Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: December 8-14
- 25 years ago:
US Supreme Court stops ballot counting in Florida
50 years ago:
Ford approves austerity loans to New York City
75 years ago:
US military evacuation from Hungnam, North Korea
100 years ago:
New York governor pardons communist leader
2. Socialism AI goes live on December 12, 2025
Technology does not lead automatically to the improvement of the human condition. Without politically conscious mass action, guided by scientific Marxist theory, technological advances under capitalism intensify the exploitation of the working class and threaten the destruction of the planet.
Therefore, the problem of bringing into proper alignment the development of technology and the interests of the working class must be solved. The socialist movement must make use of the most advanced tools available for the education and unification of the working class.
3. Israel tightens its grip on West Bank
Under the cover of the ethnic cleansing of 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza, Israel has tightened its grip on the West Bank aimed at incorporating the whole of Palestine into a “greater Israel” that now encompasses parts of Syria and Lebanon.
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Israel’s tightening grip on the West Bank has been accompanied by a wave of settler violence against the Palestinians. They have gone on the rampage, burning cars, desecrating mosques, wrecking industrial plants and destroying farmland. According to the UN’s humanitarian office, the number of attacks has surged, with settlers launching around eight attacks daily on the olive harvest during October, with attacks continuing last month.
Settlers have injured more than 1,000 Palestinians so far this year, double the rate of last year, and killed 21 people. This is in addition to at least 1,000 Palestinians killed by the military. According to the UN, settlers have forced at least 2,200 Palestinians from their homes, while the Israeli authorities have demolished the homes of more than 6,000 people.
4. The human catastrophe caused by massive flooding in Sri Lanka and Asia: How did it happen?
Sri Lanka has suffered massive destruction from Cyclone Ditwah, which made landfall on November 26 in the southeastern part of the island and moved northward along the eastern coastline. According to official statistics, 627 people have died due to the cyclone and the resulting floods and landslides, while 190 remain missing.
More than 4,500 houses were completely destroyed and over 76,000 partially damaged. A total of 247 kilometres of roads were impacted, and 40 bridges have been washed away. Several sections of the main railway line running through the central highlands were ruined, leaving transportation along this critical route indefinitely suspended.
The devastation caused by the cyclone is not an isolated phenomenon limited to Sri Lanka. In the final week of November, torrential rains swept across Southeast Asia, triggering massive floods and landslides in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. More than a thousand people were killed, and millions were displaced. Tens of thousands of homes were either completely or partially destroyed. The full scale of property damage has yet to be assessed.
In response to the disaster, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared this week, “We are facing the largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history.” While the scale of destruction is indeed immense, to claim that the catastrophe is purely a “natural” event conceals the deeper social and scientific realities underlying it.
Many people are asking a simple and urgent question: How did this catastrophe happen?
The answer lies not in fate or nature, but in the combined impact of climate change—driven primarily by global warming—and the systematic dismantling of scientific and disaster-prevention infrastructure by successive governments.
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This disaster is not the result of individual ignorance, but of the deliberate priorities of the global capitalist system, which places private profit and personal wealth above human life. Trillions of dollars are being invested in fossil fuels. Extreme inequality is maintained by billionaires. Military spending is soaring. The ruling class will not sacrifice its profits for climate safety. On the contrary, war and inter-imperialist conflict are intensifying emissions and plundering resources. Sustainable technologies exist, but they cannot be implemented under a global system rooted in private ownership of production and nation-state rivalry.
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Various intellectuals have proposed isolated “national solutions,” as if climate change and disaster prevention can be addressed within a single country’s borders. This is a dangerous illusion. No nationalist program can stabilize the climate, construct modern forecasting systems or build the infrastructure needed to protect lives without being part of a globally coordinated effort.
The WSWS has repeatedly emphasized that climate change is a global crisis that demands a global solution. It requires the mobilization of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program, including:
· Reorganizing global production to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels
· Redirecting scientific resources toward climate modeling, forecasting and adaptation
· Providing flood- and landslide-resistant housing as a social right
· Placing energy, transportation and industry under workers’ democratic control
· Coordinating international scientific planning, not competitive national policies
Only an international socialist reorganization of society can marshal the technological, scientific and material resources required to address global warming and protect human life. This cannot happen under capitalism, which subordinates every aspect of society to private profit and fuels national and communal division. Only the international working class, which has no allegiance to national borders, can lead the struggle for socialism on a global scale.
The catastrophe now unfolding in Asia is a warning from a destabilized planet—a warning that the continued domination of capitalist profit over human life is incompatible with the survival of millions. The international working class must take up the fight to overthrow the capitalist system and build a socialist future.
5. Netflix takes over Warner Bros. Discovery in $82.7 billion deal
On December 5, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced an agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros.’ film and television studios, along with its streaming operations, including HBO Max and HBO. The deal is valued at roughly $72 billion in equity, with a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion when accounting for debt.
The proposed purchase has major cultural and social implications. It sharply increases the cartelization of the entertainment industry and places decisions about what tens of millions see and hear each day in even fewer hands. If “American democracy is in its death throes,” under the Trump administration as it pushes ahead with its plan for dictatorship, “freedom of expression” in the film and television world is in an equally perilous state. To speak of such freedom when a handful of gigantic conglomerates own nearly all the media and entertainment outlets is increasingly meaningless.
For decades, American capitalism advertised itself as the alternative to “totalitarianism” and as the bastion of cultural openness. The mask has come off. Now, a few corporations with innumerable ties to the government and the military-intelligence apparatus by and large determine which film and television projects go forward. Many authoritarian regimes would be jealous. Artistic freedom in our day must increasingly take the form of a relentless struggle against this oligarchic stranglehold.
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The merger has provoked predictable, empty bipartisan criticism. Prominent Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Washington) have wrung their hands and condemned the deal as an “antitrust nightmare,” warning it could suppress competition, raise costs and reduce creative and labor opportunities. Republican critics, including Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), have similarly flagged the centralization of media power.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) expressed concern that consolidation would lead to worsening conditions for creative professionals: “The outcome would eliminate jobs, push down wages, worsen conditions for all entertainment workers, raise prices for consumers, and reduce the volume and diversity of content for all viewers.” It stressed: “Industry workers along with the public are already impacted by only a few powerful companies maintaining tight control over what consumers can watch on television, on streaming, and in theaters. This merger must be blocked.” However, the WGA offered no strategy whatsoever for writers or others to fight job elimination and wages lowering.
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he merger will restructure the industry with harmful consequences for workers. But the framing of these objections, whether from lawmakers or unions, assumes that capitalism is reformable, that regulatory intervention or corporate restraint could preserve competition and safeguard labor. In reality, the Netflix–WBD merger is the logical outcome of the monopolistic and imperialist dynamics that characterize the current era.
At this advanced stage of capitalist development, finance capital does not merely seek profit, it must expand and centralize, subordinating entire spheres of social life to the interests of a narrow ruling elite. Monopolization becomes a structural necessity.
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The merger, in a more profound sense, is part of a class offensive with deep consequences for the entertainment workforce and cultural life. Already, major media conglomerates operate as instruments of the corporate-financial oligarchy, shaping narratives to normalize US imperialism and play down or ignore mass social suffering.
War films routinely rely on intelligence consultants to ensure scripts do not challenge official agendas, while so-called social commentaries often reduce systemic issues to personal failures. Under a merged Netflix–WBD, these dynamics would intensify, amplified by AI systems capable of generating content at scale. Jobs for writers, actors, editors and technical crews would be further eroded, with entry-level opportunities diminished and wages reduced.
The technology itself is not inherently threatening. AI and digital production tools can be used for creative expansion, experimentation and democratization. It is the capitalist framework under which they are deployed that generates exploitation and cultural homogenization.
The denunciations of the merger by the entertainment union leadership are steeped in hypocrisy. These bureaucracies remain politically chained to the Democratic Party, the very instrument that has presided over and enabled the corporate consolidation they now claim to oppose.
In fact, the Writers Guild of America, SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America are preparing to enter yet another round of contract talks with the conglomerates they helped strengthen through their 2023 betrayals. Those sellout agreements cleared the way for an unprecedented expansion of AI, accepting the principle that studios could harvest performers’ voices and bodies and automate the scriptwriting process.
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Antitrust warnings and public statements of concern cannot reverse the structural imperatives driving consolidation. The working class and creative professionals must recognize that, at this advanced stage of capitalist crisis, the fight is about defending basic social rights and cultural production against the overarching logic of profit-driven monopolization. In a word, it is a struggle against capitalism.
6. Alliance of war criminals: German Chancellor Merz meets Netanyahu
There is hardly anything more repulsive than when the German ruling class justifies its support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians by referring to the “fight against antisemitism” and its own historical crimes. It was precisely this repugnant double standard that Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democrats, CDU) practiced on Thursday during his inaugural visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of an international arrest warrant for war crimes.
At Yad Vashem, Merz wrote in the guest book that Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security is “an unalterable core element” of bilateral relations. “That applies today, it applies tomorrow, and it applies forever.”
It is the height of cynicism and criminality when the German government, under the mantra of a “reason of state,” whitewashes Israel’s campaign of destruction and legitimizes it with responsibility for the Holocaust, of all things. In reality, it is not continuing the tradition of “Never again!” but rather the criminal traditions that led to Auschwitz—and is continuing them in a new form.
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With his visit, Merz made it unmistakably clear that the German government not only stands by this regime, but is further deepening its cooperation with Israel. The Social Democrat (SPD)/Green/Free Democrat coalition government under Chancellor Scholz (SPD) and Foreign Minister Baerbock (Greens) already provided political cover and military support for the genocide—and defamed and criminalized anyone who denounced the crimes as “antisemites.”
Merz is seamlessly continuing this course. At a joint press conference with Netanyahu, he rejected the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Such recognition could come “at the end and not at the beginning” of a process—in other words, never. At the same time, he justified the criminal policies of the right-wing extremist Netanyahu regime with the platitude that Israel has “the right and indeed the duty” to defend its existence. Criticism is “possible,” he said, but “must not be misused as a pretext for antisemitism, especially not in Germany.”
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The basis for this supposedly “eternal” alliance is obvious. Germany’s ruling class uses Israel as a geopolitical outpost to enforce its imperialist interests in the resource-rich and strategically central Middle East region. Merz himself admitted this in a moment of unusual candour after Israel’s attack on Iran in June, when he declared that Israel was doing “the dirty work for all of us.”
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People in Germany, Israel, Europe, the Middle East and around the world who want to stop the fascist barbarism of their ruling class must oppose it with the international unity of the working class and a socialist perspective. Only such a movement can break the cycle of imperialism, oppression and mass murder.
7. Immigration thugs deploy to Minnesota as 19 people kidnapped and a US citizen sexually assaulted
Less than a week after President Donald Trump disparaged all people from Somalia as “garbage” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have deployed in force to Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minnesota, targeting the largest Somali community outside Africa. As of this writing, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed 19 arrests.
Many more people, including at least one US citizen, have been detained in the ongoing raids. This past Wednesday, an Edina-born Somali-American woman was kidnapped by ICE agents while shopping in downtown Minneapolis. Despite being a US citizen, ICE agents kidnapped and ziptied her before taking her to a local jail.
Even though she repeatedly insisted she was a US citizen, ICE held her for over 24 hours. She was only released from jail after her husband, a paralegal, provided federal agents her passport.
In an interview with the local Fox affiliate, the woman’s cousin, who is a legal Somali immigrant, said that while she was in federal custody she pleaded with agents to let her go, “but they ended up sexually assaulting her.” According to the victim’s cousin, the agents mocked the woman, questioning her over what “she could be hiding in her hijab.”
The cousin continued, saying that agents joked that she was wearing the wrong attire “to try and run away from us.” The woman, still suffering trauma from the incident, did not wish to be identified or interviewed. On Friday DHS told Fox it “could not comment on the incident without additional information.”
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The vast majority of the 80,000 people of Somali descent living in Minnesota are US citizens or legal residents. Yet, in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan claimed without evidence, “there’s a large illegal Somali community there. There’s an illegal alien community, a large illegal alien community there.”
The detainment of the Edina woman is one of hundreds, if not thousands of cases this year where immigration police have assaulted and handcuffed US citizens under the guise of immigration enforcement. A report published by Pro Publica in October found more than “170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests” while more than 20 were held for over a day “without being able to call their loved ones or lawyers.”
In a disturbing incident last week in Key Largo, Florida, a woman in medical scrubs was stopped by immigration agents while driving and forcibly removed from her vehicle. In a video that has been seen millions of times, the woman can be heard screaming that she is a US citizen as immigration thugs handcuff her.
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Refuting claims that kidnapping operations are specifically targeting violent criminals, videos from Minneapolis and southern Louisiana show immigration thugs harassing and accosting workers as they go to gas stations to fill up. Underscoring the deep unpopularity of the raids among the working class, in one video a man records Border Patrol agents as they accost workers in Minneapolis. In the video a woman can be heard saying “You’re not welcome here,” while the man is heard saying, “Get the f*ck out of here.”
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In Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, workers at a local gas station locked their shop and refused entry to Bovino and other CBP thugs loitering outside the station. Another video shows community members blowing whistles and keeping watch outside a school after ICE agents were spotted in the community.
On Sunday, anti-ICE protesters continued to demonstrate and track federal agents throughout Kenner. Protesters carried signs reading “no human is illegal” and “No trespassing, we don’t open the door for ICE.”
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AP reported Sunday that in response to growing anger of Trump’s mass deportation operation state and federal police are tracking “online criticism and protests” and compiling “regular updates” to be shared between agencies. According to one report viewed by AP and circulated among police on Sunday, opinions on the raids, “remain mixed, with some supporting the operations while others are against them.”
According to the report, FBI and CBP agents are currently tracking “discussions on the online forum Reddit that local residents have used to exchange information about the immigration raids.” In response to a question from AP, Louisiana State Police spokesperson Danny Berrincha, confirmed that cops are “monitoring social media activity related to protests, activism and other forms of public response.”
The AP’s report follows a November report by the Brennan Center which found that ICE is spending upwards of $25 million on spy technology including “social media monitoring systems, cellphone location tracking, facial recognition, remote hacking tools, and more” to track and intimidate those who opposed federal kidnapping operations.
The monitoring of social media accounts by the government underscores that the attacks on immigrants are an attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class. The same techniques, technologies and legal warfare used by the federal government and police against anti-ICE protesters will be turned against all sections of the working class regardless of immigration status.
8. NBC confirms Hegseth ordered murder of all boat passengers and crew in September 2 strike
On Saturday, NBC reported that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “ordered the US military on September 2 to kill all 11 people” on a motorboat traveling between Venezuela and Trinidad, contradicting the administration’s denials that no such order was given.
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Following an initial attack on a civilian speedboat in the Caribbean on September 2, the US military, at the direction of Admiral Frank Bradley, launched a second strike, targeting two survivors who had climbed on top of the capsized boat and were reportedly waving at US military aircraft in a request for rescue. The US military launched two more strikes, sinking what was left of the boat in a likely effort to conceal their crimes.
The Pentagon’s law of war manual declares that soldiers have a duty to refuse to carry out “clearly illegal” orders, such as killing shipwrecked sailors. “Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual declares.
The Trump administration’s claims that the boat was transporting drugs headed toward the United States are contradicted by available evidence. Small drug boats do not typically have such large crews, meaning the boat was likely transporting people.
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Rebecca Ingber, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, told the New York Times, “There is a risk that the focus on the second strike and specifically the talk of ‘war crimes’ feeds into the administration’s false wartime framing and veils the fact that the entire boat-strikes campaign is murder, full stop. … The administration’s evolving justification for the second strike only lays bare the absurdity of their legal claims for the campaign as a whole—that transporting drugs is somehow the equivalent of wartime hostilities.”
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In remarks on Saturday, Hegseth threatened to continue the killings, saying, “If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on Earth doubt that for a moment.”
9. Palestine Action prisoners on hunger strike in UK at “a very, very high risk of death” warns doctor
The health of pro-Palestine activist prisoners who began an open-ended hunger strike last month is deteriorating rapidly.
The hunger strikers are demanding an end to censorship of their communications, with letters and phone calls blocked; immediate bail, with most held on remand well over the usual six-month limit; the right to a fair trial; an end to their demonization by the Labour government, including dropping the “terrorist connection” claim made of their case; and the shutting down of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems’ UK sites.
Six of the seven involved began their protest between 27 and 36 days ago. A seventh joined the hunger strike last week.
The seven are Qesser Zuhrah (His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Bronzefield); Amu Gib (HMP Bronzefield); Jon Cink (HMP Bronzefield); Heba Muraisi (HMP New Hall); Teuta “T” Hoxha (HMP Peterborough); Kamran Ahmed (HMP Pentonville) and Muhammad Umer Khalid (HMP Wormwood Scrubs).
Five of the seven have only recently returned to prison from hospital, where they said they were handcuffed to officers throughout their stays.
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Following the PA protests against Elbit and at RAF Brize Norton, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper moved to proscribe the organization. These actions were used as a pretext for long-planned police state measures, implemented in collaboration with the dictatorial agenda of the US Trump administration.
The proscription came into operation July 5, rubber stamped by both houses of parliament in a right-wing stampede. Membership of PA, or support for it, is now a crime under the Terrorism Act (2000).
Since the ban on Palestine Action, thousands of people have been arrested—the vast majority simply for holding a placard reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”—at peaceful protests organized by civil liberties group, Defend Our Juries. As of the start of December, more than 2,700 people had been arrested under sections 12 or 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Those convicted under Section 12, for inviting support or arranging meetings to encourage support for a proscribed organization, can face up to 14 years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both. A summary conviction—tried by a magistrate without a jury in the Magistrates’ Court—can result in six months’ imprisonment.
Those convicted under Section 13, for wearing clothing or displaying articles in public in support of a proscribed organization, face up to six months’ imprisonment, a fine of up to £5,000, or both.
So far, more than 300 individuals have been charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
10. Starbucks workers’ strike approaches 4th week
A nationwide strike by Starbucks workers is approaching the start of its fourth week on Wednesday. The strike, which began on November 13 with walkouts at 65 stores across more than 20 cities, expanded to 120 stores on Black Friday. Workers are demanding higher wages, stable schedules, an end to understaffing and action on hundreds of unfair labor practice charges stemming from years of union busting.
Contract talks, which began in February, collapsed in April after delegates of Starbucks Workers United (SWU)—organized under Workers United (WU), an affiliate of the SEIU—rejected a contract offering a below-inflation 2 percent raise for baristas.
This is the second strike in a year called by SWU. Around 5,000 workers struck for five days last Christmas before being sent back to work without any concessions from management.
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Four years after the first Starbucks union election in Buffalo, no contract has been signed. Wages remain low, hours remain unstable, understaffing remains chronic and retaliation continues. These conditions are the product of a deliberate strategy by Starbucks management to stall, demoralize and wear workers down.
For Starbucks—which posted $3.76 billion in net income in 2024—the fines in New York are simply absorbed as a cost of doing business. They do not alter the basic issues for workers.
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Starbucks baristas have demonstrated initiative, courage and determination in launching the strike. But to win, the struggle must be expanded, unified and taken out of the narrow channels imposed from above.
The strike must not remain confined to isolated store walkouts. All 10,000 members of SWU must walk out at all at 650 unionized locations nationwide. Workers should organize flying pickets to nearby stores, regardless of union status to encourage participation and shut down whole areas.
They should begin holding meetings on the picket lines to formulate broad, fighting demands—real wage increases tied to inflation, guaranteed hours, adequate staffing, protection from retaliation—to build a united struggle with workers across the country, beginning with the service industry and the 2 million members of the SEIU. The struggle at Starbucks is inseparable from the broader conditions facing workers nationwide.
To bring the full weight of the working class to bear, workers need organization and coordination that the official structures will not provide. This requires the building of rank-and-file committees—democratically controlled by workers themselves—and linking these committees into the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which provides a framework for uniting workers across industries and across borders.
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SWU is one of many unions established over the last few years which younger workers have joined because they see them as more militant, democratic alternatives to the established corrupt, bureaucratically-controlled trade unions. They receive considerable support from the Democratic Party and the union hierarchy, who see them as a means of providing themselves with a semblance of credibility. In 2022, [Vermont Senator Bernie] Sanders spoke alongside SEIU officials and other Democrats at “Unity Fest” in Richmond, Virginia.
This is the kiss of death. It has proven impossible to combine ties with these pro-capitalist forces with the demands of the workers. One example is the fate of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which won a major union election at one of the company’s warehouses in Staten Island, New York, in 2022. More than three years later it still does not have a contract. An internal factional crisis led to it being absorbed by the Teamsters union, whose bureaucrats have helped Amazon’s competitor UPS slash tens of thousands of jobs, and whose top official Sean O’Brien is an open fascist and Trump supporter.
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The decisive question, both in this strike and in the situation as a whole, is the emergence of the working class as an independent force. Starbucks workers are fighting a giant corporation supported by both capitalist parties and backed by a global system of exploitation. This struggle unfolds under a Trump administration preparing sweeping attacks on democratic rights, migrant workers and labor protections.
The issues confronting Starbucks workers are shared by workers around the world facing layoffs, inflation, war, austerity and state repression. The urgent need is the building of a new movement of the working class, uniting across borders in defense of their common universal interests.
11. Australian Labor government gives $95 million to Ukraine for war with Russia
The Labor government announced on Thursday that it is providing the Ukrainian government with $95 million to help it prosecute the war with Russia that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the worst European conflict since World War II.
The package is the first by the Labor government since it was reelected in May, and is among the biggest provided by an Australian government to Kiev since the US and NATO deliberately provoked Russia’s reactionary invasion in March, 2022 and the war that followed.
The latest spend is striking for its militarist thrust. When the war began, Australian governments, first the Liberal-National Coalition and then Labor, downplayed their involvement, presenting assistance as humanitarian or as indirect military support.
That pretext has been dispensed with. Of the $95 million, it appears that not a cent is earmarked for humanitarian relief. The vast majority of the money is going to offensive weaponry, including advanced US and NATO supplied munitions, which could provoke a war throughout Europe.
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The depiction of the war as being a defense of Ukrainian “democracy” and of “human rights” was always a fraud. In reality, the US and NATO transformed Ukraine into a garrison state over the course of more than a decade, deliberately provoked the Russian invasion and have used it to further longstanding plans for regime-change in Moscow and the breakup of the Russian Federation.
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[Defense Minister Richard ] Marles and the Labor government, intoning against Russia’s “illegal and immoral invasion,” and its “aggression,” have been steadfast supporters of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. As the Zionist regime has massacred up to 100,000 people, dropping bombs on schools, hospitals and all buildings, Labor has proclaimed Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
That has included ongoing military exports from Australia to Israel, in defiance of findings by the International Court of Justice that Israel had a “plausible” case to answer for genocide and an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders on charges of crimes against humanity.
The very same forces that have funded the Israeli genocide, above all American imperialism and its NATO partners, are also financing and directing the Ukrainian war effort, bluntly rejecting international law in the first case, and cynically invoking it in the second.
Ukrainian democracy, too, has been exposed as non-existent. The term of its President Volodymyr Zelensky expired in May, 2024 and he has ruled as a dictator since.
The government, roiled by corruption scandals over the siphoning off of state funds, is rounding up ordinary people in the streets to force them to fight. It is also persecuting opponents, including the young Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, who has been imprisoned for more than a year on trumped-up charges for opposing the war from a socialist and internationalist standpoint.
The phony professions of humanitarian concern for the Ukrainian people have increasingly been dropped, with the Trump administration deporting Ukrainians so that they can serve as cannon fodder.
The Labor government announcement boasted that its latest spend takes the Australian contribution to the Ukrainian war effort to $1.7 billion. Some $1.5 billion of that has been in military aid, which Labor claims is the highest of any non-NATO country.
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Labor’s involvement in the Ukraine war is part of its participation in an eruption of imperialist militarism globally. The Labor government is ironclad in its commitment to the US alliance, which in the Indo-Pacific centers on a massive military build-up in preparation for war against China, which is viewed as the chief threat to the hegemony of American capitalism.
The Trump administration has gyrated wildly on the question of Ukraine, suggesting at times that it would withdraw from the conflict and at others threatening a more direct war against Russia. The shifts reflect divisions within the US national-security establishment, including the view of some that American imperialism should cut its losses in Ukraine and focus all of its resources on conflict with China.
The oscillations have also been tied to demands for far greater military spending by the European NATO states, a demand contained in Trump’s National Security Strategy released this month.
In the Indo-Pacific, too, Trump has demanded that allies divert ever greater resources to preparations for war. That has included this year public calls by Trump administration officials for Australia to boost its military spending from the current level of little over 2 percent of gross domestic product, to 3.5 and then 5 percent of GDP.
Labor’s announcement on Ukraine was made just days before Marles and Wong departed Australia for Australia–United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in Washington. Those meetings will be followed by a summit of AUKUS, the anti-China pact involving the US, the UK and Australia.
12. Australian government prepares social media ban amid opposition to privacy and free speech violation
The Australian Labor government’s ban on social media use by those under the age of 16 is set to be rolled out on December 10. The ban is not a child welfare measure but a direct intervention by the state to dictate how ordinary people will be allowed to use the internet.
While the immediate effect is to bar under‑16s, the ban’s enforcement mechanisms will have consequences for the entire population. Implementing an age‑verification regime necessarily requires that every user be identified through biometric checks, face scans, or government and bank databases.
The nominal purpose of the world-first policy according to the government is supposedly to “protect” children’s mental health. But the primary causes of distress, particularly among young people, are the government’s own policies of austerity, housing unaffordability, militarism and the climate catastrophe.
Some mental health advocates, moreover, have warned that the ban will have a deleterious impact on that front, limiting the ability of children to communicate.
The real concern is that young people are being radicalised by what they are seeing and learning on social media platforms, including but not limited to the escalating environmental crisis, genocide in Gaza and return of fascism most sharply expressed in the second administration of US president Donald Trump. The ban’s purpose, therefore, is to censor social media platforms where youth in particular are searching for information about and answers to these major issues.
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The immediate effect is intimidatory and chilling. Requiring ID or a facial snapshot to access platforms creates a barrier to anonymous political discussion and exposes users—especially young activists, migrants and dissidents—to targeting, undercutting the use of social media as an online space for political organizing and cultural expression.
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Indeed, Albanese affirmed in an interview with radio commentator Neil Mitchell in 2023 that, were he granted dictatorial powers, Albanese’s first business would be to “Ban social media,” due to the presence of “keyboard warriors who can anonymously say anything at all without any fear.”
Initially, the list of platforms included in the ban was Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and X. Since then, the government has accepted the eSafety Commissioner’s recommendation, based on flimsy arguments, that YouTube be added to the list. Reddit and streaming platform Kick were added earlier last month while Twitch, another popular streaming platform, was added less than three weeks out from the ban’s start date.
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No credence can be given to any government or corporate claim that collected identification or biometric data will remain beyond the state’s reach. Once age-verification systems are implemented, access by state agencies—police, intelligence services, or national security bodies—becomes routine, especially as Australia deepens its role in the imperialist redivision of the world including using data to attack political opponents.
The government this year announced new Australian Federal Police units which will, among other methods, use “electronic surveillance” to enforce “social cohesion.” The AFP will work with the Australian domestic intelligence agency ASIO and the global imperialist surveillance network the Five Eyes which also uses massive amounts of data to target dissidents and in strategic planning.
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The Albanese government understands that it sits atop a social powder keg most sharply expressed in younger generations who are confronted by a system which presents them a future of joblessness, homelessness, financial stress and war.
Amid a broader collapse of the two-party system in Australia, the social media ban is a desperate attempt to prevent the further politicization of an entire generation increasingly opposed to the major parties and the corporate, militarist agendas they represent.
The ban is part of a broader assault on democratic rights in Australia and internationally including laws suppressing protest and attacks on anti-genocide demonstrators. The ruling elite is increasingly resorting to authoritarian measures to stifle political opposition as the environmental crisis, war and social inequality radicalize youth and the working class.
13. New Zealand police embroiled in major corruption scandal
Fallout from a scandal involving a group of senior New Zealand police officers is continuing despite the political establishment seeking to limit damage after a damning report found “significant failings” in the handling of sexual complaints against a former high-ranking officer.
The National Party-led government is to establish a new position of Inspector General of Police, with powers to investigate police conduct, following the release of the 135-page report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) on November 11. The report detailed serious allegations against former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming and a years-long cover-up by senior staff.
McSkimming earlier pleaded guilty in a Wellington court to accessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material on his work computer and had resigned. Police Commissioner Richard Chambers claimed the outcome “showed all police, no matter their rank, are accountable to the laws that apply to us all.” McSkimming’s behavior, Chambers said, “goes against the core values of police” and he would not allow the episode to “tarnish” his staff.
But the IPCA report exposed a systematic cover-up by multiple senior officers of other serious complaints. The allegations arose from a sexual relationship that began in 2016 between McSkimming, then aged 40 and a superintendent, and a “Ms Z,” a 21-year-old unsworn police staffer. In 2018, McSkimming informed his seniors of the affair, which he claimed had ended, but accused the complainant of threatening and blackmailing him.
Ms Z allegedly sent hundreds of emails to McSkimming and the police, posted on social media and lodged complaints with the police hotline. Her allegations included sexual interaction without consent and threats by McSkimming to use intimate video recordings against her. The IPCA found that instead of investigating the woman’s allegations, police charged her with sending harmful digital communications.
Chief among those who subverted any investigation was then Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. Coster not only failed to take the allegations seriously, he covered up for McSkimming during the selection process for the latter’s appointment as Deputy Commissioner. Coster then sought to limit the scope and accelerate the IPCA investigation to ensure it did not interfere with McSkimming’s job application.
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In the wake of the IPCA report, Coster finally resigned last week as chief executive of the Social Investment Agency, which he took up after quitting the police in late 2024. Others identified as culpable were two former Assistant Commissioners of Investigations, a Deputy Commissioner responsible for Police Integrity and Conduct and a female Deputy Commissioner.
Over six years, police brass who knew of Ms Z’s allegations “seriously” failed, the IPCA declared, to make “sufficiently robust enquiries” and relied too heavily on accounts given by McSkimming and other officers. Instead, an investigation into Ms Z was launched and in May 2024 she was prosecuted under the Harmful Digital Communications Act. The charges have only recently been withdrawn.
The IPCA’s findings were deliberately circumscribed. While the report found “significant misconduct” and a “massive failure of leadership” at the top of the police, no officers had “set out to undermine the integrity” of the organization. Their response, the IPCA deemed, was simply one of “inaction and an unquestioning acceptance” of McSkimming’s narrative.
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Ms Z emphasized that senior police ignored or dismissed her allegations for years while McSkimming continued to rise through the ranks. “I’ve been bullied into silence,” with no interest in whether there was substance to her concerns, she said. After being charged she was placed under restrictive bail conditions and subjected to suppression orders for nearly 18 months, costing her a job and legal bills. “My life has been so damaged by this … it’s an ongoing nightmare,” Ms Z declared.
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The scandal is the most recent in a litany of investigations and inquiries spanning decades. Similar systemic issues were identified by the Bazley Commission 18 years ago. That inquiry, into allegations that officers had undermined or mishandled investigations into complaints of sexual assault against other officers, delivered 60 recommendations to the police, IPCA and government—all now exposed as entirely ineffectual.
The ruling establishment has rushed to restore the plummeting reputation of the police. No criminal charges are being pursued against officers involved. Public Service Commissioner Brian Roche insisted there is “no evidence of corruption or cover up,” praising Coster for “unreservedly apologizing and accepting accountability.” Chambers assured parliament that he had now set specific goals to restore “trust and confidence up to 80 percent” in the police.
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Any conception of reforming “police culture,” given the central oppressive role the police play in capitalist society, is doomed. Amid a brutal austerity drive and escalating social tensions, police are the means of suppressing opposition particularly in the working class. The National Party-led government and the opposition Labour Party, competed on right-wing “law and order” policies.
The drum-beat includes a vicious political campaign witch-hunting Palestine protesters and, as in other countries including Britain and Australia, preparing escalating police-state measures against oppositional activities including workers’ struggles and strikes.
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The police are an essential component in the escalating state-wide offensive on the social position of the working class. The prison population has reached an all-time high, despite official figures showing a fall in the number of crimes. New Zealand’s incarceration rate is high compared to other OECD countries, with 199 prisoners per 100,000 people. Māori, among the most oppressed layers of the working class, are significantly overrepresented, making up 52 percent of inmates despite being only around 15 percent of the population.
New Zealand police are also involved in high rates of killings. Officers do not routinely carry firearms but can access them from police vehicles and stations. According to a 2022 Radio NZ report, police had killed 40 people since 1990, putting NZ ahead of England and Wales in fatal shootings per capita. The country of 5 million people had nearly eight police shootings per 10 million, compared to 0.3 in England and Wales, and 2.4 in Australia. Those killed are disproportionately Māori.
Meanwhile, corporate leaders investigated by police routinely avoid prosecution. Fifteen years after the Pike River coal mine disaster, which killed 29 workers, no one has been held accountable for violations of health and safety laws that turned the mine into a death trap. In 2017, police also decided not to charge individuals responsible for violating multiple building regulations in the construction of the CTV building, which collapsed in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake killing 115 people.
14. For a socialist perspective against the reintroduction of conscription in Germany
This is a statement that was distributed at demonstrations and protests held throughout Germany on December 5 against the reintroduction of conscription: "No cannon fodder for the profits of the rich!"
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We say no to conscription, in whatever form and at whatever time it is planned. We refuse to serve as cannon fodder for the profits of the rich!
The return of conscription is part of the militarization of society as a whole. Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, the German government is once again preparing to march an entire generation into the barracks and the trenches to sacrifice young lives for the economic interests of the ruling class. The CDU/SPD coalition is driving the rearmament of the Bundeswehr forward at breakneck speed.
The Bundeswehr is to be expanded into the largest conventional land army in Europe. The government plans to increase troop strength by some 80,000 soldiers and to build a reserve pool of several hundred thousand more. The new military service law creates the legal framework for this massive build-up, through compulsory mustering and subsequent call-ups. German military expenditure has already reached record levels and will be driven still higher through the “New Military Service” in order to finance the planned expansion in personnel and weaponry.
This has nothing to do with “self-defense.” Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine does not alter the fact that the imperialist powers systematically prepared this war for years. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has, in defiance of all assurances made to Moscow, pushed its borders steadily eastwards and encircled Russia militarily. Berlin has played a central role in this offensive.
With its current rearmament program, the German government is returning to its historic war aims from the First and Second World Wars. Its declared goal is that Germany, 80 years after the catastrophic defeat of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (army), should once again be capable of winning a war against nuclear-armed Russia. For us, this would mean the same fate that young people suffered then, and that young people in Ukraine and Russia suffer today: forced recruitment, trenches and death.
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We reject conscription not only because we ourselves do not want to die in the trenches, but because we do not want anyone to die in the trenches. We oppose conscription because it is part of a spiral of war that destroys ever more human lives.
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The escalation of the war against Russia, the German government’s support for the genocide in Gaza and the attacks on Iran, show that the strengthening of the Bundeswehr has nothing to do with “defence” but serves predatory imperialist interests.
This raises fundamental political questions. Anyone who claims that the Bundeswehr can be built up as a purely defensive force is claiming that there can be a peaceful capitalism. Two world wars and the acute danger of a third demonstrate that there can be no such thing as peaceful capitalism.
War does not arise from the malice of individual politicians at the top of society, but from the objective contradictions of capitalism. The contradiction between a world market and its division into rival nation-states leads inevitably to the struggle for markets and raw materials, which takes the form of war.
As long as capitalism exists, there will be war. A “peaceful Bundeswehr” is therefore impossible and a dangerous illusion.
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From this, decisive conclusions must be drawn. A fight against conscription means a fight against war and against its root—the capitalist system. We therefore fight for the building of an independent movement of the working class, based on the political principles elaborated by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in its 2016 statement “Socialism and the Fight Against War”:
- The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.
- The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.
- The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class.
- Above all, the new anti-war movement must be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, whose strategic goal is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. Only in this way can the world’s resources be rationally planned and developed to eradicate poverty and raise human culture to new heights.
We call on all young people: organise yourselves in schools, universities and training centres against the reintroduction of conscription. Discuss this statement with your classmates, fellow students and colleagues. Make contact with us and join the IYSSE.
15. Jeremy Corbyn attacks Zarah Sultana’s demand for nationalisation against the billionaires
Zarah Sultana’s call at Your Party’s founding conference for the nationalization of the entire economy and for the working class to run society has come under vicious attack from party leader Jeremy Corbyn and political scoundrels Owen Jones, George Galloway, and Tariq Ali.
Speaking at the founding conference in Liverpool last Sunday, Sultana stated:
“We are not here for tweaks of a broken system. We are not here just to lower some bills and sprinkle a wealth tax. We are here for a fundamental transformation of society to replace capitalism with socialism.
“That means democracy in every workplace, every community, every corner of life. So yes, we will reverse the failed experiments of Thatcherism by taking water, energy, our railways, transport and communications back into public ownership. But that cannot be the limits of our ambition. We must seek new horizons— the banking industry, food production, construction and so much more. Because we know this fundamental truth, the working class can run society better than the billionaires, the profiteers and the war criminals who rule over us today.”
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Millions of workers and young people would likely agree with Sultana’s sentiments. This year’s Sunday Times Rich List reveals 156 billionaires in Britain hold a combined wealth of £772.8 billion, while 21 percent of the UK population (14.3 million people) live in poverty. Globally, 3,028 billionaires hold $15.8 trillion, and 81 have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population.
Public support for re-nationalizing Britain’s railways, post, buses, water, and energy companies—privatized and run into the ground by successive Tory and Labour governments—is overwhelming. Capitalism is widely discredited, with 38 percent of the population supporting socialism, according to YouGov. Among 18–34-year-olds, 56 percent believe socialism would improve life, and 20 percent of 18–24-year-olds view communism favorably (compared to just 2 percent who have a favorable view of fascism).
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Calls for “renationalization” have long been a staple of Labour “left” backbenchers and trade union bureaucrats. However, Sultana linked her call for public ownership to capitalism’s replacement by socialism, insisting it was a “fundamental truth” that the working class can run society better than billionaires.
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Britain’s leading “lefts” attack Sultana because they fear the working class, especially its youth, breaking from the Labour Party and turning toward socialism. This process of reorientation is forcing a confrontation with fundamental historical and political questions. That is why, in response to Sultana’s calls for nationalisation against the billionaires, her critics rush to declare that any such discussion must be closed down.
In doing so, they attack Sultana for upholding the reformist agenda they themselves once championed and which the Labour Party, at least nominally, still upheld until 1995, when Tony Blair’s New Labour repudiated Clause 4 of the party’s constitution. This defined Labour’s ultimate aim as follows:
To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.
Sidney Webb drafted Clause 4 in November 1917, in direct response to the Russian Revolution. He worked with Independent Labour Party (ILP) leaders Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald to revise Labour’s program, constitution, and structure to better channel the working class away from revolution and toward what Henderson called “ordered social change through constitutional methods.”
The worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution was immense, and Britain was no exception. Labour leader Aneurin Bevan later recalled seeing Welsh miners “rushing to meet each other in the streets with tears streaming down their cheeks, shaking hands and saying, ‘At last it has happened’… the revolution of 1917 came to the working class of Great Britain, not as social disaster, but as one of the most emancipating events in the history of mankind.”
Nationalization of industry and production from above, whether carried out by reformist governments or (more extensively) by the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe after World War II, cannot bring about socialism. It requires the conscious revolutionary mobilization of the working class to overthrow the capitalist state and establish workers’ power.
During the 20th century, and especially after World War II, the British ruling class depended on the Labour bureaucracy to promote the vista of a parliamentary road to socialism. The 1945 Attlee Labour government nationalized one-fifth of Britain’s industry. It established the welfare state, including free universal healthcare, public housing, and state pensions, not out of altruism but to stave off revolution and divert the working class from Marxism. That period has ended. Today, neither Corbyn nor Labour’s discredited “left” make such promises. The urgent task is to resolve the crisis of working-class leadership and to build a genuine mass socialist party that unites workers worldwide and completes the epoch of world socialist revolution that began in 1917.
16. Bosch Rexroth workers in Scotland to strike for a week against pay cuts
Over 280 workers at Bosch Rexroth’s manufacturing plant in Glenrothes, Scotland, are set to strike for a week from December 8-15 against a cut in pay and working hours by up to 22 percent. A 95 percent majority, based on a high turnout, voted for strike action, rejecting the company’s latest proposal. The strike follows “a collective conciliation meeting”, hosted by arbitration service ACAS.
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The Glenrothes site, highly integrated into Bosch Rexroth’s global operations, is the company’s worldwide design and production center of its MCR series hydraulic motors used in construction, forestry, material handling and other heavy industries. 95 percent of the output from its skilled workforce is exported worldwide. The Bosch group employs some 6,300 people in the UK, including at manufacturing the R&D sites, which is also the company’s fourth largest market worldwide and the second largest in Europe after Germany.
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The assault on conditions in Glenrothes is part of a desperate global attempt by Bosch Rexroth parent company, Robert Bosch GmbH, to increase its profits at the expense of its workforce.
Worldwide, the Baden-Württemberg headquartered company employs around 418,000 people in around 60 countries. More than half of these, 230,000, are in the Bosch automotive parts supply wings, whose primary customer is the European car industry, which is in deep crisis. This September, Bosch announced 22,000 were to be eliminated in Germany alone—the largest in the company’s history.
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Over the last year—besides Bosch—Volkswagen, Mercedes, ZF, Porsche, Ford, Audi, Stellantis/Opel and many smaller outfits have idled production lines, shut down plants, gone bankrupt, and make tens of thousands of workers redundant. Last year, VW announced 35,000 job losses by 2030, pay cuts and flexible working while threatening plant closures. Audi is cutting 7,500 jobs in Germany alone.
Stellantis is threatening to close plants across Europe, while forcing thousands of its workers to take compulsory days off. The historic Rüsselsheim Opel plant, which once employed 40,000 workers, now hosts about 1,500 production workers, half under gig economy conditions. In the UK in April this year the company closed its van production site in Luton, England—formerly Vauxhall, GM—ending 120 years of vehicle manufacturing in the town axing over 1,000 jobs directly and 5,000 in the supply chain. This is to transfer production to its remaining electric vehicle-only site in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside from 2026.
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Not a word explaining this crisis has come from the Unite trade union, of which the striking Glenrothes workers are members. In the union’s last press release, General Secretary Sharon Graham reiterated the blustering and vacuous line. “Unite will not allow our members’ jobs, pay and conditions to be slashed by an extremely profitable company. We will back our members all the way in their fight as they begin strike action.”
A Unite industrial officer, George Ramsey said, “Hundreds of workers are being forced to take strike action by Bosch Rexroth when there are absolutely no financial reasons for them to impose these changes.”
Given these statements, workers could conclude that they were dealing with a greedy local management, inexplicably failing to pay decent wages. All was well with capitalism in Britain and Europe and the Bosch Rexroth board will see sense in due course.
In fact, Bosch remains far more profitable than Unite let on. The Bosch group’s after-tax profit worldwide last year was €1.4 billion on sales of just over €90 billion, down from €2.6 billion profit on €92 billion sales the previous year. Despite this, the company’s balance sheet improved as did the dividend paid to shareholders. But the company employed 11,500 less workers.
Bosch, which is 94 percent owned by a charitable foundation run by ex-corporate officers, industry figures and members of the Bosch family, aims to remain profitable directly at the expense of the jobs and living standards of its workforce.
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Bosch workers can only defend themselves by mobilising their independent strength. The fight cannot be left in the hands of the union apparatus who refuse to unify workers against any aspect of the capitalist onslaught.
Both Unite in the UK and the IG Metall union in Germany, exert their bureaucratic influence to blind workers as to the origins of the attacks on them and delay, suppress, confuse and divide workers’ efforts to oppose these attacks. Where struggles break out, the unions work to ensure they remain isolated and ineffective.
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Workers are tasked with building new organisations of struggle to defend themselves from the capitalist assault and advance their own interests. The WSWS encourages the formation of rank-and-file committees of action in every factory, office, workplace and institution of education and care. Such committees are posed with unifying workers within corporations and across industries, sectors, regions and national borders. Contact the World Socialist Web Site today to discuss further.
17. 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.
