1. Michael Tilson Thomas, acclaimed American conductor, has died at the age of 81
The well-known American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, long associated with the San Francisco Symphony, died on Wednesday at his home in that city.
MTT, as he was known almost universally to musicians and also to music lovers in the US and elsewhere, had led the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020, when he became music director laureate. It was the longest tenure of any conductor since the symphony’s founding in 1911. Under Tilson Thomas, the SF Symphony had become one of the most prominent and critically praised orchestras in the US.
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Throughout his life, Tilson Thomas sought to use the medium of television to reach a broader audience. He inaugurated the “Keeping Score” series of programs on public television in the US about 20 years ago, introducing the music of such figures as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Copland and Charles Ives. These programs, nine in all, highlighted some of Tilson Thomas’s interests: his devotion to the great classics like the work of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky; his enthusiasm for work of the late 19th and the 20th century, including Mahler, Stravinsky and Shostakovich; and his advocacy for American composers like Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. These treasures of education and of musical performance can be viewed today on YouTube.
Another American composer with whom Tilson Thomas was closely identified was George Gershwin, the composer of such classics as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, the Piano Concerto in F, the Cuban Overture and Porgy and Bess. MTT’s recordings of Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris were among his best. “Gershwin Live!,” an award-winning performance with Sarah Vaughan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, included some of Gershwin’s most famous song
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It should be noted as well that Tilson Thomas was also an active composer. The titles of some of his compositions—From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990); Shôwa/Shoáh (1995), composed to mark the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; and Whitman Songs (1999)—indicate an interest in social issues and history that he shared with Bernstein.
In Tilson Thomas’s programming, both in San Francisco and elsewhere, he was able to combine the standard repertory with new music in a fresh and lively way. He worked closely with contemporary composers, including John Adams, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk and others.
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Tilson Thomas’s partner of some 50 years, Joshua Robison, to whom he was married in 2014, died in February of this year.
2. LA mayor Bass joins Trump in pro-corporate wildfire “relief” charade
The April 22 Oval Office meeting between Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and President Donald Trump has been hailed as a pragmatic effort to secure relief for victims of the January 2025 wildfires. In fact, it is a stark demonstration of the unity of the political establishment in defense of corporate interests.
Bass and Barger appealed for $34 billion in federal aid, citing the scale of devastation and the insufficiency of existing funds. They urged pressure on major insurers, including State Farm, to pay outstanding claims in areas such as the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. They also called on banks to grant relief to residents paying mortgages on destroyed homes while struggling to afford rent elsewhere.
Trump’s response exposed the fraud at the center of the entire exercise. He announced that Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin would conduct an “audit” of insurance companies, producing a public list distinguishing those that have paid claims from those that have not.
Such an “audit” without enforcement powers imposes no obligation on corporations. It replaces law with publicity, allowing the administration to posture as an opponent of insurance abuses while guaranteeing that no meaningful action is taken.
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The joint appearance of Bass, who has cultivated a “progressive” image, alongside Barger and Trump, is being celebrated as bipartisan cooperation. In reality, it lays bare the essential class unity of Democrats and Republicans. When confronted with a crisis that threatens social stability, all factions of the ruling elite close ranks.
Karen Bass’s administration in Los Angeles has been defined by austerity, expanded policing and support for real estate developers. Her 2025–26 budget has intensified opposition amid overwork, stagnant wages and declining services, while wildfire response failures followed cuts to fire funding.
Bass’s appearance beside Trump was entirely consistent with her role only days earlier in shutting down the threatened strike by 77,000 Los Angeles educators and school workers. At 2:30 a.m. on April 14, hours before the walkout was set to begin, SEIU Local 99 announced a last-minute deal with LAUSD, abruptly canceling what would have been the first district-wide strike of classified workers, teachers and administrators in LAUSD history.
Bass had intervened directly in the late-night talks, appearing the next morning alongside union officials who praised her for “stepping in” and serving as “the closer,” while they made clear they would “rather be here today than on the picket line.” In that case, as in the wildfire talks, Bass functioned as an enforcer for the corporate and Democratic Party establishment, blocking a broader mobilization of workers and subordinating urgent social needs to the dictates of the ruling class.
She has boosted LAPD spending, aligned with federal raids and advanced punitive homelessness policies benefiting private contractors. Facing reelection and a $1 billion shortfall, Bass declared a fiscal emergency, proposing the elimination of 1,647 city jobs to impose sweeping social cuts.
The supposed pressure on insurers is a preemptive maneuver to contain mounting public anger. Insurance corporations are not aberrantly failing. They are functioning exactly as the system requires, maximizing profit by denying or delaying payouts. The refusal to impose binding regulation reflects the political intent by both big business parties.
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Wildfires, like all disasters, are shaped by social conditions. Their scale and impact reflect decades of deregulation, environmental destruction and the subordination of infrastructure to private profit. By reducing the crisis to a logistical problem, officials conceal its origins in policy and class relations.
The situation in California makes this explicit. Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, a Democrat, has functioned as a key facilitator of insurance industry interests, approving major premium hikes while advancing a “sustainable insurance strategy” that legitimized deregulation. He accepted industry donations, intervened to benefit contributing firms and helped create conditions allowing insurers to raise rates, withdraw coverage and shift costs onto homeowners, effectively transforming the regulatory apparatus into a mechanism for protecting corporate profits rather than consumers.
The role of California Governor Gavin Newsom cannot be ignored either. He has suspended key environmental protections, including the California Environmental Quality Act, to fast-track rebuilding for utility companies. Under the guise of recovery, his policies grant firms like Southern California Edison broad freedom to operate without oversight, prioritizing profit over environmental and public safety concerns while mirroring federal deregulatory practices and reinforcing the subordination of state policy to corporate demands
State Farm has no doubt played a central role in deepening the wildfire crisis by delaying and disputing claims, while simultaneously seeking major premium increases and reducing coverage in high-risk areas. Homeowners have faced prolonged waits for payouts and, in many cases, loss of coverage altogether, reflecting a profit-driven strategy that shifts the financial burden of disasters onto policyholders rather than absorbing losses.
However, the focus on individual firms such as State Farm can be used as a diversion. The problem is not a handful of bad actors but the structure of the entire industry. Insurance companies operate according to profit calculations, not social need. Without coercive regulation, they will continue to deny claims and raise rates.
The same applies to the appeals directed at banks. Calls for voluntary relief are empty gestures. Financial institutions will not act against their own interests absent compulsion. The refusal to impose such compulsion defines the policy of both parties.
The April 22 meeting exposes the real character of American politics: whatever differences exist between Democrats and Republicans, they collapse when corporate interests are at stake. In times of crisis, the political system operates as a unified mechanism for defending capitalist rule. The alignment of Bass, Barger and Trump exposes how the ruling class manages social catastrophe: empty rhetoric with policies that leave the underlying system untouched.
3. Hegseth says Iran blockade “going global,” as US announces new sanctions on Chinese shipping
The United States is expanding its naval blockade of Iran into a global operation against shipping in any ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday. Hours earlier the Treasury Department sanctioned a major Chinese oil refinery and 40 shipping companies for buying Iranian crude.
“Our blockade is growing and going global,” Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on April 24. “No one sails from the Strait of Hormuz to anywhere in the world without the permission of the United States Navy.” He said 34 ships had been turned back since the blockade began this month and the U.S. Navy had seized two Iranian ships in the Indian Ocean this week.
The blockade and the sanctions are aimed at China. The U.S. Navy this week seized the M/T Tifani, a tanker carrying about 2 million barrels of Iranian crude bound for Chinese refineries, in the Bay of Bengal between Sri Lanka and the Strait of Malacca. China is the largest buyer of Iranian oil and depends on Iran for more than 10 percent of its crude supply.
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A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said Friday that the sanctions “undermine international trade order and rules” and “infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals.” The action came on the eve of a planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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At the same Pentagon briefing Hegseth demanded that European governments join the war, telling them to “start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat.”
A Pentagon memo, authored by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby and leaked to Politico on April 24, proposes to formally punish NATO members who refuse to send warships to enforce the blockade. The memo recommends throwing Spain out of NATO planning meetings, putting the British claim to the Falkland Islands back into question, cutting French access to US intelligence and canceling joint exercises with the German military. The targets are treaty allies. The United States launched the war on Iran without consulting NATO or gaining authorization from the United Nations Security Council.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that Israel is preparing to renew its bombing of Iran. “We are awaiting a green light from the United States, first and foremost to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty,” Katz said, “and additionally to return Iran to the Dark Age and the Stone Age by destroying key energy and electricity facilities and dismantling its national economic infrastructure.” When the attack resumes, Katz added, “it will be different and lethal, adding devastating blows at the most sensitive points.”
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Among targets struck in the past 48 hours: a Tehran University student dormitory in Amirabad, where the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported 14 students killed and 31 wounded; an apartment block in Bandar Abbas the US military described as a “naval logistics target”; people standing in line for bread in Ahvaz, per Tasnim and HRANA; and a Red Crescent triage station in Khorramabad. In Lebanon, the Health Ministry reports 2,491 killed and 7,719 wounded, including at least 177 children and 91 medics. CNN, citing satellite imagery analysis, says 523 buildings have come down in southern Lebanon over the past three weeks. Israeli officials, in reports by Al Jazeera and Haaretz, describe the policy as “Gazafication.”
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The escalation comes as the Pentagon’s missile stockpiles fall below half their prewar level. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported this week that the US has burned through as many as 1,430 of its 2,330 prewar Patriot interceptors—over 60 percent of the stock—each priced at nearly $4 million. “A war against a capable peer competitor like China will consume munitions at greater rates than in this war,” the report said. “Prewar inventories were already insufficient; the levels today will constrain US operations should a future conflict arise.”
The economic costs of the war are being paid by working people around the world. Brent crude oil closed Friday at $106 a barrel, roughly 60 percent above prewar levels. Gold reached $4,697 an ounce. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has called the disruption to global energy markets “the worst energy crisis in history” and executed its largest coordinated reserve release ever, 400 million barrels. JPMorgan projects Brent at $150 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed into mid-May.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Associated Press that Iran “in the next two, three days ... they’re going to have to start shuttering production, which will be very bad for their wells.” Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, in a Newsmax interview Wednesday, said of the embargo: “We’re literally starving them, both financially, and they can’t feed themselves either.”
In the same interview Marshall endorsed nuclear escalation. Asked whether the US “will have to go in and finish this job” if negotiations fail, he replied: “I think that’s right. Previous presidents have had the same issues on what to do. Think about President Truman’s decision on dropping the bomb, and D-Day for President Eisenhower.” Truman ordered the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A federal court order releasing Hayam El Gamal and her five children from the Dilley family detention center in South Texas is a significant victory for democratic rights and a defeat for the Trump administration’s campaign of collective family punishment.
But it is a victory in a single battle. The war on immigrants, and through them on the democratic rights of the entire working class, continues and is escalating, and the El Gamal family, including four minor children, remains under threat.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately release the family after nearly 10 months of imprisonment and seven months after a judge earlier ordered them released on bond. Hayam El Gamal and her 18-year-old daughter Habiba were ordered to wear electronic monitors.
The order followed an emergency hearing Thursday argued by Christopher Godshall-Bennett, an attorney for the family. Attorneys Eric Lee, Rebecca Webber and Niels Frenzen were among those who submitted the filings and argued for the family’s release. Following the ruling, Godshall-Bennett wrote on social media, “Heading home from Texas after the triumph of our family over the admin. The Dilley concentration camp remains full of children living in shipping containers. Release every single one and close that hell hole immediately.”
The Texas Tribune reported that the family was believed to have suffered the longest detention in the history of the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, the only federal immigration facility authorized to hold parents with their children.
The family had been held since June 2025, after ICE thugs seized them two days after the June 1, 2025 Boulder, Colorado, firebombing attack for which Hayam’s estranged husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was arrested. None of the six family members has been charged with any crime, and El Gamal has divorced Soliman and condemned the attack. The FBI confirmed that none of the family members had advanced knowledge of the attack.
The family’s innocence did not stop Stephen Miller and the Trump administration from punishing them. The El Gamal case was intended to establish the principle of collective punishment: that relatives of those the state labels “enemies” can be seized, imprisoned and deported without charge or trial.
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The conditions the El Gamal family endured at Dilley are part of a wider atrocity. Human Rights First and RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) reported this month that more than 5,600 people, including parents, children, toddlers and newborn babies, were imprisoned at Dilley between April 2025 and February 2026. The report found “pervasive and systemic” abuse and that families are “routinely threatened with or subjected to separation to coerce them into abandoning asylum claims.”
The report documented inhumane conditions, due process violations and lasting physical and psychological harm to families and children, including inadequate access to food, water, hygiene and basic medical care. Families reported foul-smelling and unclean water, dirty water barrels and mold. Parents also reported undercooked meat, hair, worms, bugs, dead flies and foreign objects in meals. The concentration camp was the site of a measles outbreak earlier this year.
El Gamal was rushed to the ER this month after her urgent requests for medical care were ignored. A CT scan revealed an unexplained chest lump and fluid around her heart, but ICE then denied the doctor-recommended ultrasound for follow-up. Her 16-year-old son also suffered acute appendicitis after detention staff refused treatment beyond Tylenol.
In heartbreaking letters, El Gamal’s children described their imprisonment in writing as “slowly killing us on the inside.” The younger children drew pictures pining to go “home” and to “school.”
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What is being tested on immigrants is being prepared for the entire population. Federal troops have been deployed against peaceful protesters in American cities. Immigration Gestapo have killed US citizens, including Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Administrative subpoenas are being used to compile dossiers on students, healthcare workers and social media users who speak out against the raids.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born US citizens whose citizenship it wants to revoke, part of a broader push to accelerate denaturalization cases through dozens of US attorney’s offices. A top Justice Department official described the 384 people as the “first wave of cases” in a “White House initiative.”
The conspiracy for dictatorship is unfolding in real time. The defense of immigrants is inseparable from the defense of democratic rights for the entire working class. Immigrant workers are not a separate population. They are part of the international working class confronting the same program of austerity, war and authoritarianism.
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The Democrats have ceased fighting ICE deployments at airports, a test run for deploying immigration police at polling stations. By agreeing to DHS funding in March, they have paved the way for the current Republican reconciliation package, which would entrench ICE and CBP funding and expansion through Trump’s presidency.
The El Gamal family’s freedom was won through sustained legal and public struggle, including by the family itself, whose letters and public statements from detention, combined with the efforts of their attorneys and supporters, mobilized broader support. Protests were held outside the Dilley facility and in Colorado demanding the family’s return home and the closure of the concentration camp.
The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers to demand the immediate end to all proceedings against Hayam El Gamal and her children, the removal of the electronic monitoring imposed on Hayam and Habiba, and a guarantee that the family will not be re-detained or deported. The Dilley detention center must be closed, and every child and parent still imprisoned must be released, along with an end to family separations, mass raids and the use of detention and deportation as instruments of political terror.
The defense of immigrants is inseparable from the defense of democratic rights for the entire working class—against political surveillance, denaturalization, and the normalization of armed immigration forces in cities, workplaces and airports. What is required is the independent political mobilization of workers, native-born and immigrant alike, against both parties and the capitalist system they defend—a system that imprisons children, wages illegal wars abroad and diverts the wealth produced by society into repression and destruction.
5. El Salvador’s Bukele regime stages mass show trial for nearly 500 alleged gang members
Prosecutors in El Salvador have opened a mass trial of 486 alleged members of the MS-13 gang on charges ranging from homicide to extortion and arms trafficking. In what will be the largest criminal proceeding in the country’s history, the defendants are accused of involvement in more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, including an estimated 29,000 homicides.
Authorities claim they are targeting the highest ranks of the gang’s leadership and insist they possess overwhelming evidence, pledging to seek the maximum sentences available under Salvadoran law.
The trial is taking place under a regime enacted through sweeping legal changes enacted during the ongoing state of emergency imposed by President Nayib Bukele, who has ruled under extraordinary powers for four years. These measures permit mass hearings, often conducted virtually, denying defendants’ basic rights.*****
Bukele, who has referred to himself as “the coolest dictator in the world,” has been embraced by Donald Trump as an “incredible ally.” The American would-be dictator has applauded his crackdown on gangs, amounting to martial law, and the construction of vast prison complexes. He has described El Salvador’s prison system as “humane” and effective, while highlighting cooperation on immigration enforcement, including deportation agreements targeting alleged gang members.
The reality behind this rhetoric is the consolidation of an authoritarian regime. The state of emergency has suspended fundamental democratic rights and enabled mass detentions on an unprecedented scale. Human rights organizations estimate that El Salvador’s prison population has surged to approximately 118,000 detainees—more than double the system’s capacity. At one point, 1.9 percent of the country’s population was incarcerated, one of the highest rates globally. Bukele’s government has threatened life sentences and even starvation for detainees, invoking a so-called “war on gangs” to justify these measures.
This state of authoritarian terror strips away the thin democratic façade established after the end of military rule in 1979 and the conclusion of the civil war in 1992. That façade was constructed with the complicity of the petty-bourgeois nationalist and Stalinist leadership of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which transformed itself from a guerrilla movement into a bourgeois political party. Bukele himself emerged from the section of the business elite that aligned itself with the FMLN.
The repressive apparatus now in place has extended beyond El Salvador’s borders, intersecting with US immigration policy in alarming ways. The Trump administration designated MS-13 a terrorist organization and pursued agreements with El Salvador to exchange prisoners. These policies have led to the deportation of migrants—including Venezuelans—under conditions that evoke the forced disappearances of Latin America’s military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Invoking the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, the US government has justified mass deportations by claiming an “invasion” by criminal groups. Hundreds of migrants have been detained without due process, often seized by plainclothes agents and transported to undisclosed locations. Lawyers and relatives frequently cannot determine their whereabouts, as records are altered or erased. Some detainees last year later reappeared in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), effectively functioning as a concentration camp overseen by security forces with a documented history of torture and extrajudicial killings.
The historical parallels are unmistakable. Under the US-backed dictatorship that ruled El Salvador during the country’s civil rule (1979-1992), approximately 71,000 people—between 1 and 2 percent of the population—were killed or disappeared.
CECOT itself has become a symbol of repression. Human rights groups estimate that at least 238 to over 250 individuals, including Salvadorans and Venezuelans, were transferred from the US in early 2025 without charges. As many as 36 Salvadorans deported from the US remain there incommunicado.
Testimonies describe a pattern of brutality: beatings, humiliation and sexual assault. Prisoners are held in windowless cells under constant artificial light, deprived of sleep and basic necessities. Access to water is severely limited, with reports of contamination by worms and mosquitoes. Hunger strikes have been met with violent reprisals, including prisoners being beaten and dragged away “half dead.” In desperation, some detainees resorted to a “blood strike,” cutting their wrists—only to be ignored by guards and medical staff.
Internal intelligence documents further reveal that 36 percent of those detained during the state of exception had no prior criminal profile. Yet they remain imprisoned without contact with the outside world and without any meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.
The NGO Socorro Juridico Humanitario (SJH) has compiled a database showing 517 deaths of prisoners under Bukele's state of exception, with nine out of ten of them never having been convicted of any crime. About a third of the deaths were caused by violence or torture, another third by medical negligence, and for the rest the cause of death remains unknown.
The case of Kilmar Abrego García illustrates the arbitrary nature of these policies. Deported unlawfully from the United States, he became one of hundreds sent to CECOT without trial. Although later returned to the US and released by court order, his case highlights the broader system of extrajudicial detention. Bukele himself publicly refused to return him during a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, underscoring the political alliance underpinning these actions.
The broader implications extend across the region. Bukele’s model—combining mass incarceration, suspension of rights and militarized policing—is being promoted by right-wing governments in Ecuador, Honduras and Costa Rica. Trump’s support reinforces this trend, normalizing a doctrine that the state may detain or even kill individuals based on suspicion alone, without due process.
Bukele has placed the country under a permanent state of exception, criminalizing civil society organizations and journalists as fronts for gangs.
As is typical of the US corporate media, little attention has been paid to the deeper roots of violence in El Salvador. These lie in a long history of extreme inequality and state repression, driven by the interests of local elites and US imperialism. The rise of gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18 cannot be understood outside this context.
Their consolidation was a byproduct of US policies in the 1990s, particularly under the Clinton administration. Mass deportations of young immigrants—many of whom had formed small groups for protection in US cities—transplanted gang structures to Central America. One deportee recalled: “Eventually it became a gang, but initially it was just to protect each other… These kids were being treated like trash.”
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), enacted under the Democratic Clinton administration, marked a turning point, dramatically expanding deportations and undermining due process. Combined with severe social inequality in El Salvador, these policies created fertile conditions for gang proliferation.
That inequality is itself rooted in decades of US-backed economic and military intervention. During the civil war, Washington provided more than $4 billion in aid to the Salvadoran government, supporting a regime that employed death squads, torture and mass killings. Economic policies tied to US interests deepened poverty, promoting export-led growth while increasing dependence on imports and undermining domestic employment.
Privatization, austerity and dollarization—under both the fascistic Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) party and the FMLN—further eroded living standards. By the early 2000s, a tiny elite controlled nearly half of the country’s wealth. Subsequent FMLN governments, despite their leftist rhetoric, continued these policies, expanding military spending and imposing austerity measures.
Conditions have worsened under Bukele, who came to power exploiting mass anger against the ARENA party and the FMLN. Poverty increased from 22.8 percent in 2019 to 25.8 percent in 2024, driven by a 24 percent rise in the cost of living that outpaced wage increases. Social programs were slashed, with 31 out of 40 eliminated. Meanwhile, public debt ballooned from $19.8 billion to $32.1 billion.
These conditions will continue to push youth toward migration or involvement in criminal networks, perpetuating the cycle of violence that the government claims to combat. The current mass trial, far from addressing these root causes, represents a further escalation of repression aimed ultimately against the working class.
6. Trump’s “Department of War” seeks to enlist US auto companies in accelerated arms buildup
Pentagon officials recently met with executives from General Motors and Ford, marking a turn by the Trump administration toward the development of a war economy.
According to press reports, unnamed senior defense officials have held meetings with executives of major corporations about building military equipment, including Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, and Jim Farley, CEO of Ford. The Pentagon is reportedly seeking to replenish critical munitions and weapons systems that have been depleted due to the ongoing Ukraine proxy war against Russia, the Gaza genocide, and the war against Iran.
According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, “By some estimates, it could take five years or more to replenish the munitions that have been used in the last 40 days” of the war against Iran. It quoted John Ferrari, a retired Army major general who now works for the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing Washington, DC think tank, who warned, “We are on borrowed time. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians—everybody knows that we don’t have enough munitions.”
For their part, auto executives, with profits lagging as a result of low electric vehicle sales, are eyeing Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion military budget.
A defense official stated, “The Department of War is committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage.”
The meeting with top auto executives follows the announcement earlier this year of the launch of the so-called “Arsenal of Freedom” project, aimed at putting US industry—and all of society—on a war footing. This has involved tours by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials of weapons plants.
Hegseth is calling for the rebuilding of the US military-industrial base and moving away from what he calls a “peacetime science fair” toward a “wartime arms race,” aiming to “out-innovate competitors.”
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In response to the moves by the Trump administration to enlist the auto companies in the drive to war, Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman, who is running for UAW president, said:
This is what fueled the student protests against the genocide in Gaza. Universities were associated with war development and war technologies, and students and university workers did not want any part of it.
War is being presented to workers as something that will bring jobs, but the reality is that workers will pay in blood.
They are gearing up to send workers and the children of workers to fight these wars, to die for the profits of those who are exploiting workers. The wars in the Middle East have led to debacles. They have left scars on the working class that will not soon be forgotten.
Trump talks about destroying an entire civilization, but it is not just Trump talking—it is US imperialism that is driving this.
The only way we are going to stop that is through our collective action. The UAW bureaucracy is fine with workers going off to fight wars as long as they collect dues. They are not going to be fighting these wars.
The UAW usually lines up behind the Democrats, but they are fully backing the Trump administration by promoting war production. Fain wears a shirt with a bomber on it. Anti-genocide protesters in Michigan were thrown out of a UAW rally.
This is part of the bureaucracy’s policy that everything must be subordinated to nationalism and the war effort. Nationalism is a poison being fed to the working class, and workers must oppose this.
Workers face a choice. It is not all said and done—we still have an opportunity to stop it. The power of the working class is real. Workers need to understand their class strength and act. But the UAW bureaucracy is not going to lead that fight. If they remain in charge, we are going to lose.
This means workers need to assert their own power by building rank-and-file committees to organize and coordinate struggles based on the interests of workers, not the UAW bureaucracy.
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UAW President Shawn Fain has often spoken nostalgically of the “Arsenal of Democracy” and has promoted converting auto plants for defense industry use. In 2024, then-president Joe Biden, for whom Fain was a top ally, described the unions as his “domestic NATO.”
Last month, the UAW bureaucracy shut down a strike after 5 days by General Dynamics shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Workers at the facility make the same guided missile destroyers being deployed against Iran.
In a visit to the facility only weeks before the strike, Hegseth delivered a speech in which he stated, “[America and Americans first] means we protect your jobs, your security, and your family’s future before we even think about any foreign country or globalist peacekeeping project. We invest in factories in Colorado, not China.” The local UAW leadership reportedly responded by leading chants of “USA, USA.”
7. Watch: Australian workers and youth oppose Gaza genocide and war in Iran
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to workers and youth protesting the genocide in Gaza last weekend, under conditions where those war crimes are being extended into Lebanon and Iran.
The demonstrations, attended by several thousand people across the country, took place in an atmosphere of repression and intimidation. In Brisbane, 22 protesters were arrested under the state Liberal-National Party government’s draconian “hate speech” legislation, which bans the anti-genocide phrases “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.”
This followed police raids in recent weeks in Sydney and Melbourne, arresting people who had taken part in previous protests. While the New South Wales anti-protest laws that were the ostensible basis for the Sydney arrests have now been ruled unconstitutional and struck down, the state Labor government still plans to go ahead with the charges.
8. New Zealand government minister stokes anti-Indian racism
Shane Jones, a member of the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party and minister for Regional Development in the National Party-led coalition government, sparked controversy over the past week with racist comments targeting Indian immigrants.
Speaking with the far-right Reality Check Radio on April 20, Jones denounced a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India, falsely claiming that it would lead to “unfettered immigration.” In fact, the deal only provides for up to 5,000 extra temporary work visas at any one time.
With the coalition divided on the FTA, the National Party is relying on the opposition Labour Party’s support—which was confirmed on April 23—to pass it into law.
Jones ranted that immigration will “drive down the value of wages, it will clog up our roads, it will completely overwhelm our health and other frontline services. And I don’t care how much criticism we get, I’m just never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming to New Zealand.”
Such statements are part of NZ First’s positioning ahead of the November election. They are a crude attempt to scapegoat immigrants for the social crisis created by decades of brutal austerity measures, the transfer of wealth to the rich, and the diversion of billions of dollars to the military, under successive governments in which NZ First has played a significant role.
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Jones’s comments follow months of racist agitation against Indians, who make up more than 5 percent of the NZ population (292,000 people). The fundamentalist Destiny Church has held provocative demonstrations in Auckland, with slogans including “This is New Zealand, not India,” “Kiwis first” and the Trumpian “Make New Zealand Great Again.”
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For most of the twentieth century, Labour upheld a racist “white New Zealand” immigration policy. More recently, it has echoed NZ First’s anti-Chinese rhetoric—including scapegoating Chinese immigrants for high house prices in 2015—while pushing for New Zealand’s integration into US-led war preparations against China.
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Workers must reject anti-immigrant poison and all forms of nationalism, which is promoted by the ruling class to obscure the real source of the deepening social crisis: the capitalist system, which subordinates every aspect of life to profit and is plunging billions of people into poverty, war and fascist barbarism.
The working class is an international social force whose strength lies in its unity across national and ethnic divisions. The essential task is to break workers from all capitalist parties and to build a conscious, unified movement against austerity, racism and imperialist war, based on the fight for socialism.
9. Hesse, Germany: 4 tannery workers killed in workplace accident
On Thursday afternoon, April 16, five workers at an old tannery in central Hesse were found lifeless in a pit. Two were able to be resuscitated, but for the other three, help came too late. A fourth worker died in hospital a week later, on April 22.
The workplace accident deprives the old tannery of almost its entire workforce. The Beuleke leather factory and fur tannery has been in existence for 200 years. It is a family business with only half a dozen employees, located just outside the small town of Runkel (Limburg-Weilburg) on the river Lahn. The company website states: “Closed due to bereavement!” and all flags in the town are flying at half-mast.
The autopsy results were announced Thursday, determining that the men were the victims of hydrogen sulphide poisoning, an extremely toxic gas that can cause death very quickly. It is denser than air and accumulates on the ground and in pits. The treacherous nature of the gas is such that the characteristic warning smell of rotten eggs may not be noticed, as hydrogen sulphide has the property of numbing the olfactory receptors at higher concentrations.
It is suspected that one or more men climbed into the pit while working and fainted, and the others tried to come to their aid. The fifth seriously injured worker was a fitter from a pipe cleaning company who just happened to be present.
Public sympathy is enormous. A fundraiser was set up for the bereaved family of one victim, 35-year-old Yuri, who leaves behind a wife and a five-year-old daughter. On the initiative of a mother at the local nursery, €37,000 was raised for this family in just a few days. The mayor has now encouraged further fundraising campaigns.
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Tanning, the processing of animal hides into leather and fur, is a very old, complex craft that involves numerous special steps. The greatest dangers to humans and the environment, however, do not stem from the production process itself, but from the waste products.
Waste residues of animal hides that are temporarily stored in septic tanks can form highly toxic substances such as carbon monoxide, digester gases and hydrogen sulfide during the fermentation and rotting process. The most toxic, hydrogen sulfide, which can paralyze the sense of smell, is the most common cause of fatal accidents in such production worldwide.
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For many years, the central Hesse region was world renowned for its tanneries, to which the Leather Museum in Offenbach still bears witness today. With globalization, however, the profession of tanner has almost died out in Germany. At the same time, the processing of animal hides has developed into an industrial process worldwide. Large tanning operations have emerged in North and South America, China and India.
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Theoretically, every tannery is subject to strict environmental and occupational health and safety conditions. There are legal regulations, accident prevention rules, and supervisory authorities. In practice, however, these rules are systematically eroded and undermined. Hardly any authority, municipality, city or region still has the capacity to effectively monitor compliance with the rules.
The political attitude towards this is exemplified by the handling of the supply chain laws in Berlin and Brussels. The attempt to make corporations liable for occupational health and safety and environmental protection in supplier companies and countries as well, was watered down and torpedoed in the EU at the end of last year. The supply chain law is now only supposed to apply to a few large corporations and will only come into force across Europe from 2028. Since then, the Merz government has also been working to abolish the same law in Germany.
Corporations and governments increasingly have their sights set exclusively on two issues: rearmament for a war against Russia and profit maximization for shareholders and the super-rich. Issues like occupational health and safety and accident prevention inevitably fall by the wayside. The consequence of this is more and more fatal accidents and increasing danger in the workplace.
10. Union leaders meet with Lula amid strike wave in Brazil
Officials from Brazil’s largest union federations met last Wednesday, April 15, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party – PT). Officially portrayed as delivering a series of demands compiled in the nationalist and pro-corporate document “Working Class Agenda 2026-2030,” the meeting signaled the open support of the union federations for Lula’s candidacy in October’s presidential election.
The meeting took place amid a wave of strikes in Brazil, particularly in the education sector at the municipal, state, and federal levels. Just as happened during the administration of the fascist President Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), Brazil’s largest union federations are making it clear that they will do everything they can to once again isolate, stifle, and divert these struggles behind Lula’s candidacy.
During the 2022 election campaign, Brazilian union federations offered unprecedented joint support for Lula’s candidacy against Bolsonaro. Explaining this support, Ricardo Patah, president of the UGT — Brazil’s third-largest union federation — told Folha de S. Paulo in February: “Bolsonaro wanted to wipe out the union movement, a pillar of democracy, while Lula listens to us and endorses our demands.”
At the April 15 meeting, Lula greeted the union bureaucrats, repeatedly calling them “comrades.” Sérgio Nobre, president of the PT-controlled CUT—Brazil’s largest union federation—responded by declaring: “President, here is your army, and we will be fighting this battle alongside you. You are our general.”
The labor federations made a big fuss over their drafting of the document “Working Class Agenda 2026–2030” and its presentation to Lula and to the presidents of the House of Representatives, Hugo Motta, and the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre. The CUT wrote on its website that the unity of the federations “ensured that our voice would echo in the ‘corridors of power.’”
The document was written in the tired language of bourgeois nationalism, which assumes that conflicting interests between “capital and labor” can be reconciled by the capitalist state. Furthermore, it promotes a protectionist chauvinism that mirrors the support US unions are giving to Trump’s tariff war.
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At no point do Lula and the union federations point out that the brutal regime of labor exploitation in Brazil is a consequence of the capitalist system in one of the most unequal countries in the world. For them, a measure such as reducing the workweek is something that “helps improve productivity” and “the winners are Brazil and the companies,” as the labor minister, former union bureaucrat Luiz Marinho, declared last year. This illusion also helps divert the struggle for a reduction in the workweek into the safe channels of the Brazilian Congress, pressuring it to approve the end of the 6x1 shift schedule.
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The behind-the-scenes negotiations in the “corridors of power” between union leaders, the Lula administration, and the heads of the Brazilian Congress take place in the context of a powerful working-class movement emerging in Brazil.
A report by DIEESE published on Wednesday indicates that the number of strikes in Brazil increased by 14 percent in 2025 compared to the previous year, rising from 880 to 1,006. The largest increases occurred in the “private sector” (from 440 to 539) and in state-owned enterprises (from 46 to 71). Among the latter are numerous work stoppages throughout 2025 and strikes at the end of the year by postal workers and Petrobras employees against the Lula administration.
Like everywhere else in the world, this trend will intensify as the effects of the war in Iran become more pronounced in Brazil. Since last October, inflation has been rising, climbing from 0.09 percent that month to 0.88 percent in March. The largest increases were in diesel fuel (13.90 percent), gasoline (4.59 percent), and food and beverages (1.56 percent).
Last week, a strike by app drivers and delivery workers took place in at least four Brazilian states. In addition to protesting against rising fuel prices and increased fees charged by companies, they protested against a bill in the Brazilian Congress to regulate app-based work. Championed by app companies, this legislation leaves “platform-based independent workers” without an employment relationship with the companies. In 2024, the Lula administration had advocated for a similar bill, which was also widely rejected by app workers.
Since the beginning of the year, a series of strikes in primary and higher education has erupted across Brazil at the municipal, state, and federal levels. Teachers, staff, and students have been fighting against widespread attacks on public education, which combine low wages, poor working conditions, and a rapid advance of privatization and pro-corporate policies.
Today, this movement has been making its presence felt in a powerful way in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are among the most populous states in Brazil. Teachers in the public school systems of the capitals of these states, as well as those in the state public school system, and teachers, students, and staff at state universities—the University of São Paulo (USP) and the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)—have been staging walkouts and strikes.
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Workers have faced repeated betrayals by the unions, which refuse to unite their struggles. At the same time, the vast majority of these unions are led by bureaucrats from the PT and from Morenoist and Pabloite groups within the PSOL, who do everything to suppress these struggles for fear that they will get out of their control and seek to divert them toward bourgeois politics, particularly elections.
The attacks on education and the working conditions of the working class and Brazilian youth are being waged by the entire ruling elite and its parties, including Lula’s PT. Like other bourgeois rulers around the world, Lula’s response to the growing global crisis—now intensified by the war against Iran—has been an open defense of increased military spending, while continuing to commit to austerity policies. Conversely, this policy is paving the way for the electoral rise of Bolsonaro’s son, the equally fascist Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who is already tied with Lula in the polls.
Brazilian workers and youth seeking a socialist and internationalist response to the capitalist crisis—the root cause of austerity and the attacks on education and working conditions, as well as of war and the threat of the fascist far right—will find a genuine path forward in the International Online May Day Rally organized by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). We call on you to organize to attend the rally, which will take place on May 1, and to help publicize it as widely as possible.
11. Turkish miners’ struggle continues under a police siege
The struggle by Doruk Mining workers to demand their unpaid wages and other benefits—centred on a march which began in Eskişehir and has now reached the capital, Ankara—continues with a hunger strike under police siege.
The miners’ arrival in Ankara brought the class struggle to the forefront of the national agenda. While the people of Ankara showed their support for the miners, statements of solidarity with the workers were issued in factories and public squares across the country. Dozens of actors, musicians, poets, academics, writers, and journalists—including Hüsnü Arkan, İlyas Salman, Vedat Yıldırım, Orhan Alkaya, Menderes Samancılar, Ataol Behramoğlu, Müjdat Gezen, Suavi, Tülin Özel, and Füsun Demirel—released solidarity videos.
The class struggle in Ankara is unfolding in the midst of an imperialist war of aggression against Iran, waged by the Trump administration—an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government—in collaboration with Israel. Despite the government’s calls for a “ceasefire” and “peace,” it is effectively siding with the US and condemning Iran’s right to self-defense, while over 90 percent of the population opposes the US-Israel war against Iran.
Under these conditions, the workers’ entry onto the political stage and their potential to block the implementation of the capitalist oligarchy’s agenda are deemed unacceptable by the government. Numerous independent workers’ leaders have been arrested in recent months. The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) has called for the demand for the release of prisoners of the class struggle to be one of the main demands of the upcoming May Day.
That the struggle of just a hundred miners for their unpaid wages and other social rights has resonated so widely highlights the decisive nature of the class struggle that has been suppressed for decades, not only by state repression but also by the union apparatus and identity politics. The miners demonstrate the social power that must be mobilized for the social and democratic rights of the overwhelming majority of the people and against imperialist war.
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Miners’ demands include payment of months of unpaid wages, severance and notice pay for dismissed workers, an end to the imposition of unpaid leave, safe working conditions, reinstatement of workers dismissed for union membership, and the nationalisation of the mine to guarantee job security.
Mining workers who set out from Eskişehir on April 13 to seek a response to their demands arrived in Ankara on Monday after a nine-day march covering approximately 190 kilometers. The arbitrary arrest of union leader Aksu just before the march began signaled what kind of response President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government was preparing to give.
On Monday, police attacked workers with pepper spray at the entrance to Ankara, detaining 30 people—including Aksu and the union’s General President, Gökay Çakır—later releasing them. On Tuesday, 110 miners who had begun a hunger strike in an attempt to stage a peaceful protest in front of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources were detained by police. Faced with growing public outrage over the unlawfully of detentions and the government’s oppression of workers, the miners were released after 14 hours. However, neither were their demands met nor did the threat of severe state repression subside.
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The urgent task of putting an end to capitalist exploitation and private property—the root causes of social problems—requires the working class to take power into its own hands. This is the most important question raised by the struggle of Doruk Mining workers: Who controls society and the economy? The problems faced by Doruk Mining workers are, at their core, part of the broader problems of the working class in Türkiye and around the world. A fundamental solution requires the economy to be restructured on a socialist basis in the interests of society, rather than in the hands of a handful of capitalist oligarchs.
The numerous parties that visited the miners on Thursday are representatives of the same capitalist order and ruling class that the Erdoğan government is striving to protect by suppressing workers’ struggles through force. Some of them, such as the CHP and the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democracy and Equality Party (DEM Party), are attempting to control the social opposition developing within the working class through illusions of social reform and democratization.
DEM Party Co-Chair Tülay Hatimoğulları visited the miners and stated, “We stand with the resistance of the Doruk Maden workers.” While the DEM Party criticizes the government’s repression of social opposition and the working class, it simultaneously promotes the illusion that the government could expand democratic rights within the framework of the negotiations being conducted between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
On Thursday, a representative of the Islamist New Welfare Party visited the workers. The day before, Şenol Sunat, a far-right deputy from the Good Party, expressed his support for the miners in a speech in parliament. In addition, many union representatives visited the miners and expressed their support.
None of these establishment parties—including the CHP and the DEM Party—or the union bureaucrats have done anything to mobilize the masses in defense of the miners. The truth is, they are just as reluctant as Erdoğan to see a mass working-class movement erupt across the country.
The government and the company are now trying to pacify the miners by deploying not only police pressure, but also the corrupt trade union apparatus. While the workers’ march to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources was blocked by police force, the ministry’s doors were opened to the Türkiye Maden-İş Sendikası (Turkish Miners’ Union), affiliated with the Türk-İş confederation—an organization that has been absent for years and complicit in the company’s attacks on workers. On Wednesday, Minister Alparslan Bayraktar met with Nurettin Akçul, the General President of the Türkiye Maden-İş Sendikası.
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The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), one of the sponsors of this year’s 13th International Online May Day Rally, is fighting to put an end to the way union bureaucracies everywhere divide the working class along national lines for the interest of corporations and their power, and to unite the growing workers’ struggles across borders. We call on all workers to establish rank-and-file committees linked to the IWA-RFC in their workplaces, to show organized solidarity with the workers of Doruk Mining and other workers’ struggles, and to participate in the International May Day Rally.
12. ANC-led government sends army to South Africa’s townships
The African National Congress (ANC)-led Government of National Unity (GNU) is deploying 2,200 soldiers across South Africa, targeting working-class townships under the pretext of combating gang violence.
Under the banner of “Operation Prosper,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is deploying troops in full combat gear, armed with assault rifles and transported in armoured vehicles and military Samil trucks. Soldiers are equipped with live ammunition, with standing orders to fire in “self-defense”.
These forces are being sent into overwhelmingly working-class and impoverished apartheid-era townships, shaped by the legacy of the Group Areas Act. Areas targeted include Eldorado Park, Westbury, Riverlea, Mitchells Plain, Hanover Park, and the northern parts of Nelson Mandela Bay, spanning the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, North West and Western Cape provinces.
Speaking to Parliament last month, Ramaphosa stated that “We are getting the police and the army to work together to handle the challenges our people are facing.” He justified the deployment of the South African National Defence Force as necessary to complement the South African Police Service in tackling gang violence, extortion syndicates and unregulated mining, and in “bringing stability to our communities.”
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Soldiers are also being deployed in regions such as the Far West Rand that have become centres of the country’s “zama-zama” informal mining economy.
For many residents, the sight of soldiers on the streets revives memories of apartheid-era repression, including the brutal suppression of the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and the widespread township revolts of the 1980s under successive states of emergency of the apartheid regime. Entire generations recall the military’s role in occupying townships, enforcing curfews, and terrorizing residents.
The deployment of troops has nothing to do with combating gangs. The growth of crime and violence stems from a deepening social crisis rooted in capitalism and overseen by three decades of ANC rule.
Thirty years ago, Nelson Mandela promised that taking control of the capitalist state and advancing a new black capitalist elite would open the path to widespread prosperity. In his inauguration speech on May 10, 1994, he declared, “Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.” He proclaimed that “we have, at last, achieved our political emancipation” and pledged to liberate all people from “the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.” He concluded: “Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement.”
The ANC’s promise has given way to a nightmare for the majority of South Africans.
Two-thirds of the population now live in poverty, and around 10.8 million people cannot afford sufficient food. Approximately 30 percent of workers are unemployed, while youth unemployment stands at around 40 percent. At the same time, the richest 10 percent of the population controls more than 80 percent of the country’s wealth.
Wealth ownership is still overwhelmingly concentrated among the white South African ruling class. However, studies show that inequality within the black African population now accounts for the largest share of total inequality in South Africa. The ANC’s black economic empowerment policies have benefited a thin layer to the point that now more than half of total inequality in South Africa now comes from differences within population groups, particularly within the black African population, rather than between racial groups.
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The use of the military to suppress the working class is set to escalate amid the social crisis intensified by the US–Israeli war against Iran. On April 1, petrol increased by R3.06 per litre (approximately $0.16), while diesel rose by R7.51 (approximately $0.39). Paraffin—used by the poorest households for cooking and heating—has more than doubled in price, reaching between R30 and R35 per litre (approximately $1.55 to $1.80) in informal settlements. Lower-income workers already spend around 40 percent of their wages on transport, and rising fuel costs are cascading through the entire economy.
As the global crisis of capitalism deepens—driven by imperialist war, economic instability and intensifying geopolitical conflict—the ruling class is preparing for dictatorship and war. The US–Israeli war against Iran is a decisive factor in the worsening conditions faced by millions of workers in South Africa and internationally. Through its impact on energy prices, currency instability and global supply chains, it is accelerating inflation, driving down real wages and pushing already impoverished populations to the brink. The ruling elite, integrated into global finance capital, is imposing the burden of this crisis onto the working class while preparing the armed forces to suppress the inevitable resistance.
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The working class must draw the necessary political conclusions. The fight against poverty, inequality and repression cannot be waged within the framework of capitalism or through appeals to the existing parties and institutions.
The upcoming International May Day Online Rally 2026 takes on decisive importance. It will bring together workers and youth from across the world to advance a socialist program against imperialist war, social inequality and authoritarian rule. Workers and young people in South Africa should seize this opportunity: register today, participate in the discussion, and help build a unified international movement against capitalism and war.
13. Unemployment to rise by a quarter of a million as Iran war hits UK economy
The working class in Britain faces a surge in unemployment as the economic shockwaves from the war on Iran push an already stagnating economy towards recession.
New forecasts point to a sharp deterioration in labour market conditions, with up to 250,000 additional job losses forecast. This would see the official number of unemployed to increase from 1.87 million to over 2.1 million.
The EY Item Club, an economic forecasting group, warns that the UK economy will flatline across the second and third quarters of this year, placing it on the brink of a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. Economic growth, already weak, is projected to collapse from 1.4 percent in 2025 to just 0.7 percent this year, cutting across earlier signs of modest recovery reflected in February’s slight uptick in gross domestic product.
The consequences for the working class are severe. Unemployment is expected to rise to 5.8 percent by mid-2027, up from the current five-year high of 5.2 percent, as the crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict reverberates through the global economy.
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The UK economy is highly exposed to energy price shocks, with imports accounting for nearly half of the UK's oil and gas needs. Almost 68 percent of the UK's gas supply was imported in 2025.
Rising energy prices are increasing household bills, delivering significant blows to incomes. Analysis by the Resolution Foundation published this month found that average median working-age households are expected to be nearly £500 worse off this year than they would have been without the Iran war.
Higher energy and petrol costs continue to hit household income. Filling a typical 55-litre family car now costs £27 more for diesel (breaching the £100 mark for the first time since December 2022) and £14 more for petrol than before the war.
Only limited protection for households exists for electricity and gas bills through the price cap in England, Wales and Scotland. However, it is temporary, with the latest cap set to expire on July 1. Energy consultancy Cornwall Insight’s latest forecast predicts that under Ofgem’s price cap for July to September, a typical dual-fuel household could pay £1,861 annually, up from £1,641.
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The war is affecting mortgage markets. Before the conflict, expectations had grown that interest rates would fall, easing costs for borrowers. Instead, lenders now face higher funding costs and reduced expectations of rate cuts. According to Moneyfacts, the average two-year fixed mortgage rate has risen from 4.83 percent at the beginning of March to 5.9 percent, with the cheapest deals increasing most rapidly.
14. London Underground drivers speak from the picket lines against imposed “condensed” four-day week
World Socialist Web Site reporters visited picket lines and spoke with striking London Underground drivers.
The 1,800 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) are striking against Transport for London (TfL)—overseen by London’s Labour Party Mayor Sadiq Khan—who plan to impose a four-day week. This would increase shift lengths to eight hours and 45 minutes, risking greater fatigue and compromising safety.
Strikes were held this week from Tuesday to Wednesday and Thursday/Friday with further action planned in May and June.
The RMT represents half of all drivers on the Underground. The Aslef union already agreed to the changes earlier, significantly affecting the impact of the strikes. If combined, the two votes on the deal by RMT and Aslef members showed a clear majority of drivers across the whole Underground had voted against the deal.
A driver at Seven Sisters on the Victoria Line said, “We want a four-day week with reduced hours, 32 hours a week, which makes sense. But we don’t want any four-day week where you have longer hours to work because the fatigue will kick in. We don’t agree with the offer that is being imposed on us. We want better conditions, that is what we are striking for.
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On the picket line at Barking depot, Socialist Equality Party members raised that management’s proposals—originally pushed in 2021—were a Trojan horse for the destruction of hard-won working conditions. A striker, Malcolm, replied, “The action today is essentially about freedom of choice. We have fought for decades to get the terms and conditions we have—through our actions and through our union affiliation. To have those stripped away at a whim for a token gesture, a half-hour paid meal relief is what we are getting, sweeping everything else away is simply not worth it.
“Everybody would like a four-day week, but not at this cost. This is not the four-day week we wanted. Management are selling the lie that it’s optional, which it absolutely is not, it will be imposed. That is why we’re standing here today.”
15. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
South Korea:
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.
