare state are entirely in line with the policies of the AfD. At the same time, mass layoffs in industry are sharpening class conflicts ever further.
Like its sister parties in Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and the United States—where the AfD maintains close relations with Trump’s Republicans—the AfD is needed to build an authoritarian police state and to proceed against the opposition of the working class and youth.
10. Modi greets Putin with pomp and ceremony as Trump demands New Delhi downgrade its ties with Russia
India’s demonstrative display of the “warmth” and “strength” of its decades-long strategic partnership with Russia was intended as a message to Washington that New Delhi will not allow the US to define its relationship with Moscow.
The Modi government, building on the Indo-US Global Strategic Partnership its Congress Party predecessor negotiated, has dramatically expanded India’s military-security ties with Washington during its eleven years in office, transforming India into a veritable frontline state in US imperialism’s strategic confrontation with China.
Yet to the dismay of Modi, his BJP government and the whole Indian ruling class, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly struck at India, demanding that it remove barriers to US exports and investment, cease Russian oil imports and otherwise downgrade its ties with Moscow.
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From the standpoint of the BJP government and the Indian ruling class, Putin’s visit for the 23rd India-Russia Annual summit was part of a precarious balancing act. India has long tried to straddle the growing geopolitical divide between Russia and the US and its NATO partners. But this has become ever more difficult, especially since the outbreak of the US-NATO-instigated Ukraine war.
Trump is a further complicating factor. In a desperate bid to arrest the rapid erosion of US imperialism’s economic and geopolitical power, he is lashing out against avowed US strategic enemies and ostensible allies alike.
Putin’s December 4-5 visit was his first to India since the outbreak of the Ukraine war. Eager to show that the western powers have failed to isolate Russia, Putin, like his Indian hosts, took every opportunity to play up the strength of Russo-Indian ties.
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The sixteen agreements India and Russia concluded during the summit covered a wide range of sectors, from trade and nuclear energy to health care, culture and counter-terrorism.
Putin and Modi set a target of raising the annual value of Russia-India trade to $100 billion, an increase of 50 percent, by 2030. They also reported progress on linking RuPay (India’s domestic card payment system) with Russia’s Mir payment system with the aim of circumventing US sanctions on Russian trade. The establishment of such a rupee-ruble payment and exchange is crucial if India is to continue to benefit from massive purchases of discounted Russian oil in defiance of Washington and the NATO powers.
Modi also highlighted progress toward a possible free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a Russian-led regional bloc of five-post Soviet states.
In respect to defense, India and Russia reaffirmed their longstanding close defense cooperation, and signed new agreements relating to joint weapons production, technology transfer, and expedited delivery of existing orders.
However, New Delhi clearly decided to adopt a wait-and-see stance in regards to major new weapons purchases from Russia, as it gropes to find a means to patch up relations with Washington.
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Under US pressure, New Delhi has reduced its dependence on Russian weapons purchases in recent years. However, Russia remains a vital defence partner, supplying a large portion of India’s existing weapon-systems—including fighter jets, tanks and missiles—through multi-billion-dollar contracts, and the parts needed to keep them operational. The BrahMos missile, a joint venture with Russia, is among India’s most advanced and widely exported missile systems.
Following India’s recent border war with Pakistan, India went on a crash program of restocking its war material, with Russia in many cases the only or best supplier.
At the same time, New Delhi, already wary of Washington’s long record of controlling its allies through arms dependency, has been shaken by Trump’s sudden turn on India. This has involved Trump not only making India a special target of his global trade war, and seeking to dictate its relations with Russia, but also a sudden thawing of Washington’s relations with Pakistan, which, to India’s dismay, has continued apace even in the aftermath of the recent Indo-Pakistani war.
The Indian ruling class is anxious to maintain its so-called “all-weather” alliance with Moscow, and therefore Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP, hitherto notorious for theirs slavish courting of Washington, have been compelled to push back against the Trump administration.
This has included an outreach to Beijing. In late August, Modi traveled to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. This was his first trip there in seven years, and marked a significant de-escalation of the five-year border stand-off between India and China that began in May 2020 and saw both sides forward deploy tens of thousands of troops, tanks and warplanes along their disputed Himalayan border for years.
Nevertheless, the current array of conflicts with the Trump administration notwithstanding, the Indo-US strategic partnership remains the cornerstone of the foreign and geopolitical strategy of Modi, his BJP government and the Indian bourgeoisie.
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India also continues to strengthen its relations with Israel, whose genocide in Gaza it has staunchly backed alongside the US and the other imperialist powers. Israeli Prime Minster and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is set to travel to India later this month. While Modi’s Hindu supremacist BJP has a close affinity with Netanyahu’s fascist wing of the Zionist movement, the Israeli-India alliance is a corollary to New Delhi’s pursuit of closer ties with US imperialism. This includes supporting, and hoping to profit from, Washington’s drive to carve out through aggression and war a “New Middle East” and an Israeli-anchored India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor.
In the days prior to Putin’s visit to India there was a swirl of diplomatic activity surrounding Trump’s attempt to broker a so-called peace deal with Russia, over the heads and at the expense of Washington’s NATO allies.
India’s ruling class largely views the prospect of such an agreement favorably, believing that an improvement in Russian-US relations would be to its benefit and to the detriment of China, which it considers its principal obstacle to emerging as the regional hegemon of South Asia and a global power. It similarly viewed Trump’s return to office last January favourably, calculating he would prioritize American’s conflict with Beijing and close relations with India, including supporting India’s ambition to emerge an alternative production chain hub to China.
New Delhi is walking a tightrope, aiming to maintain strong relations with both Russia and the US without sacrificing its strategic interests. Nothing can be said with certainty, but even were a deal to freeze the Ukraine war reached, there is nothing to say Trump would back off in his attempts to leverage what he perceives as India’s economic and geopolitical weakness to force New Delhi to dramatically downgrade its relations with Moscow.
Putin’s visit to India underscores just how fluid, unstable and explosive global economic, diplomatic and strategic relationships are, and how perilous are New Delhi’s efforts to chart a “strategical autonomous” course to advance the Indian bourgeoisie’s own predatory global interests.
11. Washington state floods force more than 100,000 to evacuate
The series of floods across western Washington that began December 8 have exposed decades of infrastructure neglect and the class character of disaster response under capitalism. More than 100,000 residents faced evacuation orders as rivers shattered records, and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency on December 10.
The immediate cause of the floods was an atmospheric river, a meteorological formation containing abnormally high amounts of moisture, that drifted over western Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, Canada. The storm system has dumped an estimated 5 trillion gallons on the region and also triggered an enormous amount of snowfall runoff from nearby mountains.
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A significant part of the cost forced on workers is the conscious refusal by insurance companies to insure against floods. Only 36,000 flood insurance policies exist in Washington, while more than 2 million residents live in flood-vulnerable areas. The National Flood Insurance Program’s maximum coverage of $250,000 has remained unchanged since 1994. Average annual premiums of $936 deter many working families from purchasing coverage, while standard policies explicitly exclude flood damage.
The official response has been anemic, from both the state Democratic administration and the Trump administration at the federal level. Reports indicate that only 300 state National Guard have been deployed to aid in disaster relief, with another 150 sent from California. Mount Vernon Fire Chief Bryan Harris acknowledged the inadequacy in a comment to Cascadia Daily News, stating, “We know that that is not enough for everybody.”
For its part, the Trump administration has gutted FEMA, cutting its staffing by 9.5 percent this year and canceling the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. In addition, the administration has proposed quadrupling the damage threshold for public assistance, which would exclude many smaller communities.
The floods and landslides have also come amid the passage of a record $1 trillion military budget with mass bipartisan support. Compared to the sums allocated for flood prevention, it is clear that the destruction of human life is on the order of 1,000 times more important for the American bourgeoisie than projects to preserve life.
Similar to the floods in Texas over the summer and the recent floods in Sri Lanka, the floods across the Pacific Northwest are not a natural disaster but the direct result of all aspects of capitalist society being geared toward the accumulation of private profit and the waging of war both abroad and at home.
12. Trump administration ordered TSA to provide passenger travel lists to immigration Gestapo
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which conducts airport security screening, has been forwarding the names of all expected air travelers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to assist in the Trump administration’s mass deportation operations.
The program, which has been operating since at least March 2025, includes lists of people flying both within the United States and into the country. The New York Times, which first reported the existence of the passenger data-sharing operation on December 12, wrote that ICE is using the TSA-provided lists to match names “against its own database of people subject to deportation.” ICE agents are dispatched to airports to seize anyone on its lists who is attempting to travel.
The TSA was created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to conduct airport passenger screening. It was incorporated into the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), along with ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Coast Guard and other internal security agencies, all except the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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While the TSA has long collaborated with federal police agencies, including the FBI, in enforcing so-called “no-fly” lists, this is the first confirmed instance in which the agency has gone beyond airport security functions to directly serve as an arm of the deportation apparatus.
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This TSA-ICE data-sharing operation is unfolding alongside a separate but closely related initiative by CBP, which has proposed requiring foreign travelers entering the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) to submit years of social media history, mandatory “selfie” photo uploads and a mobile-only Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) which would require travelers to download an invasive app on their phone as a condition of travel authorization. Taken together, these programs function in tandem to compile vast centralized databases of personal, biometric, travel and political information.
Under the CBP proposal, the new screening requirements would apply primarily to travelers entering the US under the VWP, which covers citizens of more than 40 countries, overwhelmingly in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. These include, among others, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Israel, Singapore and Taiwan. Citizens of these countries are normally permitted to enter the United States for up to 90 days for tourism or business without a visa, provided they obtain authorization through the ESTA.
According to CBP, not every traveler from a VWP country would necessarily be required to submit the same volume of information. However, the proposal would make the disclosure of social media identifiers mandatory for many applicants, transforming what had previously been a nominally voluntary field into a de facto requirement for entry. CBP has indicated that the information could be used for automated vetting, risk scoring, and cross-referencing against law enforcement and intelligence databases, with little transparency regarding how determinations are made or how long the data is retained.
Canadian citizens occupy a partial exception within this framework. Canada is not part of the Visa Waiver Program, and most Canadian visitors do not require either a visa or an ESTA to enter the United States for short stays. As a result, Canadian tourists are not currently subject to the proposed ESTA social media disclosure requirement. Nevertheless, Canadians remain subject to questioning, inspection, and discretionary enforcement at the border, and are already affected by the TSA’s domestic passenger data-sharing with ICE when traveling by air within the United States.
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Under conditions in which the Trump administration is openly declaring broad layers of political opposition to be “antifa terrorists,” criminalizing protest and equating dissent with treason, the expansion of this domestic surveillance and policing apparatus is especially ominous. It constitutes a warning to the working class that mechanisms initially justified in the name of “security” are being repurposed to facilitate political repression, mass deportations and the suppression of opposition to the capitalist state.
12. Socialism AI answers the question: How can GM workers at Factory Zero in the US oppose layoffs?
Since its launch on December 12, Socialism AI has provided thousands of users throughout the world with access to the revolutionary perspective of Marxism, drawing from more than 175 years of historical material and nearly three decades of World Socialist Web Site coverage. With each interaction, it is helping workers and young people understand the world and how to change it.
This new feature will highlight selected questions and answers from Socialism AI—concise, clear and politically insightful responses to some of the most pressing issues of our time.
13. Departing SEC official warns of coming “winter” for US capital markets
The rise of Trump to the presidency of the US and his efforts to construct a fascistic dictatorship represent the violent realignment of the political superstructure to more openly and directly express the domination of the American economy and increasingly all aspects of life by a financial oligarchy.
In its mode of existence, its social being, this oligarchy, based on the endless accumulation of wealth through stock market speculation, financial market operations and parasitism, demands the abolition of all remaining restrictions on its activity.
One of the expressions of this process, which derives not from the personal characteristics of the individuals involved but from the objective logic of the system they head, is the evisceration of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulatory authority of the stock market.
The extent of this gutting operation was highlighted in a speech last week by Caroline Crenshaw upon her impending exit from the SEC. She first referred to the dismantling of the SEC block by block back in May and expanded on this assessment in her latest remarks.
Summing up what she called the “chaos” of the past year, Crenshaw said: “The appetite to deregulate has been rapacious; the analysis of the costs and benefits of our policies has been non-existent; and the repercussions… could be dire.”
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Crenshaw presented her remarks within the framework of what has functioned as the prevailing official mythology over many decades—that the SEC functions to ensure that the financial system and the stock market is a “system for everyone, and not for any special interest or market participant.”
The SEC was established in 1934 by the Roosevelt administration in response to the stock market crash of 1929. But from the outset it was clear that the SEC, while imposing some controls, was no inherent threat to the giants of Wall Street.
Its first chairman was Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, John Kennedy. He was not a regulator—far from it. He had made his money in the very kind of speculation and dubious practices which the SEC was set up to curb. He was also accused during the prohibition era of being a bootlegger, though no charges were ever brought.
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During the Clinton administration, the regulations which had been introduced under the New Deal of Roosevelt were largely scrapped culminating in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 in 1999.
The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis saw a marked shift in the operation of the SEC under the Obama administration. Prosecutions were increasingly replaced by financial settlements and the “revolving door” through which individuals passed back and forth between Wall Street and the SEC was swung open with increasing frequency.
Most significantly, even though investigations, including a major report prepared for the US Senate, revealed that some of the biggest finance houses had engaged in criminal activity leading to the crash of 2008, not a single executive was charged, let alone convicted and jailed. Banks were provided with bailouts on the basis they were too big to fail while executives were considered too important to jail.
The activities of SEC chair Gary Gensler, appointed by the Biden administration, were aimed at trying to reintroduce some tightening of regulation after the first Trump administration but largely failed as a result of legal action.
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For years the SEC, like all the regulatory institutions of capitalism, operated behind a kind of mask, promoting itself as the guardian of the public interest. It has become increasingly tattered and frayed over the past decade and a half but today the remnants are being torn off.
14. Workers and youth in Australia and New Zealand urge the use of Socialism AI
Launched on December 12 2025, Socialism AI represents a transformational development for the political education of the working class. This new application of augmented intelligence is to make the scientific method and historical perspective of Marxism accessible on a mass scale, and facilitate the strengthening of socialist consciousness. Its inauguration opens the means through which workers, students and young people can engage directly with theory, historical experience and practical political questions in real time.
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Bolivia:
Canada:
Ottawa airport in-flight meal prep workers strike
Mexico:
Student strike at National Pedagogic University continues
United States:
Ohio teachers rally in wake of 10-day strike notice
Proposed school closings roil Minnesota school district
16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
