Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. United States: West Contra Costa California educators and classified workers launch joint strike
West Contra Costa educators joined with classified school workers to launch a powerful joint strike Thursday morning, shutting down normal operations in one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest districts and opening a new front in the growing wave of educator struggles across California and the United States.
Picket lines went up before dawn at schools in Richmond, San Pablo, El Cerrito, Pinole, Hercules and surrounding communities, as roughly 1,500 K–12 teachers, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, early childhood educators and nurses—members of United Teachers of Richmond (UTR)—walked out for the first time in the district’s history.
Educators were joined the same day with about 1,500 members of Teamsters Local 856, including paraprofessionals, custodians, clerical staff, food service workers, maintenance workers and campus security. The united action of some 3,000 school workers marks a significant escalation of class conflict in California and poses the urgent question of how this struggle can be taken forward.
The immediate issues in the strike are wages, staffing and intolerable working conditions. Teachers and other certificated staff face low pay that does not keep up with soaring Bay Area housing and living costs, ballooning class sizes and a chronic teacher shortage that leaves many students without permanent instructors. The district’s schools have become increasingly reliant on substitutes and short-term hires, while special education, English learner support and mental health services are systematically starved of resources.
Classified staff are among the lowest‑paid workers in the education system. Many paraprofessionals and support workers are forced to work multiple jobs or rely on public assistance to survive. Custodians and maintenance workers struggle to keep aging facilities functioning, while clerical and food service workers shoulder impossible workloads. Their decision to join the strike side by side with teachers underscores the unity of interests between all sections of school workers.
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Central to the development of this struggle was the vote by Teamsters 856 members to reject a tentative agreement jointly crafted by the union leadership and the district. The proposed contract offered only a token wage increase that did not come close to offsetting inflation and left many classified workers effectively trapped in poverty. It advanced nothing fundamental to resolve understaffing, overwork, or the widespread use of part‑time, precarious positions and split shifts. In short, it was a contract designed to preserve the district’s austerity budget at the direct expense of some of the most exploited workers in the system.
That this deal was brought forward by the Teamsters bureaucracy is a warning. The apparatus sought to present the agreement as the “best possible” under existing budget constraints, attempting to stampede workers into ratification with the usual scare tactics about layoffs, fiscal crisis and the alleged impossibility of fighting for more. The narrow margin of rejection expresses both rank‑and‑file anger and the pressure exerted from above to push through a rotten agreement. The vote confirms that there is a disconnect between the aspirations of the rank and file and the pro‑corporate outlook of the union bureaucracy, which functions as an arm of the Democratic Party and the political establishment.
In response to the strike, the district declared that schools would remain open, a strikebreaking maneuver aimed at undermining the strike and pitting parents and students against educators. The district attempted to staff buildings by paying substitute teachers double their usual rate and by redeploying administrators to classrooms, especially at elementary schools. At middle and high schools, students were reportedly crowded into gyms and cafeterias, supervised by a patchwork of administrators and a handful of substitutes.
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Whatever promises district and union officials eventually make to educators will quickly be abandoned once the impact of the administration’s deep cuts in federal funding to low-income, special education and English learner students hit. That is why the struggle must be expanded and converted into a conscious political struggle against the Trump administration and its existential threat to public education.
The strike in West Contra Costa is not an isolated event. Across the country, educators are engaged in bitter struggles over the same issues: starvation wages, short staffing, decaying buildings and the ongoing diversion of public funds to charter schools and private vendors. In California, the WCCUSD strike coincides with a growing wave of discontent in major districts. In San Francisco, educators voted Wednesday by 99 percent to authorize a strike in the first of two votes. In Los Angeles and Berkeley, and numerous other districts, contracts have expired, negotiations are stalled and teachers are working without agreements. The conditions facing Richmond teachers and classified staff are part of a broader national and international crisis.
The state affiliate, California Teachers Association (CTA) has responded with its much‑publicized “We Can’t Wait” campaign, touted as a coordinated bargaining effort for dozens of districts whose contracts lapsed around the same time—nearly six months ago! In reality, the campaign has been designed to force educators to wait, keep them locked within district boundaries and prevent a unified, state-wide strike.
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To understand why schools remain chronically underfunded despite California’s immense wealth, it is necessary to look beyond the bargaining table to the underlying class interests at stake. For more than half a century, both Democrats and Republicans have carried out a bipartisan assault on public education. Tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate subsidies, and the expansion of charter schools and standardized testing regimes have gone hand in hand with school closures, program cuts and attacks on teachers and staff.
Today, this offensive is entwined with a rapidly intensifying global crisis of capitalism. Enormous resources are being poured into imperialist war preparations, including escalating threats and deployments in Latin America, as well as in Europe and the Asia‑Pacific. The financial oligarchy demands that the working class pay for these adventures through austerity at home—cuts to education, health care, housing and social services. Under such conditions, capitalism is increasingly incompatible with even the limited forms of democracy that existed in the past.
The Trump administration is spearheading an open drive to destroy public education, expand privatization and strip away basic democratic rights. But it does not act alone. At every level—federal, state and local—the Democratic Party coordinates with Republicans to impose corporate demands.
To prevent the West Contra Costa strike from being isolated and betrayed, educators and school workers must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands! This requires the formation of rank‑and‑file committees in every school and worksite, democratically elected by workers themselves and independent of the union apparatus.
Such committees must insist that there be no secret negotiations, that all proposals be made public immediately, and that workers—not union officials—decide on demands and strategy. They should fight for a program based not on what the district claims is “affordable,” but on what students and workers actually need.
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The continued existence of public education and democratic rights as a whole is incompatible with oligarchic rule. The resources to fully fund public education and social services must be found by ending the squandering of society’s resources on war and corporate subsidies, and by expropriating the financial oligarchy and reorganizing economic life on socialist foundations.
To win, the West Contra Costa strike must be consciously expanded and unified. Rank‑and‑file committees in WCCUSD should reach out to educators in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and beyond, as well as to workers in health care, logistics, ports, manufacturing and other sectors throughout the Bay Area and California.
2. Video of September 2 killing showed US massacred “shipwrecked” people, House committee leaders say
Democratic Representatives Jim Himes and Adam Smith said Thursday that the full video of the September 2 missile strike that killed 11 people in the Caribbean showed that two “shipwrecked individuals” were “killed by the United States military.”
The two congressmen are the ranking members of the House Intelligence and House Armed Services Committee respectively, which viewed the video in a closed-door briefing. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to “kill everybody” on board the boat, leading to a second strike that killed two survivors.
In a statement following the hearing, Himes and Smith said that “we saw or heard nothing today to convince us that the decision to strike the vessel a second time was justified.”
They added, “The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military. Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”
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In September, the Trump administration began murdering people in boats off the coast of Venezuela in over 20 separate missile strikes. It claimed, without evidence, that the victims were transporting drugs. But even if the victims had been captured and convicted in a court of law, their killing outside of any legal process is a summary execution, a murder, and a war crime.
Trump, a known admirer of Adolf Hitler, is seeking to establish a personalist dictatorship in the United States in an ongoing coup d’etat. His murders off the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Latin America are aimed at establishing a precedent for the murder of civilians by the military, precedents which he hopes to use against his domestic political opponents.
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Given the likelihood that the boat was transporting passengers as its cargo, not drugs, the decision to murder the survivors could be seen as a deliberate action to cover up the murders committed in the first strike.
While the briefing was behind closed doors, committee members said that the officer responsible for the murders, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, claimed that his supervisor, Defense Secretary Hegseth, did not give an order to massacre the survivors. During the hearing, however, Bradley admitted that Hegseth was the “target engagement authority” for the murder.
The Pentagon’s law of war manual declares that soldiers have a duty to refuse to carry out “clearly illegal” orders, such as killing shipwrecked sailors. “Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual declares.
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In the face of the administration’s increasingly tattered denials of responsibility, the Republicans defending Trump have made clear that the murders in the Caribbean are a development and extension of the drone murders carried out under the Democratic Obama administration.
“Those who appear ‘troubled’ by videos of military strikes on designated terrorists have clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes, or, for that matter, those of any other administration over recent decades,” said Republican Representative Rick Crawford, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
This line was elaborated by Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, in a Washington Post column headlined, “Trump, Hegseth’s drug-boat strike playbook was written by Obama.” The column bears extensive quotation:
On taking office, Obama dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes against terrorism targets after ending the CIA’s terrorist interrogation program—finding it was simpler to vaporize enemy combatants rather than capture them alive for questioning. So Obama forged what the New York Times called at the time a “take-no-prisoners policy,” ordering more than 540 drone strikes on terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen (including one that killed a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula).
The strikes Obama ordered were similar to those Trump has carried out in the waters off of Venezuela. Obama used what were called “signature strikes” in which the U.S. targeted patterns of behavior denoting terrorist activity (“signatures”) even when the precise identity of the individuals being targeted was unknown. And he routinely carried out so-called “double-tap” strikes hitting a target once and then striking again to take out any survivors or other terrorists who rushed to the scene after the initial hit.
Obama personally approved the “kill lists” for these strikes. “Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” Obama reportedly declared to aides. According to one estimate, the strikes Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people.
So, anyone who wants to charge Pete Hegseth with war crimes should charge Barack Obama first.
All of this is completely true. These admissions of fact are meant as a warning to any factions of the US political establishment: If they admit Trump and Hegseth committed war crimes, there will be demands for prosecution for war crimes of the top officials in every presidency of the 21st century, all of whom are guilty of war crimes on a vast scale.
3. Taiwan to increase its military spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2030
On 25 November, the Washington Post published an op-ed by President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Lai Ching-te, announcing the island’s defense spending, would rise to 3.3 percent of the island’s GDP by 2026 and then to five percent of GDP by 2030.
As part of this attempt, Lai stated, his government would create “a historic $40 billion supplementary defense budget” that would be used to “fund significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and “enhance Taiwan’s asymmetrical capabilities.”
Raymond Greene, Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, de facto US ambassador to Taiwan, immediately issued a statement describing Lai’s manoeuvres as “investments necessary to deter unprecedented challenges to global peace and prosperity,” despite Lai’s denial that the decision was dictated by President Donald Trump, who had previously demanded Taiwan’s military expenditure equal ten percent of its GDP, or eighty percent of the government’s annual spending.
The “necessary investments” do not and will not stop at five percent of the national GDP. As Nikkei Asia revealed on 20 November 2025, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), an organ under the US Congress, requested Taiwan to fund upgrades to numerous Philippine military bases run by the US as they had previously served to “deter” China.
By this reasoning, Taiwan must also pay for not only every military installation along the first island chain, which stretches from the Japanese archipelago to the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo, but also US war drives against China around the globe, as the world’s second largest economy must be “deterred” anywhere and everywhere by imperialism.
Lai’s government will grovel at Trump’s feet to demonstrate “Taiwan’s determination to defend itself,” as a code phrase for the Taiwanese ruling elite’s supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, fascist dictatorship and world war.
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According to International Monetary Fund estimates, Taiwan’s GDP per capita is $37,827 in 2025. This figure conceals the brutal reality that nearly half of workers in Taiwan have earnings below the tax threshold, as indicated by Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance.
The real implications of supporting US hegemony extend far beyond bearing financial burdens, however. It requires Taiwanese working people to pay the price in blood.
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In September 2021, Robert C. O’Brien, former National Security Advisor to the first Trump administration, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would embolden China. To deter Beijing, Washington must turn Taiwan into a “porcupine” by distributing shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to the island’s 2,000 police stations, deploying quick strike air-dropped sea mines off Taiwan’s coast and forming shooting clubs, similar to those hotbeds of far-right elements in Eastern Europe.
In 2023, O’Brien was awarded the Order of Brilliant Star by then-President Tsai Ing-wen in appreciation of his “contributions” to Taiwan-US relations. He additionally asserted that China would be deterred if one million Taiwanese civilians were to be armed with AK-47s.
Since then, Taiwan’s defense of US imperialism has increasingly taken the form of asymmetrical warfare.
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Taiwan has purchased 14 M-136 Volcano automated mine delivery systems. Each volcano can place 960 land mines in 10 minutes. Fourteen Volcanos can therefore deploy 13,440 land mines in 10 minutes. One can do the arithmetic to gauge what the systems could do to the island in a single day.
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The ruling elites of Washington and Taipei are well prepared to transform Formosa into a landmine island before a military confrontation with China begins.
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According to the Atlantic Council’s 2024 report titled “Toward Resilience: An Action Plan for Taiwan in the Face of PRC Aggression,” wars against China should be conducted through “a public-private partnership” and involve the private sector “as a direct stakeholder in national defense matters.”
The study cited Ukraine’s “public-private partnership” (a euphemism for a massive embezzlement scandal) as an example for Taiwan to emulate, arguing that allowing private sectors to reap profits from conflicts would incentivise them to do Washington’s bidding.
Lai’s government followed the instructions and instituted initiatives aimed to improve “urban resilience.”
This past July, military police equipped with Stingers operated at stations of Taipei Metro during the annual Han Kuang military exercise. Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior has further trained thousands of police officers as combat troops and armed them with Stingers despite the government repeatedly dismissing the existence of “a second army” as “fake news.”
Warrior cops from a repressive state apparatus primarily target political opponents and working people for mass repression. As Lai stated in June 2025, “similar to forging a sword, you must keep hammering to eliminate impurities, until all that’s left is an iron will to… safeguard our democracy.”
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Taipei is one of Asia’s most densely populated cities, with some 9,500 people per square kilometer; New Taipei has approximately 7,490 inhabitants per square kilometer in urban areas. These maneuvers of “urban resilience” serve to obfuscate the distinction between civilians and soldiers, turning ordinary people into legitimate targets.
Since November, the Ministry of Defense has distributed a Defence and Security brochure to every household in Taiwan, asserting in both Chinese and English, “In the event of a military invasion of Taiwan, any claim that the government has surrendered or that the nation has been defeated is false.”
Taiwan’s working people are mere cannon fodder, expected to fight China to the last man, woman and child under US dictates.
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Lai’s far-right regime is a malignant expression of the rot of the entire Taiwanese ruling elite. Successive governments in the Republic of China since 1949 have defended the interests of American imperialism in the region. Today, the more reactionary and perverse the Taiwanese ruling elite becomes the more it serves its objective historical purposes. As Lai declared in the Washington Post on 25 November, “We are grateful” to Trump for showing the significance of “American leadership” to the world. “The international community is safer today because of the Trump administration’s pursuit of peace through strength.”
After 36 years the cover-up surrounding the killing of 97 Liverpool Football Club supporters at the Hillsborough football stadium is complete. It has been finalized with publication of a report—itself taking 13 years to complete—by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
The Liverpool supporters were crushed and suffocated to death after police gave the order to open an egress gate at 2:52 p.m., just before the kick-off of an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989. Thousands of fans were directed into two already dangerously overcrowded pens.
Despite critisism at previous inquests, trials and hearings of the police, the Football Association and those responsible for safety at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield—followed by the inquests held as far back as 2016 which determined that the 96 who initially perished were “unlawfully killed”, no-one has ever or will be held responsible. The 97th victim, Andrew Devine, died in 2021—31 years after his initial “life-changing” injuries.
The IOPC investigation’s report on the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath, while citing extensively police misconduct and criminality, concludes that only 12 retired police officers would have faced gross misconduct proceedings had they been prosecuted under legislation in operation today. Ten were from South Yorkshire Police (SYP) force and two from West Midlands Police (WMP).
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Although its 366 page report assembles extensive evidence of a police cover-up, including involvement by the investigating West Midlands Police, the IOPC denies any such cover-up occurred. The report states, “The first suggestion that there was some form of police ‘cover-up’ was reported in the media in the days after the disaster. Over the years, similar comments have been made by a wide range of people: not only by the families of those who died and Liverpool supporters, but also by some journalists, public figures and campaigners as well as other football supporters. In short, many believe that there was a cover-up, and the IOPC received several complaints to that effect.”
This forced the IOPC to investigate whether there was a police cover-up. But a body that supposedly exists to investigate police conduct simply accepts as good coin statements from those proven years ago to have lied—including Duckenfield—that there was no organized cover-up or involvement “from the wider ‘establishment’”.
In the section “The response of SYP officers to allegations of a cover-up”, the IOPC states, “The allegation that there was a deliberate attempt to blame supporters for the disaster was repeatedly raised during the [2014-2016] Goldring Inquests [into the deaths]. Several former senior SYP officers were asked by barristers representing some of the families whether their actions in the aftermath of the disaster had been part of a cover-up. While some accepted that, in hindsight, certain actions were hard to justify, and in some cases even acknowledged that SYP had been on the defensive, all denied that they were involved in a deliberate cover-up of any form”.
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Speaking on behalf of several bereaved families, Nicola Brook, a solicitor at Broudie Jackson Canter, noted that there was no need for the IOPC to take 13 years to deliver its report as “The evidence that has allowed the IOPC to draw its conclusions has been there all that time.” It took so long that two of her clients had died while waiting for fresh inquests and never got to hear the verdict of unlawful killing in 2016. More had died in the years since then and never saw the IOPC report.
She added, “This outcome may vindicate the bereaved families and survivors who have fought for decades to expose the truth—but it delivers no justice.
“Instead, it exposes a system that has allowed officers to simply walk away, retiring without scrutiny, sanction or consequence for failing to meet the standards the public has every right to expect.
“Yes, the law has now changed so this loophole cannot be used in future. But for those affected by this case, that is no consolation.”
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During the Grenfell Tower Fire inquiry—which took seven years to complete from 2017—nothing stopped the political and corporate criminals responsible from placing the blame on everyone but themselves. As with Hillsborough, over eight years after the deaths of 72 people in the inferno, not a single person has been brought to justice.
A timeline of the state cover-up over the Hillsborough 97 deaths, carried out under successive Conservative and Labour governments can be viewed here.
5. United Kingdom: Timeline of the Hillsborough disaster and cover-up as it unfolded (1989-2025)
The World Socialist Web Site provides a thorough timeline of critically-related events that followed the horrific tragedy that occurred at Ninety-four men, women and children were killed and 766 injured. Two others subsequently died as a result of their injuries.
World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters visited the Siththi Vinayagar Temple Hall in Kandapola—9 km from Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka’s central plantation district—on December 3 to speak with survivors of Cyclone Ditwah, which has devastated much of the island. The temple has been converted into a temporary shelter for displaced residents.
Nuwara Eliya District, with a population of 724,957 and located in a hilly region, is among the worst hit by heavy rainfall, flooding, landslides and stone slides. As of Tuesday evening, 89 people were confirmed dead and 73 missing—the second highest death toll after Kandy District—according to the Disaster Management Centre (DMC). Cattle, crops and property has also been destroyed. Damaged infrastructure and impassable roads have severely hampered rescue operations. Most of the district’s population are Tamil-speaking tea plantation workers earning low wages.
The Siththi Vinayagar Temple Hall is currently sheltering nearly 300 families of plantation workers—about 800 people, including children. WSWS reporters spoke with several survivors from Concordia and Eskdale tea estates, both managed by Udapussellawa Plantations, a subsidiary of Browns PLC Ltd.
A worker explained, “On the morning of November 27, we rushed out of our homes as we saw a landslide occurring before our eyes.” He described how, in contrast to the indifference of officials, the local community had stepped up: “Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim people alike from Kandapola town and surrounding areas are supporting us, providing meals three times every day. They are providing medicine and other facilities if they can.”
He condemned the estate owners, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government, and the plantation trade unions, including the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC): “No one from the estate management, the government or the trade unions has provided any support. They just visit and make promises of aid, but nothing has been given.”
A female worker from the Eskdale estate began by describing their deplorable housing conditions: “We are living in the line rooms, which are like hell. It is hard to live there. There are several cracks on the walls.” She continued, “During rainy seasons it’s very difficult to live with children. Estate management doesn’t care about our housing, even if we complain to them.”
She urged the WSWS reporters to expose their conditions: “Please go and see how we are living in these houses, take videos and expose this to the world. We don’t want to return to our houses. First, we want new houses built in safe places. If not, we don’t want this kind of hellish life.” She also criticized the unions: “In our estate, most of the workers are members of the CWC. But its officials don’t care about the conditions we are facing.”
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On December 4, WSWS reporters visited the Fairlawn Estate in Up-Cot, Maskeliya, in Nuwara Eliya District, where 40 families and 49 houses have been affected. Six homes were completely destroyed. Roads and land have cracked, and the threat of further landslides persists as rains continue.
To escape danger, 150 residents have taken shelter at a nearby school. Locals and nearby businesspeople have provided some assistance. Workers insisted on the need for permanent housing, saying they were afraid to return to their damaged homes. They also reported a severe shortage of toilet facilities at the shelter.
Infrastructure and property damage across Nuwara Eliya District is unprecedented. Cities like Nuwara Eliya, Kandapola, and Ragala are among the worst hit. Thousands of acres of vegetable farms have been wiped out. Roads connecting Nuwara Eliya with Kandy and Badulla remain closed. While the road between Nuwara Eliya and Hatton is partially accessible, many segments have been damaged by landslides and massive stonefalls.
Camp Mystic, the Christian summer camp where 27 children died in the July 4 Guadalupe River flood in Kerr County, Texas, announced this week that it was planning to reopen this summer with new precautions against flooding. They include four flood warning monitors, two-way radios in cabins with national weather alerts and generators in some buildings.
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News of the camp’s new measures comes after FEMA chief David Richardson resigned in mid November. Richardson was appointed purely as a Trump loyalist with no experience in disaster response or management. He faced extensive criticism for how FEMA responded to the floods, with critical delays in response and inadequate resources allocated, costing lives.
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Richardson will be replaced by senior adviser Karen Evans. Evans’ tenure at FEMA has consisted of ripping up grant programs and denying disaster relief funds to hard hit communities. A report by CNN quoted FEMA employees calling her the “terminator” for “terminating grants, terminating contracts, terminating people.” As the head of FEMA she will be tasked with dismantling the agency as it exists today and turning it into an appendage of DHS’s anti-immigrant campaign. Disaster response programs will be ripped apart while money is reallocated to building immigrant detention centers. FEMA has already allocated over $600 million to states for the construction of concentration camps to house people kidnapped by ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo.
Amidst this attack on emergency management, the families of the flood victims have criticized the plan to reopen the camp. Several have filed lawsuits against camp management for its role in their children’s death, alleging that the owners were aware of the flood risk, both during the flood and for years prior, but failed to take appropriate action to save lives.
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Further seeking to shirk responsibility, the Texas state government has launched an investigation into the flood, where it will seek every culprit but itself. Every effort will be made to shift blame onto the Eastlands, improbable weather and even the “will of God.”
In the aftermath of the flood, the bourgeois press attempted to shift attention to FEMA, using unverified models from financial analysis company First Street, which claimed FEMA had underestimated the flood risk at Camp Mystic, implying that FEMA had failed to inform local officials of the true dangers. This was despite FEMA showing nearly all affected buildings in it’s flood map, the flood extending well past the 500-year (0.2 percent chance) boundary and the nearest federal stream gauge recording maximum flows 10 times higher on July 4 than the previous record ever documented (295,000 cubic feet per second). Regardless of the limitations of FEMA’s flood maps, even if the agency had updated them prior to the flood, it would not have changed that the area was denied a proper warning system and evacuation plan.
Efforts have been made, and will continue to be made, presenting the Camp Mystic disaster as the result of something unforeseen, even unavoidable. In reality, the risks were well known by both camp management and government officials. Had proper measures been taken, the disaster was completely avoidable.
It is these servants of big business—representatives of an economic and political system seeking to gut federal social services and establish a presidential dictatorship—that bear ultimate responsibility for the deaths of the people who died at Camp Mystic and the thousands more who die in preventable tragedies every year.
8. United States: Royal Oak, Michigan parents oppose fascist high school club
At a packed Royal Oak Board of Education meeting last month, parent after parent spoke to oppose granting club status at the local high school to the pro-Trump fascist organization Turning Point USA. Students had already expressed their opposition to Turning Point in October, when hundreds walked out of classes and carried out a sit-in in the school cafeteria.
Founded in 2012 by fascist Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA is a billionaire-funded organization set up, in its own words, to “combat modern liberalism on college campuses.” In actuality, it works to spread anticommunism, antisemitism, racism and anti-gay bigotry, creating an atmosphere that encourages violence against the youth it targets.
Parents, grandparents, teachers and others addressed the November 13 board meeting to express their concerns. One speaker, Ann Abby, said, “It is about documented patterns of behavior tied to TPUSA that raise legitimate safety concerns for protected student groups, including trans students, students of color, and LBGT youth.”
“The initial stated purpose of the Nazi party and Hitler was to rebuild roads and unify Germany. And that sounded great too. And by the time the darker purpose had come out, it was harder to stop it the way they could have earlier. So many people had died. So many were hurt.”
Joy then quoted racist statements made by Kirk, demonstrating the real direction of Turning Point, as opposed to its claims to be fostering “open discussion” of controversial issues.
Jane Baker, a grandmother of three children at Royal Oak schools, expressed her agreement: “The lady that just spoke, I agree with her 100 percent. My family came from Europe. The stones and the clubs that were used in Germany and spread across Europe remind me of Turning Point. What you see in his book looks like it’s a perfect little First Amendment group. But what’s behind it is something else.”
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Phyllis Steele, a retired public school teacher, spoke as a member of the Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Committee, which is affiliated to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. She said, “I would like to applaud those students who walked out of Royal Oak High School on October 22 to oppose the establishment of a Turning Point Club USA at their school. Their action expresses a growing determination of young people to stand against fascism, racism, war, and political intimidation.
“Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk, is not a legitimate student organization promoting free speech, as has been eloquently explained, It’s a billionaire funded operation. It’s deeply tied to Trump’s authoritarian movement. It’s dedicated to spreading anti-communism, racism, and anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda among students. It has a professor watch list, a schoolboard watch list, which I’m sure I’m on, but so be it. These are political tools of political surveillance and intimidation against educators and youth who express progressive or socialist views.
“Turning Point has not only been tapped by Trump’s Department of Education to create a patriotic right-wing curriculum for K through 12 schools. It has also provided logistics and builds networks for the fascist right. They chartered buses to DC on January 6, 2021.”
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“The administration’s justification for allowing the club under the Equal Access Act of 1984 ignores one essential issue. Fascist organizations are not vehicles for legitimate political discussion, but instruments historically of violence and reaction. Educators and students and families alike have every right to reject and oppose such forces in defense of democratic rights and human equality.
“I’m for the international working class, for young people to have a decent future free of war, free of fascism. I would urge students to establish an International Youth and Students for Social Equality club at their high school.”
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According to the school administration, if students follow administration guidelines and they do not violate school rules, they can form a club. The school board claims to have no decision-making power on club status, making the public hearing an exercise in allowing people to vent their opposition, while the activities of the fascists continue.
TPUSA is a multimillion-dollar business to promote American capitalism and the interests of the super-rich. Its web site explains that the high-school wing of the group “employs 48 field representatives nationwide who exist to empower each high school chapter in becoming freedom-loving activists within their community.” It sends “activism kits” to students with fliers, stickers, buttons, etc. to promote clubs and organize other activities. It offers financial incentives if students hold meetings at a school and achieve other goals.
The vast majority of voters in Royal Oak rejected Trump in 2024, and the effort to form a fascist pro-Trump club at the local high school is a political provocation. As the walkout at Royal Oak High School and the turnout of parents at the school board meeting showed, there is mass opposition to the fascist politics of Turning Point USA.
9. United States: Retired CDC vaccine expert blasts anti-science policy shift
On November 19, the longstanding statement on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that “vaccines do not cause autism,” was abruptly rewritten to claim this conclusion is “not evidence-based.” The change—ordered directly by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—bypassed the CDC’s scientific clearance process and appeared without the knowledge or involvement of the agency’s autism researchers, vaccine-safety experts, or senior scientific leadership. What occurred was not a routine update but a political intervention inserting Kennedy’s personal views into what has long been one of the nation’s most authoritative public-health resources.
The manipulation of CDC communications coincided with the quiet installation of Dr. Ralph Abraham, an outspoken critic of established vaccine science, as principal deputy director of the agency. Abraham, who lacks training in epidemiology, infectious disease, or scientific-agency management, now occupies the position that will soon wield de facto control of CDC once the acting director’s temporary authority expires.
Scientists outside the administration have warned that the implications are profound. Dr. Alycia Halladay, chief science officer of the Autism Science Foundation, described the website change as a “hijack” of the CDC platform—an insertion of politically motivated language that reopens long-settled scientific questions and risks fueling misinformation. She cautioned that this kind of interference will shape upcoming deliberations by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on vaccine ingredients and could introduce selectively interpreted or flawed analyses into the policymaking process. “People are going to die because they will look at that website and think vaccines can cause autism,” she warned.
Against this backdrop, the World Socialist Web Site reached out to a retired CDC physician with decades of experience in immunization policy and vaccine safety. Speaking under conditions of anonymity, the expert—identified here by the pseudonym Dr. Michael Reid (MR)—offers an unfiltered perspective on how the guardrails that once protected scientific integrity at the CDC have been dismantled and what the consequences may be for the national immunization program.
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The doctor:
"You can never prove a negative in science. You couldn’t prove that drinking milk doesn’t cause autism. That’s not how scientific reasoning works. You set up a null hypothesis—in this case, “vaccines do not cause autism”—and you design studies to try to reject that hypothesis.
What Secretary Kennedy and others often do is cherry-pick low-quality studies and claim those suggest a link. Meanwhile, twenty to thirty high-quality studies across multiple countries show no evidence of an association.
At some point, continuing to imply uncertainty becomes misleading and wastes time and resources that should go toward researching real, potentially preventable causes of autism."
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The doctor:
"Trust in vaccines has already declined since the COVID pandemic, and it’s falling further because of the confused and misleading messaging coming from the secretary of Health and Human Services. With this latest change to the CDC website, information about vaccines that appears to come from CDC can no longer be trusted—not because of the scientists, but because their work is being overridden.
I strongly encourage people to consult their healthcare providers or their state health departments for reliable guidance. Providers remain the best source of accurate, science-based information. And I have the utmost confidence in organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and others to continue offering sound scientific recommendations."
10. Massive flooding in Asia leaves over 1,500 dead, hundreds missing
As of Thursday, 836 people have been confirmed dead in Sumatra, Indonesia and hundreds still remain missing. These figures are sure to change. The three hardest hit provinces are Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. More than 2,600 people have been injured while 3.2 million people have been impacted. Thousands of homes have been badly damaged as well as hundreds of other buildings and pieces of infrastructure, including schools and bridges.
The destruction on Sumatra is the worst since the 2004 tsunami. Heavy rains began on November 25 as a result of Cyclone Senyar and Typhoon Koto, which struck at the beginning of the country’s monsoon season. Flooding has continued to leave many areas inundated under water this week as survivors struggle to receive aid. Total destruction is estimated to have caused 68.67 trillion rupiah ($US4.14 billion) worth of damage.
The disaster in Indonesia follows terrible flooding in Vietnam and Thailand. The latest flooding in Thailand has left 185 dead. The Bangkok Post, however, reported on December 1 that rescue volunteers believe the true number of dead could be closer to 500 or even 1,000. The hardest hit area has been around the city of Hat Yai in Songkhla province in the south.
In Malaysia, nine states on the Malaysian Peninsula have been inundated, displacing tens of thousands into evacuation centres and flooding homes, farms and small businesses. Three people have been confirmed dead.
Sri Lanka has also experienced a terrible death toll from flooding caused by Cyclone Ditwah, with 479 people killed and hundreds more still missing. Heavy rains and landslides have devastated 25 districts. Hundreds are still missing and about a million people have been affected.
Many of the survivors from different countries have expressed similar experiences, describing the rains and flooding as some of the worst they have ever seen in a region where these intense weather patterns are common.
[The article continues by describing how the Indonesian government, in particular, is responding, and how global warming has contributed to the deadly storms.]
11. Sri Lanka: The JVP/NPP government moves to cut social welfare
In line with the harsh austerity program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, Sri Lanka’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government is moving to slash the number of recipients of Aswesuma, a meagre social subsidy for the poor.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, presenting the 2026 budget in Parliament on November 7 in his capacity as the finance minister, confirmed further austerity and explicitly said welfare would be restricted “only for genuine low-income earners”—terminology lifted directly from IMF and World Bank directives.
Dissanayake’s budget has allocated only 240 billion rupees ($US777 million) for the Aswesuma Cash Grant Program in 2026, hardly an increase from this year’s allocation of 232 billion rupees.
The JVP/NPP government functions as a trustworthy instrument of the corporate elite and global finance capital, implementing policies dictated in Washington and by international financial institutions.
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At a public meeting on November 5, Industries and Entrepreneurship Development Minister Sunil Handunnetti launched a vicious attack on those receiving the Aswesuma subsidy, saying they should feel ashamed of what he called “legal begging.” His comments echoed, almost word for word, the prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF for the restriction and dismantling of welfare programs.
Handunnetti openly stated that the government does not intend to continue Aswesuma, declaring that Sri Lanka must “move away from this dependency mentality.” He added that he hoped to “see the day when this subsidy no longer exists,” presenting the destruction of welfare not as an assault on the poor but as a marker of national “success.”
In a cynical inversion of reality, the minister posed a rhetorical challenge to impoverished people: “Will poverty always exist, or will we challenge it and move forward?” In doing so, he shifted blame for mass destitution onto its victims.
The minister’s rhetoric echoes historical arguments used to justify the removal of support for the poor. His framing of welfare recipients as unproductive “burdens” on society has chilling parallels with fascist language used in the early 20th century to rationalize the exclusion—and eventual elimination—of those deemed “unfit” or “costly” to maintain.
In truth, poverty in Sri Lanka—like elsewhere—is not the product of individual failings or personal “dependency,” but of a social system driven by private profit rather than human need. Decades of capitalist crisis, intensified by global economic turmoil and IMF-imposed austerity, have produced conditions in which the majority of society has been impoverished through job losses, wage cuts, and soaring living costs. The poorest sections, already living at subsistence levels, face the full brunt of the crisis.
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The IMF’s central objective is to extract resources from working people to repay foreign creditors—international banks, bondholders, governments, and multilateral institutions. The 2026 budget allocates a staggering 4.5 trillion rupees for debt servicing alone. To meet these obligations, the government must rely on indirect taxes, higher utility charges, and deep cuts to social spending.
By demonizing the poor and casting welfare as a moral failing, the government seeks to suppress public resistance to austerity measures that will devastate broad layers of society. This ideological attack is essential because the burden of the crisis is being shifted entirely onto the working class, while big business and international investors remain untouched.
Aswesuma is not a generous welfare program but a minimal safety net, providing monthly allowances of 5,000 to 17,500 rupees ($US16 to $57) to categories such as the disabled, elderly, kidney patients, and the extremely poor. The highest payment barely matches the official poverty line of around 16,000 rupees per month. Yet even this meager assistance is now under attack.
Historically, such schemes have been implemented not out of benevolence but to contain social unrest. Since the late 1980s—beginning with the dismantling of food rations—successive governments have introduced welfare, food assistance and so-called anti-poverty programs like Janasaviya, Samurdhi, and Divinaguma. Over time, these programs have been repeatedly restricted, with allocations continuously slashed under IMF pressure.
At the same time, the government displays staggering hypocrisy in its treatment of the wealthy. Despite the fiscal crisis, the JVP/NPP administration maintains a low corporate tax regime, refuses to impose wealth or inheritance taxes, and continues offering tax holidays and concessions to large corporations and foreign investors. The so-called “engine of growth”—the private sector—is protected at all costs, while workers, pensioners and the rural poor are squeezed to the limit.
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The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) insists that the struggle against austerity requires the formation of workers’ independent action committees in workplaces, plantations, and rural areas. These committees must coordinate a unified movement of workers, youth, and the rural poor to oppose budget cuts and IMF austerity, defend social rights, and reject the payment of foreign debt at the expense of human life. The SEP proposes convening a Democratic and Socialist Congress of delegates from these committees to elaborate and fight for a government of workers and peasants, committed to a socialist program.
Such a program would reorganize production to meet human needs, not private profit. It would repudiate all foreign debts, expropriate the wealth of the ultra-rich and large corporations, place key industries and financial institutions under workers’ control, and coordinate with the international working class in a common struggle against austerity, inequality and capitalist exploitation.
Only through such a revolutionary socialist strategy can the working class defend its living standards and end the system that produces poverty, inequality, and repression.
12. Australian economy “flat” amid global volatility
Australia’s latest gross domestic product (GDP) figures show zero growth of production per person in the September quarter of 2025, a result that the Australian Bureau of Statistics described as “flat.”
The data showed a drop in the per capita growth rate, taking the outcome to just 0.4 percent over the previous year. This is under conditions of rising inflation, a continuing cost-of-living crisis for working-class households and low levels of corporate investment, except for AI-related data centers.
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Australia’s state Labor governments are desperately vying for global investment in AI facilities. New South Wales Planning Minister Paul Scully approved a $3.1 billion data center project in Sydney’s northwest last week after Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said she would be “ruthless” in attracting data centres to her state.
Over the past five years, Australia’s data center market has expanded sharply. It is now home to 314 facilities, according to industry estimates. A Knight Frank report showed Australia attracted $10 billion in data center investment in 2024, making it the second-highest location after the US. A September 2025 forecast by CBRE estimated that the investment will reach $46 billion by 2029.
This, however, raises two major problems. The first is the likely acceleration of job losses through the corporate exploitation of AI. The second is the increased load on the electricity grid, as well as water supplies and other environmental risks. Data centers consumed 2 percent of the country’s grid-supplied power in 2024, and the Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts that could rise to 12 percent by 2050.
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Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor Michele Bullock voiced another concern when she appeared before a Senate estimates committee this week. “What happens in China is very important to us,” she said. Bullock said the real estate market in China was “still very much in the doldrums,” so there was still a risk to growth in China. “I think that’s something that’s top of our mind as well.”
This points to an underlying crisis of Australian capitalism, for which China is by far its biggest export market, primarily for iron ore, coal and gas. Despite this dependence, the Labor government has intensified the ruling class’s commitment to the AUKUS military pact and other preparations for a US-led war against China.
13. Crisis and division grip Bolivia’s new right-wing government
Less than one month after taking office, Bolivia’s new right-wing government is embroiled in a severe internal crisis that threatens to bring it down. The confrontation between President Rodrigo Paz Pereira and his vice president, Edman Lara—a former police captain and evangelical preacher—has exposed deep fissures in the country’s ruling elite and raised fears of a social explosion.
Paz and Lara won the election thanks to the disintegration of the Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo-MAS), which ruled Bolivia for the previous two decades. The party, once a flagship of Latin America’s bourgeois-nationalist “Pink Tide,” won a humiliating 3.2 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections and held on to just a single legislative seat.
The MAS, while employing pseudo-socialist and anti-imperialist rhetoric, maintained intact the capitalist state and its repressive police-military apparatus. It met payments on the country’s debts to the international banks, even as domestic economic growth collapsed and inflation rose to over 23 percent. Faced with plummeting popular support, the party was riven into bitterly opposed personalist factions supporting former President Evo Morales and his successor Luis Arce.
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Paz ran on the demagogic slogan of “capitalism for all” and appealed to former MAS voters with promises to maintain limited social assistance programs that were made possible by the commodities boom that ended a decade ago and have since been largely eviscerated by inflation.
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The new president now insists austerity measures are necessary to restore market confidence. Critics, however, see them as fitting a familiar pattern of IMF‑inspired structural adjustment that punishes ordinary Bolivians while meeting the demands of international creditors along with foreign and domestic capitalist interests.
The rift between Paz and Lara has paralyzed decision‑making. Without consulting the president, Lara convened Congress to appoint judges and denounced cabinet ministers for corruption. Offended by Paz’s unilateral creation of a Vice‑Ministry of Legislative Coordination, a body that would usurp functions previously delegated to vice-presidents, he warned that no major policy would move forward without his approval. In effect, Bolivia now has two competing centers of authority.
In response, Paz has introduced a bill to remove Lara from office. Ministers back the president publicly, but divisions within the administration remain deep.
Paz’s admission that Bolivia inherited over one billion dollars in unpaid debts underscores the country’s vulnerability. Creditors now dictate terms, demanding fiscal discipline and resource extraction to secure repayment. According to the Spanish daily El País, the government plans to open the Amazon and Chaco regions to new oil and gas projects, loosening environmental protections and riding roughshod over Indigenous land rights.
These moves reflect a broader orientation: the subordination of Bolivia’s sovereignty and the well-being of its people to capitalist imperatives and the need to generate profit to stay solvent.
The political legacy of the MAS has been to politically disarm the working class and oppressed masses in the face of the new right-wing government. Social movements that provided a base of support for the party’s creation were converted into the government’s corrupt instruments and obedient clients.
Similarly, the Bolivian Workers’ Center (COB), the country’s main trade union federation, subordinated the interests of the workers it purported to represent to the government in return for perks and positions. Corruption scandals have engulfed the COB after the arrest last month of its longtime leader Juan Carlos Huarachi for illicit enrichment through kickbacks by government contractors.
Meanwhile, former president Evo Morales—in hiding due to an arrest order—sees opportunity in the chaos, proposing dialogue with Paz as a way to restore stability and protect his own interests.
The two men, despite their political differences, share a common goal: averting popular unrest that could spin out of control.
Behind the personal feud between Bolivia’s new president and vice president lies something larger: the exhaustion of Bolivia’s bourgeois regime. The ruling class, caught between the demands of global finance capital and the resistance of the working class and oppressed masses, is incapable of governing in the old way.
The victory of the Paz-Lara ticket was celebrated in Washington. The overriding goal of US imperialism in the region is to reverse, by means of political pressure and naked force, China’s growing economic influence.
This appears particularly challenging in Bolivia however. The US does not make even the top ten list of the country’s export markets and accounts for only 6.8 percent of its imports. US foreign direct investment is negligible, while state-connected firms from both China and Russia, as well as Brazil, have made billions of dollars in investments, the lion’s share in developing the exploitation of the country’s strategically critical lithium reserves, the largest on the planet.
Even more daunting for Washington and its allies in Bolivia’s ruling oligarchy is the resistance of Bolivia’s working class and oppressed masses. They turned against the MAS not out of a rejection of socialism, but because of its failure to overcome the country’s historic backwardness and subordination to imperialism, and its alliance with the most right-wing representatives of the Bolivian bourgeoisie in the name of “national unity.”
History has proven—from the miners’ uprisings of the 1950s to the gas and water wars of the early 2000s—the capacity of Bolivia’s workers and oppressed to revolt against the existing capitalist order. The same forces are stirring once again in response to the reactionary policies of the Paz-Lara regime.
If this movement is to prevail and not fall victim once again to a police-state dictatorship, the working class must mobilize its strength independently from the MAS, the trade unions and all the political forces of the bourgeoisie on the basis of a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program.
More than 7,200 healthcare workers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), members of AFSCME Local 328, are poised to strike on December 12, which marks the end of a mandatory 30-day “cooling-off” period following their overwhelming vote to strike last month.
he workers include those involved in patient care, food services, administrative staff, hospital research and more. They are demanding an 18 percent increase in pay over three years to $27 per hour for all workers, better staffing ratios and improved benefits. OHSU management claims the university posted an adjusted operating loss of $133 million in its 2025 fiscal year and is thus unable to provide higher levels of compensation for its staff.
The university was, however, able to pay its former president, Dr. Danny Jacobs, an annual salary of $1.64 million, and $350,000 a year to his retirement account.
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Heading into the holiday season, workers are finding it increasingly more difficult to pay for basic necessities, leaving little, if anything, to celebrate. However, healthcare workers, as every section of the working class, face a critical question: How can a genuine struggle be waged?
The determination of OHSU workers to fight for real improvements stands in contrast to the lack of serious preparation by the union leaderships. Instead of mobilizing to wage a powerful, unified struggle to win workers’ demands, AFSCME is seeking to divide and undermine the fight. After dragging out negotiations for months past the June 30 contract deadline, AFSCME scheduled a strike vote right before the holidays, when financial and family pressures on workers are the greatest.
Moreover, only a fraction of the AFSCME members at OHSU, as well as members of the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA), are set to strike, undermining a united fight.
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AFSCME and the Oregon Nurses Association have worked to keep the contract expiration dates offset from each other. A collective strike across the entirety of OHSU, Legacy and Providence, for example, would place the initiative squarely with healthcare workers and provide a powerful basis for actually achieving workers’ demands.
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OHSU workers cannot afford to leave their fight in the hands of the union apparatuses. They must set up their own organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees democratically elected from the hospital floors to enforce the demands of workers themselves. OHSU rank-and-file committees will be able to collaborate with other workers in healthcare, public education and other workplaces in the US and around the world under the umbrella of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
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Healthcare workers must also connect their struggles with the broader social crisis. The Trump administration has sharply escalated its attacks on immigrants nationally, with the complicity of the Democratic Party. Since October, ICE arrested at least 329 people in Oregon, a 550 percent increase over previous months, conducting armed raids in unmarked vehicles. Nurses have noted in particular the collaboration of the Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center with ICE.
Further, any serious mobilization of workers faces the possibility of a confrontation with the National Guard currently deployed in Portland. The city was one of Trump’s first targets for domestic troop deployment, based on the lie that the city was “war-ravaged” and describing those protesting ICE as “domestic terrorists.”
In opposing such police state measures, workers cannot rely on the courts or the Democratic Party. Throughout Trump’s entire second term the Democrats have actively collaborated with the fascist, would-be dictator, voting to end the budget stand off on Trump’s terms and offering no serious opposition to ICE terror. This was epitomized in the friendly meeting between New York Democratic Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Trump last month.
OHSU workers must go into action now to ensure the broadest possible mobilization to win their contract demands. At the same time they need to recognize they are engaged in a political, not merely a contract fight, against the entire capitalist, for-profit health system. Despite the vast advances in medical science, life expectancy is falling, and infant mortality is on the rise.
15. Holiday jobs massacre: Mobilize the working class to defend the right to a job!
As the holiday season is underway, the relentless attack on jobs by US and global corporations is continuing unabated. A counter-offensive must be launched through a united struggle of all workers, independently of the pro-corporate union officials and capitalist parties.
The monthly report put out by Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that US corporations announced 71,321 job cuts last month, up 24 percent year on year. So far this year, nearly 1.2 million layoffs have been announced, the highest since the first year of the pandemic and approaching levels during the 2009 Great Recession. The report warned that job cuts have surpassed the 70,000 mark only twice in recent memory, in 2008 and 2022.
According to a study by Resume.org, 3 out of 10 business leaders say their companies are planning layoffs during the holiday season. This practice fell out of fashion in recent years due to negative publicity, but the pace of the jobs massacre is such that corporations cannot afford to stop even for a few weeks.
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Layoffs are sweeping through industry after industry across the globe. Blaming Trump’s tariffs, Canada’s second-largest steelmaker, Algoma Steel, plans to cut 1,000 jobs—one-third of its workforce—by March. Germany’s Thyssenkrupp just reached a deal with IG Metall to eliminate or outsource 11,000 jobs—40 percent of its workforce—while major automakers, including Volkswagen, Mercedes, Bosch, ZF, Porsche, Ford and Audi, are announcing mass layoffs in the thousands.
This is not the result of a cyclical downturn or blind economic forces. It is a class war. It is part of a deliberate policy to engineer the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in history.
The normal platitudes about “love and good cheer” are being overshadowed by massive inequality, which CNN called “the dirty secret” this year. The social crisis is worsened by holiday spending, with increases in “buy now pay later,” credit card debt and other mechanisms to make up the difference.
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One measure of the staggering levels of inequality, according to the RAND Corporation, is that the bottom 90 percent would have accumulated $79 trillion more in income since 1975 had wages kept pace with productivity. Millions of manufacturing jobs have been destroyed over the past 50 years. One video went viral recently of an 88-year-old man, who lost his pension and health benefits in the 2009 restructuring of the auto industry, forced to work at Walmart to pay his bills.
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Other reports underscore the dire situation. The Economic Policy Institute found that 43 percent of American households cannot afford basic needs and are compelled to dip into savings, go into debt or go without. For the first time, a poll found that college is no longer considered “worth the cost,” due to the absence of decent paying jobs.
The jobs massacre is being spearheaded through the use of artificial intelligence, which is expected to eliminate tens of millions of jobs in the next few years. A global economic forecast by JPMorgan Chase speaks of a “jobless recovery” following the next economic crisis due to AI’s impact on virtually every industry and profession.
As World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North explained in lectures in Europe last month, the ruling class is attempting to pay for unsustainable levels of debt and financial bubbles by orchestrating huge declines in real wages through inflation, increases in exploitation, the implementation of AI to eliminate vast sections of the workforce and wars—especially those involving Russia, Iran and China—over global supply chains and natural resources.
The emergence of Trump and other right-wing figures in countries all over the world flows from the fact that this strategy can only be implemented through dictatorship. While the Trump administration is a government of the oligarchy, he is only the most criminal expression of a political system, Democrats and Republicans, that is united in the defense of the rich and the war on the working class.
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The Socialist Equality Party calls for the building of rank-and-file committees, organized through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), to launch a counter-offensive. A rebellion against the trade union apparatus is the necessary precondition for the emergence of a mass working class movement.
16. US and European imperialists weaponize “human rights” following Tanzania’s post-election massacre
The US and European Union (EU) have mounted a cynical “human-rights” campaign against President Samia Suluhu Hassan and her Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) government, exploiting Tanzania’s brutal post—October 29 election crackdown that has reportedly killed thousands. Their real aim is to lever this state violence to pull Tanzania out of China’s orbit amid an imperialist-led struggle for control over Africa’s strategic minerals.
On Thursday, the US State Department issued a statement declaring that “recent actions by the Government of Tanzania raise grave concerns about the direction of our bilateral relationship and the reliability of the Tanzanian Government as a partner,” citing “ongoing repression of religious freedom and free speech,” “persistent obstacles to US investment,” and “disturbing violence against civilians” following the elections.
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The crimes of Hassan’s regime, horrific as they are, pale beside the daily atrocities of the imperialist powers. For over two years, they have armed and financed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and they instigated a war against Russia in Ukraine in 2022 that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. Within the US, Trump is attempting to install a dictatorship, unleashing Gestapo-style raids on migrants as he conducts extrajudicial drone assassinations in the Caribbean and threatens to invade oil-rich Venezuela. The EU’s “Fortress Europe” immigration regime has transformed the Mediterranean into a mass grave, mostly for Africans.
The imperialist powers have worked for over sixty years with the TANU/CCM regime to plunder the country’s resources, tightening their control through debt, “development assistance,” and mining and energy concessions while showing total indifference to the democratic rights and social conditions of the masses. Their invocation of “human rights” is driven by a new scramble for Africa that has become yet another front of a developing Third World War.
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What alarms the US and EU is that China is rapidly consolidating itself as Tanzania’s principal economic partner. Even though Hassan further reopened the economy to Western corporations after her predecessor John Magufuli was denounced by the West for “resource nationalism”, Chinese economic influence continues to grow.
China has become Tanzania’s largest trading partner by far, with nearly $9 billion in annual trade, dwarfing the EU’s $2 billion and US’s $0.8 billion trade volumes. China’s dominance is driven by its export of affordable goods like cheap machinery, electronics and textiles. The EU, historically a major market for Tanzanian exports like coffee, cashews, cotton, and fish has seen its share fall compared to Asian markets (India, China). The US is a minor export destination.
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The economic war now unfolding is shaping the mineral geography of the energy transition, determining whether Africa’s central Copperbelt’s vast deposits move through a US-EU controlled Atlantic gateway or a China-influenced Indian Ocean corridor. The US and EU are backing the rehabilitation and expansion of the Lobito Corridor to the Atlantic, as an export route for copper, cobalt and nickel that reduces global dependence on Chinese-dominated supply chains. China is seeking to maintain and expand its eastward routes through the TAZARA railway and Dar es Salaam port. China Exim Bank has funded with $2.15 billion the standard-gauge railway section linking Dar es Salaam to the interior.
Workers across Africa must oppose both the murderous repression of the Hassan government and the predatory manoeuvres of the imperialist powers. Tanzania’s capitalist opposition—CHADEMA and ACT–Wazalendo—offers no alternative. These parties routinely appeal to the “international community” dominated by Washington and Brussels, defend the capitalist system, and fear the independent mobilization of the working class far more than they fear state violence. Their calls for inquiries, commissions, and electoral law changes serve only to demobilize popular anger.
On Tuesday, youth who played a central role in the three days of mass protests that erupted after the election are calling for nationwide demonstrations coinciding with the country’s independence day. Hassan’s regime has banned official celebrations and even imposed restrictions at petrol sales at fuel stations to just two liters for tuk tuks and motorbikes, some of the main means youth have mobilized in the last round of protests. She has carried out a wave of disappearances, arrests, and abductions targeting government critics.
The central lesson of the October 29 massacre is that to break the imperialist stranglehold over Tanzania and its CCM stooge requires the independent political mobilization of the working class and rural poor on a socialist program that places the country’s vast resources at the service of human need, not profit or war.
The decisive task is the construction of a revolutionary socialist leadership in Tanzania, rooted in the working class and armed with the internationalist perspectives forged by the Trotskyist movement in its struggle against Stalinism, social democracy, Nyerere’s African Socialism, and every form of pseudo-left nationalism and opportunism, as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. These historical are summarized in the World Socialist Web Site’s four-part series, “The December 9 protest in Tanzania, Nyerere’s ‘African Socialism’ and the struggle for Permanent Revolution.
17. Sixteen students arrested in Turkey for protesting deaths of child workers
Sixteen students who are members of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) were arrested on Wednesday for staging a protest against the deaths of high school students working at Vocational Training Centers (MESEM) under the Ministry of National Education. Four teachers who are members of the Private Sector Teachers’ Union were detained.
On Tuesday, students gathered in front of the conference hall of the Vocational and Technical Education Summit organized by the Ministry of National Education. Students carrying a banner reading “Children’s blood is on your hands” and photos of child workers who died while working in MESEMs, were detained by the police.
Video footage demonstrates that these were arbitrary arrests provoked by an attack by private security forces and police on young people during a peaceful protest in exercise of their constitutional rights.
On Wednesday, teachers staged a protest at the same location, declaring, “We are teachers; we will not allow our children to be killed,” and demanding the closure of MESEMs. Subsequently, four teachers, including the general president of the grassroots union, were detained. While the prosecutor requested judicial control and a ban on leaving the country for the detained teachers, the court rejected this request and the teachers were released.
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In a statement posted on X opposing detentions and arrests, the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) pointed out the falsity of the claim of “democratization” advanced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government through negotiations with Abdullah Öcalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Calling for an independent mass movement of the working class, it declared:
Yesterday, four teachers who are members of the Private Sector Teachers’ Union were detained for saying “students should not be killed by MESEM,” and 16 students who are members of the Workers’ Party of Turkey were arrested for the same reason. This clearly exposes both the falseness of the claims of “democratization” and the dominance of the capitalist oligarchy, which does not recognize constitutional and legal rights.
Protesting the detention and arrest of teachers and students is not enough. Education workers’ unions should go on strike demanding the immediate release of teachers and students; students should support this with boycotts.
To wage a genuine mass struggle against both political pressure and the deaths and child labor exploitation in MESEMs, independent rank-and-file committees must be built in schools, and workers must take the reins of the struggle into their own hands.
Since MESEMs were introduced in 2016, at least 16 children have been victims of workplace homicides in these centers. Through MESEM, high school-aged students between 14 and 18 are made to work four days a week in a workplace for four years and receive theoretical training at school for only one day. Children officially receive a salary equal to just 30 percent of the minimum wage (6,631 TL/$160 USD) for the first three years and 50 percent of the minimum wage (11,052 TL/$260 USD) as a foreman in the fourth year. In its current form, MESEM provides cheap labor to capital rather than serving as an educational model.
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The fundamental democratic rights of the Kurdish people continue to be disregarded, and those who defend these rights face state pressure. One of the most striking examples of this is the Supreme Court of Appeals Prosecutor’s Office’s attempt in September to intervene in the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi’s program, which included demands defending the rights of the Kurdish people. The Prosecutor’s Office demanded that legitimate democratic demands such as “education in one’s mother tongue” and “Kurdish becoming an official language with constitutional guarantees,” be changed or removed, but the party categorically rejected this.
Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi Chairman Ulaş Sevinç sent its response along with a letter to the headquarters, parliamentary groups, and deputies of parties that describe themselves as “left” or “democrat,” including the CHP and Kurdish political tendencies. Only the Socialist Laborers Party has responded to this call so far.
18. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Nigeria:
South Africa:
Europe
Bulgaria:
Tens of thousands protest government corruption and draft budget
France:
Thousands of workers strike and protest austerity budget
Workers for EssilorLuxottica strike for pay increase
United Kingdom:
Further stoppage by Sellafield nuclear workers in Cumbria, England over hazard pay
Bosch workers in Scotland set to strike over pay-slashing contract changes
Middle East
Iran:
Workers’ protests continue as economy in crisis
Workers’ protests continue as economy in crisis
19. 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.
