World Socialist Web Site: US imperialism rings in the New Year with a new war

The World Socialist Web Site, the Socialist Equality Party in the US and the International Committee of the Fourth International unequivocally denounce the invasion of Venezuela and the criminal abduction of President Nicolás Maduro in the early hours of Saturday morning. We demand the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the full withdrawal of all US troops and military forces from the region.

The invasion, which included the killing of at least 40 people, is a total repudiation by the Trump regime of any semblance of legality. It is an unprovoked war of aggression launched in flagrant violation of international law and carried out to reimpose colonial control over Venezuela and all of Latin America. This imperialist assault must be opposed by the working class in the United States and throughout the world.

Speaking at Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, declared, “Welcome to 2026.” Only three days into the New Year, the assault on Venezuela is an unmistakable signal that the imperialist violence that marked 2025—in the Gaza genocide and the bombings of Lebanon, Syria and Iran—will escalate in 2026. 

There is no concrete wall between foreign and domestic policy. Imperialist gangsterism beyond the borders of the United States will be accompanied by the acceleration of the conspiracy to impose a fascistic presidential dictatorship within the United States.

In his remarks at Saturday’s press conference, Trump declared that the United States would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” In the past, American imperialism sought to legitimize its wars with hypocritical invocations of democracy and human rights. Trump dispensed with pretenses. The purpose of the assault on Venezuela, he declared on Saturday, was to seize control of the country and its oil resources.

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Above all, the war serves a critical geopolitical purpose. The invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its president are meant, as Trump put it on Saturday, as a “warning” to “anyone who would threaten American sovereignty.”

Referring to his new National Security Strategy, Trump declared that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Invoking the infamous “blood and iron” speech of the nineteenth century Prussian militarist Bismarck, Trump hailed the assault as a reassertion of the “iron laws that have always determined global power.”

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The aggressive message to China is unmistakable. Just hours before the assault, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met with a high-level Chinese delegation led by Beijing’s Special Representative for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, to discuss joint energy cooperation. The US raid, timed to coincide with this meeting, was an act of aggression aimed at disrupting growing ties between China and Latin America.

The actions taken by the Trump administration are not only criminal, they have the character of sheer madness. In 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, the World Socialist Web Site warned that American imperialism had entered into a “rendezvous with disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles upon the masses of the Middle East. … It will not find, through the medium of war, a viable solution to its internal maladies.” 

That warning was confirmed. What is now being set into motion is even more reckless—a rendezvous with catastrophe. 

Trump declared on Saturday the intention to impose a dictatorship over Venezuela, proclaiming that the country will be “run” by Rubio, Hegseth and other officials in the Trump regime, as if a country with 30 million people and which spans over 350,000 square miles can be dictated to by Washington bureaucrats. In reality, such an occupation will require the deployment of hundreds of thousands of US troops and a brutal campaign of urban warfare amid mass resistance. Trump said as much when he said he was not afraid of “boots on the ground.” 

It should be recalled that the 2003 invasion of Iraq required approximately 180,000 coalition troops, including 130,000 from the United States. In total, nearly half a million US personnel were deployed across the region in support of the war effort. And Iraq, with a population smaller than Venezuela’s, was already devastated by a decade of sanctions. The scale of military occupation required to enforce the subjugation of Venezuela will rapidly spiral into a bloody, protracted conflict across all of Latin America, and indeed throughout the world.

The recklessness of the Trump government can only be understood in the context of the crisis of American imperialism. Politically, there are no doubt many unstated motives driving Trump’s actions, including an effort to distract from the explosive revelations surrounding the Epstein sex-trafficking network, which has implicated top figures within the financial aristocracy and state apparatus. 

But more critical interests are at stake. The United States is attempting to reverse the long-term decline of American capitalism through militarism and war. The economic foundations of US global dominance have dramatically eroded. Gold has surged past $4,300 an ounce, a de facto measure of the collapse in confidence in the dollar as a global reserve currency. The national debt has soared past $38 trillion. The seizure of Venezuela’s oil and the reassertion of American control over the Western Hemisphere are seen by the ruling class as essential to the survival of its economic and geopolitical position.

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At Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s erratic remarks shifted seamlessly from boasting about the “snatch and grab” abduction of Maduro to threatening major American cities. Praising the National Guard deployments to Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Memphis and New Orleans, he declared, “They should do it with more cities.” The same “iron laws” of violence that govern US conduct abroad will be imposed on the population at home.

It is necessary to understand that Trump does not act as an individual. He is the chosen instrument of the American ruling class, a gangster vomited up by the oligarchy to enforce policies that can no longer be pursued through democratic or legal means.

In 2025, US billionaires—roughly 900 individuals—amassed an 18 percent increase in their net worth, bringing their combined holdings to nearly $7 trillion. Ten individuals alone accounted for $750 billion of this total. The German ruling class brought Hitler to power in 1933 to implement policies that could not be carried out except through dictatorship. Trump serves the same function.

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The Democratic Party represents the same class and defends the same system as Trump. There will be no serious opposition from its ranks. Their differences with Trump are purely tactical, not strategic. This was made clear in the muted response to the assault on Venezuela. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries grumbled about the lack of congressional notification, while reaffirming that Maduro was “not the legitimate head of government.” 

Just weeks ago, Democrats and Republicans joined together to pass a $900 billion military spending bill, in an unambiguous endorsement of the imperialist agenda now being ruthlessly enforced.

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Demonstrations broke out within hours of the assault on Venezuela, an initial indication of popular opposition that will expand and grow. However, the experience of the mass protests against the Gaza genocide has shown that appeals to Washington will have no impact whatsoever on government policy. Without a program and leadership, popular outrage is funneled back into the political structures of the capitalist state.

What is required is the conscious intervention of the working class into political struggle on the basis of a socialist program. Denunciations of war that ignore its roots in the capitalist system and the interests of the oligarchy that rules the country will lead only to defeat and demoralization.

The conditions for such a struggle are now far advanced. The war abroad is inseparable from a social counterrevolution at home—soaring inflation, AI-driven job destruction, deepening poverty, and the systematic dismantling of every democratic and social right. 

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In Europe, the major capitalist governments are undertaking the most massive rearmament campaigns since the Second World War as they clamor for war against Russia and destroy social programs. For British, French and their imperialist partners in NATO, Trump’s onslaught against Venezuela is seen as a signal to recover their old colonial empires. The German ruling class, engaged in a massive military buildup, is nurturing dreams of a Fourth Reich, asserting its military power across the continent and beyond.

The ruling class has made clear what they want 2026 to be: a year of unrestrained military violence. The answer must be to make 2026 a year of class struggle and the development of a mass movement for socialism. 

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The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International call on workers, students, and young people across the United States, throughout Latin America, and internationally: Join our ranks. Build the Socialist Equality Party in the US and the sections of the ICFI around the world. Take up the fight to unify the working class across all borders, to abolish capitalism, and to establish socialism as the foundation of a new society.

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1.  Trump launches aerial strike on Venezuela amid Democratic Party silence

The fact that the United States has launched an air strike on a sovereign nation—an act of war under international law—has prompted no serious discussion in the political establishment or the corporate media. The attack was relegated to small headlines on newspaper front pages and did not even appear on the Washington Post front page by Tuesday evening.

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The drone strike takes place alongside an escalating campaign of piracy on the high seas. The United States has seized multiple oil tankers transporting Venezuelan crude, imposing what amounts to an effective blockade of the country’s primary source of revenue. One tanker seized earlier this month, the Centuries, was carrying Venezuelan crude oil purchased by a Chinese trading company. Another tanker, the Bella 1, has been fleeing US Coast Guard pursuit since December 21. As the vessel fled, the crew painted a Russian flag on the side in an apparent attempt to claim Russian protection.

The fact that Russia and China are being drawn into the US assault on Venezuela demonstrates that it is not merely a regional operation but part of a broader global confrontation. This escalation comes as the United States and European powers are provoking war all over the world. European powers are openly discussing sending troops to Ukraine. The war now being initiated against Venezuela has the potential to escalate far beyond Latin America.

Trump’s targeting of Latin America is aimed at providing a power base for war all over the world. The administration’s National Security Strategy explicitly calls for “restoring American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and denying China “the ability to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.” The document effectively asserts US ownership over two continents—presented as “our hemisphere”—whose resources Washington intends to seize as a staging ground for confrontation with Russia and China. 

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The Democratic Party has offered no meaningful opposition to Trump’s actions. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said only that “Trump needs to be straight with the American people and explain what his strategy is.” But Schumer, alongside other Democratic leaders, has made clear his desire to see Maduro removed from power.  

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The so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party has been equally silent. Neither Senator Bernie Sanders nor Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has issued any statement on Venezuela since Trump announced the strikes. There have been no calls for congressional hearings, no demands for an investigation into the legality of the attacks, no legislation to halt the military escalation. The Democrats ended the year by joining with Republicans to pass the $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act, funding the very military apparatus now being used to wage war on Venezuela.

The year 2025 was a year of war—of US-backed genocide in Gaza, of US-NATO escalation in Ukraine, of American military buildup across the globe. Trump’s drone strike on Venezuela makes clear that the United States intends to wage war all over the world in the new year.

2. Part Two: From Roosevelt to Trump: The Monroe Doctrine and US imperialism’s predatory record in Venezuela

Venezuela assumed even greater strategic importance for US imperialism and its profit interests following the nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry by President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1938. With its oil reserves monopolized by US and Anglo-Dutch multinationals, Venezuela became crucial in fueling the American military during World War II, as well as in powering the postwar economic boom and the escalating militarism of the Cold War.

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Venezuela was held up as a “model democracy”during a period in which CIA-backed military coups brought brutal dictatorships to power throughout most of South America. The Monroe Doctrine had undergone yet another revision, this time in the Kennan corollary, named after the US diplomat George F. Kennan who authored the policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. Applied to Latin America, this became the doctrine of “national security” in which any revolutionary threat from below was to be regarded as a manifestation of Soviet expansionism and ruthlessly repressed.

In reality, Venezuela’s “democracy” was no less ruthless than the torture regimes imposed by Washington elsewhere in the hemisphere. The government and its reviled secret police agency, DISIP, savagely repressed fledgling guerrilla movements along with left-wing and union activists. According to the government’s own estimates, nearly 900 Venezuelan civilians were murdered or disappeared by the repressive forces under so-called “democratic” regimes.

Under the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez... the Venezuelan government nationalized the oil industry in 1976 in the midst of the sharp price hikes that accompanied the energy crises of that period. Contrary to Trump’s claims about Venezuela “stealing” oil and land from the US, the oil companies were compensated with roughly $1 billion. Moreover, neither the oil nor the land were ever US property, with Standard Oil and the others plundering the resources under generous concessions granted by successive Venezuelan regimes. 

Nationalization under a capitalist government failed to alter the fundamental class relations in Venezuela. The country remained entirely dependent for income upon a single commodity, oil, which it sold overwhelmingly to the US, leaving it at the mercy of market fluctuations.

Alternating presidencies of the bourgeois Acción Democrática (AD) and its friendly rival, the Christian Democratic COPEI, presided over escalating social inequality and rampant corruption, while the country’s debts steadily rose. Returning for a second term in power, Carlos Andrés Pérez responded to a sharp decline in oil prices by further opening up the country’s oil fields to exploitation by the foreign corporations and imposing a drastic International Monetary Fund-dictated “shock therapy” program that included a 100 percent increase in fuel prices.

Masses of impoverished Venezuelans reacted to the assault on living standards with a popular uprising that became known as the Caracazo. The government retaliated with martial law and bloody repression, turning automatic weapons on unarmed crowds and dragging people from their homes in poor neighborhoods for summary executions. The events signaled the breakdown of the supposedly liberal anti-communist consensus that had dominated after the fall of Pérez Jiménez.

Continuing unrest followed, marked by an abortive 1992 coup attempt led by a young officer, Hugo Chávez. Chávez assumed the presidency six years later in an election that saw the obliteration at the polls of AD and COPEI, both of which were widely hated for their corruption and defense of capitalist interests at the expense of the masses.

Initiating what became known as Latin America’s “Pink Tide,” the Chávez government utilized high oil prices to fund social programs that improved education and health care while ameliorating poverty. These fairly modest reforms were followed by the new government cementing economic and political ties with Cuba, while condemning the US invasion of Afghanistan, leading to mounting animosity from Washington.

This friction culminated in an April 2002 US-backed coup that saw Chávez briefly deposed and imprisoned before mass protests forced his reinstatement. Joining the collection of military officers, big business representatives and AFL-CIO-linked bureaucrats who backed the coup was Maria Corina Machado, the US-financed right-winger recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for supporting a US war for regime change.

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After the death of Chávez and his succession by Nicolás Maduro in 2013, a fall in oil prices, compounded by the imposition of punishing economic sanctions initiated under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama and intensified ever since, led to a dramatic shrinking of Venezuela’s economy, mass outward migration and a plummeting of living standards.

US intervention escalated, including through coup plots, attempted assassinations and even the landing of mercenaries on Venezuela’s shores. The Trump administration sought to impose its own president, the unelected and largely unknown right-wing legislator Juan Guaidó, whose “interim government” failed to gain popular support, proving adept only at pilfering millions of dollars in US aid funding.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The deployment of foreign fleets off Venezuela’s coasts leading to the proclamation of two corollaries to the Monroe Doctrine, 123 years apart, seems a confirmation of this saying, attributed to the celebrated writer, humorist and anti-imperialist Mark Twain.

Theodore Roosevelt, however, used the 1902 crisis to amend the Monroe Doctrine in line with the rapacious interests of US imperialism as a rising global power. Trump’s “corollary,” while tipping its hat to TR, is the expression of that same power’s increasingly intractable crisis and loss of global hegemony, which it desperately seeks to overcome by means of militarism and aggression.

China has already outstripped the US as South America’s leading trade partner and is expected to overtake it throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by 2035. It is carrying out large scale infrastructure investments, from the new deep-water port at Chancay, Peru to the creation of 5-G networks, that the US is unable to match. Meanwhile, the European Union is also seeking its own access to the region’s strategically vital sources of raw materials.

Under these conditions, the National Security Strategy document issued by the White House on December 4 states:

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

The path set out by this new assertion of the Monroe Doctrine seems, at first glance, more delusional than “common-sense.” It represents, more than at any other historical juncture, the sure road to war. The aims spelled out by the Trump administration cannot be achieved outside of military conquest and direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed China and Russia.

At the same time, the drive to impose neo-colonial shackles upon Latin America will inevitably provoke a gigantic eruption of the class struggle throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The alternatives have never been more stark. The working class must unite its struggles across national boundaries, in the Americas and beyond, to put an end to capitalism, or this moribund system will drag humanity into the abyss of a nuclear third world war.

3. Tens of thousands of school jobs cut in 2025 as Trump escalates war on education

The year 2025 has seen an unprecedented attack on the right to education and culture in the US, with tens of thousands of educators losing their jobs.

Upon taking office in January, Donald Trump announced the shutdown of the Department of Education, the opening salvo in a thorough-going assault on the population’s access to knowledge. As Democrats join with Republicans to divert $1 trillion to the military budget, schools are being starved of resources.

Determining the exact number of jobs cut in education is challenging. The US education system is fractured into 13,859 school districts run by local, state, county, charter and church authorities. Additionally, media reports on layoffs are inconsistent and incomplete. Most importantly, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have failed to organize a response against the nationwide assault on jobs. Teacher and school worker unions do not even keep a national count of job losses, only tracking dues income—showing the union bureaucracy’s real priorities.

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The defunding and destruction of public education is a deliberate policy, long advocated by financial interests aiming for mass privatization, with bipartisan support. The current crisis arises from decades of state-level underfunding, the corporatization of education under George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” and Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top,” the Biden-Harris administration’s decision to allow the expiration of $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds and the Trump administration’s freeze of $6.2-6.8 billion in K-12 federal funding, hundreds of millions in cuts to federal research grants and the destruction of the Department of Education.

Acting directly in the interests of the ruling oligarchy, Trump has dramatically escalated the attack. Education is no longer promoted as necessary for human improvement, but crudely identified by the rich as an unacceptable deduction from social resources that they could otherwise pocket. While enacting draconian budget cuts, these forces are hell-bent on turning education into a direct training ground for the military and for low-wage, dead-end jobs.

The fascistic Trump administration also has clear ideological concerns. It seeks nothing less than the elimination of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on human reason and science—the driving force in the creation of public education—and its replacement with patriotic, religiously driven instruction. This is patterned after Hitler’s policy of “synchronization” (Gleichschaltung) of all aspects of society and culture with Nazi ideology. 

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Educators and students must oppose the class-war policy of sacrificing the right to education to serve the interests of Wall Street. We call for the formation of rank-and-file committees in every school, college and university to organize against budget cuts and connect education struggles with broader working class actions against layoffs, budget cuts and war. Only through independent, democratically controlled workers’ organizations and a political turn to socialist policies can the attack on public education be defeated.

4. Film, television and trends and events in art and culture in 2025

The growing worldwide radicalization, which heralds impending social upheavals, terrifies and appalls the ruling classes, and drives them into frenzied preemptive action. Spearheading the counter-revolution is the Trump administration, which has declared war on culture and critical thought, branding every sign of resistance to its barbaric policies as “lunacy” and “extremism” and “Marxism.” On various fronts in 2025 (the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, public broadcasting, the elimination of federal subsidies and support, the “National Garden of American Heroes,” “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” the tariff on foreign films and so on), it pursued crude, vicious and stupid attempts to nullify the past two centuries or more of social and cultural progress. None of this provoked any serious opposition from the Democratic Party or the media. 

The governments of every country have no answer to the upsurge of opposition except repression and censorship, and this process will only deepen in an increasingly sinister and dictatorial manner. Similar processes repeat themselves in the US, Germany, Britain, Australia and elsewhere. The artists will have to learn that appeals to the authorities and to the “left” parties and trade unions are futile. The turn must be to the rank-and-file of the working class and its revolutionary potential. Art cannot save itself. It can neither evade the general crisis of society nor seal itself off from the latter. Its future is entirely bound up with the fate of the social revolution. 

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It is not of course necessary for filmmakers to confine themselves to social problems or any particular set of “numbered strips.” Intimate, lyrical and poetic work is needed more than ever, but such work too will only prove meaningful or enduring if it takes into account the generalized conditions under which humanity lives and struggles, if it strives, in fact, to “feel the world in a new way.” A great many writers and directors (and critics) still want to watch themselves and their friends in the mirror—a small, shrinking, muddied mirror, one might add—but that’s as it must be. We will leave them to it. 

5. Three police officers killed during an operation against ISIS in Turkey

The organization and attacks of ISIS in Turkey reveal the consequences of the Turkish government’s reactionary policies regarding jihadist forces.

6. UK politicians demand British activist Abd El-Fattah be deported to Egypt’s torture prisons

It is Abd El-Fattah’s pro-democracy campaigning which angers his persecutors, especially his defense of the rights of the Palestinians against the fascistic Israeli state and its genocide. 

7. Eurovision 2026 plunges deeper into political crisis as boycotts multiply

“Participating in Eurovision allows Israel to maintain the illusion that it is a modern and exemplary Western democracy, and thus to more easily conceal its criminal actions”, said [a] collective of 170 Belgian artists and cultural figures.

8. Germany’s economic crisis deepens as mass layoffs sweep industry

Germany is experiencing an accelerating economic crisis marked by mass layoffs across industry, as trade war, militarization and pro-corporate policies deepen social insecurity for millions of workers and their families.

9. Sylvia Ageloff and the assassination of Leon Trotsky

The 2025 Summer School lecture series held by the Socialist Equality Party on the topic of Security and the Fourth International is concluded by a noted immigration attorney and frequent contributor to the World Socialist Web Site who writes as Eric London. 

10. Australia: Koolewong residents speak about recent bushfires

Their experiences are part of a broader pattern of inadequate preparedness and neglect by state and federal governments to so-called “natural” disasters, which are made more frequent and catastrophic as a result of climate change.

11. Estate workers in Sri Lanka’s central district protest, demand decent housing after cyclone

The decades-long demand for decent, livable housing for Sri Lanka’s plantation workers has reemerged with urgency after Cyclone Ditwah devastated estates across all 25 districts.

12. 85 years since Finland’s alliance with Nazi Germany

With Finland’s recent accession to NATO in preparation for war with Russia and China, the inheritors to Finland’s collaboration are preparing once again to throw Finnish workers into a devastating war of aggression, all in the name of “national defense.” Exposing the crude historical falsifications behind the current promotion of Finland’s “democracy” in World War II is necessary to arm Finnish workers against the present drive to war.

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Further reading:

Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events

Imperialist War And The Proletarian World Revolution

13. FBI frame-up of Indiana University postdoc Youhuang Xiang: Anti-China witch-hunt escalates

Youhuang Xiang, a 32-year-old postdoctoral research associate at Indiana University (IU), was arrested November 25 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and is now in federal custody, charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the US, and making false statements to federal officials. This arrest and prosecution, announced December 19 by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel, is the latest episode in an FBI/Department of Justice (DOJ) campaign to criminalize scientific exchange with China. 

Xiang’s alleged crime—the transportation in 2004 of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria containing plasmid DNA, hidden in a package of commercial clothing—has been seized upon by far-right media and federal law enforcement to propagate panic over US food supply safety.

This is part of the same campaign of frame-ups that led to the deportation and destruction of the careers of Yunqing Jian and Chengxuang Han at the University of Michigan (U-M). Three more researchers at U-M, Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang, have been in federal custody since mid-October.

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The DOJ and the FBI have focused on the seizure of biological materials containing E. coli in a package addressed to Xiang’s residence in Bloomington, Indiana. Fox News headlines screaming of “smuggling E. coli” evoke images of poisoned lettuce, hospitalized children and a fragile food supply under attack by foreign agents.

However, the filings describe materials consistent with common laboratory E. coli strains used as plasmid hosts, which are non-pathogenic and incapable of surviving outside controlled culture conditions.

Such bacteria function only as replication “vessels” for plasmid DNA—small circular molecules used routinely in molecular biology to carry genes of interest. Plasmids and their common laboratory E. coli hosts are standard purchase items for life-science labs worldwide and, in their laboratory forms, do not present public health or agricultural threats.

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The universities and the media have enabled a political campaign that uses a fabricated “biosecurity” panic to isolate and expel international researchers. This must be answered by a political mobilization of scientists, students and workers demanding the immediate release of the accused researchers, the dropping of all charges against them, their reinstatement, and an end to visa-revocation and deportation as tools of political repression and warmongering. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality are organizing to link the defense of democratic rights with the broader struggle of the working class against imperialist war and corporate control of science. Join and act now.

14. Anti-immigrant confrontation in New Zealand

Far-right, anti-immigrant groups are being cultivated and accommodated by key sections of the political establishment in response to mounting social and political opposition.

15. Australian union leaders support anti-protest laws after Bondi shooting

Victorian trade union leader Luke Hilakari said pro-Palestine protesters had “made all the points they need to make about Gaza” and “they just need to back off.”

16. Popular music in 2025: Signs of resistance emerge amid war, fascism and corporate conformity

The past year witnessed tremendous and ongoing upheavals, including the revival of fascism, genocide, war, mass layoffs, the slashing of social spending and attacks on democratic rights. This onslaught led to major strikes and protests in the United States, Italy, Bulgaria, Nepal, Kenya, Indonesia, Madagascar and elsewhere. These crises inevitably intersected with major cultural moments in international music, from festivals such as Glastonbury to public confrontations between artists and the political establishment.

But to a large extent, popular music has failed to register these ground-shaking developments. The most successful and best promoted artists instead offered escapism, fantasy, romance and titillation. Artists who took a more serious approach have nevertheless addressed questions of fascism, war and inequality in limited or tentative ways (and these limitations have objective roots).

Overall, musicians made their strongest statements outside the recording studio, reflecting the growing mass opposition within the world population. This is an appropriate time to take stock of the popular music of 2025.

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As social inequality intensified in every country throughout the year, a similar stratification has been taking place among popular musicians. A handful of major stars enjoyed broad exposure and fabulous commercial success, while conditions stagnated or deteriorated for most musicians. Corporate control over streaming platforms, touring infrastructure and festival circuits have reinforced this divide, rewarding political conformity and punishing those who step outside the accepted boundaries.

17. SEP Sri Lanka holds public meeting on death of two plantation workers

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the Estate Workers Action Committee (EWAC) held a public meeting on December 21 at the PMD Function Hall in Maskeliya. The event, which was streamed on the party’s Facebook page, has been viewed by 3,700 people so far and shared 173 times.

The meeting was originally scheduled for November 30, but had to be postponed due to the disastrous impact of Cyclone Ditwah across the island, with the central plantation districts among the worst-hit areas.

In the first week of November, two plantation workers—Vijayakumar (49) of the Maussakelle Estate, Maskeliya, and Rajinikantha (25) of the Kiriporuwa Estate, Yatiyanthota—died in industrial accidents. These deaths are part of a growing wave of workplace accidents globally.

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As the World Socialist Web Site explained, these deaths were not simply industrial accidents, but industrial murders caused by companies ignoring workplace safety measures in the drive for profit.

18. Industry analysts predict “wave of bankruptcies” in 2026, as job losses mount in auto parts industry

A deepening wave of layoffs in the US and global auto and auto parts industry will continue into 2026 amid mounting trade war and problems arising from the transition to electric vehicles.

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Earlier this year financial markets were rocked by the sudden bankruptcy of highly leveraged auto parts maker First Brands, a leading supplier of replacement parts. While the exact trigger is not exactly clear, the pressure on the auto and auto parts industry flowing from Trump’s tariffs and pressures on consumer spending were no doubt major factors. 

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Even at companies that have not implemented layoffs, work at auto parts suppliers is increasingly precarious, marked by both forced overtime followed by extended periods of short time or furloughs. 

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A worker at a Detroit area Flex-N-Gate plant, a supplier for Ford, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter about the constant anxiety confronting workers employed in the auto parts factories.

“I have learned a horrible truth about the automotive industry: You could end up without a job. Every summer we have layoffs. Every time there is a problem, the biggest hit would be taken by the workers. I have found that it is not a stable source of income.

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Major battles by auto parts workers lie ahead with more than 70 contracts set to expire next year at Independent Parts Suppliers like American Axle, Nexteer, Adient, and Dana. Many of these workers, including at Dana, produce parts not only for the auto industry but for mining, warehousing and construction.

In 2021, Dana workers waged a rebellion against the UAW and United Steelworkers bureaucracies, forming the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee. Dana workers voted massively to reject a sellout contract the unions tried to foist on them and called for strike action. However, the unions refused to call a strike and instead sought to divide and confuse workers, eventually pushing through a rotten deal. Since then conditions have gotten worse as the companies seek to cut costs, impose exhausting schedules and deadly work conditions and at the same time slash jobs.

To prepare for the coming year’s struggles, auto parts workers need to build and expand a network of democratically controlled rank-and-file committees at each plant and workplace. These committees, operating independently of the trade union apparatuses, are the eyes and ears of shop floor workers, enforcing safe working conditions, providing timely and true information and preparing for mass collective actions against jobs cuts, speedup and poverty wages.

19. Workers Party-controlled union federation betrays oil workers strike in Brazil

The Unified Federation of Oil Workers’ latest betrayal underscores the need for Petrobras workers to form independent rank-and-file committees with an internationalist and socialist perspective.

20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk holds a copy of John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World 

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.

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Trump and Netanyahu pledge Middle East bloodbath will continue in 2026

Since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, over 71,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 20,000 children. On August 22, famine was officially declared by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification—the first famine ever confirmed in the Middle East—which called the hunger crisis “entirely man-made.” The healthcare system has collapsed. Every university has been leveled. The population has been bombed, starved, denied medicine and driven from their homes repeatedly for over two years.

Under these conditions, Trump speaks of Palestinians “wanting” to leave—as though a population being systematically exterminated were freely choosing to abandon their homeland rather than being expelled through murder and starvation.

The “ceasefire” announced in October has given the capitalist powers’ stamp of legitimacy to the permanent Israeli occupation and annexation of a large portion of Gaza, coupled with daily mass killing and the deliberate starvation of the population. 

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The “ceasefire” has served as the framework for Israel’s continued expansion in the occupied territories. Defense Minister Israel Katz has pledged that Israel will “never leave” Gaza and will resettle its northern areas. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has proposed annexing 82 percent of the West Bank to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In October, the Knesset voted to advance an annexation bill. Under these conditions, the capitalist media has declared that there is “peace” in the Middle East. 

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The Democratic Party has systematically enabled Trump’s global onslaught. In December, 115 House Democrats—including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar—voted for a $901 billion defense authorization, $8 billion more than Trump requested. Twenty-seven Senate Democrats supported it. In April, Senate Democrats overwhelmingly rejected resolutions to restrict arms sales to Israel. Both parties represent the interests of the same ruling class, and no faction of the political establishment opposes the global expansion of American militarism.

In the year 2025, capitalism has normalized genocide. The capitalist media has proclaimed “peace” under conditions in which an entire population is being relentlessly starved, bombed and displaced.

Throughout the past two years, millions of people have taken to the streets in mass protests against the Gaza genocide. Demonstrations on every continent demanded an end to the slaughter. Yet despite this unprecedented outpouring of opposition, the capitalist parties have only normalized genocide. The protests have been ignored, suppressed and criminalized. All efforts to pressure the political establishment—through elections, through lobbying, through appeals to international law—have led nowhere. Biden armed the genocide; Trump has embraced it openly.

The lesson of 2025 is that the fight against war and genocide cannot be waged through the institutions of capitalist rule. What is necessary is the independent political mobilization of the international working class against the capitalist system itself.

2. Six Years of Covid-19:  Long COVID and the concealment of pandemic harm

The United States has now entered the seventh year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the country is moving through what the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) characterizes as the 12th major wave. What makes the present period politically decisive is not only the level of transmission, but the systematic degradation of surveillance, the frontal assault on public health institutions, and the deliberate normalization of mass infection—conditions that for good reason undermine public trust in the official figures posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

Within this context, the PMC at Tulane University has stepped in to fill the void in public health information. According to the PMC’s December 22, 2025 national estimate of the scale of transmission in the United States, based on wastewater surveillance, around 732,000 people are being infected daily. In the current year, there have been a total of 232,000,000 infections. The same dashboard estimates that one in 67 people (1.5 percent of the population) is actively infectious on a given day, and that cumulative infections per person since the start of the pandemic have reached 4.86, a clear reflection of the official policy of repeated exposure.

This is not an abstract curve. The PMC estimates that new infections are generating 224,000 to 890,000 Long COVID cases per week. Even under conditions of lowered acute fatality risk compared to the first two years of the pandemic, the PMC estimates 220 to 360 excess deaths per day from new infections and 1,300 to 2,200 excess deaths per week from new infections. These are deaths “in excess” of expected baselines, and are frequently not recorded as “COVID deaths” in routine tallies.

At the same time, the very wastewater-driven heat map that the PMC draws on highlights how fragmented and incomplete US surveillance has become. Large sections of the country are marked as having “limited data,” while the map itself warns that the data are “lagged” and levels are “worse than shown.” This is a practical expression of the political assault on public health: society is being led through an ongoing mass-disabling event with the instruments for measuring it intentionally blunted.

*****

Six years after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the most consequential and enduring dimension of the pandemic is Long COVID, which provides the clearest explanation for the persistence of excess disease, disability and mortality worldwide despite repeated claims of normalization.

First, Long COVID represents a massive global burden of disease. A growing body of high-impact research converges on the finding that approximately 6 to 10 percent of all SARS-CoV-2 infections result in symptoms lasting at least three months, with prevalence rising substantially after severe or repeated infections (Ballering et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2023; Global Burden of Disease Long COVID Collaborators, 2022). A large multinational cross-sectional study spanning 33 countries found persistent post-COVID symptoms across all regions and income levels, with fatigue, cognitive impairment, cardiopulmonary symptoms and autonomic dysfunction among the most frequently reported manifestations (Amin-Chowdhury et al., 2025). Taken together, these findings indicate that hundreds of millions of people globally are now living with Long COVID, establishing it as a population-scale chronic health condition rather than a marginal post-viral syndrome.

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Second, reinfection substantially amplifies the risk of Long COVID, including among children and adolescents. Analysis from the RECOVER-EHR program during the Omicron era found that the incidence of Long COVID approximately doubled following reinfection, with cases encompassing autonomic dysfunction, fatigue syndromes, cardiovascular symptoms and neurocognitive impairment (RECOVER Initiative, 2024). These findings directly contradict claims that repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections are benign, particularly in younger populations.

Third, routine healthcare data captures only a fraction of Long COVID cases, leading to systematic underestimation of prevalence. A 2025 population-based study from the Barcelona Integral Healthcare Consortium, using primary-care electronic health records, initially identified Long COVID in 2.4 per 1,000 individuals. After correcting for under-ascertainment related to missed diagnoses, delayed presentation and inconsistent coding, prevalence increased by more than 25 percent, with a clear dose-response relationship: prevalence rose steadily with each additional infection (Català et al., 2025). The critical implication is not the precise percentage, but the structural limitation of health system data, which detects only a subset of cases—particularly among working-age adults who remain partially functional while chronically ill.

*****

Six years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence is no longer ambiguous. The continued spread of SARS-CoV-2, the mass emergence of Long COVID, and the steady accumulation of chronic disease and excess death expose a social order that has treated mass infection as an acceptable cost of doing business. The pandemic was never merely a medical emergency. It has always been a class event, shaped by decisions that subordinate human life to profit, market stability, and geopolitical agendas. 

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The decay of public health institutions must be understood in this light. The erosion of data systems, the undercounting of COVID-related deaths through misattribution to pneumonia and cardiac causes, and the abandonment of mitigation are not technical errors awaiting correction. They are expressions of a social system that no longer even pretends to place collective well-being above private accumulation. Where data remain robust, as in Finland, the scale of ongoing harm becomes visible. Where they do not, it is merely concealed.

The lessons of the pandemic point inexorably toward the need for an independent response by the working class. The defense and reconstruction of public health—universal access to care, clean air, paid sick leave, transparent surveillance and sustained scientific investment—cannot be entrusted to institutions that have already demonstrated their allegiance to profit over life. A socialist reorganization of society is not an abstraction, but a practical necessity if humanity is to confront a pandemic that has not ended but been politically obscured. The fight for public health is inseparable from the fight for social equality, and it must be taken up consciously and internationally.

3. Trump says US strike destroyed large dock facility in Venezuela

The strike appears to have involved air‑launched precision munitions delivered from US forces operating offshore, but the lack of official clarification highlights the lawless character of the operation. Experts have said there is a likelihood that the “facility” was a civilian port or dual‑use maritime infrastructure.

As of this writing, no authoritative source has provided details of what happened.

*****

As of Monday, Venezuelan officials had not issued a detailed public statement confirming damage or casualties at the dock facility mentioned by Trump. Previously, the Venezuelan government has denounced the boat strikes as “serial executions” and an “undeclared war,” warning that Washington is preparing an invasion under the pretext of drug interdiction. Caracas has also accused the US of seeking regime change to seize control of the country’s vast oil reserves.

Accepting that a land strike has in fact occurred, it is the latest in the months‑long US campaign of terror from the sea and air. Since early September, US forces have carried out at least 30 lethal strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing approximately 105 people. These operations, run through US Southern Command and involving an aircraft carrier strike group, an amphibious assault ship and thousands of Marines, have turned international waters off Venezuela into a killing field.

*****

Not a single leading Democrat has denounced the boat and dock strikes as war crimes or demanded the immediate withdrawal of US forces from the region, confirming that their differences with Trump are tactical and not fundamental. 

The latest strike on Venezuelan territory is an act of aggressive war, in direct violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force and the sovereignty of states. Aggression—the launching of war without lawful justification—was declared “the supreme international crime” by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried, convicted and punished leading Nazi officials, including by hanging, for planning and waging wars of conquest.

The US campaign of massacring boat crews on the high seas and now striking land facilities inside Venezuela under bogus “anti‑drug” pretexts falls squarely into this category, placing Trump, his generals and his accomplices among the imperialist war criminals of the 21st century.

The US has not been attacked by Venezuela and Trump’s claims that the drone strikes are in “self‑defense” against narcotics traffickers are blatant lies. Washington is exploiting its overwhelming military superiority to achieve regime change and strategic dominance in contempt of both domestic and international law.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the assault on Venezuela has everything to do with oil and imperialist geostrategy. US imperialism is seeking to overthrow the Maduro regime and install a government that is subordinated to Wall Street and the Pentagon.

The awarding of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado is a signal from all the imperialist powers that regime change in Venezuela is on the agenda. As the WSWS has noted, Machado’s political supporters openly advocate the use of violence and foreign intervention, and she has coordinated plans with the Trump administration for the “first 100 hours” after Maduro’s removal.

Historically, the US state has repeatedly collaborated with and utilized drug traffickers as instruments of policy, from CIA‑linked operations in Central America to the protection of friendly regimes and paramilitary forces across the hemisphere. The same apparatus that now denounces “narco‑terrorism” has long encouraged and manipulated the drug trade to deepen its control over sections of the Latin American bourgeoisie and to finance covert operations beyond the scrutiny of the population.

Behind the war drive against Venezuela is the broader imperialist strategy of asserting US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s own statements and policy directives have included threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, annex Greenland and treat Canada as a de facto “51st state,” an open program of 21st‑century colonialism.

4. UK Labour government and Supreme Court continue cover up of “dirty war” in Ireland

Nearly 31 years after Paul “Topper” Thompson was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries in Springfield Park, Belfast, the UK Supreme Court ruled, last month, against the release of a summary of intelligence documents relating to the killing.

The ruling, which overturned a previous coroner’s decision, relied on the so-called “balance of the public interest”, a euphemism for covering the tracks of informers or agents operating on behalf of the British state. It upholds the “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) stance taken by the British government when one or more “covert human intelligence source(s)” (CHIS) or surveillance operations are in danger of being publicly exposed.

*****

Thompson, a 25-year-old Catholic man, was shot dead late in the evening of 27 April 1994. The shooting was claimed by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), military wing of the loyalist Ulster Defense Association.

5. Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah finally cleared of Zionist-instigated allegations

For more than two years, Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah, a prominent author and academic at Sydney’s Macquarie University, has been the victim of a Zionist-orchestrated attack resulting from her defence of the rights of the Palestinians and criticism of the crimes of the Israeli state.

Finally, 10 months after her Australian Research Council (ARC) fellowship was suspended in February at the behest of the Albanese Labor government after a Zionist and media witch hunt, she has been exonerated on the trumped-up allegations against her.

On December 23, Abdel-Fattah announced on Instagram: “After a 10-month exhaustive, rigorous investigative process, I have been cleared of all allegations raised against me and my employment suspension has been lifted and my ARC Future Fellowship reinstated.”

The suspension of her grant was the product of an orchestrated assault by Murdoch media outlets, lobbyists and politicians that sought to conflate opposition to the genocide in Gaza with antisemitism.

*****

Abdel-Fattah’s reinstatement is to be welcomed, but the wider political context makes clear that this is only a partial and temporary reprieve. Labor and Liberal-National governments, the corporate media and the university apparatus have used charges of “antisemitism” as a political weapon to suppress dissent and shut down campus protests.

Abdel-Fattah has been far from alone in being targeted. In Australia, other critics of Israel tarred as anti-Jewish bigots and persecuted by governments, the corporate media and Zionist organisations have included journalists Mary Kostakidis, Antoinette Lattouf and Peter Lalor, Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz, University of Sydney academics John Keane and Nick Riemer, and the same university’s sociology professor Sujatha Fernandes and sacked academic Tim Anderson.

6. Book Review: Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan

In October 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant invoked the Third Anti-KKK Enforcement Act, declared martial law in nine counties in the South Carolina piedmont, and ordered soldiers to suppress what Grant called a “conspiracy” against the Constitution, which had recently, through ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, been altered to enforce the revolutionary results of the Civil War by guaranteeing equal protection and the right to vote.

In a proclamation issued in May, shortly after signing the Enforcement Act into law, Grant had declared:

I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive, whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws.

In October, Grant followed through on his promise. 

Guy Gugliotta, historian and former Washington Post reporter, describes the crackdown in South Carolina in his recent book, Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan. The federal government had spent months developing a network of informants, using the threat of federal prosecution under the Enforcement Act to thoroughly infiltrate the Klan. The Third Enforcement Act—so called because it “enforced” the Reconstruction Amendments—authorized the suspension of habeas corpus, giving federal authorities the power to arrest and detain suspected Klan members without charge. It also made it unlawful for two or more people to conspire against the civil rights of others, an underutilized provision that remains on the statute books. 

*****

Five years have passed since Donald Trump led a coup attempt to overturn the Constitution and establish himself as presidential dictator. The putsch failed, though not on account of any serious opposition from the Democratic Party or incoming Biden administration. In the half-hearted impeachment effort that followed, Democrats allowed the 15 Republican Senators who had expressed support for Trump’s coup to cast votes against conviction. They should have been barred by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which excludes individuals who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from serving in either house of Congress. Had they been barred, Trump would have been convicted by one vote.

The impact of the Democrats’ failure to prosecute the conspiracy is impossible to overstate. The insurrection has continued, and its leader now occupies the White House. None of the conspiracy’s leaders spent a day behind bars, with the exception of Steve Bannon, who was convicted of contempt of Congress and spent a few months in jail in 2024. All Congress could muster in the years that followed was a law that made it somewhat more difficult for Trump to employ the same “alternative electors” stratagem in subsequent plots. In any case, the Supreme Court subsequently held that the president is constitutionally immune from “official acts” engaged in while president.

During his first year in office, Trump has been using his “official acts” to make good on his 2022 pledge to “terminate the Constitution.” Among his first moves in office was pardoning the lower-level participants in the mob that marched past Grant’s statue and up the Capitol steps on January 6. Many have doubtless joined the ranks of ICE and CBP as they carry out their conspiracy against the population in plain sight and under ostensible color of law.  

Today, “enforcement” of the democratic gains of the first two American revolutions requires mass action. The impetus for the necessary revolutionary overhaul of society will come from the working class and it will require the abolition of capitalism.

7. Part One: From Roosevelt to Trump: The Monroe Doctrine and US imperialism’s predatory record in Venezuela

Venezuela and its oil reserves, the largest on the planet, are the immediate target of US imperialism’s predatory operations. Trump has made this explicit in statements to the media and ranting social media posts. He has vowed that US military attacks would only escalate “Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Making good on these threats, Washington has carried out the pirate-like seizure of oil tankers on the high seas and imposed a blockade, a direct act of war, aimed at starving Venezuela into submission.

But the so-called “Trump corollary,” as well as the fascistic and mafia-style pronouncements of its namesake in the White House, make clear that Washington’s aims encompass far more than Venezuela. They amount to a drive for the recolonization of Latin America as a whole and the abject subordination of the entire region to US profit interests and the Pentagon’s preparation for world war.

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Historically, Venezuela has played an outsized role in the evolution of US imperialist doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. This is due in part to its vast petroleum wealth, which, at the height of Standard Oil’s dominance, accounted for fully half of the profits that US capitalists extracted from Latin America.

US interventionism in Venezuela, however, predates even the onset of large-scale oil drilling by just over a decade, beginning with the so-called Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903.

8. Thai government turns to war and nationalism ahead of general elections

A fragile ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia commenced on Saturday following weeks of intense border fighting that displaced large numbers of civilians and brought the two countries to the brink of a wider military confrontation.

Under the terms announced by Bangkok, the two countries will observe a 72-hour ceasefire period, after which—if Thailand judges the truce to be holding—it will return 18 Cambodian soldiers captured during clashes in July.

Troops on both sides, however, remain deployed in forward positions, and none of the underlying territorial or political disputes that fueled the conflict have been resolved.

*****

The ceasefire has brought to a pause what had become the most sustained escalation of border fighting between the two countries in more than a decade. The clashes involved artillery exchanges, air strikes and armored deployments across multiple sections of the disputed frontier. Casualty figures remain contested, but at least several dozen civilians and soldiers have been killed on both sides, with many more wounded. The number of civilians forced to flee are estimated at around 700,000 to over one million people, far exceeding the scale seen during the 2008–2011 Preah Vihear conflict and creating a humanitarian emergency that remains unresolved despite the truce.

*****

The ceasefire was announced without any confirmed role played by external powers. Despite public claims by Donald Trump, neither Thailand nor Cambodia credited the United States with mediating the truce. Posting on Truth Social, Trump declared he was “proud to help,” echoing earlier boasts in which he ludicrously claimed to have “ended eight wars.” His previous claims of having brokered a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia in October collapsed within weeks as fighting resumed, exposing the hollowness of his self-promotion as a global peacemaker.

China likewise played no role in brokering the current ceasefire but has begun hosting diplomatic talks with both governments in Yunnan province on Monday. The absence of decisive involvement by either Washington or Beijing underscores the unstable and ad hoc character of the ceasefire, which reflects immediate military calculations by Bangkok and Phnom Penh rather than a durable diplomatic settlement.

*****

The ceasefire with Cambodia has not altered the fundamental character of the border dispute. As previous analysis has shown, the conflict has nothing to do with defending the interests of ordinary people, but is a political instrument used by both regimes to divert attention from austerity, repression and economic decline, while maneuvering within the sharpening confrontation between the United States and China across the Indo-Pacific.

9. AI debt grows and financial risks increase

Information and data are now emerging about the growing flow of debt used to finance the artificial intelligence (AI) boom and how major corporations are devising financial mechanisms aimed at trying to escape the consequences if the expanding financial bubble bursts. 

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JP Morgan has said that $1.5 trillion in AI-related debt will be needed by 2028, with AI infrastructure spending projected to reach $5-7 trillion by the end of the decade.

Major tech companies, including Meta, Elon Musk’s xAI, Oracle and data center operator CoreWeave are leading the way in devising means by which they are shielded from a collapse of the boom by setting up special purpose vehicles (SPVs) funded by Wall Street investment firms.

Financial firms, including Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, Blue Owl and banks such as JP Morgan have supplied at least $120 billion in debt, according to the FT.

The advantage for the firms creating the SPVs is that the debt they incur is off balance sheet making it easier for them to continue raising money in the corporate bond market. But it creates new levels of risk under conditions where it is far from sure who will be on the hook if the projects funded by the SPVs do not generate sufficient revenue.

*****

The practices which played a major role in the 2008 financial crisis are also making a return with securitization of AI debt. This is the practice where lenders pool loans and sell off slices of them to other investors in the form of asset-backed securities. So far, the numbers are not large, but they are a warning sign.

The development of AI, if it were used in a consciously controlled and rational manner as augmented intelligence, could provide enormous economic advances. But its development under the capitalist system of private ownership and market relations contains within it the seeds of a financial crisis which could rapidly germinate.

These arise from insufficient revenue being generated from the application of AI to finance the massive spending on data centers, problems associated with the development of the electricity needed to operate them and the prospect that technology changes will lead to more efficient and less costly methods being developed, meaning that the present projects will become so-called “stranded assets.”

*****

The interconnected character of the finance deals means that problems in one area of the AI boom can rapidly spread to others.

Storm said that to many observers “these astronomical circular financing deals” brought back “traumatic memories of the circular financing arrangements of the late 1990s, when vendors reinforced each other’s dotcom stock valuations without generating any real value.”

In fact, the situation is potentially far more serious because the financial system, along with debt, has grown by leaps and bounds since then and has become ever more integrated such that a crisis or collapse in one area of the market has the potential to set off a broader crisis.

The crisis of 2008 and the market freeze of March 2020 were both warnings of such an event.

hile there are clear indications that the financing of AI is setting up the conditions for a crisis, there is another issue which must be considered.

What if the estimates of the financial benefits of AI, on which the massive investments have been based, prove to be correct, or at least partially so?

The only way that can happen is if the companies using AI generate vastly increased profits by a massive reduction in their cost structure through the elimination of vast swathes of jobs, particularly in so-called white collar and computational occupations. There are already indications of that starting to take place as major firms announce mass layoffs.

The development of either scenario, or a combination of both, raises the need for the working class to wrest the ownership and control of this major technological advance from the financial oligarchy and utilize it in the development of a planned socialist economy.

10. Fabricated ICE narratives collapse as Minnesota raids escalate

On Monday in Minneapolis, Minnesota, federal immigration and law enforcement agencies launched a publicly coordinated operation targeting alleged “fraudulent” daycare and healthcare centers operated by Somali Americans. 

Under conditions where Trump’s popularity is collapsing over his cover-up of the Epstein files, warmongering and self-dealing, the police action against immigrants is being widely promoted by senior officials in the administration and right-wing propagandists.

11. Australian governments discussing domestic military deployment after Bondi attack

At a press conference on Sunday, New South Wales (NSW) Labor Premier Chris Minns stated that discussions were underway about deploying the military domestically in the wake of the December 14 terrorist attack in Bondi. 

That is one component of a feverish attempt by governments and the ruling elite to exploit the Bondi atrocity to vastly expand state powers and to crackdown on fundamental democratic rights.

Minns’ comments were prompted by a question from a journalist. But his response made clear that he was not merely responding on the fly or proffering his own personal opinion. “We’re in discussions about it,” Minns stated, adding, “I’m not prepared to front run it because obviously that’s a change for us.”

The latter comment pointed to the veil of secrecy behind which unprecedented and authoritarian measures are being imposed.

*****

The rush with which governments are instituting anti-democratic measures shows that the horrific Bondi attack is the pretext for longer-term plans. The moves towards authoritarianism, paralleling those of governments around the world amid a breakdown of global capitalism, can only be defeated by building a socialist movement of the working class directed against the entire political establishment.

12. Online Public Meeting: Bondi terror attack—a socialist assessment

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) invites workers, youth and World Socialist Web Site readers to an online meeting to examine the political significance of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, which is being exploited to implement a raft of anti-democratic measures that will inevitably be used against the working class.

WHEN: Sunday, January 11, 2 p.m. AEDT; December 30, 7 p.m. PST
WHERE: Online public meeting—register here

13. Workers Struggles: The Americas

Argentina:

Hundreds protest mining projects

 

Movement of Excluded Workers feeds 5,000 victims of government austerity 

Bolivia:

General strike call as mass protests against price rises continue

Canada:

Porter Airlines flight dispatchers move towards strike position

Honduras:

Thousands march against electoral fraud

United States:

Ski patrollers strike Telluride, Colorado resort

Teamsters file charges against Airgas as seven-month strike drags on

14. 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.

Recent headlines at the World Socialist Web Site:

1. This week in history: December 29-January 4

• 25 years ago:

A dozen immigrant farmworkers killed in Spanish train-van collision

• 50 years ago:

Venezuela nationalizes oil industry

• 75 years ago:

  North Korean and Chinese forces recapture Seoul

• 100 years ago:

Massive funeral procession for poet Sergei Esenin in Moscow

2. US launches Christmas Day missile strikes against northwestern Nigeria

On Christmas Day, the US military launched multiple cruise missile strikes against targets in northwest Nigeria, which the White House claims killed several ISIS militants and were conducted at the request of the Nigerian government. Trump administration and Nigerian officials have publicly framed the operation as a joint counterterror mission.

News media reported that the operation included missiles launched from at least one US Navy vessel positioned in the Gulf of Guinea against targets in Sokoto State, in Nigeria’s northwest. A US military source told the New York Times that “over a dozen” Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired, striking two ISIS camps, while US Africa Command (AFRICOM) described “airstrikes” that killed “multiple ISIS terrorists.”

The US source stressed that the strikes were carried out with Tomahawk cruise missiles, ship-launched long-range precision weapons repeatedly used by US imperialism in its attacks on Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries. Media and Pentagon accounts also refer more generally to “airstrikes,” implying the additional likely use of carrier- or land-based aircraft, though details remain classified.

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Civilian casualty numbers remain contested as AFRICOM’s statement speaks only of killing “multiple ISIS terrorists,” while US broadcast reports note that the administration “did not offer additional details … like what was specifically targeted or the number of casualties.”

AFRICOM’s official communication stated that it had launched the strikes “at the request of Nigerian authorities” in Sokoto State, “killing multiple ISIS terrorists,” presenting the attack as a seamless exercise in joint counterterrorism. The command framed the mission as a success, while omitting any reference to civilian harm or the broader destabilizing impact of US militarization in the Sahel and West Africa.

The official US justification for the operation is that it is part of the “war on ISIS,” targeting militants allegedly responsible for attacks on Christians in northern Nigeria. Trump had spent weeks publicly accusing the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians and, according to coverage by National Public Radio (NPR), portrayed the December 25 attack as a long-overdue response to an “existential threat” to Christianity in the country.

In a WABC radio interview, Trump hailed the attack, boasting that the ISIS terrorists “really got hit hard yesterday” and that they had received “a very bad Christmas present.” 

*****

Along with this declaration, Trump said that “there will be many more” dead terrorists “if their attacks on Christians persist,” effectively promising an open-ended campaign of US imperialist attacks on Nigeria and anyone else the fascist president designates.

The claim that a “Christian genocide” is unfolding in Nigeria is a hoax, no different in substance from Washington’s claims about “narco-terrorism” in Venezuela or “white genocide” in South Africa.

Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent and widely cited violence monitor, directly contradicts this narrative. ACLED records show that Islamist and other armed groups operating in northern Nigeria have attacked both churches and mosques, and have killed both Christians and Muslims. These attacks are not driven by religious hatred but by the brutal social crisis produced by decades of imperialist looting, state corruption, and militarization.

Nigeria’s population of roughly 220 million is nearly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with Muslims forming a majority in the north. While ACLED data indicates that attacks on churches have increased over the last six years, it also shows that mosques were attacked more frequently than churches in 2015 and 2017. The victims of armed violence in Nigeria are not a single religious group, but working people of all faiths and ethnicities.

The current hoax gained momentum in September when pro-Democrat television host Bill Maher described what was happening in northern Nigeria as a “genocide,” as a way of justifying the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Referring to the Islamist Boko Haram group, he said “they have killed over 100,000 since 2009, they’ve burned 18,000 churches.” He added, “This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”

This narrative was rapidly seized by the Republican party, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz claiming on X that “over 50,000 Christians” had been massacred.

The essential purpose of this campaign is to assert the White House’s claimed right to fire cruise missiles into any country on the basis of fabricated humanitarian pretexts, and to prepare the expansion of US military operations globally. The assault on Nigeria is part of the Trump administration’s drive to reassert US imperialist dominance over Africa, a continent that holds roughly 30 percent of the world’s proven critical mineral reserves and vast untapped rare earth deposits.

*****

The Christmas Day missile strikes must be understood within the broader context of an accelerating US drive to militarily dominate Africa. Within days, Washington launched major attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria and opened a direct military front in West Africa, confirming that the so-called “war on terror” is a permanent global framework for imperialist violence.

The operation also followed Nigeria’s rapid intervention in early December, acting as a proxy for US and French imperialism, to foil an attempted coup in Benin on December 7, 2025. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have expelled French and US forces and developed closer relations with Russia, prompting Washington and Paris to rely increasingly on Nigeria to defend their strategic interests in the region.

*****

From the standpoint of the international working class, the military strikes on Nigeria are a serious warning. They demonstrate that the crisis-ridden American ruling class, led by the corrupt and criminal elements within the Trump administration, is prepared to expand and multiply wars across the globe, fusing religious demagogy, lies about “human rights” and the fight against “terrorism” with the ruthless pursuit of strategic and economic interests.

3. Mass layoffs deepen across US economy as job cuts in auto, logistics and tech continue into 2026

The wave of mass layoffs sweeping the United States in 2025 will continue into the new year, with devastating consequences for workers across multiple industries. This includes the General Motors Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit, where more than 1,100 workers have been permanently laid off and only a single shift will resume operations when production restarts on January 5.

A Factory Zero worker, who has been transferred between seven different GM plants over the last two decades—including the now shuttered Lordstown, Ohio assembly and Warren, Michigan transmission factories—told the World Socialist Web Site, “As of right now, the layoffs have begun. On January 5, first shift returns at our plant, and second shift is on indefinite layoff.”

Speaking on the danger that GM could shutter the entire facility, he said, “I’ve seen it done many times. I tell people that all the time, it is nothing for GM to shut these doors and gut this entire plant and be out and gone.”

The worker described a sense of free fall among Factory Zero employees, abandoned by both the corporation and the United Auto Workers union.

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Internationally, the same processes are unfolding. In Germany and across Europe, auto manufacturers like VW and suppliers like Bosch and ZF have announced tens of thousands of layoffs, plant closures and restructuring as they confront declining demand, rising costs and global competition.

It is in response to this global assault that the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has issued a statement calling for an internationally coordinated counteroffensive against the bloodbath of layoffs in the auto industry. The IWA-RFC warns that the defense of jobs cannot be carried out plant by plant or nation by nation, but requires unified action by workers across borders against the transnational corporations that dominate the global economy. 

4. Stop Trump’s mass immigrant roundups!

The year 2025 has seen an assault on immigrants without precedent in American history. With the complicity of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy, the Trump administration has launched a nationwide dragnet for mass detention and deportation. Every day, heavily armed and often masked federal agents fan out into neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and homes.

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that ICE is now carrying out roughly 2,600 “at-large” arrests per week. During Obama’s first term, weekly arrests averaged 640. Under Trump’s first term, they averaged 569. Even under Biden, who oversaw a major escalation, arrests averaged about 1,100 per week. Trump has more than doubled that figure in months and has declared his goal of deporting 1 million people this year.

The claim that the operation targets “criminals” is a lie. ICE has shifted away from jail-based arrests to mass workplace raids at car washes, construction sites and food processing plants. Immigrants are targeted whose only “crime” is seeking work.

Political opposition is also being criminalized. Yaa’kub Vijandre, a longtime Dallas resident and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, has been detained for nearly three months and faces deportation to a country he has not lived in since childhood. His “crime” is refusing to become an FBI informant and continuing to speak out against US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza. If this is grounds for detention, it is grounds for the persecution of anyone. 

Those seized are routinely denied basic constitutional rights. The recent CBS 60 Minutes investigation, which was pulled from airing, documented the illegal rendition of nearly 300 immigrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison under the Alien Enemies Act. They were held for months without lawyers under conditions amounting to torture. Similar conditions have been documented at detention facilities across Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, New Jersey and Louisiana.

What is being built is a nationwide deportation machine. ICE acting director Todd Lyons has openly stated that the goal of the Trump administration is to become the “Amazon” of deportations: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”

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Trump’s deportation campaign serves three interconnected purposes.

First, the campaign against immigrants is aimed at dividing the working class. Immigrant workers are scapegoated for conditions created by the ruling class itself—stagnant wages, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and collapsing social services. By directing the anger of native-born workers against immigrants rather than against the corporations and billionaires responsible for decades of deindustrialization and austerity, the political establishment seeks to prevent the development of a unified working class movement. A divided working class cannot fight back.

Second, it serves as a diversion from political crisis and the criminality of the ruling class. New revelations tied to the Epstein network continue to implicate Trump, while the administration slashes social programs, carries out overseas military strikes and attacks workers at home.

Third, immigration repression provides the legal and political framework for expanding police state powers against the entire population. The same justifications used to deploy troops in cities and deport residents without due process will be used against striking workers and political opponents regardless of immigration status.

5. Demand the immediate release of UK pro-Palestine hunger strikers threatened with death

On Friday, a group of United Nations experts including Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, intervened to denounce Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s treatment of the protesters. Their statement declared, “These reports raise serious questions about compliance with international human rights law and standards, including obligations to protect life and prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

They added, “Preventable deaths in custody are never acceptable. The state bears full responsibility for the lives and wellbeing of those it detains... Urgent action is required now.”

The Labour government is spearheading a global campaign of state repression against opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

None of the protesters—who are on remand—has been found guilty of anything. They have all suffered ill treatment and unjustified blocks on communication with the outside world, due to the court’s arbitrary and unjust claim that charges against individuals arrested for Palestine Action (PA) protests have a “terrorist connection.”

6. Trump administration lashes out after musician cancels Christmas Eve Jazz Jam to protest Kennedy Center’s new name

In a vicious and desperate action, the Trump administration is threatening to sue jazz musician Chuck Redd for $1 million. Redd canceled his annual Christmas Eve jazz concert to protest the decision of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board of trustees to change the venue’s name to the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”

The threat against Redd is part of the Nazi-like effort to bring popular culture, education and art into line with the administration’s agenda. The Kennedy Center has been transformed from a public arts institution into a weapon of intimidation against any artist who refuses to kowtow to far-right politics.

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In an email to the Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the addition—illegal, in fact—of Trump’s name. “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said.

Redd’s departure from the “Trump Kennedy Center” is yet another blow to the center’s already fatally damaged prestige. Redd is a widely respected musician who gained international recognition playing with the Charlie Byrd Trio and Great Guitars, later performing with figures such as Dizzy Gillespie and Mel Tormé, leading bands linked to the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and teaching at the University of Maryland School of Music.

By pulling out, Redd joins a literal stampede of artists and producers out the Kennedy Center’s doors, refusing to be associated with Trump’s takeover of the institute. Among them are Issa Rae, Shonda Rhimes, Hamilton‑affiliated personnel and other prominent figures, withdrawing or relocating projects rather than perform under a banner bearing the president’s name.

This growing group was joined last week by the American College Theatre Festival, which has collaborated with the Kennedy Center for 58 years. On Monday, the event’s organizers announced they would suspend the festival’s affiliation, citing “circumstances and decisions that do not align with our organization’s values.”

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The renaming and the threat against Redd need to be seen as part of a systematic authoritarian reshaping of cultural life in the US. Following in the footsteps of the Nazis in 1930s’ Germany, Trump’s attack on “degenerate art,” “woke” productions and drag performances allegedly corrupting youth is integrally connected to the social and political counterrevolution his administration represents. Whereas the Nazis claimed to be “purifying” the Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) to create a “healthy” (and obedient) population, Trump’s regime does so in the name of inaugurating a national-patriotic “Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” a code name for its own full-scale attempt to politically intimidate and terrorize.

7. Australian high school students oppose social media ban

Teenagers in the industrial city of Newcastle, north of Sydney, speak out against the Labor government’s legislation to bar them from accessing social media platforms.

13. Vaccine policy, class, and the erosion of public health protection: An interview with legal scholar Dorit Reiss

This interview is the second extended discussion between Professor Reiss and the World Socialist Web Site examining the accelerating assault on vaccines and public health in the United States. Building on earlier analysis, the conversation explores how law, science and public health institutions are being reshaped under the current administration, and what these changes reveal about the broader social and political breakdown.

8. CUPW paves way for destruction of tens of thousands of jobs by reaching tentative agreements with Canada Post

Less than three days ahead of the holiday break, as postal workers laboured under the added burden of the Christmas rush, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) bureaucracy suddenly sprang a surprise of new tentative agreements on its 55,000 members in a short press release. The agreements for urban postal operations (UPO) and rural and suburban mail carriers (RSMC) are designed to facilitate the destruction of tens of thousands of full-time jobs in the coming years. This is the goal being pursued by Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger and the Mark Carney-led Liberal government, which wants to set a precedent with Canada Post for a massive assault on all public services.

Throughout more than two years of bargaining, CUPW has worked consistently to smother opposition among rank-and-file postal workers to the ruling class’s drive to return the Crown corporation to profitability. This has included CUPW’s national leadership acting arbitrarily to enforce a government strike ban and sabotaging a national strike earlier this year by unilaterally imposing bogus “rotating” job action confined to isolated local stunts. When the union bureaucracy was compelled to sanction strike action on two separate occasions by the militancy of postal workers, the union leadership ensured that the strikers remained isolated from all other sections of workers and sabotaged any struggle directed against the Liberal government, which has used its powers to support management’s assault on workers at every turn.

These actions were all the more criminal given that the issues involved in the contract struggle—the use of new technologies like AI to accelerate exploitation, job security, decent wage increases and the defense of workers’ right to strike—are common to all workers and could have served as a starting-point for a broader mobilization of the working class as a whole against capitalist austerity and the restructuring of public services to meet the demands of the financial oligarchy.

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Capitalist globalization in the 1980s eliminated the material conditions that allowed the unions in a previous period to secure limited gains for workers within a national framework. From then on, they became tools of management to extract concessions from workers on behalf of management with the aim of guaranteeing “competitiveness” and the profits of the union bureaucracy’s “own” national ruling elites. This rule applies to all unions, whether the once militant and nominally “left” CUPW, or more openly company unions like Unifor or the UAW in the US.

These are the basic issues at the heart of the postal workers’ struggle. Those forces, like the union bureaucracy, rooted in nationalism and a pro-capitalist outlook must accept the profit motive, which dictates ever worsening conditions for postal workers to cover shareholder payouts. Moreover, they divide workers along national lines under conditions in which the onslaught being waged by the capitalists on the working class is global in scope.

9. Optus report whitewashes Australia’s emergency phone breakdowns

The telecommunication company’s report seeks to absolve management of any responsibility for the fatal events of September 18, when some 605 calls to emergency services numbers failed to connect. 

16. World Bank, ILO reports show depth of Cyclone Ditwah disaster in Sri Lanka

Last week, the World Bank and International Labour Organization (ILO) issued assessment reports on the massive damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, driving the country deeper into economic crisis and further devastating the living conditions of workers and the poor.

The cyclone developed in the Bay of Bengal in late November and entered Sri Lanka on November 28, exiting the next day. It engulfed all of the country’s 25 districts in floods and triggered hundreds of landslides. The official death toll stands at 639, with 203 missing and thousands injured, some critically.

The World Bank’s Global Rapid Post-Disaster Damage Estimation report puts a preliminary figure on the total damage to Sri Lanka’s economy at $US4.1 billion, or about 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Around 2 million people—roughly 500,000 families—across all 25 districts were affected.

However, the ILO’s preliminary assessment estimates that 16 percent of national GDP—around $16 billion—is at risk due to the disaster. The widely differing figures only underscore the enormous scale of devastation across the country.

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The ILO also estimates that Ditwah affected the jobs of 374,000 workers, with income losses reaching $48 million per month and has recommended emergency financial assistance and labor-intensive recovery programs.

These are not figures that can be addressed through patchwork measures. The devastation of the lives of the masses has already driven many into poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine triggered an unprecedented economic crisis in 2022, compelling the then government to default on foreign debt.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe responded by securing a $3 billion IMF bailout and began implementing its harsh dictates from 2023, including hikes in value-added tax, electricity and water tariffs, sweeping cuts to public spending, and the privatization of state-owned enterprises to guarantee debt repayment from 2028 onward.

Since coming to power, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has pressed ahead with implementing all the IMF’s austerity measures.

When the cyclone struck late last month—amid the deepening economic crisis and IMF-imposed austerity—22 percent of Sri Lankans were living below the poverty line, with another 10 percent barely above it. The disaster will vastly intensify the social catastrophe confronting the masses. 

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Workers and the poor must oppose the government’s plans to impose the huge costs of cyclone recovery on the masses. They are not responsible for the cyclone catastrophe or the underlying capitalist crisis. 

Responsibility for the disaster and mass suffering squarely falls on successive Sri Lankan governments that have failed to take essential measures necessary to mitigate the impact of such events. 

Governments around the world, particularly of the major capitalist powers, all of which place profit and national interest above elementary social needs, are responsible for the unabated impact of global warming that has increased the severity of cyclones.

All opposition parties, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, United National Party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Tamil bourgeois parties are making hollow criticisms of the government  for the delay in aid distribution and reconstruction. All these parties have similar records in past disasters and provide no alternative to the ruling JVP/NPP.

10. German government abolishes basic welfare support

On the Friday before Christmas, the German parliament gave its blessing to the budget proposed by the coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD). This marks the launch of a policy that cuts social spending, abolishes the “citizens’ income” (basic welfare) and expands precarious work in order to finance rearmament, war and the further enrichment of the wealthy.

This is the policy demanded by the far -right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the Bundestag (parliament), Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the AfD, screeched: “Mr. Chancellor, finally abolish this citizens’ income!” Last week, an SPD minister complied with the AfD demand. On 17 December, Federal Labour Minister Bärbel Bas (SPD) announced a cabinet decision according to which citizens’ income is to be abolished and replaced by “New Basic Security.” Parliament is expected to decide on this in January.

The “New Basic Security” will in future be accompanied by harsh sanctions, cuts and tightened rules regarding what is deemed acceptable work that an unemployed person must accept or lose benefits. If an appointment at the job centre is missed, benefits are to be cut by 30 percent for three months, amounting to around €150 less per month. (The current basic social security rate for single adults is €563 per month). In the event of further missed appointments, benefits will be reduced in stages. After the third violation, they can be reduced to zero. 

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Around 5.5 million benefit recipients are affected by these measures. In the longer term, however, the attacks threaten many more workers. In the current situation of accelerated job destruction, particularly in the automotive and supplier industries, these decisions provide the government with the necessary instruments to effectively blackmail the unemployed. Under the Damocles sword of sanctions, those laid off will be forced as quickly as possible to accept poorly paid, precarious jobs.

This will lead to a longer-term deterioration in social conditions, because it will become more difficult to save for retirement under such circumstances. Pensions are already the next target in the government’s sights. At present, pensions account for 20 percent of federal spending and are the largest single item in the budget. The government has now appointed a commission tasked with working out fundamental “reforms” by June 2026.

Essentially, the aim is to shift old-age provisions away from the pay-as-you-go pension system, where current contributors partially fund the existing retirees, towards self-funded pensions and private provisions. Shortly before Christmas, Finance Minister and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (SPD) presented a proposal for a new private pension system that the government intends to partially subsidize. Klingbeil claimed: “We want a private pension for everyone: for all generations and all incomes.” But the shift towards self-funded pensions will inevitably further widen the gap between rich and poor.

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These attacks on working people can only be understood in connection with the pro-war policy and Germany’s grasp for world power. To make Germany and Europe “fit for war” and geopolitically capable of action—above all against Russia, and increasingly in the growing conflict with the United States—the government has created several “special funds” and is taking on debts running into the trillions. For military projects, it has suspended the debt brake to finance the most massive rearmament program of the German army since Hitler. The defence budget will rise next year to €82.7 billion and, including the special funds, to €108 billion. The aim is to reach military spending of 3.5 percent of GDP (€153 billion) by 2029. When investments in war-ready infrastructure are included, the figure rises to as much as 5 percent.

11. UPS using AI surveillance cameras from Lytx to monitor drivers, further exposing sellout of 2023 contract struggle

Since 2020, UPS has steadily installed Lytx DriveCam devices in its delivery trucks. These systems use artificial intelligence to analyze driver behavior, directly contradicting claims by Teamsters leadership that the 2023 contract banned driver-facing cameras.

According to the 2023 UPS-Teamsters contract “Vehicles may not be equipped with inward-facing cameras.” It further stipulates that if a forward-facing camera device includes an inward facing recording device “Any functionality included in driver-facing cameras (including their driver recording and monitoring functionality) will be disabled and rendered inoperable to prevent recording and monitoring of in-cab activities.”

At companies like Amazon management has used recorded footage to issue write‑ups, justify firings, intimidate workers or shift blame to the shoulders of workers for incidents that are caused by overwork or management failures.

Yet, Lytx DriveCam devices are explicitly designed to monitor drivers. Lytx DriveCam devices feature two image sensors, one facing forward and one facing inward, that are paired with other vehicle sensors such as GPS and accelerometers. The standard device records video of the road and the driver, using AI and “Machine Vision” to detect distracted driving or safety issues and warn drivers. With the standard setup, employers can monitor workers and drivers can even review footage of themselves. Ostensibly, this is used to improve safety and ensure accurate accountability in the event of an accident. In reality, however, it is primarily a tool for invasive corporate monitoring of employees.

UPS has claimed compliance with the contract by asserting that the inward-facing camera does not “record” the driver. In a letter to Teamsters Local 776, UPS stated that audio and inward-facing video recording had been disabled. However, the same letter confirmed that as of September 2023, the inward-facing sensor still issues audible alerts to drivers for distracted driving.

However, the letter confirms reports from workers that “As of September 2023, the inside sensor will provide audible alerts to the driver only. Any associated alert and event data has been disabled and not available in the Lytx portal.” This means that the alert is, ostensibly, not available to management for review and is only issued to the driver.

How is the Lytx DriveCam device able to issue audible alerts of distracted driving if it is disabled from recording the driver?

It can only do this by processing data collected by the inward-facing sensor, using AI to detect events and issue warnings. This is in direct violation of the first sentence of the clause in the contract, which clearly states that inward-facing cameras are prohibited.

12. Israel’s far-right government seeks to tighten its grip on power

The far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is advancing a series of measures in the Knesset aimed at strengthening its powers as it continues its wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and prepares for another offensive against Iran.

With his coalition of hard-right and ultra-religious parties trailing in the polls, the raft of new bills and regulations is Netanyahu’s last opportunity to cement his rule before elections that must be held by the end of October 2026. These will take place amid highly febrile political tensions: five elections took place between 2019 and 2022 with voters split down the middle over support for Netanyahu.

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Discussions are under way on a highly controversial bill to establish a politically appointed probe into the failures surrounding the October 7 attack, an approach widely seen as a government whitewash. Opposition parties and bereaved families have demanded instead a state commission of inquiry, the highest level of public inquiry, whose make-up would be determined by the judiciary, anathema to the Netanyahu government.

The bill states that if either the coalition or opposition does not cooperate in the process or cannot settle on a candidate, the Knesset speaker will choose instead, giving the coalition effective control since opposition figures have pledged to boycott the politicized inquiry. Attorney General Baharav-Miara denounced the legislation, describing it as “tailor-made” for the “personal” needs of the government.

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While Israel’s National Insurance Institute has yet to publish its official poverty report for 2024, the latest by Latet, an Israeli anti-poverty advocacy group, released two weeks ago, reveals increasing poverty in a country with one of the highest rates of inequality in the OECD group of advanced economies. A record 39 Israelis featured in Forbes magazine’s 2025 World’s Billionaires list, the highest number since the ranking began.

Household expenses have risen dramatically since the war; almost 27 percent of households—more than 2.8 million people, including 1.8 million children—suffer from “food insecurity”, a rise of nearly 29 percent in 2025.

Poverty is not confined to the traditional “disadvantaged population groups”; about a quarter of aid recipients are now the “new poor”, pushed into hardship over the past two years, including the lower middle class and self-employed army reservists who have lost their businesses due to their lengthy service. Two months after the so-called ceasefire, most reservists have still not returned to civilian life. Many won’t have jobs to return to as more than 46,000 businesses went bankrupt during the war.

The report says that “many middle-class families are collapsing under the burden of the soaring cost of living, the plutocratic economy and the ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ attitude”. The more prosperous, educated middle class in Israel is considering emigration, while tens of thousands of families have already emigrated.

It describes in startling terms “a socioeconomic state of emergency” with impoverished senior citizens unable to buy medications or afford other treatments and abandoned to their fate. Many have been forced to take out loans and buy on credit, not for luxury goods but basic necessities. 

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Income is going down for almost everyone except reservists. While reserve duty was once seen as a service to the country, Israel now has a de facto mercenary force, many of whom follow their own rules and/or form vigilante groups with settlers who go on the rampage in the West Bank and Gaza.

The government secured resources for the war—calculated by The Marker at about $34,000 per household—by purchasing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons on credit, to the extent that soon the government will have to take out loans to cover the interest payments on older loans. It has also channeled funds to the constituencies represented in the coalition—the settlers and ultra-Orthodox—while public transport, public services and higher education budgets have declined dramatically.

13. IYSSE in Germany: “We do not want to die for the interests of the rich”

The reintroduction of conscription passed by Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, marks a decisive escalation of Berlin’s pro-war policy. Under the pretext of an alleged “Russian threat,” an entire generation of young people is being prepared for a new imperialist war, while the ruling class is pushing through the largest rearmament offensive since the founding of the Federal Republic following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. In an interview with broadcaster RT, Tamino Dreisam, spokesperson of the International Youth and Students for Socialist Equality (IYSSE) in Germany, sharply condemns this development and links the spontaneous outrage of young people with a conscious socialist and internationalist perspective.

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Dreisam described the task of the the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Trotskyist movement associated with it, not merely in reflecting the anger that already exists, but in 

In the final part of the interview, Dreisam turned to the perspectives for the coming months and years. Militarization was proceeding “together with mass layoffs in industry ... every week thousands of workers are being laid off, anger is growing.” Indeed, it was becoming clearer by the day that the costs of rearmament and the pro-war policy are being paid for through social cuts, plant closures and a massive redistribution of social wealth upwards. “The central question,” he emphasized, “is whether the working class will understand that these issues are connected with militarism, with social cuts and mass layoffs, that they are connected with class rule, with capitalism.”

Dreisam summarized this perspective in a clear conclusion: “We are heading into major class battles, and the outcome will be decided in this struggle, in the building of a conscious socialist movement.” This succinctly captures the line developed by the World Socialist Web Site since the beginning of the new war offensive: preventing a third world war, rejecting the reintroduction of conscription and defending democratic and social rights are inseparably linked with building an international revolutionary leadership in the working class. The central task consists in transforming the spontaneous outrage of youth and workers against war and social cuts into a conscious, organized movement for the seizure of power by the working class and the socialist reorganization of society.

14. Maryland man hospitalized in 9th shooting by immigration agents this year, as Trump prepares mass deportation camps

On December 24 around 11:00 a.m., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents opened fire in Glen Burnie, Maryland, nearly killing a man. Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, an immigrant from Portugal, was shot by ICE agents after he allegedly attempted to flee a targeted kidnapping operation.

The shooting took place in a residential suburb, while children were home for the holiday. According to the Baltimore Banner, ICE claimed that Sousa-Martins tried to drive away instead of submitting to custody. ICE alleged that he drove into agency vehicles attempting to box him in and that officers were in the pathway of the van. An ICE spokesperson claimed agents “defensively fired their service weapons, striking the driver.” After he was shot, Sousa-Martins’ van veered off the road and struck a tree, injuring a passenger.

Sousa-Martins and his passenger, who was injured in the crash, are both recovering at a local hospital. A Glen Burnie resident and eyewitness, James Hick, told the Banner reporters, “Shot him three times. I see him laid out.” He added, “Guy didn’t deserve to be killed, but he shouldn’t have tried to run them over.” Another neighbor, who did not wish to be identified, told the Banner she saw ICE agents shooting at Sousa-Martins from inside their own vehicles.

No video has been released to corroborate any ICE statements. No claims issued by ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or any agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should be accepted at face value. Agents and their leadership routinely lie, including in court.

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The branding of resistance as “terrorism,” the construction of mass detention warehouses and the creeping deployment of National Guard troops are all components of the expanding police-immigration apparatus aimed not only at immigrants but at the entire working class.

15. Joseph Hansen—the FBI’s asset in the SWP

Thomas Scripps 

This 2025 Summer School lecture by the assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United Kingdom, Thomas Scripps, examines material which has been published in recent years regarding FBI investigation and infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party, and the additional light it shines on the findings of Security and the Fourth International.

16. Australia: Worker dies at Cleanaway’s Ravenhall waste facility

The death in Melbourne’s western suburbs on December 17 is the fifth fatality linked to the recycling and waste management company over the past 18 months.

17. Richard Linklater's Blue Moon: Rodgers and Hart, without much music

Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s new film, uses the evening of the premiere of Oklahoma, the first of the famed musical collaborations between composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, to depict the closing chapter in the life of Lorenz Hart, Rodgers’ previous partner. 

Rodgers and Hart were the team behind 26 Broadway musicals over a period of some 20 years. Their partnership began when Rodgers, born in 1902, was not yet out of his teens, and Hart was in his mid-20s. In the 1920s and 30s Rodgers and Hart, in Broadway shows like Babes in Arms and The Boys from Syracuse, created such timeless standards as “My Funny Valentine,” “Manhattan,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “With a Song in My Heart,” “Bewitched” and “Blue Moon,” the song that gives the current film its title. 

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Certain choices made by the filmmaker have resulted in disappointing and unsatisfactory results. First and foremost is the decision to focus the movie almost entirely on the very end of Hart’s life, and the alcoholism and depression that led to his death. These are legitimate subjects to explore, of course, but there is little else to this film except 100 minutes of talk about the professional problems and emotional emptiness in Hart’s life. This makes for interminable dialogue that does not add up to an illuminating and interesting cinematic experience. 

With almost no exceptions, the entire audience for Blue Moon will have lived their whole lives after Hart’s death. The youngest viewers of this story were born more than a century after Hart. They will come away from this film knowing how he died but will see little of how he lived and what he achieved in his 48 years.

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Another issue that gets mostly overlooked in Blue Moon, aside from one or two references, is the historical period of the Rodgers and Hart collaboration, and how this external world found its reflection in their songs. This is not a simple matter, but it bears some examination. Rodgers and Hart first found fame, in such shows as The Garrick Gaieties from 1925, at the height of what is sometimes called the Jazz Age, or the “Roaring 20s.” It was a time of growing crisis. This was the period of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, both published a century ago. The increasingly speculative boom ended in the crash of 1929.

Hart’s lyrics, in the 20s as well as during the Depression decade of the 1930s, reflected an urban sophistication that was part of this post-World War I era. The Rodgers and Hart musicals expressed the moods of a prosperous urban middle class, a layer seeking a good time and at times living for the moment. The songs also reflected a precariousness, however, the feeling that the good times would not last or, by the 1930s, that they would not return.

There is a sadness in many of Hart’s lyrics. Barely five feet tall, he may have been thinking of his own melancholy, including his lack of romantic fulfillment and his conviction that no one could love him, but the songs also touched a chord for many who wondered what the future had in store for them. 

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The music that Rodgers composed with Hammerstein had a different quality, a broader appeal, compared to his earlier work with Hart. The teams worked differently. With Hart, Rodgers composed first and then waited for Hart to come up with the lyrics, while with Hammerstein the lyrics came first. This could partly explain how Rodgers’ music changed, in tune with Hammerstein’s lyrics, which had less satire and sophistication, and were directed toward broader layers of the population.

These are some of the issues that are raised in considering the career of Larry Hart. Linklater has made a film that deals, as noted above, primarily with Hart’s death and not with his life. There is some similarity between his approach and that of Bradley Cooper, the director of the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro (2023). In both cases the focus remains on questions of the inner life, of psychology and identity, whether gender, sexual or racial, and not on the actual careers and the legacies of the musical figures themselves.

18. Australia: Unanswered questions about the Bondi Beach shootings

The trickle of information from the police regarding the Bondi Beach shootings continues to raise more questions than it answers. It leaves huge gaps not only in what happened in the immediate weeks preceding the terrorist attack but in the background of the two alleged gunmen—Sajid Akram, 50, and his son, Naveed Akram, 24. 

On Sunday December 14, the Akrams armed with two shotguns and a rifle allegedly opened fire on hundreds of people attending a “Chanukah by the Sea” event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach marking the start of the Jewish Hanukkah festival. Fourteen people were killed on the spot while another later died in hospital and another 40 were injured.

Police shot and killed Sajid Akram. His son was shot in the stomach and survived in a critical condition. He was charged last week on 59 counts, including 15 of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of committing a terrorist act, and has been transferred to Sydney’s Long Bay jail.

A court this week released a redacted version of police documents related to the formal charging of Naveed Akram which had been placed under an interim suppression order last week. The new order was only made after an application backed by several media outlets.

While the detail provided is limited, the police documents make it clear that the terrorist shootings were planned at least two months in advance. Yet the police and intelligence agencies claim that they had no knowledge of what was about to unfold on December 14, even though the domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, had in 2019–20 carried out a six-month investigation of Naveed Akram’s associations with groups influenced by the terrorist Islamic State (IS) organization.

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Even though they are responsible for licensing firearms, the NSW police have provided no explanation as to why Sajid Akram was given a gun licence after his son had come under ASIO investigation in 2019. Sajid Akram was also reportedly questioned by ASIO. The application for the license was made in 2020, but only granted in 2023 and used to purchase six weapons.

The number of weapons and type should also have raised suspicion, given the owner lived in suburban Sydney. Moreover, three of the six were the same type and model of shotgun purchases—a clear indication that the guns were not simply for personal use. Both the shotguns and the Beretta rifle, while not automatic or semi-automatic weapons, were capable of relatively rapid fire.

Also unexplained is a report in the Daily Telegraph that Naveed Akram was given a Class 1 Security License in August 2024, enabling him to work as an unarmed security guard and to monitor security systems. Less than a year later, in June 2025, the license was revoked. The police, who issue the licenses, have not explained why.

19. Venezuela’s oil and the crisis of US imperialism

The aim of the Trump administration is to create conditions of maximal pressure to force the removal of President Nicolás Maduro and install a government subordinate to US strategic and corporate interests. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s decision to award its prize to the US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado must be understood within this broader campaign of regime change—combining economic strangulation, military escalation and political maneuvers aimed at fracturing Maduro’s domestic support, particularly among wealthier layers of Venezuelan society.

It is not a particularly hidden point that, lurking behind all of these developments is the unique, strategic role Venezuela plays in the global economy—the largest holder of so-called “proven” oil reserves in the world.

*****

On paper, Venezuela possesses the largest volume of what are classified as proven oil reserves in the world—roughly 300 billion barrels. At current rates of global crude oil consumption, approximately 30–31 billion barrels per year, this would be enough to supply the world for about a decade. To place this figure in context, Saudi Arabia reports close to 270 billion barrels of proven reserves, Iran roughly 210 billion, Russia around 80 billion and the United States approximately 145 billion.

These are startling numbers, and they underscore the enormous strategic significance of Venezuelan oil within the framework of US imperial ambition. At the same time, they require careful qualification. “Proven reserves” are not a purely geological category; they refer to reserves that national authorities classify as economically recoverable at prevailing prices and under existing technological and political conditions. Within OPEC in particular, such figures are widely recognized as politicized and inflated since reserve size historically influenced production quotas and geopolitical standing.

Venezuela’s oil reserves are real, vast and located at relatively shallow depths. From an economic and technical standpoint, however, they rank among the most difficult oil deposits in the world to exploit. The overwhelming majority of these reserves are concentrated in the Orinoco Belt, a massive onshore formation containing extra-heavy crude. Unlike conventional oil fields, the oil in the Orinoco does not flow naturally. It is extremely viscous—closer in consistency to molasses than to liquid petroleum—and requires continuous mechanical lifting, dilution and processing merely to be transported.

One way to characterize Venezuela’s oil endowment is therefore as simultaneously vast and deeply constrained: the largest hydrocarbon accumulation on earth, but one that is slow, capital-intensive and highly dependent on continuous imports of machinery, diluents and industrial inputs. This is why independent industry assessments diverge sharply from the headline reserve figures. Rystad Energy, for example, estimates Venezuela’s long-term economically recoverable oil at closer to 27 billion barrels—an order of magnitude smaller than the official reserve claims.

*****

 The Trump administration’s blockading of tankers, repeated extrajudicial strikes and the deployment of the largest US armada in the Caribbean since 1962 are the instruments of a concerted drive to reassert imperial control over Venezuela’s oil and to deny strategic gains to China. It must be seen within a broader explosion of imperialist militarism, as American, and with it, global capitalism, faces existential crisis.

20. India’s Modi government intensifies war on the poor by gutting rural job guarantee program

The Modi government is gutting the rural job “guarantee,” fulfilling a longstanding demand of the most rapacious sections of the ruling class who have long derided its cost and complained that it “boosts” rural wages.

21. Former political prisoner Gary Tyler publishes Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison

Gary Tyler, the political prisoner who was sentenced to die in the electric chair at age 17 in 1976, has published an autobiographical book, Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison (with Ellen Bravo). Framed for murder, Tyler was held on death row for two years and spent nearly 42 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. 

Stitching Freedom is a remarkable book that workers and young people entering into struggle should read, both for its profoundly moving personal narrative and its searing critique of the American capitalist system.

It is at once a history and a warning, whose contemporary significance jumps out at the reader. The cruelty inflicted on Tyler by the capitalist state under both Democrats and Republicans—who kept an innocent man in prison for decades—is a salutary lesson. The bipartisan nature of the class war against the working class is especially evident today in the horrific rise of social inequality, poverty, and the growth of the repressive state and its brutal use, especially among immigrants.

22. Turkish metalworkers must prepare rank-and-file committee led strike against wage misery!

The escalating offensive against wages, jobs and working conditions is the ruling class’s response to the global crisis of the capitalist system.

23. BMA colludes with Starmer government against resident doctors following strike

The Starmer–Streeting government, backed by the union apparatus, is enforcing an agenda on behalf of the oligarchy: austerity, market expansion and hikes in military spending. 

24. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

Australia:

Sealife aquarium workers in Sydney and Melbourne strike over pay and safety
 

Harry Hartog and Berkelouw Books workers strike again over low pay
 

Downer EDI rail maintenance workers in Newcastle on indefinite strike

Sorell Dental Clinic workers in Tasmania strike for higher pay

Bangladesh:

Hotel and restaurant workers threaten strike for minimum wage

India:

Nurses in Chennai, Tamil Nadu protest for permanent jobs

Haryana power utility workers protest online transfer policy

Assam power utility workers hold six-hour hunger strike

 

Swiggy and Zomato delivery workers announced two-day national strike

New Zealand:

Teachers’ union settles pay deals

Pakistan:

Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa protest

South Korea: 

Rail union suspends strike again, claiming agreement reached

Vanuatu: 

Teachers to end 18-month strike

25. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk holds a copy of John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World 

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.