Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: November 17-23
- 25 years ago:
Peru’s president Alberto Fujimori resigns
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
American troops reach Chinese border in Korean War
100 years ago:
2. In the first month of Gaza “ceasefire,” Israel has violated the agreement 282 times
According to information compiled by the Government Media Office in Gaza and reported by Al Jazeera, the Israeli military has repeatedly violated the ceasefire that was imposed on Palestinians by the Zionist state in collaboration with the government of President Donald Trump.
The Al Jazeera report says that between October 10 and November 10, Israel breached the agreement at least 282 times, resulting in the death of 242 Palestinians and the wounding of 622.
Through ongoing sustained military offensives and occupation actions, Israel has criminally violated the terms of the ceasefire.
The Gaza Media Office figures show that Trump’s so-called “peace plan” amounts to a continuation of the campaign of violence and repression that began in October 2023 at the outset of the genocide. Cloaked in the language of “security” and “counter-terrorism,” the ongoing targeted assassinations and airstrikes have repeatedly hit civilian Palestinian infrastructure and humanitarian zones, obliterating homes, schools and medical facilities.
Israeli forces have continued to directly target those attempting to deliver and receive humanitarian aid, further deepening the starvation and misery of Palestinians. Despite promises to allow up to 600 aid trucks daily, actual deliveries have fallen far short, a shortage compounded by Israeli announcements to further limit or halt distribution entirely.
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Meanwhile, since the Gaza ceasefire on October 10, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has surged with frequent raids, shootings, demolitions and settler attacks. The United Nations recorded over 260 settler incidents in October alone, the highest monthly total since record-keeping began in 2006.
Israeli settlers have assaulted Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest, destroyed crops, burned homes and physically attacked residents, often with the acquiescence or collaboration of Israeli security forces. Israeli military operations have included ground raids in cities like Jenin and Tulkarm, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, including children, and thousands of Palestinians have been arrested or forcibly displaced since October. These attacks have caused immense suffering and displacement amid an environment of ongoing militarization and settlement expansion.
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In Gaza, the conditions for displaced Palestinians have deteriorated catastrophically with the onset of winter. Heavy rains and flooding have swept through makeshift refugee camps, many of which were already critically overcrowded and undersupplied.
According to multiple sources, the flooded camps have left thousands without proper shelter, electricity or sanitation, massively increasing the risk of disease and exposure-related fatalities.
UN agencies and independent reports confirm that acute malnutrition is widespread, especially among children, with an estimated 55,000 facing life-threatening hunger and more than 16 percent of surveyed children already “wasting” due to insufficient food and shelter.
The destruction or severe damage to over 94 percent of the enclave’s hospitals has rendered it impossible to care for the sick and wounded. Each passing rainstorm becomes a new disaster for hundreds of thousands of already homeless people, besieged from all sides.
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In a scheme reminiscent of the US occupation of Iraq and as the ceasefire falls to pieces, the Guardian has reported on American proposals to cordon off parts of Gaza with a “green zone” patrolled jointly by Israeli and international troops. The aim is to further isolate Palestinians, protect Israel’s military outposts and ensure the ongoing displacement and fragmentation of Gaza’s people.
Whether presented as “security” or “stabilization,” the plan would mean in reality the indefinite presence of foreign and Israeli soldiers, compound the siege and block the return of Palestinians to their homes.
International security forces would serve to legitimize Israeli military expansion and shield it from criticism, even as Israeli authorities are pressing for the UN Security Council to drop any discussion of Palestinian statehood. Like the ceasefire plan, the green zone proposal has nothing to do with ending the genocide, instead threatening to create a permanent garrison state amid the ruins of Gaza.
According to the most recent data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, the Palestinian death toll now surpasses 69,000, with tens of thousands wounded and countless more unaccounted for in the rubble. The scale of the destruction of the population with neighborhoods erased and critical infrastructure in ruins confirms that Trump’s peace plan has functioned as carte blanche for continuing relentless violence and expansion under the cover of an “agreement.”
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The peace plan’s real content has been the legitimization of occupation and genocide, shutting down any path to self-determination for the Palestinian people. As the World Socialist Web Site warned, any plan forged by US imperialism, in alliance with the Zionist state, will be nothing but a rebranding of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In short, the ceasefire and peace plan form a new stage in the decades-long attempt to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank.
The events of the past month—massacres, aid blockade, ongoing occupation, military expansion and the trampling of Palestinian sovereignty—have confirmed these warnings.
On Saturday morning, heavily armed federal immigration agents, backed by a Black Hawk helicopter, began abduction operations in Charlotte, North Carolina, the 14th largest city in the United States and home to nearly 1 million people.
While it appears that most of the raids are centered in Charlotte, with roughly 155,000 residents born outside the US (more than 17 percent of the population), federal agents have also been spotted in suburbs and rural communities near the city.
On Saturday, after five hours of raids on restaurants, churches, Walmart and Home Depot parking lots, fascist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commander Gregory Bovino claimed that immigration agents had arrested or detained 81 people. Without providing any evidence, Bovino said “many” of those arrested had “significant criminal and immigration history.”
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In a thuggish video produced and distributed by the Department of Homeland Security on X, Bovino gave a speech to armed and masked agents following Saturday morning’s raids, declaring, “This is our f___ing country... nobody tells us where to go, when to go, how to go in our f___ing country.”
As was the case in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington D.C., the flooding of federal immigration agents into the city has provoked anger among large sections of the population, regardless of immigration status. Protests against the raids drew hundreds of people in Charlotte on Saturday and in Raleigh on Sunday. At the rally on Sunday, protesters held signs saying “defend the people” and “depose the rulers.” Another said, “ICE melts under resistance.”
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In response to federal agents illegally arresting and assaulting residents, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, Josh Stein, posted a video Sunday night addressing the situation. Speaking out of both sides of his mouth, the governor praised CBP’s efforts. “To the CBP: If you know that we have violent criminals in Charlotte who are undocumented, we want them out too.”
Stein then added, “But the actions of too many federal agents are doing the exact opposite in Charlotte.” He advised that residents continue to “peacefully protest” the kidnapping operations and film them with cell phones.
These actions will do nothing to stop the anti-immigrant pogrom or defend democratic rights. The Democratic Party is not an opposition party and has refused even to bring impeachment proceedings against Trump, even as his administration tramples on the Constitution and the democratic rights of all on a daily basis.
4. Brutal Indonesian dictator Suharto declared national hero
On November 10, in ceremonies held at the State Palace in Jakarta, Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto officially declared the brutal dictator Suharto a national hero.
Suharto was a lifelong military man and virulent anti-Communist. In 1965-66 he took power in Indonesia by launching one of the worst mass murders in the 20th century, orchestrating and overseeing the slaughter of more than half a million Indonesians accused of being Communists. His corrupt dictatorship secured the interests of international finance capital and US imperialism, acting as a bulwark of reaction in Southeast Asia. For over thirty years, until his ouster in 1998 in a wave of protests, the Suharto New Order regime maintained capitalist order in Indonesian society through repression and war.
All of these events, from his bloody rise to power to his ignominious removal, occurred in living memory. There is no family in Indonesia that was not caught up in these events. To declare the architect of the worst crime in the country’s history a national hero is itself a criminal act of deception.
The rehabilitation of Suharto in Indonesia is an expression of the accelerating turn to authoritarian forms of rule, in response to deepening crisis and mass social anger, by the capitalist class around the globe. This process in Indonesia is bound up with the rise to power of Prabowo.
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Prabowo was the son-in-law of Suharto and was a commander in the Indonesian military, serving largely in the special forces, known as Kopassus, from 1974 to 1998. He was the general commander of Kopassus during the final years of the dictatorship.
Trained in the United States at Forts Bragg and Benning, Prabowo was directly responsible for many of the crimes that sustained the New Order regime. He is guilty of military atrocities against civilians in East Timor, West Papua, and Aceh. In one instance alone, the Kraras massacre of 1983 in East Timor, military forces under Prabowo burned villages, ordered the digging of mass graves, and executed around 200 civilians.
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The removal of Suharto in 1998 marked the beginning of a period in Indonesian politics known as the reform era, or Reformasi. The mass protests that ousted the dictator secured a certain degree of freedom of speech, in which public discussion of the crimes of the regime became possible. But the ruling class figures who took the reins in the reformasi government were bent on protecting and restoring the apparatus of military rule.
Presidents Abdurraman Wahid (1999-2001) and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001-4) oversaw a continuity of rule between Suharto and the Reformasi era. They preserved the military apparatus intact. Golkar, the party of the dictatorship, was not dismantled, and quickly recovered. The anti-Communist statutes, the legal bedrock of the Suharto dictatorship, were preserved and remain on the books, allowing the prosecution of left-wing organizations. There was no reckoning for the crimes and the criminals of the regime. In 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a military general under the New Order regime, secured the presidency in an alliance with Golkar.
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The Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) was founded in 1920, the first Communist party in Asia. It confronted immense tasks, unifying the vast colonized masses and working class of the Dutch East Indies for the overthrow of colonialism and capitalism.
Leon Trotsky, in his theory of permanent revolution, demonstrated that only the working class could complete the goals of a democratic revolution, including genuine national self-determination and land reform, by seizing power and taking socialist measures. The capitalist class, regardless of its nationality, was hostile to the working class and counter-revolutionary. This perspective guided the 1917 October revolution and runs throughout the first four congresses of the Communist International.
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The PKI became the largest Communist Party in the world outside of the Soviet Union and China. In 1965, the PKI had an estimated 3.5 million members, while an additional 20 million people were members of its affiliated mass organizations. Acting through these organizations the party leadership repeatedly corralled social anger behind illusions in Sukarno. They called off mass strikes and prevented the seizure of land by peasants in an effort to preserve their alliance with the president.
The volcanic tensions beneath the Sukarno presidency mounted. In 1963, Sukarno sought to mobilize the support of the military and the Communist Party behind his military campaign, known as Konfrontasi, against the British creation of Malaysia. The PKI complied and directed the anger of the working masses behind the slogan “Crush Malaysia” in support of the Indonesian military campaign.
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The Johnson administration in the United States sought to assert US imperialist interests in Asia on two fronts in 1965: in Vietnam and Indonesia. The results were spectacularly bloody, two of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. Johnson launched the saturation bombing of North Vietnam and by the end of the year the United States had deployed 185,000 troops to Vietnam.
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Washington also sought the removal of Sukarno and the destruction of the PKI. Washington had trained over 4,000 Indonesian military officers at US military academies, and there were intimate ties between certain sections of the Indonesian military brass and the Pentagon (Jessica Darden, Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence (Stanford University Press, 2020) p. 49). The difficulty, from the perspective of Washington, lay in orchestrating a military seizure of power without publicly moving against the immensely popular Sukarno.
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Historian Bradley Simpson accurately sums this up: “The United States and Britain unquestionably sought to entice the PKI into a coup attempt or some other rash action in the hopes of provoking a violent response by the army and organized covert operations and propaganda efforts to this end for the better part of a year” (Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-68 (Stanford University Press, 2008)).
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Sukarno’s health was rapidly failing. On September 30, in what scholar John Roosa refers to as the “pretext for mass murder,” a group of six senior Indonesia Army generals and one lieutenant were detained and later killed by a conspiracy of junior officers, who claimed to be acting to prevent a CIA-backed coup against President Sukarno (John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006)). One of the leaders of the junior officer coup, Col. Abdul Latief personally visited Suharto hours before the events and claimed that he informed Suharto of the plot. Suharto did nothing.
Many questions remain unanswered surrounding the precise events of September 30. What is clear is that a small clique of officers played the precise role that the CIA sought to orchestrate, and that Suharto seems to have known about the events in advance.
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Suharto moved against the PKI. While his actions were initially presented as being in defense of Sukarno, he ignored Sukarno’s orders and began to implement rule through the military. The military began to broadcast viciously anti-Communist propaganda, creating the atmosphere of a pogrom. The CIA produced and supplied at least some of this propaganda.
Over the next ten months more than half a million people were murdered. This death toll is the scholarly consensus for a conservative figure; serious estimates range up to a million (On this point, see Katharine MacGregor, ed., The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics, and Legacies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), p.1).
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Another fact which recent scholarship has overwhelming confirmed is that the killings were politically targeted. These were not random killings, or the explosion of village violence. Those murdered were, or were alleged to be, members of the PKI or its affiliated mass organizations. This was a campaign that sought to exterminate anyone who held left-wing political views. The greatest numbers of killings tended to take place in areas that were locations of the sharpest social struggles, around plantations and sites of labour conflict.
The killings were centrally orchestrated by Suharto. He incited the mass murder, set the precedent by staging killings, and deliberately selected military personnel who conducted executions (Roosa, Buried Histories, p.243). Those who survived were subjected to other atrocities. One million Indonesians were placed in concentration camps, subject to forced labor and torture. Many would be held until 1979.
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Washington, and to a lesser but significant extent, British and Australian imperialism, oversaw, funded, coordinated, and assisted in the mass murder, aware at every step of the death toll. Within weeks of the launching of the slaughter, the US began supplying covert military aid to Indonesia. All aid was directed to the military. Washington was determined to support Suharto without stabilizing Sukarno. The US also covertly and directly supplied cash to anti-Communist organizations and paramilitary groups, including the notorious KAP-Gestapu.
This aid flowed to Suharto while the Johnson administration was not only aware of, but enthusiastically kept tabs on the death toll. Simpson damningly recounts, “The Johnson administration’s decisions to extend aid were made after it had become clear that the United States would be directly assisting the army, Muslim organizations, student groups, and other anti-Communist forces in a campaign of mass murder against unarmed civilians—alleged members of the PKI and its affiliate organizations. Moreover, U.S. officials knew and expected that the covert assistance they provided would further this campaign” (Economists with Guns).
The mass murder furthered the interests of US business. A collection of economists and technocrats trained at UC Berkeley, who later became known as the “Berkeley mafia,” worked hand in hand with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to draw up the economic framework of Suharto’s New Order, integrating Indonesia into the circuits of international finance capital. Non-alignment was at an end.
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The authoritarian model set up by Suharto in Indonesia was exported throughout the region. Scholar Matias Fibiger writes, “The New Order internationalized counterrevolution across the region” (Suharto’s Cold War: Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2023) p. 283). In my own scholarship I demonstrated that Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines imposed martial law in 1972 with the support of Washington in a manner deliberately modeled after Suharto’s New Order (Scalice, The Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines (Cornell University Press, 2023)).
In a popular recent work, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped our World (PublicAffairs, 2020), Vincent Bevins demonstrated how Washington saw events in Indonesia as an immense success and sought to implement them widely. “Jakarta” became a byword for right-wing murder. In 1973, on the eve of Pinochet’s seizure of power in Chile and the murder of Chilean Communist Party members and other leftists—again with the backing and orchestration of Washington—the threat that was bandied about was “Jakarta is coming.” Recently discovered military documents, reveal that the Brazilian dictatorship launched “Operation Jakarta” aimed at the extermination of the Brazilian Communist Party in 1973.
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The crimes of Suharto reveal the depths that capitalism will descend to defend the system of private property and profit. The rehabilitation of Suharto is a whitewash by Prabowo of the crimes on which his administration rests, and of which he himself is guilty. But it is more than this.
It is a declaration of intent by the capitalist class and should be treated by the working class in every country as a serious warning. They are declaring the methods of mass murder and concentration camps to be socially acceptable; and what’s more, heroic.
A repeat of the crimes of 1965-66 is not unthinkable. It is in fact unfolding. From the genocide in Gaza to the mass roundups by the masked ICE Gestapo of the US Border Patrol, the ruling class is bringing back openly fascist methods in defense of capitalism. Rosa Luxemburg’s stark assessment stands: the crisis of capitalism presents society with only two alternatives, Socialism or Barbarism.
5. COP30, capitalism and the socialist solution to the climate crisis
The UN’s climate change lead Simon Stiell opened the ongoing COP30 climate summit last week by telling the represented states, “Your job here is not to fight one another. Your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together.” But the fine words rang even more hollow than usual.
For years, the World Socialist Web Site has named the proceedings of the annual conference for the fraud they are. Whether promises were made or not made, the outcome was the same: a failure to even approach the measures necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average—even as record extreme weather wracks the planet.
In the last year, governments and corporations have largely given up on the pretence. When it came to COP30, the largest delegation outside of Brazil was sent by the fossil fuel lobby, whose 1,600 representatives—a 12 percent rise on last year—occupied one in every 25 places at the summit. The main actors could no longer be bothered even to show their faces and left the farce to their understudies. Only 60 world leaders are in attendance, down from 165 two years ago.
None of the leaders of the world’s five largest greenhouse gas emitters—US President Donald Trump, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, Indian President Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin or Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi—was present. Trump, head of by far the world’s largest historic source of emissions, refused to even send a delegation, after using a speech at the UN in September to call climate science “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” His climate policy is for fossil fuel companies to “Drill, baby, drill.”
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In the United States alone, Trump’s presidency will add an estimated 4 billion more tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere than expected under the previous trajectory—equivalent to the combined yearly output of the European Union and Japan, or twice the savings from renewable infrastructure deployed in the five years up to 2024.
The dire consequences have been confirmed by UN reports, which show the planet is on course to heat by 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, even based on current climate commitments.
According to authoritative studies, such a scenario would expose billions of people to one or more of extreme heat and regular life-threatening heatwaves, regular droughts and wildfires, coastal and riverine flooding, far more frequent extreme storms, newly prevalent diseases and food shortages and price shocks. Each new study and experience suggests that the predictions of earlier assessments are underestimates.
All of these phenomena, which will result in widespread death, displacement and economic damage, fall overwhelmingly on the poorest people of the world, who have drawn the least benefit from fossil-fueled development, above all, in sub-Saharan Africa.
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This is social murder on a global scale carried out by the capitalist class, which owns humanity’s productive forces and runs them in its own interests.
When Trump denounces climate science, he speaks in his customary brutish style for an entire oligarchy. This fact was confirmed by centibillionaire Bill Gates’ advice ahead of COP30 for delegates to reject a “doomsday view of climate change” which focuses “too much on near-term emission goals.” This social layer has no intention of abandoning its profits and lifestyles, which are inextricably bound up with runaway emissions and climate catastrophe.
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At the current rate of fossil fuel use, society will reach the carbon emission limit for a 50 percent chance of keeping global warming below 1.5°C in just four years. With these resources it has delivered: 2 billion people facing moderate or severe food insecurity each year, the same number living in slums and shanty towns, 2 billion lacking safely managed drinking water, over 2 billion relying on cooking methods which produce harmful household pollutants, 4.5 billion people not covered by essential healthcare services, and three-quarters of a billion without access to electricity.
These problems must now be addressed under conditions in which the world’s 41.6 billion net tonnes of carbon emissions a year must be reduced to zero within the space of decades, if broadly the same billions are not also to suffer the symptoms of a superheated planet. Sustainable technologies—triumphs of human ingenuity—point the way to the solution, but they are insufficient in themselves, requiring widespread implementation and the parallel dismantling of fossil-fueled systems.
Resolving this crisis requires international collaboration on a scale unprecedented in human history. Instead, the ruling classes are fighting among themselves for every last cent of profit through trade war and predatory campaigns of violence and intimidation. A new wave of colonialism is underway. Far from unifying capitalist states, the development of new green technologies has created new bloody conflicts for resources, to go with those that still rage over fossil fuels and which have been intensified by climate change.
In the last decade, global military spending has increased by more than a third, accelerating in the last three years since the war in Ukraine. Even in 2019, the world’s military powers accounted for an estimated 5.5 percent of carbon emissions, more than shipping and civilian aviation combined.
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Billions of people around the world realize the urgency of the situation; multiple studies report 80-89 percent support globally for stronger action on the climate crisis. And millions have been prepared to mobilize in its support. The “Fridays for Future” protest movement in 2019 saw over 7 million people, overwhelmingly youth, take to the streets in protests across 150 countries.
The world’s governments have responded by retreating even from their own inadequate targets. Where Green parties have come to power in coalition governments in Europe, as in Germany, Belgium, Austria and Ireland, they have participated in the same politics of injustice and inaction as their predecessors.
What this experience shows is the bankruptcy of any and all attempts to address climate change, or any aspect of the ecological crisis, without trespassing on profits and private property in the means of production. By this approach, either the costs are placed on the shoulders of the working class and poor, producing a backlash, or the efforts are curtailed and abandoned in the face of fierce resistance by the capitalist class.
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Capitalism is based on the division of the world’s productive forces into private capitals competing in the market for profit, supported by rival nation states. It inevitably produces levels of social inequality and the monopolization of vast swaths of wealth which are fatal to democracy and social reform. Out of these conditions arises an increasingly degenerate ruling class, of which Trump is only the most fully developed (or devolved) expression, incapable of addressing social problems outside of the “solutions” of war, dictatorship and mass death.
An oligarchy that does not bat an eyelid at sacrificing millions of lives on the altar of profit in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments which risk war between nuclear-armed powers and which facilitate genocide in Gaza will not act to save the lives and livelihoods endangered by climate change.
The sole feasible program of action is the expropriation of the super-rich through world socialist revolution. Reversing climate change demands a scientifically planned global restructuring of the world’s energy industry to transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy. This would necessitate a similar restructuring of transportation, logistics, agriculture and the whole of society. Such changes would also demand an end to all artificial national boundaries and the restriction of production to the dictates of accumulating corporate profits.
The only form of economic life in which the world’s productive forces can be organized on such an internationally coordinated scale is socialism.
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In Marx’s words in Volume Three of Capital, written 160 years ago, the freedom represented by socialism
can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature.
Only the international working class which sets into motion the world’s productive forces, gathering around itself the rural poor and the most progressive sections of the middle class, is capable of accomplishing this historic task. The desire to safeguard the environment and secure a livable future for humanity, which animates billions around the world, will not be fulfilled by 100 COPs, but by building the revolutionary tendency which can lead this class to power: the International Committee of the Fourth International and its Socialist Equality Party sections.
6. Nordic countries support imperialist preparations for war with Russia in the Arctic and Baltic
Finland’s early winter military exercises began on November 8 and will run at various locations in the north and south of the country until December 5. In addition to professional soldiers, conscripts and reservists from the Finnish armed forces, personnel from NATO allies Britain, Sweden and Poland will also participate. Underscoring that these operations aim to prepare a northern front for waging war on Russia, a press release from the Finnish military declared on October 30, “The exercises ensure integration of lessons identified and learned concerning the war in Ukraine in training settings.”
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Since joining NATO two years ago, Finland’s 1,300-kilometre-long border with Russia has become a major flashpoint in the imperialist powers’ drive to subjugate Russia to semi-colonial status and plunder its natural resources. Sweden’s acceptance into the aggressive US-led military alliance shortly afterwards helped transform the entire Nordic region into a base of operations for war on Russia. The ruling elites in both countries had long sought NATO membership but faced the problem of broad-based skepticism in their populations. A sustained propaganda campaign following the US-instigated Russian invasion of Ukraine helped create the political conditions to implement their war plans.
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The military escalation against Russia has been accompanied by sharpening tensions between the erstwhile Transatlantic allies, expressed in Trump’s efforts to reach an accommodation with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the heads of the European imperialist powers and the trade war between the US and Europe. Led by Germany, the major powers are rearming at breakneck speed, with Berlin investing some €1 trillion in war spending as it aims to establish the largest and most capable conventional army on the continent.
Trump’s threat to seize control of Greenland, a Danish territory, by military force if necessary is yet another point of conflict between the former Transatlantic allies. The Danish government, a coalition led by the Social Democrats and including the right-wing Liberals, has responded with a huge expansion of military spending since the beginning of the year. The latest announcement on October 10 included an investment of more than €4.5 billion in additional 16 F-35 fighter jets to expand air patrols around Greenland, on top of the 27 planes already purchased. A further €4 billion was announced for Arctic military infrastructure, such as drones and radar upgrades for remote parts of Greenland, and an expansion of Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command headquarters in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.
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The military build-up throughout the Nordic and Arctic regions is being carried out within the framework of NATO, but the European imperialists are increasingly attempting to assert their own aggressive geostrategic ambitions independently of the US. In October, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius visited Iceland to sign a letter of intent for expanded defense and security cooperation. The German navy will gain access to Icelandic ports and logistics for its frigates, submarines and reconnaissance aircraft for what a German Defense Ministry statement termed “situational awareness.” Joint exercises and future cooperation on the procurement of military technologies were also discussed. Pistorius declared, “We are ready to assume greater responsibility for stability and security in the High North.”
7. Stellantis and its European Opel car plants—closure by installments
Stellantis is responding to declining sales figures with attacks on its production workers. At the Opel plant in Eisenach, where the Grandland SUV is built, the assembly lines came to a standstill again two weeks ago. For the second time in a month, 1,100 employees were forced to take compulsory days off in October.
They are not the only ones: Eisenach is one of six European plants where management halted production temporarily this autumn. In Poissy near Paris, assembly of models such as the Opel Mokka, DS2 and DS3 was suspended for more than two weeks; assembly lines also stopped in Zaragoza (seven days), Tychy in Poland (nine days), Madrid (14 days) and Pomigliano d’Arco near Naples (two weeks).
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When the Opel plants were transferred from General Motors to PSA in 2017, the World Socialist Web Site warned:
IG Metall and its works council reps play a central role in enforcing cost-cutting measures. They have been involved in the restructuring process from the beginning. Their aim is to prepare the newly created group for the upheavals in the European car market. In times of trade war, the unions support mergers and acquisitions that allow “their” companies to retain only the profitable parts of production and cut tens of thousands of “excess capacities.”
Two years later in 2019, PSA merged with Fiat Chrysler to form Stellantis, now the world’s fourth-largest and Europe’s second-largest carmaker (after VW), which includes Opel, as well as Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Citroën, DS Automobiles, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Peugeot and Vauxhall. Since then, the World Socialist Web Site warning has been completely confirmed.
The strategy of IG Metall and the other unions in Europe—to subordinate workers’ interests to “competitiveness” and a protectionist nationalist policy—has in no way slowed the decline. On the contrary. Year after year, employees have given up wage increases, Christmas bonuses, and holiday pay. Nevertheless, thousands of jobs have been destroyed and entire plants closed, such as the Opel plant in Aspern in July 2024 and the Vauxhall plant in Luton in March 2025.
The threat of closure now hangs over Opel’s Rüsselsheim headquarters in Germany as well. The toolmaking and vehicle development departments have already been shut down. The Rodgau-Dudenhofen test track near Rüsselsheim, which operated for almost 60 years and was widely known across Europe, ceased operations at the end of October. Its 70 kilometers of specialized test tracks were operated most recently by the supplier Segula, which had taken over Opel’s ITEC technical development center that once employed 7,000 researchers and engineers. Segula itself is now insolvent.
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In Rüsselsheim, everyone is asking the anxious question: How much longer before the plant closes? In July, the works council and IG Metall agreed to an aggressive program of “voluntary” severance packages to implement further job cuts. All measures are carried out explicitly “in consultation with IG Metall and the Opel works council.”
The strategy of IG Metall and the works council has proven disastrous: The bureaucrats have neither opposed the creeping decline nor even slowed it—rather, they have actively organized it. At the same time, IG Metall is preventing any effective struggle by dividing workers into permanent and temporary employees, and into those still employed and those already dismissed.
Particularly destructive is the division and pitting of workers of plant against plant and across borders at a time when a Europe-wide, joint fight for every job is urgently necessary. Works council reps and union bureaucrats do not represent workers’ interests but those of management, shareholders, big business and the government. IG Metall in Germany now openly supports the pro-war policy of the governing coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) in Berlin.
While new cars pile up unsold and Stellantis complains of an 8 percent drop in European sales, Opel workers can no longer afford the cars they build. Now, they are also expected to shoulder the costs of the global tariff war and competition from East Asia, while the government pushes through a war budget.
Stellantis workers in Canada and the United States recently committed themselves to fighting together, across borders, to defend jobs and wages. Opposing the sellout by their union leaders—who are just as nationalist as IG Metall—these workers are building independent rank-and-file action committees and joining the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
These autoworkers face the reactionary MAGA policies of the Trump administration, which United Auto Workers leader Shawn Fain also supports. On October 14, Stellantis announced it would abandon its plan to produce a Jeep model in Canada due to Trump’s tariff policy and instead revive production at a closed US plant in Belvidere, Illinois. This puts workers in both countries under pressure.
Neither the UAW nor its Canadian counterpart Unifor did anything to stop the layoffs. Like IG Metall, these unions act as industrial police to enforce the economic war on behalf of the financial oligarchy. For example, UAW President Fain praised Trump’s tariffs because they had supposedly “brought thousands of good union jobs back to the USA.”
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The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is fighting to build a new organizational structure of independent action committees that can give effect to the enormous strength of the working class. This strength consists of the many millions of workers who create the entirety of society’s wealth.
Only in this way will it be possible to stop and reverse the disastrous decline, to link the struggle against mass layoffs and wage cuts with the fight against war, based on the principle espoused by Karl Marx: “Workers of all countries, unite!”
8. US museums face cancellation of government grants, attendance downturn and “deep uncertainty”
As part of its program of cultural counterrevolution, the Trump administration has declared war on libraries, universities, cultural institutions, historical sites, museums and individual scholars whose efforts run counter to chauvinism, militarism and anticommunism.
Like the Nazis before them, Trump and his cronies reach for their guns when they hear the word “culture.”
The latest “National Snapshot of United States Museums,” issued by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), provides a glimpse into the present conditions. One of its critical findings is that one-third of museums have lost federal funding under the new Trump regime and two-thirds of affected institutions have not been able to replace their grant money at all. Only eight percent have been able to fully make up for the loss of government funding through other sources.
The AAM tries to put a good face on the situation, asserting that despite everything, “museums remain steadfast in serving their communities,” which no doubt is true, but does not offer any fighting way out of the present crisis. In any event, the depth of the crisis does find limited expression in the recent report.
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These losses, the AAM asserts, have forced “difficult choices, including deferring facility or physical infrastructure improvements; canceling programming for students, rural communities, individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and/or veterans; and reducing public programs overall.”
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The Trump administration is accelerating its efforts to impose a US version of the Hitlerite Gleichschaltung, “synchronization,” “coordination” or “integration,” the Nazi regime’s effort to “bring into line” all aspects of political and cultural life and subordinate them to the fascist state’s ideology. The devastation or destruction of museums, which may offer views on society and history that conflict with the official narrative, is an aspect of that program.
The logic of the actions points toward a presidential dictatorship and the attempt to crush dissent and independent thought. The cultural counterrevolution is aimed at numbing and intimidating the population, while justifying war, social inequality and fascistic attacks on democratic rights.
9. Tensions between India and Pakistan surge after last week’s explosions in Delhi and Islamabad
Tensions have surged between India and Pakistan, which fought a four-day war last May, following deadly explosions on consecutive days last week in their respective capitals, New Delhi and Islamabad.
Pakistan has blamed India for the November 11 suicide bombing outside the Islamabad District Judicial Court complex, which killed 12 people, in addition to the bomber, and injured dozens more.
Almost immediately after the attack, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that it had been carried out by “Indian terrorist proxies” and called on foreign governments to condemn “Indian state terrorism.” Defense Minister Khawaja Asif was even more explicit. He claimed the bombing in Pakistan’s capital and a November 11 assault by five gunmen on a Pakistan army cadet school in South Waziristan “were orchestrated from Afghanistan, at the behest of India.”
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Fighting erupted between Pakistan and Afghanistan along their disputed border last month after Islamabad mounted airstrikes deep inside Afghanistan, targeting what it called Pakistan Taliban bases. Only after a week and a half of border clashes and Pakistani drone and fighter-jet missile strikes across southern and central Afghanistan did the two sides reach a shaky truce with the help of Qatar and Turkey.
Not coincidentally, Pakistan launched its illegal campaign of air strikes inside Afghanistan on October 9, just as Afghan Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi was beginning a week-long trip to New Delhi. There he met his Indian counterpart, S. Jaishnakar, and India’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, and signed an “India–Afghanistan Joint Statement” that outlines a framework for increased trade, humanitarian and military-security cooperation.
In addition to ratcheting up tensions with India, Pakistan has also made new bellicose threats against Kabul in the wake of the Islamabad bomb attack. Defense Minister Asif said the attack shows Pakistan is in a “state of war,” adding that “in this environment, it would be futile to hold out greater hope for successful negotiations with the rulers of Kabul.”
Pakistan’s relations with both India and Afghanistan are now highly fraught, with a growing danger that renewed border clashes or even a full-scale war could erupt at any time.
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Nothing that the Indian authorities—or for that matter the Pakistani—say about terrorist attacks should be taken at face value. Both are up to their necks in reactionary intrigues, including in India’s case mounting a campaign of assassinations against Sikh separatists in North America and Europe. New Delhi denies any ties to the Pakistan Taliban or to Baluchistan ethno-nationalist insurgents battling the Pakistani state; yet shortly prior to his nomination as India’s National Security Adviser, Doval boasted about India’s ability to use Baluchi separatists to neutralize Pakistan.
At Washington’s behest under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan, Pakistan armed, trained and organized the Mujahedin to fight Afghanistan’s pro-Soviet government. Later, Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus used the connections and spycraft it had developed in conjunction with the CIA to further its own strategic conflict with India in Kashmir.
The dispute over Kashmir, like the broader India-Pakistan strategic conflict of which it is part, is a product of the reactionary 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India. Partition was carried out by South Asia’s departing British colonial overlords in connivance with rival factions of the national bourgeoisie led by the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League.
Both India and Pakistan have run roughshod over the democratic rights of the Kashmiri people. In 2019, to fulfill a long-time goal of the Hindu supremacist right and strengthen India’s hand against China and Pakistan, the Modi government stripped Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its special autonomous constitutional status and reduced it to a central government-dominated Union territory. At the same time, it spun off the strategic Ladakh region into a separate Union territory to facilitate its transformation into a forward base of military operations against Beijing.
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The predatory actions and ambitions of US imperialism are a critical factor in the heightening geopolitical tensions in South Asia and the danger of a catastrophic war. Under successive presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, Washington has worked to transform India into a frontline state in its military-strategic confrontation with China. This has included giving New Delhi special status in the world nuclear regulatory regime, access to high-tech US weapons and real-time intelligence during its ongoing border conflict with China.
Faced with an increasingly aggressive India, Pakistan has doubled down over on its “all weather” military-strategic alliance with Beijing. This has only heightened tensions with New Delhi and Washington and further enmeshed the Indo-Pakistani and US-China conflicts.
American imperialist support has emboldened New Delhi to take an ever more provocative stance against Pakistan. Last May’s military clash with Pakistan was the largest in decades and saw India for the third time since 2016 demonstratively mount a cross-border attack on its western neighbor, even at the risk of provoking a broader war.
However, to New Delhi’s shock, Washington has in recent months taken steps to significantly improve relations with Pakistan, on the calculation that it can induce it to downgrade ties with Beijing. Even as it has done so, it has taken aggressive steps to punish India for its large-scale imports of Russian oil and continued close strategic ties with Moscow.
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The sudden turns in US foreign policy under Trump—as he flails about for a means through trade war, massive military spending increases and preparations for war around the globe from Venezuela and the Middle East to Russia and China to extricate US imperialism from an ever accelerating decline—are only fueling tensions in South Asia, making war whether by design or miscalculation more likely.
Meanwhile, Munir and the Pakistani military, encouraged by Trump’s support and the apparent restoration of relations with the Pentagon, have moved to tighten their grip over Pakistan’s civilian government. Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the Islamabad suicide bombing, Pakistan’s parliament bowed to pressure from Munir and adopted a series of laws and a sweeping constitutional amendment that constitute nothing less than a “soft” coup.
As a result of these changes, even nominal civilian control over the armed forces has been abolished, and Munir has been given a five-year appointment to the newly created position of Chief of Military Defence Forces (CMDF). Under the 27th amendment to Pakistan’s constitution, the CMDF has full authority over all three branches of Pakistan’s military and its nuclear arsenal. He is also guaranteed immunity for life from criminal prosecution.
10. Marburg virus disease confirmed in Ethiopia amid regional instability
The first documented outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in Ethiopia was confirmed this month in Jinka, a market town in the South Ethiopia Regional State that functions as a commercial hub with active cross-border movement from South Sudan and Kenya. A suspected case of viral hemorrhagic fever was initially reported to Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on November 12, 2025. Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health confirmed MVD on November 14 following molecular testing at the Ethiopia Public Health Institute (EPHI). Sequencing indicated that the virus is genetically similar to previously identified East African strains.
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The first documented outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in Ethiopia was confirmed this month in Jinka, a market town in the South Ethiopia Regional State that functions as a commercial hub with active cross-border movement from South Sudan and Kenya. A suspected case of viral hemorrhagic fever was initially reported to Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on November 12, 2025. Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health confirmed MVD on November 14 following molecular testing at the Ethiopia Public Health Institute (EPHI). Sequencing indicated that the virus is genetically similar to previously identified East African strains.
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... In severe cases, multi-organ dysfunction, shock, and death follow eight to nine days after symptoms begin, often due to profound blood loss.
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Jinka, the administrative center of the Ari Zone and gateway to the Lower Omo Valley, sits at the crossroads of a region grappling with severe political instability. Recurrent armed conflict and civil unrest in Amhara, Oromia, and Gambella have disrupted humanitarian access, strained basic health services, and eroded the state’s capacity to detect and contain emerging infections. These pressures converge with widespread economic distress, mass displacement, and simultaneous outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and measles. An estimated 21.4 million people require humanitarian assistance. Jinka’s proximity to South Sudan further heightens the risk of cross-border spread, given South Sudan’s profound state fragility and near-total health system collapse.
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Historically, the Marburg virus emerged sporadically. The first known outbreak in 1967 in Germany and the former Yugoslavia produced 31 cases and 7 deaths, traced to imported African green monkeys from Uganda. Cases occurred in 1975 in South Africa (linked to exposure in Zimbabwe) and in two outbreaks in Kenya during the 1980s associated with bat-inhabited caves. A major resurgence in the mining town of Durba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 2000 resulted in 154 cases and 128 deaths, with an average interval of about eight years between outbreaks from 1967 to 2000.
A profound shift began in the twenty-first century. The 2004–2005 Angola outbreak remains the largest on record, with 252 cases and 227 deaths. Uganda experienced three outbreaks between 2012 and 2017. From 2020 to 2025, seven outbreaks occurred—including first-ever events in Guinea (2021), Ghana (2022), Equatorial Guinea (2023), Tanzania (2023 and 2025), Rwanda (2024), and Ethiopia (2025). The interval between outbreaks has collapsed to less than one year, placing the 2020s on track to surpass all previous decades combined. This surge reflects fundamental shifts in ecology, surveillance, and the socioeconomic crises reshaping the African continent.
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Although no licensed Marburg vaccine exists, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, in collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center, has developed a promising candidate that uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vector. Phase two trials are underway in Uganda, Kenya, and multiple US sites, with additional emergency deployment in Rwanda’s 2024 MVD outbreak, where more than 1,700 doses were administered within days, largely to healthcare workers.
While the development of effective countermeasures marks an important advance, vaccines alone cannot overcome the political violence, economic pressures, environmental disruption, and global inequities that continue to drive Marburg’s emergence.
11. United States: Ammonia leak spreads gas cloud in Weatherford, Oklahoma, sends 34 to the hospital
A chemical disaster unfolded in Weatherford, Oklahoma on Thursday when a tanker truck carrying 25,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia began leaking its contents behind a Holiday Inn Express.
The incident precipitated a mass emergency response, with dozens suffering severe health injuries. The chemical leak forced the evacuation of over 500 area residents as authorities scrambled to contain and investigate the deadly vapor cloud.
Photos and videos were posted online showing a thick plume of the chemical that had engulfed the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express.
The tanker truck is owned by Airgas Specialty Products based in Lawrenceville, Georgia. The anhydrous ammonia onboard also belonged to Airgas, a major supplier and distributor of industrial gases in the region. Airgas confirmed its involvement and stated that its crews have been on-site, coordinating with authorities on environmental monitoring and cleanup efforts.
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Local authorities report that Weatherford Police and fire personnel first received 911 calls around 10:00 p.m. from the semi-truck’s driver, who discovered the ammonia leak in the parking lot behind the hotel.
Mechanical failure in a gasket or valve is believed to have leaked the ammonia in large quantities, forming the toxic cloud that blanketed both the Holiday Inn and adjacent residential blocks. Residents within the evacuation zone east of Washington Street and north of Main Street were woken by first responders going door to door or by shelter-in-place alerts sent to their phones.
Public schools and businesses within the affected radius—including Southwestern Oklahoma State University—were ordered closed as firefighters and hazardous material crews worked through the night to dilute the gas and monitor air quality.
More than 500 residents were evacuated to emergency shelters as officials established incident command posts and used approximately 2.4 million gallons of water to suppress vapors and flush out the contamination. Federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were involved in the response and are reportedly conducting an investigation. No details or preliminary findings of the investigation were available at the time of this writing.
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The human toll of the exposure was widespread. Thirty-four individuals were treated for serious injuries at Weatherford Regional Hospital, with eleven in critical condition and five airlifted to trauma centers in Oklahoma City.
Dozens more suffered respiratory distress, burns, or loss of consciousness, including first responders. Hundreds remain displaced as the cleanup continues.
Anhydrous ammonia is highly effective as a fertilizer that helps farmers grow food and replenish nutrients in the soil. As a fertilizer, it provides essential nitrogen for plants, and industry experts report that it must be handled with a high level of safety awareness and care.
Ammonia gas is both corrosive and highly irritating to all exposed tissue. Inhalation typically causes immediate coughing, throat and chest pain, respiratory distress, and burning of the eyes and airways. Substantial exposure—like that which occurred in Weatherford—can result in chemical burns, laryngeal swelling, pulmonary edema, and risk of death from airway obstruction or lung injury.
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The Weatherford incident is the latest in a troubling history of anhydrous ammonia leaks associated with transport and industrial disasters in the United States. Among the major events is the 2004 pipeline rupture near Kingman, Kansas, which released over 200,000 gallons of ammonia, killing more than 25,000 fish and forcing mass evacuation.
In other cases, failure to quickly notify the public or take proper precautions contributed to widespread environmental and health damage. Between 1,500 and 2,000 chemical transport accidents involving hazardous materials like ammonia occur each year, with the Department of Transportation estimating that many stem from inadequate packaging, labeling, or employee training.
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Oversight of ammonia and other chemical transportation lies primarily with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). PHMSA develops safety regulations covering the classification, handling, packaging, and emergency response protocols for all hazardous chemicals moved by road, rail, and pipeline.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) also plays a role by enforcing standards for drivers and vehicle safety. The EPA assists during active emergencies by monitoring contamination and coordinating cleanup efforts, as occurred in Oklahoma.
For years, the World Socialist Web Site has warned about the catastrophic consequences of undermining the US chemical safety infrastructure, especially the Trump administration’s attack on any government oversight of corporate practices and the removal of any restrictions that reduce profitability.
12. “Why are people dying?”: Postal worker speaks out on death of Nick Acker
Many questions remain unanswered in the week since the death of Nick Acker, a 36-year-old maintenance mechanic at the Allen Park USPS Detroit Network Distribution Center (DNDC) on November 8. While no official cause of death has been released, his coworkers are continuing to speak out about what they know. Workers are demanding answers and an end to the constant pressure to keep the mail machines running at all cost.
Nick arrived at work around 11:00 p.m., but his body was apparently not recovered until 12:30 p.m. the following day. Firefighters told local media that he had been dead for six to eight hours before he was found. One of Nick’s coworkers, John, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, contacted the World Socialist Web Site with information on his death, confirming other reports from workers that the machinery that killed him should not have been running.
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He described the relentless pressure applied to postal workers by higher-ups to keep the mail machines running and the disregard for basic safety measures to make that happen. “Even me, I have this internal dialogue like, ‘Oh, this is petty. I’m being petty by wanting to be safe here.’ And sure, 99 times out of 100, these situations we’re dealing with are pretty benign, but the thing is, safety should just be the culture. It should be just the way that we do things.”
“If you’ve got a problem with the machine or mail is stuck,” John said, “then you shut down the machine, you lock it out, you get your partner, you go up, you deal with it, you unlock the machine, you come down. But that’s all considered a pain in the ass because we’ve got this pressure to keep the plant moving, and that’s our job as mechanics. We keep the machines in orderly fashion. We repair them, and we clear any problems during operation. So it can be a real struggle, and sometimes there’s only two [maintenance mechanics] in a plant that I think is nearly one million square feet.”
“A few months ago, we got a new plant manager,” he continued. “When he took over, that’s when this culture really took a turn for the worse. It’s always been kind of shady in the safety department there, but not as bad as now.
“They wanted to run the plant as they were bringing Nick’s body down! They didn’t give anybody any time off. They’ve never had any conversations with us about it, about what they’re gonna do, how things are gonna be different, if we’re safe, or to reassure us. There’s been none of that. So it’s toxic there right now. It’s real bad.”
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John wanted to speak directly to postal workers about the issues they are confronting. “Working at the Post Office is a really unique job,” he said. “We don’t have a CEO. We don’t have stock shareholders. Our shareholders are the American people. I genuinely think that the Post Office feels that the American people want their mail at all costs, and I think that that is not correct. I think that the American people would rather have their mail tomorrow and have everybody safe.
“There’s this toxic environment at the Post Office from these higher-ups because their pay is based on incentives. A plant manager gets a bonus based on production numbers and all these other factors. Postmasters, it’s the same thing.
“For us workers, there is a devotion to making the mail go and getting the American people their packages. I don’t do it for my boss. I don’t do any of this for my boss or anybody that’s above me. I do this for the American people, because I think that what we do as a service is super important, and it’s time-tested and true throughout our history. I think it’s really important, and most people feel that way who work here. But the higher-ups are always not gonna care about us.
“So the message I really want everybody to hear is: You’re not gonna lose your job ever over being safe and taking care of yourself. Why are people dying? It’s a very important job but nobody should be miserable at work. And nobody should die. Us postal workers across the country have to take care of ourselves and our coworkers at all costs, because nobody else is going to do it for us.”
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Workers attended a meeting of the International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Committees (IWA-RFC) on Sunday afternoon to discuss a strategy to fight against unsafe working conditions, layoffs and hunger. Another postal worker from Pennsylvania joined the meeting and spoke on Nick’s death, as well as the deaths of mail carriers due to lack of air conditioning in extreme heat.
Nick’s horrific death is the product of a system that prioritizes profit over the lives and safety of workers. Workers around the world spoke on this at the IWA-RFC meeting and are beginning to draw the necessary conclusions.
The fight to uncover the truth about Nick’s death and to prevent future tragedies requires the building of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, democratically controlled by workers themselves and independent of the union apparatus.
13. Japan’s new far-right PM threatens war with China over Taiwan
In the month since coming to office, Japan’s far-right-wing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has sharply escalated tensions with China, particularly over the issue of Taiwan. Recent comments by the prime minister openly demonstrate that Tokyo is preparing for war against China.On November 7, while speaking to the National Diet’s lower house budget committee, Takaichi discussed a situation in which Japan’s military, formally known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), could be dispatched against China. If Beijing were to impose a military blockade around Taiwan, she said, “No matter how you think about it, it could constitute a survival-threatening situation [for Japan].”
She stated, “Simply lining up civilian ships to make passage difficult would not be a survival-threatening situation. If it is a wartime blockade, with drones flying and various other developments, then the situation could be seen differently.” She also added that an attack on US warships attempting to break a blockade could also justify dispatching the SDF.
The carefully-chosen phrase, “survival-threatening situation,” is a legal term bound up with Japan’s remilitarization. Japan is barred from waging war overseas by Article 9 of its constitution, informally known as the pacifist clause. In 2015, the government of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, from whom Takaichi draws her political inspiration, rammed military legislation through parliament despite mass anti-war protests. It allows Japan to go to war so long as these deployments can be justified as “collective self-defense” in a so-called “survival-threatening situation.”
According to its latest Defense Ministry White Paper, Tokyo defines a “survival-threatening situation” as one “where an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs, which as a result, threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger of fundamentally overturning Japanese people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
This deliberately vague definition could be used to justify any number of military actions and there is nothing defensive about Tokyo’s position. Takaichi is the first sitting Japanese prime minister to explicitly state that Japan would go to war with China over Taiwan. In doing so, she is building on the positions of her predecessors, who, while speaking more vaguely, claimed that a conflict over the island would threaten Japan’s economic interests and be a danger to its islands in the East China Sea. Japan’s Yonaguni Island is just 110 kilometers east of Taiwan.
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Beijing fears that if Taiwan declared independence, it would set a precedent for a further carve-up of Chinese territory, recalling the division and subjugation of China by the imperialist powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Taiwan would also quickly become a US military base posing a threat to mainland China along with existing bases in Japan and South Korea, which are home to approximately 80,000 US troops in total.
US imperialism regards China’s economic rise as the chief threat to its global domination and is prepared to resort to any means, including military, to subordinate it to US interests. Japanese imperialism, which has slipped from the world’s second largest economy to fourth, is likewise determined to prevent its eclipse by China. The two allies are deliberately undermining the “One China” policy as a means of goading China into military action against Taiwan, in a similar manner to how the US and NATO provoked Russia into war in Ukraine.
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Beijing’s relations with Tokyo quickly deteriorated last week. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian last Monday criticized Takaichi for “seriously damaging bilateral ties and challenging the post-war international order” while conducting “blatant interference in China’s internal affairs.” The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, published a commentary on Thursday, stating, “The Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interests.”
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A war over Taiwan would not take place in a vacuum. The US is already conducting a war against Russia in Ukraine while also backing Israel’s barbaric genocide of the Palestinian people, and using it to justify bombing Iran in June. Trump is now on the verge of launching another illegal war against Venezuela, having amassed an armada off the South American coast. Amid all of this, Trump is seeking to undermine China by carrying out an economic war against it. The outbreak of hostilities in the Indo-Pacific would mean a major new front in what is rapidly evolving into a world war.
14. Australia: Queensland Teachers Union stages token rallies instead of strike
Instead of a promised strike, for which its members had voted, the Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) held after-school rallies in some places across the state last Thursday. The official QTU line of these rallies was to appeal to the right-wing Liberal National Party (LNP) Premier David Crisafulli to “intervene in our ongoing pay dispute.”
A QTU media release last Friday claimed that members had turned out “in huge numbers” to “call on this government to provide fair pay and working conditions that value teachers and school leaders, address the teacher shortage crisis, and keep us safe at work.”
The rallies were a “huge success,” according to the “members’ newsflash.” This is a fraud.
First of all, pleading to the government is a political dead end—and a preparation for a rotten sellout. Teachers voted last month by nearly 68 percent to reject a government “best and final” pay offer.
This vote was also a blow to the QTU leadership, which had endorsed the deal in an October 27 “campaign update,” falsely describing it as an “improved offer.”
That offer was for an 8 percent nominal pay rise over three years, far below the latest official inflation rate, which sat at 5.2 percent a year in the most recent September quarter.
Secondly, the truth is that the QTU’s bankrupt appeal to Crisafulli attracted few teachers to the main rally outside the state parliament building in Brisbane.
About 400 people, counting various trade union bureaucrats and politicians, attended the event. That was tiny compared to the more than 4,000 teachers who crammed into a Brisbane auditorium on August 6, during the first strike called by the QTU for 16 years.
That strike, which won widespread support among students and parents, and throughout the working class, was meant to be just the first of a “series of 24-hour strikes,” for which teachers had voted. But the QTU then “paused” industrial action and finally called off a strike last Thursday.
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During the week, the QTU spent undisclosed amounts on advertisements in newspapers across the state, urging Crisafulli to “Step up Premier, and be the leader you promised to be.”
This pitch to Crisafulli and his LNP government must be another warning of preparations for a sellout.
It also comes as teacher unions across the country face growing unrest among educators, reflected in stoppages by teachers in Tasmania and protests in Victoria, against Labor and Liberal-National governments alike. But the union bureaucrats nationally, represented by the Australian Education Union (AEU), have opposed any unified struggle.
The AEU is backing the Albanese federal Labor government, which is starving public schools and universities of adequate funding, while pouring billions of dollars into military spending for the AUKUS pact against China, backing the Gaza genocide and supporting the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the educators’ rank-and-file network, is urging teachers to draw the lessons of these experiences and set up their own committees to organise independently of the trade unions. Rank-and-file committees are needed across the public sector, and throughout all workplaces, to take up the fight against intolerable conditions and the preparations for war.
15. United Kingdom: Residential doctors begin strikes against Labour government and real-term pay cuts
Fifty-thousand resident doctors employed by the National Health Service (NHS) in England began a five-day strike Friday in pursuit of a pay increase. The strike is the 13th walkout out since the doctors first took action in March 2023 against the then Conservative government to address years of pay erosion, with the lowest paid doctors on just £14 an hour.
The resident doctors (previously known as junior doctors) also demand an adequate number of training places be made available by government, with 30,000 doctors applying for just 10,000 places this year. Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s offer of just 1,000 more training places means that thousands of qualified doctors will still not be able to get an NHS job.
The strike followed the breakdown in talks last month between the Labour government and British Medical Association (BMA). Streeting has refused to budge an inch, refusing demands that the pay of resident doctors be increased to a level which reverses years of pay restraint. Instead, he has imposed a take it leave it offer of 5.4 percent for the 2025-26 financial year.
In rejecting the offer, the BMA stated that under its terms “pay erosion against RPI [Retail Prices Index inflation measure] will be at 21%. Or, put another way, resident doctors are still working more than a fifth of their time for free. A pay uplift of 26 percent is needed to reverse it.”
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Streeting has support from across the political spectrum, with Labour government-supporting Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee denouncing the resident doctors in a column headlined, “This week’s doctors’ strike is another test of Wes Streeting’s mettle. He is right not to buckle”. Praising Streeting rock bottom offer of a 3.6 percent pay deal for nurses, midwives and physiotherapists, Toynbee wrote, “The doctors have done better than others, which is why Streeting can’t and won’t give in.” She claimed that Streeting “has been eager to settle with them but has been snubbed by the BMA’s ungracious haste to strike.”
The pro-Conservative Telegraph saluted the health minister in a piece published Saturday, “Wes Streeting vs the toxic union behind Britain’s doctors strikes”, lauding him for “not hiding his contempt for militant BMA bosses”. The newspaper cited a former NHS trust chairman, Martin Gower, denouncing the “extremely militant” BMA who “clearly don’t give a damn whether anyone dies because of their strikes, or indeed how many die because of their strikes.”
Streeting became the Telegraph’s poster boy for his pledge—when in opposition to the ruling Tories—to implement NHS cuts and to escalate its privatization in defiance of workers he denounced as “obstacles” to his “reforms”. He received glowing praise for a glut of right-wing statements including, “We are not going to have a something-for-nothing culture in the NHS with Labour”; “I’m not prepared to pour money into a black hole”; and the NHS is “a service, not a shrine,” which is “going to have to get used to the fact that money is tight”.
The Telegraph’s latest endorsement comes amid speculation that Streeting is priming a leadership bid to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with Labour’s support polling at record low levels.
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The struggle by resident doctors must be the spearhead of a fight by all NHS workers fighting for a living wage and better conditions. But this cannot be won under a leadership seeking a change in course from a government operating as the tool of big business pledged to austerity and public spending cuts—and a ruling elite which wants an end to a public health service freely available to all, with an annual budget of around £200 billion.
NHS FightBack, initiated by the Socialist Equality Party, calls on all health workers to defend resident doctors and take the fight into their own hands. We call for the building of a network of rank-and-file committees across every hospital, trust, and department, independent of the union apparatus, democratically controlled by workers and committed to the defense of pay, conditions, and patient care.
Resident doctors spoke with World Socialist Web Site reporters on the picket lines at hospitals around England on Friday at the start of a walkout for five days in the National Health Service (NHS). The doctors are fighting for pay restoration and tackling widespread unemployment in the profession.
Those gathered on the picket lines under pouring rain explained the reasons why they were renewing the strike against the Starmer Labour government with discussion over the NHS FightBack statement widely circulated, “Make resident doctors’ strike a united NHS fightback against the Starmer government” .
Doctors stressed the same core issues: pay that has fallen sharply in real terms, impossible workloads, and a training system locking out tens of thousands of fully qualified doctors while patient waits grow longer and services deteriorate. They described an NHS starved of staff and resources, with creeping privatization and a government refusing to provide the funding needed to sustain a safe, functioning health service. The strike, they made clear, is a fight to defend both their future as doctors and the future of a publicly funded NHS for all. There was also opposition expressed to social inequality and the wealth of the billionaires, the growth of the extreme right and scapegoating of immigrants, the Gaza genocide and billions being diverted for war.
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NHS FightBack is holding a Zoom meeting on Tuesday November 18 at 7 p.m., “Defeat Starmer–Streeting Budget Cuts and Privatization”. We encourage resident doctors and all NHS workers to attend; Register here.
17. UK Leonardo and BAE Systems workers strike for pay rise
More than 3,000 aerospace workers at weapons manufacturer Leonardo struck Wednesday and Thursday after rejecting a revised pay offer. The Unite members struck at sites in Yeovil, Luton, Basildon, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Further strikes are being held to November 28.
The strikes went ahead eight days after Unite called off action, just hours before an initial round of strikes were to go ahead from November 5. Workers were originally offered a pay deal of just 3.2 percent from Leonardo, a company raking in huge profits—with the CPI rate of inflation at 4 percent and RPI at 4.5 percent.
Unite gave no details at the time of the “improved offer” under which it tried to end the dispute. It was no such thing, as Leonardo workers proved in rejecting it. The initial pay offer was for just 3.2 percent for Year 1 and 3 percent for Year 2 with a potential RPI trigger to 4 percent (below where RPI is at now!). The second offer was just 3.6 percent for Year 1 and 3.75 percent for Year 2. This equates to a pay deal of under 3.7 percent for each year, well below rising inflation.
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Leonardo is seeking to preserve its position as one of the largest global arms manufacturer and over €1.5 billion euros profits on revenues of nearly €18 billion. The company produces helicopters, aircraft, aerospace parts, electronics and cybersecurity products at its 129 sites worldwide and employs over 60,000 workers.
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In the knowledge of Unite’s long record of ending token strikes with sellout deals of their members, Leonardo responded, “We welcome Unite back to the negotiating table in a bid to reach a resolution.”
Unite played a central role in ensuring that workers employed by arms companies in the UK were not mobilized against the Starmer government’s complicity in Israels’ genocide in Gaza—in which Leonardo have played a key role. Leonardo’s Edinburgh factory manufactures parts for Apache helicopters and components used in the laser targeting systems for F-35 fighter jets, with the plant repeatedly targeted by anti-war activists.
Leonardo’s helicopter manufacturing facility is vital to its revenues and profits. In a July 2024 press release Leonardo noted of Yeovil, “Since 2013, Leonardo has generated almost £6.8 billion in helicopter exports from the UK to customers across North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North Africa. This includes over £500 million of export sales in 2023.”
Shoring up future profits from the Starmer government in defense contracts is a central issue for Leonardo and is being weaponized in the current dispute.
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Unite openly declares a “Buy British” agenda and seeks to dragoon its members behind a cross-class campaign claiming that workers in the arms industry have the same interests as the firms that employ them. South West Regional Officer for Unite, Shevaun Hunt told the BBC, “The strike isn’t going to impact the government’s decision [on a new helicopter contract] but our message is very clear to the government—Yeovil is the home of British Helicopters.”
This corporatism chimes perfectly with Leonardo’s boast that it is the “only company… in the New Medium Helicopter competition that has the skills and infrastructure onshore to provide a ‘Made in Britain’ helicopter to the UK Armed Forces”.
Unite has tens of thousands of members who are employed by the arms manufacturers and their supply chain and is working overtime to ensure there is no joint offensive against them. Britain’s largest arms company, BAE Systems, is seeking to hold down pay offering just a 3.6 percent rise in September. This after BAE Systems raked in over £5.7 billion in profits over the past two years, with shareholders in line to receive £1.5 billion in dividends this year.
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Unite’s action is designed to do the least economic damage possible to a company it has maintained the coziest relations with, under conditions in which it provides 15 percent of the components for F-35 fighter jets dropping 2,000lb bombs on Gaza.
The token action at BAE Systems confirms the pro-forma nature of the motion the bureaucracy allowed to pass at Unite’s Policy Conference in August, as anger mounted among workers at the Starmer government’s complicity in Isreal’s genocide in Gaza. Presented by the United Left faction as backing a workers’ boycott of arms supplies to Israel, the motion avoided any direct reference to the UK-based arms firms enabling these war crimes—especially BAE Systems. No mention was made of targeting any specific Unite-organized workplaces involved in the manufacture or shipment of weapons.
Leonardo and BAE Systems workers cannot leave their struggle in the hands of the union bureaucracy. Rank and file committees, acting outside the control of the union bureaucrats, would be able to make contact with other workers in key industries—including port workers throughout Europe—to stop the flow of British arms to Israel and defeat the Starmer government’s complicity in the genocide.
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
