1. The breakdown of the capitalist system is not a prospect for the future, it is already underway and there is no solution within its framework

2. Although determined to rule as a dictator, the US president, Donald Trump, remains a slave of financial markets and billionaires

3. The US Trump administration’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development and axing foreign aid sends the anti-government opposition in the south Caucasus country of Georgia into crisis

4. Borderland: The Line Within is a documentary film that explores the “border industrial complex,” or the profitable systems, worth billions of dollars annually, built around capturing, incarcerating, and deporting immigrants

“The meaning of the title Borderland: The Line Within is at the heart of the film.” asserts director Yates. “The border is not geographical line, but rather a vast border industrial complex entrenched in every corner of the U.S. It is inside each and every undocumented person because wherever they may be, the fear of being discovered and deported is looming, yet in the shadow of the border industrial complex, they are quietly creating networks and building power.”

5. Sri Lanka president Dissanayake’s call for a unified national response to Washington’s new tariffs means trouble for Sri Lanka's working class and rural masses

6. A Socialist Equality Party candidate in Australia's federal election takes a stand with public housing residents in the state of Victoria against drives to privatize public housing

7.  Socialist Equality Party candidate Taylor Hernan's address at the Neighborhood Action Committee meeting

8. Rank-and-file teachers and school support staff in Chicago hold their noses to vote on a tentative agreement for a new four-year contract signed by the Chicago Teachers Union and the Democratic Party-controlled school district and city government

9. A third-year international student at the University of Florida, is handed over to ICE officials and disappeared to a Miami-Dade detention facility before electing to return home

10. More than a month after Mahmoud Khalil was abducted by government agents outside his apartment, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio admits that the Colombia University graduate student was targeted solely because of his opposition to genocide

Link to the Department of Homeland Security documents submitted in the immigration court case of Mahmoud Khalil

11. The catastrophic collapse of a nightclub's roof in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, shocks people around the world

12. The coalition government of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Germany will be the most right-wing German government since the Nazis held power

13. On the heels of the unprecedented mass layoffs of over 10,000 federal public health workers in the US, the anti-vaccine zealot Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "sells snake oil" on a tour of the measles-ravaged Southwest

14. The president of George Mason University in Northern Virginia welcomes the US Trump administration's attack on the democratic rights of students as part of its crackdown on anti-genocide protests

15. Police serve a warrant to snatch an anti-Trump administration protester from a protest rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan

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

17. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. The United States sees Turkey as a critical ally in its plans for full sovereignty in the Middle East, including preparations for war against Iran

2. Israel maintains deadly military air strikes on Palestinians after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US President Donald Trump

3. A message from the Socialist Equality Party in Canada: Workers in Canada and the United States must reject nationalism and organize with workers of all countries to stop capitalism's inevitable slide to world war

4. A strike by 28,000 teachers in Chicago, one of America’s largest school districts, would be a catalyst for a broader, nationwide fight against Trump’s savage budget cuts to public education

5. Like every topic being raised by the establishment in Australia's federal election campaign, the “debate” on public school funding is being characterized on the one hand by misleading and false claims, and on the other by complete silence on the critical issues confronting workers and youth

6. Cutting tens of millions of dollars earmarked to provide a lifeline to its homeless, Los Angeles, California turns its focus on marketing illusions and opening up profit opportunities

 This follows the pattern already set in cities like New York, where outsourcing homelessness services has enriched private contractors while failing to deliver lasting solutions. These changes reflect a conscious class strategy to commodify and profit from poverty while shifting the burden of [the homelessness] crisis onto the working class.

7. The Transport Workers Action Committee issues a call to BVG public transit workers in Berlin, Germany to form a committee to enforce an overwhelmingly agreed-upon all-out strike, which their union has been trying to suppress 

8. A collective agreement at Deutsche Post DHL in Germany angers letter, post, and parcel delivery workers because it will mean cutting thousands of jobs

9. The Postal, Public Service, and BVG Action Committees invite workers to join an online meeting today to unite against a sellout labor contract being pushed by the United Services Union, Verdi, in Germany

10. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) calls for a mobilization against the Trump administration’s escalating campaign of terror targeting international students in the United States

They also warn:

 Democratic rights cannot be defended by appealing to the Democratic Party— a party of Wall Street, war and political reaction. The various pseudo-left organizations that orbit the Democrats are laying political traps for students and workers, seeking to channel opposition back into the very forces responsible for the crisis.

11.  In New South Wales, Australia, more than 5,000 doctors strike to demand  a 30 percent pay rise, an end to serious understaffing, punishing working hours, and unsafe conditions in the public hospitals

 The strike, despite immediately targeting the NSW Labor government, is of national significance. It is being held amid a federal election campaign, in which Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition and the corporate media are desperately trying to suppress any expression of the immense anger in the working class over the cost-of-living crisis, real wage reductions and the decimation of social services, including health and education.

12. Striking doctors, nurses and other health workers in New South Wales, Australia speak to reporters of the World Socialist Web Site 

13. Leonard Slatkin conducts a New York Philharmonic presentation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, one of the greatest musical compositions of the 20th century

 The composition and the content of the Shostakovich Fifth cannot be separated from the events of the decade in which it was composed, in the Soviet Union in particular. This was the decade of the Depression, the rise of Nazism, the bloody consolidation of Stalin’s rule and the emergence of the storm clouds leading to the Second World War. It is therefore remarkable, although not too surprising, that the New York Philharmonic program notes of two weeks ago—while including a separate section entitled “At the Time,” and listing events of 1937 such as the coronation of King George VI in England, the Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey and the opening of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and New York’s Lincoln Tunnel—make no mention of the frame-up trials in the USSR.

14. Gunboat diplomacy aimed at subordinating Mexico and the wider region to colonial status:  the US Pentagon threatens to target drug cartels with drone strikes

15. In an attack on the free speech rights of the entire working class in the US and internationally, the US Department of Homeland Security announces that it will begin screening and logging social media accounts and flagging what it deemed “antisemitic” activity

16. The government of Papua New Guinea admits that police “successfully tested” placing a block on social media platforms, including Facebook

17. A 17-year employee of New York City’s Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital speaks to the World Socialist Web Site about the vital teaching hospital's impending closure

18. Holding out for an agreement with Washington, the European Union responds to US tariffs by implementing modest, incremental tariffs of its own

19. An announcement by US President Trump of a pause in the implementation of his tariffs, ostensibly to allow negotiations to take place, is another expression of the deepening economic and financial crisis of American imperialism and its state

Trump declared that, because China had retaliated against US tariff hikes, tariffs on Chinese goods would be raised to 125 percent “effective immediately.”

In an earlier period, such an economic blockade would have been recognized as an act of war.

20. The US Supreme Court declines to intervene in the execution of a man in the state of Florida, the third execution in the state, and the 11th in the US so far this year

21. Preceded by journalist strike, tens of thousands of workers in Greece hold a general strike to demand higher pay, end austerity, and win justice for the victims of the 2023 Tempi train collision disaster

22. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) calls for youth and workers to oppose the UK Labour government's collaboration with the fascist US Trump administration and its crackdown on students protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

24. The UK Labour government’s repressive measures against the striking sanitation workers in Birmingham are aimed against the entire working class

The build-up of 17,000 tons of waste on the streets of Birmingham— underscoring the essential role bin workers perform— was seized on by the Labour council to declare a “major incident” on March 31, giving itself extraordinary powers to effectively illegalize strike action and enforce sweeping pay cuts. It has drafted in extra agency workers and additional vehicles to bolster strike-breaking operations and called on support from neighboring councils. 

24. Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa

• Greece: 

Hundreds of thousands hold a general against continuing austerity

• Spain:

Tens of thousands demonstrate across Spain for affordable housing and against property speculation

Hundreds of Spanish employees at the multinational giant, Bridgestone Corporation, begin the first of several strike days 

• Italy:
  

Students and teachers join a national strike and demonstrations against government cuts to education

• Belgium: 
  

Rail workers strike against government austerity measures affecting pensions, working conditions and rail services

•  United Kingdom:

   Academic staff at London’s Brunel University walk out over job cuts

Cleaners and passenger-assistance workers at London's Heathrow airport strike

• Middle East Region:
  

Strikes protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the West Bank take place across the region... and beyond including: Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia and Turkey

• Israel: 
  

Israeli Foreign Workers Administration staff strike over workloads

Prior to the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza there were around 160,000 foreign workers. Israel relied on the labor of around 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank traveling into Israel each day to work. Since the beginning of the war, this source of labor stopped.

Israel plans to double the quota of foreigners entering the country and planned to employ around an additional 500 Israeli workers to administer the increase. However, because of low wages it failed to attract enough applicants, increasing the workload on the current staff.

•  Iraq:
  

  Teachers and public sector workers walk out over pay and conditions

• Iran:
  

Cost-of-living protests continue across Iran: among telecommunications retirees in Ahvaz, Bijar, Marivan, and Rasht, and among oil workers on the island of Lavan in southern Iran

• Nigeria:
  

Protests met by police repression take place across the country against economic hardship and loss of democratic right

Federal government employees in Ibadan protest non-payment of wages

Polytechnic staff strike in Ondo State over non-payment of salaries            

• South Africa:

waste collection workers in Johannesburg and sanitation workers in KwaZulu-Natal protest abysmal work conditions

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

26. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1.  The US Supreme Court's defense of President Trump's mass deportations is a new milestone in the collapse of the constitutional framework of the United States and a component part of an overarching conspiracy to establish a dictatorship

2. The "complacency and cynicism" of a "more or less" that carries a truckload of meaning:  former US President Barack Obama gives a speech at an expensive private college

3. The US Department of Homeland Security begins revoking the temporary protected status of tens of thousands of immigrants, who legally entered the United States using an app provided by the department's enforcement agency

4.  Autoworkers face layoffs and worse conditions while UAW President Shawn Fain defends Trump's tariffs

For decades the UAW has used anti-foreigner demagogy to deflect the anger of workers over concessions and job cuts away from the union bureaucracy and against brother and sister workers in Asia and Latin America. One tragic product of this was the death of Chinese American draftsmen Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death in 1982 by a Chrysler foreman and his unemployed son who thought Chin was Japanese.

5. Union bureaucracies, including the National Association of Letter Carriers, are enabling US President Donald Trump and his MAGA-fascists to privatize the US Postal Service

In the face of growing frustration and anger in the working class, pseudo-left factions of the bureaucracy are deploying “rank-and-file” rhetoric to prevent this opposition from breaking free of the union’s control. In the USPS, one of the main such groups is Build a Fighting NALC (BFN).

BFN insists that workers cannot take action without the permission and support of the bureaucracy. Rather than encouraging a genuine rank-and-file rebellion, they falsely claim that workers can pressure the bureaucracy to reform itself and lead a fight.

6. Musicians, artists, writers, and athletes discover how an authoritarian regime or a military dictatorship operates

7. A report from Sri Lanka: "If one eye hurts, the whole body feels it"

8. New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government publicly downplays the effects of US President Donald Trump's tariffs

9. After three years of war, the Putin regime is increasingly unable to control the war's explosive social consequences, which have exacerbated the internal contradictions of Russian capitalism

While [US President] Trump is interested in a deal that will allow the US to exploit the raw material resources of Ukraine and Russia at the expense of its imperialist rivals in Europe, he is increasingly dissatisfied with Putin’s dragging out the negotiations. Now, these tensions are exacerbated by a global trade war.

A peace treaty, even if it is reached, no matter how much verbal guarantees and ostensible actions accompany it, will only be a temporary truce.

10. A veteran BNSF freight train railworker responds to the World Socialist Web Site's call for exploited workers to bypass the trap of corrupt unions to form independent, democratic, rank-and-file committees

11. Laid-off National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health workers attending an anti-Trump rally in Pittsburgh describe what it was like to be targets of DOGE's "chainsaw"

The workers take great pride in their contributions to workplace safety. “We are saving lives. We are making workplaces safer,” said one worker. “If you have to wear a respirator at your job, it must have a NIOSH tag. We certify that those respirators do what they are supposed to do.”

12. While other countries respond to US President Donald Trump's tariffs by seeking to talk and negotiate, China digs in for a major battle

Ever since President Obama launched his anti-China “Pivot to Asia” in 2011, announced from the floor of the Australian parliament, many countries in the region have been seeking to maintain a balancing act between China, to which they are deeply connected economically, and the US.

13. A televised election debate between Australian establishment candidates delivers voters paltry promises and flat-out lies while concealing enormous shocks to come, whichever party takes office

14. The Socialist Equality Party in Germany calls for public service workers to reject the Verdi union's betrayals and form independent action committees to prepare an all-out unlimited strike

15. Protesters rally in Berlin, Germany to oppose state actions targeting four anti-genocide activists

Katja Rippert of the Socialist Equality Party: 

In the United States, we are once again witnessing the enforced conformity [Gleichschaltung] of universities. University administrations are bowing to Trump’s demands and enabling the deportation of opponents of the war.

Here in Germany, too, the elites are building a police state. Despite their differences with Trump, they agree on one point: any protest within their own population should be suppressed by all means.

16. A political ride lasting seven hours: the World Socialist Web Site reports on a pseudo-leftist "Summit of Resistance" in the UK which promoted an impossible reform of capitalism, not resistance to it

17. The Postal Workers Rank-and-File in the UK will host an online meeting this coming weekend to discuss the CWU-Royal Mail "USO reform"

Anger toward the Communication Workers Union’s naked collusion with the company is growing. But this opposition must be organized and prepared in advance with a worked-out strategy

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

19. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC to report on the US-Israeli campaign to displace or exterminate the Palestinian people and annex their land

2. Myanmar's earthquake survivors face increased hardships due to the priorities of the ruling junta and the stinginess of the United States under the Trump administration

3. US President Donald Trump's executive order to take control of the District of Columbia furthers his efforts to establish a dictatorship by means of cracking down on demonstrations, heightening police presence and targeting agencies in the District

4. Nine months after a federal judge ruled in favor of Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate Will Lehman, ordering the Department of Labor to revisit his challenge to the fraudulent 2022–23 UAW election, the Department of Labor has yet to issue any response

Will Lehman in 2023 

Lehman’s campaign gave voice to a widespread desire for rank-and-file control and a growing political radicalization among the working class. It demanded the dismantling of the bureaucracy, the defense of workers’ democratic rights, and the building of a political movement of the working class, independent of both capitalist parties. The continued stonewalling by the Department of Labor underscores once again the need for workers to build new organizations of struggle, independent of the union apparatus and the state.

5. UAW President Shawn Fain ignores US President Donald Trump reign of terror on US college campuses while embracing his “America First” policies

6. In advance of federal elections, and as a display of political unity behind US preparations for war against China, the Australian establishment announces plans to terminate a Chinese company’s lease of a civilian port at Darwin

7. A Socialist Equality Party candidate explains that he is standing as a candidate in Australia's upcoming federal elections to represent the working class, not the ruling elite 

8. US President Donald Trump roils world markets by threatening a further 50 % hike in tariffs on goods coming from China

9. Paris, France:  Two rival demonstrations take place for and against a court ruling which prevents the neo-fascist Rassemblement National political party leader, Marine Le Pen, who was convicted for embezzling, from standing in the 2027 presidential elections

10. The Socialist Equality Party in France issues a statement: the only way to stop the drive of the capitalist oligarchy towards dictatorship and war is to build an independent movement among workers and youth in a struggle for socialism

10. A sixty-two-year-old skilled tradesman is tragically crushed to death while working at the Stellantis automotive engine plant in Dundee, Michigan

11. While the working class in Spain faces an unrelenting cost-of-living crisis, the pseudo-leftist government responds to US President Donald Trump’s trade war tariffs with a massive US $15.66 billion corporate bailout

12. War and economic concerns push leading representatives of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats to negotiate a future government in Germany

13. Heavy rainstorms, tornadoes and flooding strike multiple states in the US South and Midwest over the weekend, destroying structures and causing at least 23 fatalities

14. A new documentary film recounting the Gaza Solidarity protests that took place at Columbia University in New York City in April 2024, The Encampments, has been met with significant support and enthusiasm

Mahmoud Khalil in The Encampments

15. Among the targets of the US Trump administration's trade war are the ASEAN countries of Southeast Asia-- especially Vietnam 

16. A recent government report regarding the deaths of six Impact Plastics workers during the catastrophic flooding of Hurricane Helene last year is nothing short of a whitewash of profit-driven employer negligence

Here is a link to that report

17. Washington's plans to create an anti-Iran axis between Ankara, Damascus and Tel Aviv, are being hindered by the growing rivalry between the Turkish and Israeli bourgeoisies and Israeli missile attacks on Syrian military targets

18. Under the guise of tackling people smuggling, Sir Keir Starmer's UK Labour government hosts a 40-nation summit to outline a common right-wing anti-immigrant, austerity agenda 

19. Speaking at a shop stewards meeting, a Kenyan labor leader urges the government to crack down on online opposition

20. Workers Struggles: The Americas

• Chile: 

Thousands of workers in cities across Chile hold strikes and protests denouncing the Boric administration’s “broken promises” on wages, working conditions, education and health 

• Brazil: 

Hundreds of peasant families occupy mining and plantation lands because the Lula administration has done nothing to advance land reform despite repeated assurances

• Panama: 

Four educators strike for 48-hours to protest the government of President Jose Raul Murino's proposals to privatize Social Security pensions

• Illinois, United States: 
  

Illinois State University reaches a tentative contract heading off a strike by the union representing 650 tenured and tenure-track faculty

•  Connecticut, United States:

   Nursing home workers rally in Hartford to facilitate bargaining for higher wages
  

• Montreal and Laval regions, Quebec, Canada: 

Thousands of education workers including kitchen and office staff employed at early childhood care centers extend a three-day strike an additional two days

• British Columbia, Canada: 

1,200 medical technicians are in the eighth week of a rotating strike to press their demands for wage equity, better health and safety protections, and improved scheduling processes

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

22. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. Millions protest Trump!

2. Saturday's mass demonstrations were a turning point in the struggle against the Trump administration's efforts to establish a fascistic dictatorship in the United States

In a few of the major cities where rallies were held, such as Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the speakers' platform was dominated by Democratic Party members of Congress and leaders of the public employee unions. They had nothing to offer in terms of a program for fighting Trump. In other cities, including New York and Detroit, there were no speakers at all, an even more open expression of political bankruptcy.

In contrast, there was a powerful response among thousands of protesters of all ages and backgrounds to the political perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, wherever we intervened. Our statement denouncing the Democrats and the union bureaucracy resonated broadly, as did our call to unify the working class internationally against war, dictatorship, and the assault on living standards.

3.  BEWARE ALL! Today's immigrant jails will be utilized tomorrow to detain workers who oppose the US Trump administration’s fascistic government

4. In an interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi reviews her academic research and expertise, recounts the circumstances of her firing by Yale Law School, and explains the political context within which freedom of speech and political opposition to the Trump administration are being attacked within the United States

5. Another unvaccinated child dies of measles in Texas

6. Over 400 Jewish students, faculty and staff at the University of  Michigan in the US sign open letters denouncing the school's “weaponization of antisemitism.”

7. Filmmaker James Longley, responding to the initial silence of the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about the recent savage beating of No Other Land director Hamdan Ballal in the West Bank, sends the World Socialist Web Site an eloquent statement describing his perspective on the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza and the criminals responsible:

 ...I completely understand the cowardice of the Academy leadership and their beige, formless silence. That is why I have deep empathy for their spineless, obsequious non-apology and for their inability to speak the truth. They are right to be afraid. Their fear is the soul of prudence. I am also afraid, and I understand them. 

8. Sir Keir Starmer's UK Labour government is the only Labour government to increase child poverty

9. Starmer's UK Labour government approves using police to break a sanitation workers' strike in Birmingham, England

9. An estimated 5,000 defiant doctors in New South Wales, Australia plan to strike

10. A forensic analysis of the bodies, along with a smartphone video captured by one of those killed, shows that the official Israeli narrative regarding the deaths and mass burial of 15 Palestinian aid workers near Rafah on March 23 is nothing but a lie

As they have done throughout the 18-month-long genocide in Gaza, in which more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, the Israeli military concocted the lie that their troops fired on unmarked vehicles at night, suspecting them to be transporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

12. A labor contract proposed by Chicago's Teachers Union and its Mayor is bluntly, not worth the paper it is written on

13. A new low marks the Communication Workers Union leadership and its standing among the UK's Royal Mail post delivery workers

14. Last week's equities selloff was the fourth most significant in the post-war period-- investors worry that Trump’s tariff war against the world is increasingly resembling the Wall Street crash of 2008

15. The topic of war dominates this year's Leipzig, Germany Book Fair

16. Allegations of “terrorism” and “threats to national security” are being exploited by Sri Lanka's government to intimidate and silence peaceful critics of Israel’s mass murder in Gaza

17. Responding to its members’ outrage, the National Nurses United union recently issued an anemic statement opposing President Donald Trump’s executive order abolishing negotiated federal union contracts at 18 government departments deemed vital to “national security”

The union’s main concern is not about workers’ rights but the disruption of its mutually beneficial relations with hospital management and the state

19. This week in history:

• 25 years ago: Nazi revisionist historian David Irving loses libel case in the UK

• 50 years ago: Final major battle of Vietnam War

• 75 years ago: Truman administration issues program for Cold War militarization

• 100 years ago: F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby

 

 The original cover of Fitzgerald's novel

16. In the lead-up to the May 3 federal election, Australia’s unions launch their campaigns for the re-election of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Labor government, which are increasingly recognized as being responsible for a deepening cost-of-living crisis

20. The Socialist Equality Party announces its candidates for Australia's May 3 federal elections 

The SEP candidates are alone in telling the working class the truth: that the election will resolve nothing, and that the incoming government, whichever party leads it, will deepen the bipartisan agenda of austerity and war. The SEP is not directing its campaign to the political and media establishment, as is every other party, but to the development of an independent movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist perspective.

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

22. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

The past, present, and future of genuine socialism

In a casual conversation, David North, the National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, explains the basics of Trotskyism, today's genuine Marxism 

1. With hundreds of thousands of people expected to demonstrate today in opposition to the Trump administration, the urgent question facing workers and youth is: What is to be done?

2. In the face of an horrific new phase of the Gaza genocide, the US establishment media launches a two-pronged effort to cover up US-Israeli war crimes. The first is silence. The second is the promotion of demonstrations taking place in Gaza, whose slogans allegedly included opposition to Hamas

3. As a part of its plan to wreck the democratic principles embedded in American culture, the US Trump administration issues an executive order to impose a fascist-like conformity on the Smithsonian Institution

4. Public sector workers in Germany must link up with their counterparts in other nations if they are to surmount the Verdi union's determination to chain them to the government's push for war and requirements for greater austerity

5. The Berlin state government orders four anti-genocide activists to either leave Germany by April 21 or face compulsory deportation

6. The official Australian election campaign, marked by banalities, lies and phony promises from all the establishment parties, are suppressing any discussion of what is to come after the election

7. US autoworkers, respond to the impact of US President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs by turning their growing anger against the UAW union's leadership, which has aligned itself with the fascist administration  

A worker at the Ford Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan:

When I go to Kroger’s I can tell they’re short-staffed and they’re pushing people to do more and more; like they’re wearing five hats. it’s too much. It’s everybody.

8. One day after a US District Judge reluctantly drops federal charges of corruption against New York City mayor Eric Adams, Adams announces that he will pass up the Democratic Party primary and run as an independent in November to pursue a second term

9. Canada retaliates against the US with its own tariffs-- a recent projection by the Brookings Institution predicts that tit-for-tat tariffs between the neighboring countries could result in the loss of more than 510,000 jobs in Canada— or approximately 2.5 percent of all its employment

10. South Korea’s Constitutional Court upholds the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk-yeol; a special presidential election will likely take place on June 3

11. A recent survey reveals that “hot-bedding”— the practice of tenants sharing a bed in shifts to reduce rental costs— is becoming more common in Australia

12. For the second time in less than four months, the US Senate resoundingly votes in support of continuing the genocide in Gaza by rejecting two resolutions aimed at blocking some $9 billion in weapons to the Israeli government

Under conditions where President Donald Trump has promised to “take over” the Gaza Strip and, with the Israeli government, oversee the forced displacement of the remaining 2.1 million residents, a majority of Democratic senators voted against putting minimal restrictions on US arms transfers to Israel. No Republicans voted in favor of either resolution.

13. An Australian locum psychiatrist (one who works on a temporary, contract basis, often filling in for other psychiatrists) speaks to the World Socialist Web Site about the increasingly desperate situation facing public sector psychiatrists and their patients:

Right now, the mental health system is failing patients, their families, and the community, and it’s quite disheartening. I’m now faced with lots of patients who really should be case managed in the community. 

We’re not able to provide the ongoing case management, care and treatment these patients need and should be getting in the community. They go between the police, the emergency department and the inpatient ward in a cycle that just repeats itself and is putting a big strain on emergency services as well. There are lots of police and ambulance call outs because of the increasing number of mental health presentations.

14. The union that represents 6,000 nurses at Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Northern California (CRONA) blocks a strike by announcing a sellout tentative labor agreement

15. The collective bargaining committee of the service trade union Verdi accepts a wage agreement at Germany’s postal service (Deutsche Post) that includes a reduction in real wages and job cuts for mail delivery workers

16. Sri Lanka’s ruling political party is campaigning for the May 6 local government elections on the basis of lies, hypocrisy and false promises-- it's chief agenda is to squeeze the most money possible out of workers to begin repaying IMF loans for which repayment has been postponed to 2028

17. China retaliates against US tariffs

 There are now multiple warnings in the financial press and in business circles that the world is being plunged into an all-out trade war, akin to and possibly even more damaging than that of the 1930s, which played a crucial role in intensifying the Great Depression.

18. Workers Struggles in Asia, Australia and the Pacific:

• India: 

ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala enters eighth week 

Nestlé factory workers in Goa begin hunger strike protest

Diamond workers strike indefinitely in Surat

• Bangladesh: 

TNZ Group garment workers protest for unpaid wages in Gazipur

• Australia: 

Castlemaine Perkins brewery workers strike for pay rise and protection of existing conditions

Kellogg’s factory workers in Sydney threatened with lockout

Noosa council workers hold third strike for higher pay

Mental health workers strike and march on Victorian parliament

Strathcona Girls Grammar school teachers to strike for pay rise and reduced workload

Newcastle bus drivers take action for pay rise

Victoria’s Forest Fire Management workers escalate industrial action

Workers at Victoria’s public mental health facilities continue industrial campaign

• New Zealand: 

Hospitality workers protest over low minimum wage

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

20. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. The number of personal tragedies mount as ICE conducts gestapo raids on immigrants all across the United States; hundreds of people have been injured or killed trying to circumvent Trump's wall at the US-Mexico border

2. What can a one-day strike accomplish? With a 19,000 strong workforce University of California workers are in a powerful position to carry out a fight against the assault on the working class, but the question at hand is a struggle against the Democratic party and the trade union apparatus

3. The US Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is seeking the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December, 2024

 The high-profile case against Mangione is being seized upon by the Trump administration to advance its bloodthirsty drive to revive the federal death penalty. However, any misguided public sentiment that has held up Mangione’s actions as a justified response to the evils of the profit-hungry healthcare system cannot counter the government’s reactionary drive to send him to his death. Individual violence is a retrograde reaction that does nothing to reform the healthcare system or ameliorate any of the scourges of American capitalism. This requires a unified, working class response based on a revolutionary socialist program.

4. Economic insanity-- US President Donald Trump's tariff measures have been launched under the banner “Made in America,” but there is not a single commodity, in the US or anywhere else, which is not the outcome of a global production process

5. European Union officials respond to global tariffs imposed by the US Trump administration by moving to impose tens of billions of euros in tariffs on US products

6. Germany's foreign minister assures Ukraine of further military aid; meanwhile a preliminary German Panzer brigade is commissioned in Lithuania, the first deployment of German combat troops to Eastern Europe since the end of World War II

 Eighty years after the fall of the Third Reich and the most horrific crimes in human history— the Holocaust of 6 million Jews and Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union— nothing less than the complete unleashing of German militarism, including nuclear armament, is on the agenda once again. In particular, the warmongers in the media leave no doubt about this.

7. France's Overseas Minister returns to New Caledonia for "discussions" about the health of the island's future-- of a variety that could hardly be worse than it already is and one that would not detract from France's geopolitical interests in the Pacific Region

8. Among the issues a report from the Committee for Public Education in Australia addressed in a recent international online meeting are the unprecedented challenges facing Australian schools, and the financial cuts to public education in the United States taking place under its president, Donald Trump

9. The official Australian election campaign, as it’s being waged by the major parties and the corporate media, is a fairy tale. The Socialist Equality Party is alone in sounding the alarm about the danger of a global war, and in fighting to build a movement of the working class against it

10. The multinational automotive company Stellantis answers Trump tariffs by idling manufacturing plants and laying off workers across North America

11. In the latest of actions by the Trump administration to decimate public education in the United States, the Department of Education abruptly ends billions in pandemic relief funding, throwing ongoing programs in school districts across the US into chaos

12.  By nearly doubling the money to be spent on army recruitment campaigns, the UK Labour government under Sir Keir Starmer is using unemployment and cuts to welfare to drive young people into the armed forces as cannon fodder

13. A recent report from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research reports that while some in the United Kingdom enjoy a standard of living comparable to the most prosperous regions of Europe, the poorest are now poorer than the poorest parts of countries like Slovenia and Malta

Here is a direct link to the report

14. As a strike of video game performers in Hollywood enters its ninth month chiefly over Artificial Intelligence (AI) issues, what workers want is one thing, what their union will agree to is another

15. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality will hold public meetings in Colombo, Jaffna, and Matara as part of their campaign for the May 6 local government elections in Sri Lanka.

Jaffna
Meeting venue: YMCA Auditorium (Near Government Agent Office) in Jaffna
Date and time: April 7 at 3.30 p.m.

Colombo
Meeting venue: Colombo Public Library Auditorium
Date and time: April 9 at 4.30 p.m.

Matara
Meeting venue: Post Office Auditorium in Matara
Date and time: April 26 at 3.00 p.m.

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

17. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. The United States sends six of its B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean— within striking distance of Iran

A 2021 description of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit 

2. Aimed at extracting hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up the ever-worsening trade and financial position of the United States and increasing manufacturing capacity for the military, the imposition of the new tariff regime unveiled by President Trump is a declaration of economic war against the rest of the world

3. As part of its preparations for a broader crackdown on all opposition to its policies at home and abroad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is moving to dispense with all constraints on its powers and get rid of its political opponents

4. The initiation of mass firings of over 20,000 scientists and public health workers at the Department of Health and Human Services marks an historic turning point in the collapse of American democracy

5. The fortunes of United Auto Workers union bureaucrats rocket upward while the fortunes of the autoworkers they are supposed to defend plummet

6. An absurd court ruling ends a 17-day strike by Santa Clara Valley Transportation transit workers' in an area of California that includes San Jose and much of Silicon Valley

7. Under conditions of exploding income inequality, widespread poverty and inflation-driven real wages cuts, Canada's establishment parties campaign for April's federal election by offering phony “affordability” measures that don’t even amount to a Band-Aid

8. As lecturers conclude a three-week strike, the management of Dundee University in Scotland announces as many as 632 job losses-- around one fifth of the university's entire work force

9. Several university administrations in the United States announce that they will fully cooperate with a right-wing congressional committee formed to attack student anti-genocide protesters by labeling them "anti-Semitic"

10. Bellwether elections in the US: within the political straitjacket of the US two-party system, the only alternatives to the fascist Republicans are right-wing, pro-corporate Democrats

11. Amid soaring social inequality, brutal austerity measures and the integration of New Zealand into US-led war preparations against China, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters gives his support to an extreme right-wing campaign making lurid and baseless insinuations that Green MP Benjamin Doyle is a pedophile

12. The Transport Action Workers Committee in Germany issues an open letter to Berlin public transit workers to resist establishment efforts aimed at preventing them from organizing an all-out strike

11. Brazil recently marked the 61st anniversary of the US-backed military coup in Brazil that overthrew the elected government of President João Goulart and established a brutal dictatorship that remained in power for 21 years. Why does the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva continue to impose a silence about it?

12. Virtually no one believes that the last-minute election pledges-- proposed by the main parties of the political establishment—Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Greens—  would make any real difference to the lives or prospects of workers and  their families in Australia

13. After two days of a censure debate in the National Assembly, Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra survives a no-confidence vote

14. Workers Struggles in Europe, Middle East & Africa:

• Metalworkers walkout for 8 hours in major cities across
  Italy
• About 20,000 teachers in Spain strike 48-hours
• Workers that make mechanical engineering seals strike in England
  
• School support staff at a primary school in London, England begin a strike
• Train drivers employed by Hull Trains in the UK strike
• Teachers in Lebanon strike 24-hours for a living wage even as their economy is collapsing
• Farmers and workers across Iran protest or strike as the country's economic and social conditions deteriorate
  
• Health workers and teachers strike over minimum wage in Nigeria
• Municipal workers in Eastern Cape, South Africa strike
• School students stage a protest on behalf of their unpaid teachers in Liberia
• Unpaid health workers in South Sudan walk off their jobs

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

16. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. All UN bakeries are closed-- for nearly a month, Israel has prevented all food, fuel, water and electricity from entering the Gaza Strip as part of a deliberate policy of starvation and ethnic cleansing aimed at killing or displacing Palestinians in Gaza and annexing their land

2. Falling in line with the witch-hunting campaign directed by the Trump administration against pro-Palestinian students and academics, the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut fires Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi in violation of her basic democratic rights

3. A perspective by Joseph Kishore: Cornell University Ph.D. student Momodou Taal is forced to leave the United States where dissent is being criminalized and a dictatorship is being constructed

Momodou Taal

4. Trade union bureaucrats fall in line with the Sri Lankan government's imposition of unjust IMF-directed austerity measures

5. NY Representative and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sheds her previous "left" lip service to advance the interests of US imperialism in an interview with the New York Times

6. On April 10, the Socialist Equality Party in Australia will hold a public online meeting to discuss what is at stake in Australia's upcoming federal elections

7. As falling oil revenues and military-industrial expenditures blow a hole in Russia's budget, the country's oligarchs are torn over their hopes to keep ruling and their desire for immediate economic relief should a negotiated settlement with the United States over the war in Ukraine succeed

8. US railroad workers contact the World Socialist Web Site to speak out about their oppressive working conditions

9. The Australian government’s attitude toward working people at home is in line with its callous indifference to the plight of earthquake victims in Myanmar

10. Through its mass firing of federal workers without cause, the US Trump administration promotes widespread fear as it systematically dispenses with thousands of years of collective knowledge and expertise

11. Massive wildfires, described as the worst in the South Korea’s history, kill 30 people and ruin almost 120,000 acres of land before being extinguished 

12. Lower global growth and the impact of Trump tariffs exacerbates a growing crisis within Indonesia's already-squeezed economy

13. Almost 40,000 young people aged 15–24 in Australia requested homelessness services in 2023–24

14. With an expired contract and grueling working conditions, Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital nurses in Northern California get little relief from their employer, their union, or the government

15. Teachers Union officials, Mayor Johnson and the news media in Chicago, US, conspire to conceal the full impact of Trump's historic cuts on the city's public schools

16. 1970s film comedies shown during the  Retrospective section of this year's Berlin International Film Festival convey a more nuanced and accurate view of the the former German Democratic Republic that dissolved after the fall of the Berlin Wall

17. Emerging evidence suggests that a 2019 Assembly bill, passed by the Democratic Party-dominated California legislature and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, was a bipartisan handout to powerful utility corporations, ensuring their profitability at the expense of public safety, and a significant factor in contributing to this year's devastating wildfires in Los Angeles

18. The growing opposition of UK mail delivery workers to advancing reforms which will transfer control of the Royal Mail to the Czech billionaire, Daniel Kretinsky, provokes panic within their official union's leadership 

19. Kenya’s recently appointed Chief of Defense Forces, publicly threatens youth who have voiced opposition to the government of William Ruto

20. The outcome of a refuse workers' dispute with the city of Birmingham, England will test the UK Labour government's ability to impose greater restrictions on the working class and appease the banks and big business

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

22. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. Ordinary Australians are hostile to the program of war and dictatorship embodied by US President Donald Trump, but Australia's establishment parties are in a competition over who can work best with the would-be dictator in the White House

2. Beginning tomorrow, according to a US Trump administration directive, any country that produces or buys Venezuelan oil directly or through third parties will face 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported into the United States, potentially for a year after the last recorded purchase

 The stated aim of the order is to “sever the financial lifelines” to the government of President Nicolás Maduro to provoke its downfall. But the executive order claims in the most unambiguous terms to date that the United States is fighting an armed invasion launched by the Venezuelan government itself.

3. The New York Times publishes an extensive article on US
involvement in the Ukraine war entitled “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” which admits that “America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.”

 The article is an admission that the United States waged, and is waging, an undeclared, unauthorized and illegal war against Russia. It makes clear that American officers, some deployed inside Ukraine, have been selecting targets for attack and authorizing individual strikes, making them, for all intents and purposes, combatants.

4. The Health Workers Union is asking its more than 200 members at Australian Clinical Laboratories in Victoria, Australia to vote on an agreement that would further slash the real wages of most workers and do nothing to address their concerns 

The HWU is telling ACL workers that the only possible response to the attack on their legal right to strike is to give up and accept whatever crumbs the company offers.

5. The barbarity of the US-backed Israeli genocide reaches a new level with the recovery of the bodies of 15 emergency and aid worker from a grave in the sand south of the Gaza Strip

The Israeli military murdered and then bulldozed the bodies and ambulances of Palestinian and UN aid workers, who attempted to retrieve casualties after Israeli forces launched an offensive in the Tel al-Sultan district of the southern city of Rafah.

6. Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, a former general in the Suharto regime, is taking a step towards dictatorial rule, amid a massive social crisis and an international political shift to the right by the ruling class 

What is being revived is the total control of every aspect of society by the military apparatus that existed under Suharto, known as dwifungsi (dual function). Military officers held leading positions not only in government, but in the state-owned enterprises, banks, the media, cultural institutions and elsewhere

7. Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, leader of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, and foreign minister, delivers a Trumpian “state of the nation” speech in Christchurch

 The media and political establishment’s promotion of identity politics as “left wing” has enabled the far-right parties to hypocritically posture as the champions of “equal rights”— even as the government accelerates the assault on living standards and public services, embraces the fascist Trump, and seeks to demonize anti-genocide protesters

8. After just one week, an industrial action by workers at two plants in Victoria, Australia operated by Nestlé are shut down by their unions, although none of the workers' demands were met

9. Financial backers of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States spend nearly $100 million to back rival candidates in today’s special election for a vacancy on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court

The most heavily publicized event of the campaign has been the intervention of President Trump’s top financial backer, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the spearhead of Trump’s effort to slash federal jobs and programs. Musk handed out a one million-dollar check to a supporter of the Republican campaign on Thursday, then two more on Sunday, after the state supreme court turned down a lawsuit by the Democratic state attorney general to block it.

10. In the latest blatant attack on free speech in the United States, the administration of the Rhode Island School of Design shuts down an exhibition by 20 artists expressing support for the Palestinian people and opposition to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza

11. The US Trump administration stops the deliveries of millions of dollars’ worth of food intended to be distributed as charity to hungry people... allowing it to spoil

12. Johannes Stern introduces World Socialist Web Site editorial chairman David North's newly translated book, Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War, at the Leipzig International Book Fair

13. In a powerful statement, Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, announces on social media that he is leaving the United States to escape political persecution by the Trump administration 

"This is of course not the outcome I had wanted going into this, but we are facing a government that has no respect for the judiciary or for the rule of the law"

14. A so-called “antisemitism” resolution passed by the German parliament in the midst of the recent federal election campaign makes clear that the ruling class intends to continue its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza

15. By suspending his state's landmark environmental regulations to fast-track utility infrastructure rebuilding in wildfire-affected areas, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom once again reveals his true allegiances

16. The Chicago Teachers Union backs the shutdown of two Acero charter schools and layoffs of its members

17. In advance of an April 13 runoff election being held under conditions of martial law and amid preparations for the deployment of US troops his country, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa meets with Donald Trump at the US President’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida

18. Alberta’s far-right United Conservative Party premier, emboldened by US President Donald Trump, issues an ultimatum to the federal government that will take office after Canada’s April 28 national election

19. Workers Struggles: The Americas:

Brazil oil workers carry out a one-day protest strike; Argentina tire workers hold a 24-hour strike; Thousands in Chile protest new pension legislation; a California judge orders Silicon Valley transit workers back to work; University of Southern California janitors prepare to strike for wages and benefits; University of Illinois faculty could strike April 4; Alberta education workers end job-actions as their union imposes a sellout “pattern” deal

20. Last week Skadden Arps, the world’s fifth largest law firm, capitulated to Trump while two smaller firms obtained temporary restraining orders against his fascistic executive decrees

21. Much of Belgium is brought to a standstill as millions of workers strike in opposition to the austerity program of the federal coalition government led by Flemish nationalist Bart De Wever

22. The Socialist Equality Party Assistant National Secretary in the UK, Tom Scripps, visits the foreign office in London to help defend Momodou Taal

23. Turkey: hundreds of thousands protest İmamoğlu’s arrest in Istanbul as CHP and Erdoğan accuse each other of being “pro-imperialist”

24.  French courts convict National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen and two dozen other leading RN members of embezzling European Parliament funds

 While the RN is an utterly reactionary party, descending from the French collaboration with Nazism in World War II, this ruling is bankrupt and deserves no support. Workers cannot stop fascism, militarism and police-state rule by supporting bans imposed by the courts. The far right can only be fought politically through the mobilization of the working class in struggle

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

26. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help

1. David North, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and the chairman of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board, introduces his latest book, Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War, at the Leipzig Book Fair in Germany:

 Humanity is confronting the danger of a descent into the abyss. The only way out of this crisis is through the ending of the capitalist system. The alternative as posed by Rosa Luxemburg, “Socialism or Barbarism,” confronts us all today. The alarm has been sounded. Now we must respond to it.

2.  The administrations of the major universities in the United States are playing an absolutely foul role in facilitating the reign of terror against free speech and democratic rights being implemented by the fascist Trump administration

3. US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance double down on their threats to annex Greenland, which Trump previously threatened to conquer by force

4. The heads of state of 30 European powers meet in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky-- France and Britain pledge to send troops to Ukraine, risking total war with Russia

5.  The US Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee holds an online meeting against Trump’s threats to privatize the United States Postal Service (USPS)

Postal workers, outraged at the betrayals of the trade unions, discussed what needed to be done now to protect jobs and unify all sections of the working class in a common struggle against oligarchy and dictatorship.

6. The United Auto Workers trade union's endorsement of US President Trump’s auto tariffs amounts  to a declaration of support for a world war to dominate global markets and supply chains

7. In an interview on the CBS program Face the Nation, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain reiterates his support for the tariff and trade war policies of the fascist US President Donald Trump

8.  

Some of the more than 230 films shown at the recent Berlin international film festival are true discoveries, but receive little attention from the mainstream media and fail to find their way into cinemas or streaming services due to a lack of financing and marketing opportunities 

One such film is the gripping Egyptian film The Settlement

9. In the United States, the Los Angeles City Council moves ahead to dismantle its lead homeless agency to shift control of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to private homeless service providers, ensuring corporate profiteers will control the flow of resources

10. A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Myanmar following the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake there

11. Dr. Peter Marks makes clear that the central impetus behind his resignation as the US FDA's top vaccine scientist was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s criminal response to the deepening measles outbreak in the US

12. Marking a complete capitulation to the fascist Trump administration in the US, the president of the University of Michigan announces the immediate ending of all facets of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program

13. What is behind Boeing being selected to build latest the US fighter jet, the Next-Generation Air Dominance F-47?

During the announcement from the Oval Office, Trump attempted to assert that the jet was named after him, in honor of being the 47th president of the United States. He claimed, “It’s a beautiful number.” In reality, the jet’s designation had been decided beforehand as a grotesque celebration of the head of the American state and would have applied to Democrat Kamala Harris had she won the 2024 election.

14. As part of a massive attack on the freedoms of association, assembly and expression, and fundamental rights, German public prosecutors have charged the “Last Generation” climate protection group with forming a criminal organization

15. Within a mile of the prime minister's residence in London, England, up to 30 police officers, some armed, smash their way into a meeting of Youth Demand, an environmental and political activist group

16. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality in Sri Lanka issues a statement denouncing ongoing political repression in the United States and declaring support for Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal, and others in the US, who are in the forefront of defending the democratic rights of students, youth and immigrants, and all workers facing the Trump administration’s savage assault on jobs

17. The corporate media barrage against the construction division of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union in Australia, resumes in earnest

 Labor’s claim to be cleansing the union of rogue elements was always a fraud. The allegations of corruption, which remain untested and unsubstantiated to this day, were nothing more than a front for a massive attack on the wages, conditions and basic rights of building workers.

18. The Australian Electoral Commission rejects a Freedom of Information request from the Socialist Equality Party for evidence to justify the its refusal to grant the party official recognition

19. Effectively banned from officially appearing on Australia's May 3 federal election ballots, the Socialist Equality Party will nevertheless field candidates to speak on issues that the capitalist political parties ignore

20. In the United Kingdom, lecturers strike at Sheffield Hallam University over unpaid wages

21. An eight-part BBC radio series about a cluster of birth defects that were a consequence of a negligent cleanup in the UK town of Corby, is available as a complement to the Netflix series, Toxic Town

22. In Spain:  Hundreds of actors, filmmakers, singers, and other cultural workers— joined by more than 16,000 signatories and over 850 social organizations— have launched the manifesto “We refuse to accept rearmament and war in Europe”

 

Supporters and signatories of the manifesto on the steps of the Spanish parliament

23. This week in history: March 31-April 6:

 Mass jobs protest in Britain; Chiang Kai-shek dies; US longshore leader Harry Bridges witch-hunted; Eisenstein films Battleship Potemkin

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

25. San Francisco, California city legal resources for immigrants needing help