1. Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States, (1924-2024)

2. Widespread social distress and economic insecurity in America’s supposedly booming economy: US credit card defaults reach their highest level since 2008

3. A total sellout: the IG Metall union in Germany agrees to a 20% real pay cut for the Volkswagen workers it represents

4. Covid-19: "If people really understood the science... they would have a very different attitude"

5. Film, television, and politics: the World Socialist Web Site looks back at 2024 and forward to 2025

6. Victims of financial parasitism, being taken over by private equity firms and saddled with debt: brick and mortar retail chains close stores, eliminate jobs

7. The US-backed Pacific Policing Initiative-- a new multi-national police force created for deployment across the Pacific in response to civil unrest, natural disasters, transnational crime and major events-- opens its headquarters in Brisbane, Australia

8. Speculators are nervous about the incoming Trump administration largely because the bottom third of Americans are financially "tapped out"

9. Families wait years for explanations: the dire and deadly conditions within Canada's jails and prisons

10. The union covering Sydney and New South Wales, Australia passenger railway workers collaborates with the Labor government to put off fights against wage cuts until next year

11. The crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 results in the deaths of 179 people of 181 on board

12. The Brazilian pseudo-left Socialism and Freedom Party exploits a popular campaign to shorten the working day to reinforce the right-wing shibboleths of nationalism and the bourgeois state 

13. The Bibi Files-- shortlisted for nomination for an Academy Award, but widely banned from screening-- ignores the fact that the war on Gaza was coordinated with the Biden administration

14. A petition asks that fabricated charges against members of a pseudo-left Turkish political party be dropped and that those under house arrest must be released 

15. Kenyan trade unions suppress worker strikes scheduled to take place across the country over the Christmas holidays

16. Part Three: The essential feature of the Ted Grant/Alan Woods International Marxist Tendency has been its implacable hostility to any break with Stalinism and UK Labourism, and a struggle for the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class

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

1. The World Socialist Web Site perspective on the growth of homelessness in the United States, which has doubled since Biden entered the White House

2. Israel targets the last remaining hospital in northern Gaza, endangering about 75,000 lives

3. A "Victims of Communism" monument becomes a memorial to the Canadian government's hypocrisy

4. Now, South Korea's acting president is impeached

5. To better integrate Colombo into US-led preparations for war against China, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake makes an official trip to India

6. Deflecting attention from the destruction of essential social services and growing poverty, the UK Labour government sets a record by expelling almost 13,500 migrants from Britain since it came to office

7. Not so unusual in the United States: prison officers beat a prisoner to death at Marcy prison in New York

8. Backed by the Murdoch media and the most right-wing faction of Australia's federal Liberal-National Coalition, a "law-and-order" ex-police officer will head Victoria's Liberal Party opposition

9. Seeking influence within the established political system, Australian Greens appease the Liberal government's war and austerity pursuits

10. A corporate deal in Kokomo, Indiana shows how the United Auto Workers functions as a labor contractor instead of a genuine workers organization

11. Corporate complacency and notes of optimism: writers at the World Socialist Web Site assess 2024's popular music

12. Part Two: The essential feature of the Ted Grant/Alan Woods International Marxist Tendency has been its implacable hostility to any break with Stalinism and UK Labourism, and a struggle for the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class

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

1. How the incoming Trump administration in the US is planning a social crime of historic proportions

2. Essential to his America-first, ultra-nationalistic ideological offensive and fascist incitements, Donald Trump seizes on Joe Biden’s commutation of the death penalty for 37 prisoners on federal death row to tout his bloodthirsty support for capital punishment

3. With their demands unresolved, thousands of Amazon and Starbucks workers returned to work this week after launching nationwide strikes

4. Acquitted of #MeToo charges, an Australian actor's rude experience defending his innocence is recounted in an interview with his wife

5. Australia records first increase in the rate of union membership since 2011

6. The rapid rise in rents fuels Germans' rising poverty, which is far more widespread than officially recognized

7. Israel wave of air strikes against Yemen include the main airport where the Director-General of the World Health Organization was about to board a flight

8. Questions remain after at least 38 people were killed on Christmas Day when Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crashed at Aktau in Kazakhstan

9. Part One: The essential feature of the Ted Grant/Alan Woods International Marxist Tendency has been its implacable hostility to any break with Stalinism and UK Labourism, and a struggle for the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class

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

1. Trump's megalomania

2. Canada Post workers need to draw lessons after their strike was sabotaged

3. Documents corroborate Israel's "war of extinction"

4. Drive for profit: US retailers sell their assets to activist investors for pennies on the dollar

5. President-elect Trump's "Border Czar" promises to build internment camps for deporting people from the United States

6. The exposure and prosecution of former President Bolsonaro's coup attempt is a "testimony to the explosive political situation in Brazil"

7. The departing Biden administration announces an official investigation into "anti-competitive" practices by the Chinese semi-conductor industry

8. Scientists investigate the novelty, fidelity, and transmission of human culture

9. Turkey's new minimum wage means that already strained workers will become poorer in real terms

10. Postal workers in the UK condemn their union's endorsement of the Labour government’s approval of a billionaire's takeover of the Royal Mail

11. Religious and sectarian minorities in Syria live in uncertainty under the new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham regime; some march to protest the burning of a Christmas tree

12. Union bureaucracies in Sri Lanka oppose the demands of School Development Officer teachers and are silent about the police witch hunt against them

13. Questions are raised after two crewmen were killed and three others were injured after a Union Pacific train with hazardous cargo collided with a tractor-trailer at a rail crossing in western Texas

14. An agenda to divide the working class and divert mounting social and political discontent in reactionary nationalist directions: the Australian Labor government issues a potentially illegal decree to limit foreign students from studying in Australia

15. Attempts to seek “climate justice” through the framework of UN institutions like the International Court of Justice at the Hague prove to be a political dead end

16. Berlin, Germany's state government's stiff austerity budget meets widespread anger and protests

17. New Zealand's economic recession is the second in less than 18 months

18. Today's billionaires are not interested: unprofitable orchestras and operas in smaller US cities struggle to survive; the Syracuse Opera Company files for bankruptcy

19. More than 354,000 people in England are homeless-- an incredible one in 160 people

20. National Committee Member Tony Robson's speaks to the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) about its responsibility to provide leadership to the working class in its struggle against capitalism

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

Again...

Patrick Martin, a veteran writer for the World Socialist Web Site surveys the US political landscape at the ending of 2024

1. Perspective: how the holiday season in the United States is being accompanied by a season of worker struggle

2. At year's end, two related major issues loom over the world's economy

3. In a Law and Disorder podcast, the World Socialist Web Site writer Patrick Martin explains how the corporate media has been working to normalize Trump and his cabinet nominees in advance of 2025

4. Suppressing an effective struggle: in the Amazon workers' strike, the Teamsters union calls out only a fraction of the workers they represent

5. Since the Canadian government imposed a strike ban, Canadian postal workers contact the World Socialist Web Site to describe the failure of their union to help them

6. By embracing Syria's new leadership and a former enemy, Turkey's ambassador jockeys for influence vis-a-vis larger imperialist powers

7. Anti-war demonstrators rally in France and Germany

8. Slightly less than in the previous year: the US Department of Labor reports that only 5,283 workers were killed on the job in 2024

9. Israel attempts to punish Ireland for its defense of rulings against it by the International Court of Justice

10. A surge of opposition to traditional bourgeois-nationalist ruling parties contributed to a first-time electoral victory of an opposition party in Botswana

11. Take back the Panama Canal? Take control of Greenland? US President-elect Trump's hankering for Lebensraum

12. UK Labour government stymied by US President-elect Donald Trump's agenda for dealing with China

13. The musical talents and generally humane outlook of Andrew Bird showcased at his seasonal Gezelligheid concert series held in Chicago

14. In Peru where an arrogant education minister called dissidents "rats" undeserving of human rights, its president unveils a multi-million-dollar militaristic “strategic plan”

15. Exposed: Maersk, a major shipping and logistics company, has transported millions of pounds of military equipment to the Israel Defense Forces from the United States

16. The German Federal Election Commission uses a technicality to bar the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, a pseudo-left Maoist organization, from participating in the planned February election

17. The Australian Labor government acknowledges the latest surge of COVID-19, but adheres to its homicidal “let it rip” policies

18. Found guilty of “corruption” and “influence peddling”: former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is sentenced to a three-year jail term

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

1. The hypocrisy of the corporate oligarchs and mainstream media (and unthinking pseudo-left elements) concerning the prosecution of the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, who is no hero

2. President-elect Donald Trump threatens to "take back" the Panama Canal

3. Aaron Siri's preposterous ideas about Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine which has protected millions of people from becoming paralyzed or dying

4. France: fascists vandalize the vacation home of New Popular Front (NFP) head Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s vacation home

5. Hours after Elon Musk messaged “Only the AfD can save Germany,” a far-right Alternative (AfD) supporter plows his vehicle through a Christmas Market in Magdeburg, Germany leaving five dead, and 200 injured

6. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad: the US, European and regional powers believe they can utilize the al-Qaeda-linked group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as their subcontractor to further their geostrategic interests in Syria

7. The president of George Mason University in Virginia paints student activists engaged in constitutionally protected activities as potential terrorists

8. Resident physicians training to be doctors at the Detroit Medical Center in Michigan demonstrate for better working conditions against its owner, Tenet Healthcare

9. Dire conditions confront survivors of Vanuatu's devastating December 17 earthquake

10. What sort of society drives its artists into pornography? A great deal of what now dominates the music and entertainment world is backward and degraded; what can we learn from Pierre-Jean de Béranger?

11. South Korea's political crisis deepens a week after President Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached

12. Associated passenger rail unions in Australia offer rail companies "a peace offering" to prepare pushing through a sell-out deal  

13. Across Australia, public schools face a severe teacher shortage due to daunting duties and poor rewards

14. A tactical shift of the ruling class, not a genuine victory for workers: a judge rules against unconstitutional parts of a law that attacked pensions and health care, stripped public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights, and decimated public education in Wisconsin

15.  A secret deal between the UAW and the EV automaking company, Rivian, reveals the alignment of the union's bureaucracy with corporate profit interests

16. Veteran Trotskyist Barbara Slaughter addresses the UK Socialist Equality Party's Seventh National Congress: What is the truth behind slanders of Gerry Healy? What does it mean to be a revolutionary optimist?

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

1. Elon Musk, ignoramus and world's richest man, champions fascists around the world

2. Forewarned: leading representatives of NATO and the imperialist powers now openly demand the complete militarization of society and the establishment of a war economy at the expense of the democratic and social rights of the working class

3. A lopsided bi-partisan budget resolution passes in the US House of Representatives after Elon Musk, ignoramus and the world's richest man, tweets on his X

4. Liz Cheney in the crosshairs: US President-elect Donald Trump lays the groundwork to prosecute his political enemies upon his return

5. We Were Dangerous, a film depicting an example of widespread, sanctioned abuse of institutionalized children in New Zealand, tells an unconvincing story that conforms with the requirements of identity politics

6. Resistance must be organized against IG Metall and the Volkswagen works council who completely capitulated to the profit interests of Volkswagen shareholders by agreeing to cut 35,000 jobs in Germany and reduce wages by billions of euros

7. With heavy rain expected, catastrophic Israeli airstrikes continue to target Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza

8. The arrest of a four-star general in Brazil exposes the critical role played by the military in the country's January 8, 2023 coup attempt

9. Boos greet French President Emmanuel Macron's arrival in the Indian Ocean department of Mayotte where 60,000 people are feared to be dead

10. A product of four decades of ruthless austerity for public spending and attacks on worker rights, combined with massive subsidies and tax breaks for corporations: the income gap between high-earning and low-earning households in Canada reaches a record level

11. On the pretext that it will cause “significant economic harm,” the New South Wales, Australia Labor government resorts to every mechanism at its disposal to prevent any strike action by passenger rail workers

12. More than 5,500 Staten Island, New York Amazon workers join other Amazon workers in a historic strike

13. After nearly 20 years of incarceration, surviving members of the infamous "Bali Nine," charged for drug smuggling, are returned to Australia from Indonesia; the circumstances behind their incarceration are still largely ignored

14. A "fresh start" or a betrayal? Bureaucrats of the Communication Workers Union announce an acord with the billionaire trying to take over the UK's Royal Mail

15. Socialists and unionists in Turkey are arrested and accused of being terrorists; evidence of their crime? photos of picnics, summer schools, and drinking tea at a cultural center

16. The Workers’ Action Committee Collective (CWAC) in Sri Lanka meets online to discuss the defense of School Development Officers and how to fight the ongoing police persecution of activists who defend them

17. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality in Sri Lanka will hold a public meeting to address the government's imposition of IMF austerity measures on Sri Lanka

18. “War, the class struggle and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party”: an introductory speech by Assistant National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the UK, Tom Scripps

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

1. Seeking to eliminate all limits to his power when he returns to the White House, President-elect Trump and his sidekick, the ignoramus and richest man in the world Elon Musk, intervene to keep Congress from allowing the US government to fully run without a budget

2. By striking, Amazon workers hope to win their demands, but the motivation of the Teamsters bureaucracy in calling the strike is to bolster its own damaged credibility

3. Not a word about this latest COVID-19 wave has been uttered by the Biden administration or any major outlet in the corporate media: wastewater surveillance data show that the COVID-19 pandemic has entered its tenth wave in the United States

4. California Governor Gavin Newsom tries to dampen the public's fear of contagion while declaring a state of emergency regarding the spread of H5N1 bird flu among dairy cows

5. More than 30,000 nurses, healthcare assistants and midwives across New Zealand continue strikes to win demands for better benefits and working conditions

6. Australian foreign minister declares his country's "ironclad" commitment to defending Ukraine's "democracy" and "freedom"

7. An anti-Marxist, anti-socialist pseudo-left organization to beware: "The Platypus Affiliated Society"

8. Reinstate Rachel Dawson! The University of Michigan fires a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) unit director for alleged "anti-semitic" remarks

9. "An author's moral failings are not the basis on which to judge her art"-- Nobel winning Canadian Alice Munro (1931-2024) breathed new life into the short-story genre

10. Cruel, unjust, and not uncommon: the execution of mentally ill prisoners in the United States

11. Consultation is cooperation: the premier of the German state of Saxony won't avoid working with the far-right elements that helped him get re-elected

12. Recent live events and videos from the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party

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

1. Workers strike against Amazon’s refusal to bargain

2. Wall Street celebrates earnings while auto manufacturers prepare mass worker layoffs for the beginning of next year

3. Jacobin magazine publishes an interview with the “independent” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders with the aim of promoting illusions that the Democratic Party can reform American healthcare

4. An act of “perfidy” prohibited under the Geneva Conventions is hailed by the British and American media

5. The French territory of Mayotte (its poorest), in the Indian Ocean, is battered by its worst cyclone in nearly a century; thousands did not go to shelters because they are undocumented immigrants

6. US House Speaker Mike Johnson loses Republican loyalties as the incoming Trump and Vance administration seeks to inflate the budgetary debt limit under Biden's watch: "If Democrats threaten to shut down the government... then CALL THEIR BLUFF”

7. Interest rate cutting at the US Federal Reserve appears to be coming to an end amid widespread uncertainty; a petulant Wall Street responds with selloffs

8. An Australian government budget assessment indicates that a reversal in the country's fortunes can worsen if the US Trump administration follows through with its tariff threat against China

9. In an attempt to head off growing interest in Marxism and socialism, 156 Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi) join 171 Republicans in the US House of Representatives in favor of a “Crucial Communism Teaching Act”

10. Canada Post workers seethe with anger after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) capitulated to the Liberal government’s strikebreaking and enforced a back-to-work order

11. The Spanish government, including its contingent of pseudo-leftists, bestow one of the country's highest awards to the fascist Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni

12. With more to come: Sir Keir Starmer's Labour government in the UK announces austerity plans that will cut thousands of civil service jobs

13. The UK Labour government targets anti-genocide National Health Service workers to discipline

14. UK Defense Secretary John Healey is seriously considering sending British troops to “work with the Ukrainians to help them motivate and mobilize more recruits”

15.  The UK National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, Chris Marsden, delivers his opening report at its seventh national congress

16. The Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Committee declares its opposition to the continued layoffs, school closures, and inadequate pay that public education teachers across the United States are facing

17. Opposition to the criminal militarization of German society in Berlin:  the Humboldt University Student Parliament condemns the massive spending cuts being planned at universities

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

1. Artists in Toronto and Miami demonstrate against continuing genocide of Gazans; mass murder has opened the eyes of millions to the savagery of imperialism

2. US President Biden commutes the prison sentence of a crooked judge who made millions of dollars in a kickback scheme to profit off of children being sent to juvenile detention centers and kept there

3. A Lakeland, Florida woman is charged with a felony after allegedly saying “Delay, deny, depose" to a health insurance call center representative

4. Canada's Liberal government hangs by a thread after Prime Minister Trudeau's finance minister and deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned from the cabinet in a manner calculated to inflict maximum political damage

5. About 55,000 postal workers return to work after Canada’s Liberal government imposes a draconian strike ban: the working class must respond!

6. A federal judge orders the United Auto Workers (UAW) to produce “between 10,000 and more than 100,000 electronic records” it has been withholding in an effort to block an investigation into its corruption

7. Incoming US President Donald Trump stokes an atmosphere of fear and disorientation by fueling right-wing hysteria over alleged sightings of drones above northeastern states

8. US President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of a man implicated in some of the worst war crimes committed in Latin America during the 20th century, as ambassador to Mexico, makes clear that threats of military operations and a reckless tariff war against Mexico are not mere bluster

9. US President-elect Donald Trump announces his intention to privatize the United States Postal Service

10. The extent to how today's world economy "rhymes" with that which existed during the Roaring Twenties of the last century

11. The Labor Premier for the state of Victoria in Australia announces a series of repressive laws aimed at curtailing or even abolishing the right to protest

12. Political turmoil disrupts Romanian elections, fails to stop the rise to influence of the political far-right, and browbeats widespread working-class opposition to policies pursued by the EU and NATO

13. Despite reported safety complaints, a worker is killed by a falling turbine blade at a wind farm near Melbourne, Australia

14. The assassination of a high-ranking Russian general in charge of nuclear defense is the latest in a series carried out by Ukrainian forces

15. At least 14 people have died and hundreds more have been injured after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake strikes the island-nation Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean

16. Announcing that a tentative agreement had been struck, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) abruptly calls off a strike of George Washington University resident doctors in Washington, DC

17. Despite strong opposition, dozens of public schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are slated to be closed due to budget shortfalls

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

1. Not counting tens of thousands buried under rubble, the official death toll of Gazans killed by the Israeli Defense Force is 45,000

2.  A cynical stunt designed to temporarily tame and control growing discontent among workers: the Los Angeles City Council votes to raise the minimum wage for 23,000 tourism workers

3. Madison, Wisconsin: this time, a child's chilling worldview is behind yet another American mass shooting

4. At the behest of Canada's Liberal government, the Canada Industrial Relations Board forbids determined Canadian mail delivery workers to continue their strike

5. After Bashar al-Assad's fall, European nations try to get Syrian refugees to go back to Syria

6. President Emmanuel Macron's naming of François Bayrou to head a new minority government for France does not resolve the impasse the French political establishment faces: mass popular opposition to Macron’s policies of austerity and war

7. A Teamsters' sellout and betrayal locks in a major reduction in workers’ standard of living: striking Marathon refinery workers in Detroit ratify a a seven-year agreement after a call to vote on short notice

8. The United States sends a diplomatic mission to Sri Lanka to consolidate political ties with Sri Lanka and take advantage of its strategic military value

9. Just a cost of doing business: The Walt Disney Company will pay a $233 million settlement for allegedly stealing wages from 50,000 Disneyland Park employees

10. Elections are planned to be scheduled in February, 2025 after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz loses a vote of confidence in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag

11. A major political signal: ABC News pays Donald Trump $16,000,000 for the privilege of being sued

12. Part Two: A bi-partisan House Select Committee issues a report  that misrepresents and dismisses the massive accumulated evidence that COVID-19 had a natural origin

And here is a link to that report

13. How a candidate on Trump's list to become head of the USDA suppressed efforts to eradicate the H5N1 avian influenza (bird flu) virus, which is running rampant on farms in California and spreading elsewhere

14. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer meets with British troops on Russia’s border to press NATO's war agenda

15. Turkish metal workers continue to strike in defiance of a decree signed by President Erdoğan

16. Members of the political and media establishment clamor for Australia to implement Javier Milei’s fascistic brand of Argentine capitalism

17. US Socialist Equality Party Chairman David North speaks to audiences in Melbourne, and Sydney, Australia to explain the Trotskyist movement's critical role in our present time

18. Workers and young people respond to David North's lectures in Australia

19.

 

David North on the times in which we live

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

1. In the United States, Elon Musk's personal fortune embodies the fusion of oligarchy and the government

2. Calls are growing for a mass mobilization of the working class to defend Canadian postal workers and their right to strike

3. An overview of the reactionary, imperialist-led carve up of Syria

4. Report: The average house in England is affordable for only the richest 10 percent of households

5. The late release of a US Department of Justice report about the failed January 6 coup in Washington, DC speaks to the ongoing coverup by both capitalist parties and the complicity by sections of the military and intelligence establishment in the event

6. Amid daily public demonstrations, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will now act as South Korea's acting president, after Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached and suspended from office

7. Australia’s dropping unemployment rate masks economic fragility and a fall in working-class living standards

8. By abandoning diversity statements and by firing a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion administrator, the Democratic Party-controlled Board of Regents at the University of Michigan seeks to accommodate the incoming fascistic Trump administration

9. Part One: A bi-partisan House Select Committee issues a report  that misrepresents and dismisses the massive accumulated evidence that COVID-19 had a natural origin

And here is a link to that report

10. A well-attended general assembly of students at Humboldt University in Berlin resolves to unite against right-wing and fascistic influences

11. Argentinian President Javier Milei's purported "economic miracle" delights billionaires, financial, and media establishments

12. Ken Burns' documentary, Leonardo da Vinci, provides optimism to socialists

13. A new political party alliance in Germany (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) is eager to collaborate with major parties to implement austerity measures

14. The union representing mail delivery workers in the UK paves the way for a takeover of Royal Mail by a billionaire and his private equity firm

15. Socialist Tom Scripps delivers a speech asserting the need for everyone to redouble their efforts to defend Bogdan Syrotiuk, a political prisoner in Ukraine

16. The Socialist Equality Party in the UK issues a detailed statement in defense of the Ukrainian political prisoner, Bogdan Syrotiuk

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

1. The United States funds war all over the world

2. Students, lecturers and faculty at San Francisco State University held a “funeral march” to protest the mass layoffs of lecturers planned for the 2025-2026 academic year

3. Educators, families and students denounce the decision by a charter school operator to close seven schools in Chicago that serve predominantly working class and immigrant Latino families

4. The cold-blooded calculations the US healthcare system depends on to ensure its profitability

5. The Canadian government orders 55,000 Canada Post mail delivery workers back to work under an expired contract

6. The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee calls on Canada Post workers to mobilize with them against the Liberal government’s enforced strikebreaking

7. US dockworkers' hopes about the incoming Trump administration being on their side will be soon shattered by massive attacks on workers, cuts to social spending and deregulation of corporations

8. Confusion predominates in Tennessee after its state assembly bans "inappropriate" books from public school libraries

9. Socialist youth demand New York University lift its ban against pro-Palestinian teachers and students

10. Volkswagen's solution to increasing worker pain: get rid of the workers

11. China moves to stimulate its economy in advance of anticipated US tariffs

12. Fearing growing Chinese influence in the Pacific, Australia bestows favors and hardens alliances with Papua New Guinea and Nauru

13. Under the fascist regime of Javier Milei, reforms won through decades of struggle by the Argentine working class are now being discarded

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

1. Expected to be fast-tracked through the Senate before being signed by US President Joe Biden, the US House of Representatives approves the largest annual military spending bill ever

2. Diseased and dishonest tributes: President-elect and fascist Donald Trump rings the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell on the same day that Time magazine ritualistically names him as its 2024 “Person of the Year”

3. A "Network of the Future": Layoffs are leaving thousands of UPS workers jobless

4. China demonstrates that it is prepared to swiftly retaliate to growing US economic pressure against it by restricting its export of strategic materials and by initiating an anti-trust investigation against the US silicon chip maker, Nvidia

5. Germany's ruling class reacts to the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

6. Railroaders must break the divide and conquer tactics of the US rail unions that have been selling them out by trying to ram through separate agreements in a divide-and-conquer tactic

7. Part of its far-right government’s sweeping “law and order” agenda, New Zealand passes an anti-gang insignia law that chiefly targets the most vulnerable layers of society, including the Māori minority

8. Concerned about delays of weapons being exported to Israel, the US Federal Maritime Commission threatens to investigate the denial of container ships into Spain's ports

9. "Honk if your boss sucks!" Lower-level functionary UAW workers' strike against their executive leadership ends after 10 days

10. Holding a city hostage: General Motors threatens to demolish its Renaissance Center headquarters, Detroit's tallest skyscraper and a symbol of "revival," unless it gets public subsidies

11. Part of a "dirty trick?": Sri Lankan judges grant bail to four teachers accused of being members of an unlawful demonstration

12. In the aftermath of this year's APEC summit held in Peru, business executives are found to be overwhelmingly pessimistic about the future

13. With no thanks to their representative union, the state of New South Wales in Australia is given an allowance to ban a strike by passenger rail workers

14. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to Ankara to smooth tensions arising from conflicting interests between Turkey and Israel over Syrian territory

15. Available in spite of widespread, deliberate censorship against all Palestinian films:  Alam is a sincere and honest film

16. Pakistan's big-business Muslim League led minority government and its US-backed military continue their brutal crackdown against supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party

17. A political campaign directed by the establishment and the media against the pseudo-leftist Haroun Bouazzi in Quebec is a fabricated controversy that serves to legitimize the very things that he is accused of criticizing

18. Keeping "everything on the table," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's "steel summit" is more about producing enough steel for war than it is about preserving workers' jobs

19. A UK Labour government white Paper “Get Britain Working” outlines plans to force millions of disabled people off of welfare and into looking for work

20. The Socialist Equality Party in the United Kingdom convenes its seventh annual congress to reassert the working class's orientation to genuine Marxism and socialist internationalism

21. At its seventh national congress, the Socialist Equality Party in the United Kingdom adopts resolutions to lead the working class through expected class battles ahead-- and the probability of an imperialist third world war

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

1. The conquest of Syria by the Al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia has triggered rapturous celebrations by an international milieu of pseudo-leftists: the nearly 14-year US-NATO war in Syria was not a democratic revolution

 2. President-elect Trump picks nominees for top US State Department positions from a fascistic cesspool:

None... is an opponent of the agency they will serve or of the so-called “Deep State.” On the contrary, they represent the integration of the military-intelligence apparatus and Trump’s fascist entourage

3. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (taking the state of Georgia's lead) promote tax breaks to spur economic activity that will help corporate behemoths, hurt workers in the entertainment industries, and rob California taxpayers

4. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) suspends humanitarian aid to starving Gazans due to Israeli forces allowing criminal gangs to rob truck convoys

5. Just part of the cost of doing business: OSHA fines Stellantis a little over $16,000 for the August death of one of its autoworkers at their Toledo, Ohio Jeep plant

6. Mobis, a Jeep parts-supplier in Toledo, Ohio invites laid-off workers back to work for half their previous pay

7. In preparation for a third world war, ministers from Australia and New Zealand sign a mutual defense statement modeled after their past WWI alliance

8. South Korea’s Democratic Party resubmits a motion to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol who failed to carry out a coup last week. If approved, a new presidential election must take place

9. Without taking a vote, ruling and opposition parliament members in Sri Lanka unanimously approve an interim budget to impose austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

10. More evidence of capitalist-induced climate change: the Franklin wildfire in Malibu, California continues to spread threatening homes, businesses, and natural habitats

11. Disturbing questions raised: a convicted Australian policeman, who provoked international outrage after killing an elderly woman with a taser, is still free on bail

12. Why has Australia’s main university union, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) prevented any organized struggle against programs-gutting and layoffs at Western Sydney University?

13. A leading member of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee writes to demand that striking Canada Post workers insist that all contract negotiations be made public

14. 500 nurses at Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey (not unlike workers at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York) are still exploited despite having voted to join a union more than two years ago

15. Belfast, Northern Ireland: in sharp contrast to how anti-immigrant thugs have been treated indifferently, tactical police are deployed against anti-genocide demonstrators during a visit by Hillary Clinton

16. Parents and teachers speak out against seven "devastating" charter school closures in Chicago

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

1. Departing US President Joe Biden gives a speech defending his economic record and career in service of corporate America

2. The enormous surge in Bitcoin prices and its implications for the working class: the crypto market is, by any definition, a Ponzi scheme

3. For providing a meal to a homeless person, a Florida woman is fired from her job a week before Thanksgiving

4. The manhunt for the reactionary killer of UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson ends with the arrest of Luigi Mangione in Pennsylvania

5. UnitedHealth Group, a mighty corporation scandalized by tragedy, is exposed for the systemic way it profited by denying patients the care they need

6. The purchase of a Lansing, Michigan electric vehicle battery plant leaves workers in the dark about their future

7. Mischievous graffiti and vandalism in Sydney, Australia provides the government a pretext to ramp up police powers

8. Alan Woods and the Revolutionary Communist International: pseudo-leftists that defend capitalism... and Donald Trump

9. A major blow to free speech everywhere: MIT expels a student for "offending Lockheed Martin recruiters"

10. Pro-Zionist organizations in California file lawsuits against California teacher unions and school districts to harass and intimidate free speech and dissent against Israeli genocide in Gaza

11. The man who choked a homeless and mentally ill man to death on a New York City subway, Daniel Penny, is acquitted of criminally negligent homicide

12. Conclusion of a New Zealand inquiry into its government's response to COVID: public health measures... must be “balanced” against the need to protect “the economy”

And here is a link to obtain the report

13. Political turmoil in France spills over into New Caledonia, splitting its pro-independence movement and adding to a tense political and social situation there

14. How will the UK Labour government honor its commitment to raise the country's military spending? Chancellor Rachel Reeves explains how

15. Authorities order "high-spirited" minority children not to enter Manchester, England

16. The World Socialist Web Site interviews Yvonne MacNamara about police's discrimination against Romany Gypsy and Irish Travellers children in Manchester, England

17. Bestselling novel about the "triumph and wonder" of astronauts working on the International Space Station, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, strikes a strong chord among its readers

18. Donald Trump's plan to abolish birthright citizenship repudiates a bedrock principle underlying the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution

19. After the toppling of Bashar al-Assad's regime, US and Israeli warplanes begin a massive bombing campaign in Syria

20. An Australian strategic think tank calls for a government PR campaign to entice Australian youth into military service

21. A second online meeting of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee on behalf of striking Canada Post workers elicits a strong international response

22. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, socialists discuss the political lessons of the recent US and Sri Lankan elections

23. "D. Lencho"-- Larry Moore (1948-2024), a genuine socialist

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

1. Perspective: the "Thompson affair" has laid bare immense, unbearable paradoxes in American society. How horribly backward and primitive this country is in so many ways!

2. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, the imperialist states and regional powers, led by the US and its proxies, are calculating how to carve up Syria

3. Fascists gather in Argentina: the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC

4. Striking Marathon Detroit Refinery workers are calling for support from workers in the auto, steel, trucking and other industries to support their three-month strike against the largest oil refiner in the United States

5. One in eight students in the New York City school system... is homeless

6. William Gropper: Artist of the People, currently showing at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, through January 5, 2025

7. Media polls suggest that the Australian Labor Party’s 2022 election slogan of a “better future” has proved to be a fraud

8. The Trudeau government reinterprets the powers of the Canada Industrial Relations Board to suppress workers’ struggles and make strikes illegal

9. "Do you fancy going to the Eastern Front?"-- students protest against military recruitment in Leipzig, Germany

Also at the World Socialist Web Site:

10. George Mason University students demand democratic rights for leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine

11. Sydney school students condemn disciplining of Palestinian pupil for wearing keffiyeh

12. Taiwan's ruling DPP retreats from endorsing South Korea's martial law

13.  University of Michigan-Dearborn signals "unprecedented" cuts and layoffs

14. More than 2,000 people hospitalized as UK faces "quad-demic" including COVID

15. Australian tunnel construction workers exposed to dangerous silica dust

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

1. With the complicity of factions of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian regimes, so-called “rebels,” dominated by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia, supported by the United States and Turkey, seize Syria after 14 years of war

2. In his first major interview after the US presidential election, Donald Trump's audacious fascistic agenda is presented by the establishment media as being within the scope of a "normal" presidential term

3. Preeminent American historian of Irish history, Kerby Miller discusses author Aidan Beatty and Irish historiography with the World Socialist Web Site

4. The Socialist Equality Party strongly condemns the German government's long-prepared plans to send its soldiers to Ukraine

5. Declaring war on students: the German government will impose cost-cutting austerity measures on universities to pay for military rearmament and war

6. Berlin, Germany: thousands of teachers, public employees, artists and cultural workers, carers and educators protest against the Berlin Senate’s plans to cut billions of euros from the city’s budgets for education, culture, health and more

7.  Part Two: Donald Trump’s presumptive health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to eliminate fluoridated drinking water in the United States. What are the real benefits of fluoridated water?

8. Lawmakers fail to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol over his abortive recent attempt to impose martial law

9. The political and media establishment in Australia tries to pre-empt and taint a necessary investigation of a reactionary fire-bomb attack on a synagogue in a Melbourne suburb

10. The Socialist Equality Party-affiliated Collective of Workers Action Committees in Sri Lanka issues a statement demanding the release of four teachers who were arrested for protesting government austerity measures

11. A federal district judge in the US rejects a plea deal between Boeing and the Department of Justice after Boeing pled guilty to a felony conspiracy charge for defrauding US regulators

12. The role of DSA members in the Los Angeles City Council is to support corporate-friendly measures while exploiting social problems as a justification for political opportunism

13. At the expense of their claims to fight for policies to avert climate change, Australian Greens bend over backward to cooperate with the capitalist Labor Party government to create a toothless Environmental Protection Agency

14. The United Workers Union ends a strike by more than 1,500 Australian Woolworths warehouse workers after 17 days: with nothing to show, the "win" is a fraud and should be rejected!

15. Financial interests behind the healthcare and health insurance industries react in fear to both the recent reactionary murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the public’s unsympathetic response to it

16. The painful reality confronting Ethiopians after 20 years of Chinese investment and industrialization in their country is the topic of a powerful, interesting and valuable film, Made in Ethiopia

17. A new report describes how almost a quarter of the population (24 percent) of people living in the United Kingdom live in poverty

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

1. What if American leaders were held to the same legal tests to which Amnesty International subjected Israeli leaders in a recent report it issued that accused them of intentionally committing genocide in Gaza?

2. Demonstrators trying to topple the Georgian Dream Party government are being backed by the European Union and the United States

3. The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee announces that it will hold a public online meeting tomorrow to discuss the way forward for striking Canada Post workers

4. As it was in the United States' recent election, the topic of what to do with migrants and immigrants has become a priority for German political campaigns in advance of February’s early general election

5. The Socialist Equality Party is intervening in February's German elections with a socialist plan to unite the working class against capitalism and the escalating warmongering policy of the ruling class

6. The way recently released bodycam video was edited, it is clear that authorities are trying to justify the police gunning down of a High School student in Akron, Ohio

7. The right-wing US Supreme Court signals its support for reactionary state laws that ban hormonal therapies to treat transgender adolescents

8. A Michigan district court holds an initial hearing to address unprecedented, politically motivated charges against anti-genocide student protesters

9. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration drags its feet in replying to why its investigations of workers' heat-related deaths left their employer, Amazon, blameless

10. The film No Other Land, about Zionist repression and violence in the illegally occupied West Bank, continues to win awards but still cannot be distributed in the United States

11. A trend only likely to worsen: more Australians are reaching retirement age in debt and unable to pay off their home mortgages

12. Part One: Donald Trump’s presumptive health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to eliminate fluoridated drinking water in the United States. What does this mean, and why is the media rapidly adapting to this plan?

13. France's New Popular Front coalition pivots 180 degrees to enter conciliatory talks with President Macron

14. In a draconian ruling attacking basic democratic rights, the pro-business Australian Fair Work Commission orders an end to picketing by striking workers outside a major Melbourne Woolworths’ warehouse

15. The Health Workers Rank-and File Committee in Australia delivers a message of support and advice to the 1,800 striking Woolworths and Lineage Cold Storage workers on strike

16.  Billed as a relaunch of his government amid polls showing plunging popularity, UK Prime Minister Starmer delivers a ludicrous “Plan for Change” speech

17. Turkey: nine peaceful demonstrators are arrested on charges of “violating the Law on Meetings and Demonstrations” and “insulting the President”

18. Capitol Hill rolls out a red carpet for the unelected billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy who pledge to improve efficiencies by reducing government spending

19. World Socialist Web Site reporters speak with workers at Luton and Ellesmere Port in the UK to urge them to form rank-and-file committees and fight against the closing of their van manufacturing plants

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

1. France: public discontent with President Emmanuel Macron surges following the fall of Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s unpopular minority government. However: as a direct consequence of the bankruptcy of the NFP coalition, the political forces strengthened by Barnier’s fall are not on the left, but on the right

2. Ready to collaborate with the incoming Trump administration, the United Auto Workers bureaucracy led by Shawn Fain is moving to wrap up its bogus “Keep the Promise” campaign

3. The New York Times: voice of the American Oligarchy

4. In the wake of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson's murder, the US media awakens to the public's widespread hatred for the corporate and financial interests that control the health insurance and health care industries

5.  The World Health Organization is investigating an outbreak of a new, deadly disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

6. Amnesty International formally accuses Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza:

Israeli forces have caused unprecedented destruction, at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, leveling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land, and cultural and religious sites, rendering large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable

7. Spying, raids, and mass deportations: Sir Keir Starmer's Labour government in the UK adopts immigration policies demanded by the far-right

8. The US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issues a scathing report describing corruption and routine abuses of the public by the City of Memphis and the Memphis police

9. An ambassador from China tries to warn New Zealand against joining AUKUS, a security partnership led by the United States, that is escalating a drive to war against China

10. Inviting a reactionary backlash: recent federal accounts figures reveal that Australia would be in a recession if not for government spending

11. Australian Green Party leader and pseudo-leftist Adam Bandt wants to help the Labor Party's victory chances in the next election

12. What is Germany's Left Party, and what is it trying to achieve with its "Silver Locks Mission", named after three grey-haired left-wing political veterans who have right-wing ambitions?

13. A new documentary film about the life of the controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl reveals dangerous parallels between the present and the years before the outbreak of the Second World War

14. A message from the Socialist Equality Party in Canada: the three-week-long strike by 55,000 Canada Post workers is a class battle that will impact all workers who share the same concerns about how their futures will be impacted as the nature of employment is being restructured

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

1. Biden's gift to Trump and the meaning of "justice" in America today

2. Rather than resign, French President Emmanuel Macron searches for a new prime minister after the National Assembly gives the despised Michel Barnier government the boot

3. By limiting the export of strategic minerals, China retaliates against the latest US bans on providing it high-tech equipment and computer chips

4. Incoming US President-elect Trump's handover of government to oligarchs has no precedent in American history

5. Mexico's nominally-left president, Claudia Sheinbaum, tries to curry favor with Donald Trump by thwarting immigrants trying to get to the United States 

6. With warnings of the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1990 having gone unheeded, Namibia, finds itself today the second most unequal country in the world after South Africa

7. With a shortfall of enrollments, the University of Sheffield in England launches a targeted voluntary severance scheme to be followed by layoffs

8. Why are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers greeting Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency with whoops of joy?

9. Canada's bellicose new Arctic policy aims to strengthen its influence and military capabilities in a region that is viewed as a key front in a rapidly escalating third world war between the major powers

10. Critical to Washington's elaborate plans for war with China over Taiwan: Japan and the Philippines

11. A law enforcement manhunt is underway in New York City for the person who used a silencer-equiped handgun to kill Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans

12.  Hundreds will lose jobs when Stellantis’s Opel plant in Rüsselsheim, Germany reduces production to just one shift

13. With the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers and other unions doing nothing, the Marathon refinery in Detroit punishes striking workers by taking away their healthcare insurance

14. President Yoon Suk-yeol's attempt to impose martial law in South Korea reveals the country's autocratic foundations and strips the veil off what is routinely described as a “flourishing Asian democracy”

15. More than 1,500 artists and cultural workers sign an open letter calling on the Tate Gallery in London to sever its connections with “organizations that are deeply complicit with the Israeli regime"

16. The Socialist Equality Party in Australia calls for workers from broad backgrounds to be rapidly mobilized to defend the critical Woolworths distribution workers' strike

17. Tens of thousands of public-sector health workers in New South Wales, Australia will see a further cut to real wages after their union and the government negotiated a sell-out deal

18. The close relationship between former D.C. Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Shane Lamond and Proud Boy leader and "prolific" FBI informant Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is indicative of the relationship of police to fascist militia groups

19. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality denounces anti-democratic measures at George Mason University in Northern Virginia

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

1. In a distinct echo of Trump’s lashing out at “the enemy within," the unpopular South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol tries to impose martial law

2. With public education in the United States in crisis (tens of thousands of teachers and staff being laid off, schools closing by the scores, and vital programs being axed), Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association downplay the fascist character of the incoming Trump administration

3. The fall of Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government in France will not be enough to resolve the serious problems workers face in France

4. Violent dawn raids and arrests of seven people in north London accused of supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party have sparked a furious response

5. The US and NATO-backed war for regime change in Syria, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions and the destruction of the the country's infrastructure, has been revived with major help from Turkey

6. Weeks of horse trading between establishment election winners and one or more third parties are expected to take place to sort out the low-turnout elections just held in Ireland

7. The IG Metall automakers' union in Germany initiates dead-end one-day strikes at nine Volkswagen plants

8. The University of Michigan threatens a legacy student group with a two-to-four-year suspension for being pro-Palestinian

9. A senior Trump transition team member's question to Rolling Stone Magazine: “How much should we invade Mexico?”

10. An intriguing film from Morocco, The Mother of All Lies, includes memorable scenes that recall brutal crackdowns on bread riots in Casablanca in 1981

11. Due to funding cuts and stringent new rules limiting foreign students in Australia, over 2,000 university jobs will disappear there

12. As part of a so-called “Network of the Future” plan, UPS plans to lay off hundreds in Oklahoma and California

13. Kicking and punching, Sri Lankan police attack a peaceful protest of teachers in the Colombo suburbs

14. In opposition to government austerity measures, 36,000 nurses, healthcare assistants and midwives in New Zealand public hospitals strike for eight hours

15. Incoming US president Trump's tariff threats are an expression of the crisis of US imperialism and foretell the possibility of world war

16. Barbara Slaughter, David North and Eric London expose Aidan Beatty's slanderous allegations at an Institute of Historical Research seminar

And here is an audio recording of their response

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

1. Hunter Biden gets mercy and Trump gets a political gift: A son's crimes trading on his family name hardly compare to the crimes committed by his father, US president Biden, who facilitated Israeli genocide in Gaza, instigated the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, and authorized mass spying on the people of the United States and the entire world

2. A major escalation in a global war: US backed, NATO-supported, Al Qaeda-linked militias storm Aleppo, Syria, Trump issues threats, Russia and Iran end trading with the US dollar

3. As parliamentary elections are being used by the ruling class to pave the way for an extreme right-wing government in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz travels to Kiev to provide arms and reassurances to Volodymyr Zelensky

4. Without explaining how it will work, the Australian Labor government pass vague, but far-reaching laws to ban children under age 16 from accessing social media

5. In Austin, Texas, Tesla factory workers are exposed to hexavalent chromium, a dangerous chemical that was highlighted in the biographical film, Erin Brockovich

6. Victoria, Australia paramedics are voting this week on a sell-out agreement drawn up by the state Labor government in collaboration with their unions

7. How an 18-year-old government fund, the so-called "Future Fund" in Australia, makes profits from war

8. Australian university and school educators send letters of support to the World Socialist Web Site on behalf of striking Woolworths distribution workers

9. Despite massive public opposition, Denver, Colorado closes 7 public schools and eliminates grades in others to cope with looming funding cuts which it blames on dropping enrollments (due largely to families leaving because the city has become unaffordable)

10. Pathways to hazardous child labor?  Trump's pick to head the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, is enthusiastic about “apprenticeship programs” in secondary education

11.  Presented as a reinterpretation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain is a play that leaves no buzzword unspoken in its fabrication and then joyous demolition of a world of “textbook toxic masculinity”

12. Changes to Medicare and Medicaid drug coverage in the United States will require the endorsement of the incoming Trump administration, which has unequivocally stated it plans to cut federal spending

13. In its latest move to intimidate and silence opposition to the war in Gaza, Britain uses an anti-terrorism act to charge a prominent anti-Zionist activist, Tony Greenstein

14. Quebec’s big business, pro-independence Parti Québécois pledges to drastically reduce immigration should it (as expected) form Quebec’s next provincial government

15. Autoworkers in Thailand are not immune from job layoffs that are affecting autoworkers in other countries

16. Stellantis CEO, Carlos Tavares, resigns for failing to cut costs quickly enough for Wall Street and European investors

17. The strike by 55,000 postal workers at Canada Post is now well into its third week

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

1. Amazon worker protests call attention to poverty and brutal working conditions which generally reach a low point due to extreme overwork during the holiday season

2. School districts, community colleges and public universities across California are grappling with budget cuts, layoffs and campus closures

3. High rates of truancy in the United States are being weaponized by the incoming Trump administration to justify Wall Street’s demand for the privatization of public education

4. A Netflix offering, Woman of the Hour, "crowds out a meaningful examination" of a bizarre period of serial killing that took place in the US during the '70s and '80s

5. President-elect Trump rewards January 6 insurrection co-conspirator Kashyap “Kash” Patel by nominating him to direct the FBI

6. A freedom of information request reveals the precarious livelihoods provided lecturers and researchers at England's prestigious Oxford University

7. In spite of having made big promises to the Berlin, Germany transportation workers it represents, the Verdi public service union loses its Berlin staff council majority for the first time

8. An Australian State of the Climate report describes how extreme heat events will be exacerbated by increased global warming

Here is a direct link to the report

9.  With the assistance of police, the Australian Woolworths chain tries to break a distribution workers' picket line by bringing in scab workers on buses

10. The former Australian Labor Party premier of the state of Victoria demands the de-funding of any organization that criticizes Israel at an awards event

11. A major setback for French imperialism (especially when Russia is bolstering its military presence in Africa's Sahel): Chad ends its defense agreement with France; also, Senegal  announces that France should close its military bases there

12. Recognizing the central role the global dollar plays in maintaining the financial hegemony of the US, President-elect Trump increasingly threatens severe tariffs against all renegade countries

13. Billionaire-controlled private equity firms and financial institutions wield unprecedented control over public healthcare in the United States

14. Every escalatory action taken by the Biden administration against Russia was preceded by an equally categorical denial, it now denies reports it will include nuclear weapons to Ukraine as a part of more massive assistance being sent

15. By forbidding the commemoration of Tamil war heroes, the Sri Lankan government reneges on its promises to stand for democratic rights, national unity and against communalism and racism

16. Unions allow Massachusetts' North Shore teachers' strikes to end with none of the strikers' main concerns getting addressed

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