Recent headlines at the World Socialist Web Site:
1. This week in history: December 29-January 4
- 25 years ago:
A dozen immigrant farmworkers killed in Spanish train-van collision
50 years ago:
Venezuela nationalizes oil industry
75 years ago:
North Korean and Chinese forces recapture Seoul
100 years ago:
2. US launches Christmas Day missile strikes against northwestern Nigeria
On Christmas Day, the US military launched multiple cruise missile strikes against targets in northwest Nigeria, which the White House claims killed several ISIS militants and were conducted at the request of the Nigerian government. Trump administration and Nigerian officials have publicly framed the operation as a joint counterterror mission.
News media reported that the operation included missiles launched from at least one US Navy vessel positioned in the Gulf of Guinea against targets in Sokoto State, in Nigeria’s northwest. A US military source told the New York Times that “over a dozen” Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired, striking two ISIS camps, while US Africa Command (AFRICOM) described “airstrikes” that killed “multiple ISIS terrorists.”
The US source stressed that the strikes were carried out with Tomahawk cruise missiles, ship-launched long-range precision weapons repeatedly used by US imperialism in its attacks on Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries. Media and Pentagon accounts also refer more generally to “airstrikes,” implying the additional likely use of carrier- or land-based aircraft, though details remain classified.
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Civilian casualty numbers remain contested as AFRICOM’s statement speaks only of killing “multiple ISIS terrorists,” while US broadcast reports note that the administration “did not offer additional details … like what was specifically targeted or the number of casualties.”
AFRICOM’s official communication stated that it had launched the strikes “at the request of Nigerian authorities” in Sokoto State, “killing multiple ISIS terrorists,” presenting the attack as a seamless exercise in joint counterterrorism. The command framed the mission as a success, while omitting any reference to civilian harm or the broader destabilizing impact of US militarization in the Sahel and West Africa.
The official US justification for the operation is that it is part of the “war on ISIS,” targeting militants allegedly responsible for attacks on Christians in northern Nigeria. Trump had spent weeks publicly accusing the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians and, according to coverage by National Public Radio (NPR), portrayed the December 25 attack as a long-overdue response to an “existential threat” to Christianity in the country.
In a WABC radio interview, Trump hailed the attack, boasting that the ISIS terrorists “really got hit hard yesterday” and that they had received “a very bad Christmas present.”
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Along with this declaration, Trump said that “there will be many more” dead terrorists “if their attacks on Christians persist,” effectively promising an open-ended campaign of US imperialist attacks on Nigeria and anyone else the fascist president designates.
The claim that a “Christian genocide” is unfolding in Nigeria is a hoax, no different in substance from Washington’s claims about “narco-terrorism” in Venezuela or “white genocide” in South Africa.
Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent and widely cited violence monitor, directly contradicts this narrative. ACLED records show that Islamist and other armed groups operating in northern Nigeria have attacked both churches and mosques, and have killed both Christians and Muslims. These attacks are not driven by religious hatred but by the brutal social crisis produced by decades of imperialist looting, state corruption, and militarization.
Nigeria’s population of roughly 220 million is nearly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with Muslims forming a majority in the north. While ACLED data indicates that attacks on churches have increased over the last six years, it also shows that mosques were attacked more frequently than churches in 2015 and 2017. The victims of armed violence in Nigeria are not a single religious group, but working people of all faiths and ethnicities.
The current hoax gained momentum in September when pro-Democrat television host Bill Maher described what was happening in northern Nigeria as a “genocide,” as a way of justifying the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Referring to the Islamist Boko Haram group, he said “they have killed over 100,000 since 2009, they’ve burned 18,000 churches.” He added, “This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”
This narrative was rapidly seized by the Republican party, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz claiming on X that “over 50,000 Christians” had been massacred.
The essential purpose of this campaign is to assert the White House’s claimed right to fire cruise missiles into any country on the basis of fabricated humanitarian pretexts, and to prepare the expansion of US military operations globally. The assault on Nigeria is part of the Trump administration’s drive to reassert US imperialist dominance over Africa, a continent that holds roughly 30 percent of the world’s proven critical mineral reserves and vast untapped rare earth deposits.
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The Christmas Day missile strikes must be understood within the broader context of an accelerating US drive to militarily dominate Africa. Within days, Washington launched major attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria and opened a direct military front in West Africa, confirming that the so-called “war on terror” is a permanent global framework for imperialist violence.
The operation also followed Nigeria’s rapid intervention in early December, acting as a proxy for US and French imperialism, to foil an attempted coup in Benin on December 7, 2025. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have expelled French and US forces and developed closer relations with Russia, prompting Washington and Paris to rely increasingly on Nigeria to defend their strategic interests in the region.
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From the standpoint of the international working class, the military strikes on Nigeria are a serious warning. They demonstrate that the crisis-ridden American ruling class, led by the corrupt and criminal elements within the Trump administration, is prepared to expand and multiply wars across the globe, fusing religious demagogy, lies about “human rights” and the fight against “terrorism” with the ruthless pursuit of strategic and economic interests.
3. Mass layoffs deepen across US economy as job cuts in auto, logistics and tech continue into 2026
The wave of mass layoffs sweeping the United States in 2025 will continue into the new year, with devastating consequences for workers across multiple industries. This includes the General Motors Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit, where more than 1,100 workers have been permanently laid off and only a single shift will resume operations when production restarts on January 5.
A Factory Zero worker, who has been transferred between seven different GM plants over the last two decades—including the now shuttered Lordstown, Ohio assembly and Warren, Michigan transmission factories—told the World Socialist Web Site, “As of right now, the layoffs have begun. On January 5, first shift returns at our plant, and second shift is on indefinite layoff.”
Speaking on the danger that GM could shutter the entire facility, he said, “I’ve seen it done many times. I tell people that all the time, it is nothing for GM to shut these doors and gut this entire plant and be out and gone.”
The worker described a sense of free fall among Factory Zero employees, abandoned by both the corporation and the United Auto Workers union.
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Internationally, the same processes are unfolding. In Germany and across Europe, auto manufacturers like VW and suppliers like Bosch and ZF have announced tens of thousands of layoffs, plant closures and restructuring as they confront declining demand, rising costs and global competition.
It is in response to this global assault that the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has issued a statement calling for an internationally coordinated counteroffensive against the bloodbath of layoffs in the auto industry. The IWA-RFC warns that the defense of jobs cannot be carried out plant by plant or nation by nation, but requires unified action by workers across borders against the transnational corporations that dominate the global economy.
4. Stop Trump’s mass immigrant roundups!
The year 2025 has seen an assault on immigrants without precedent in American history. With the complicity of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy, the Trump administration has launched a nationwide dragnet for mass detention and deportation. Every day, heavily armed and often masked federal agents fan out into neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and homes.
On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that ICE is now carrying out roughly 2,600 “at-large” arrests per week. During Obama’s first term, weekly arrests averaged 640. Under Trump’s first term, they averaged 569. Even under Biden, who oversaw a major escalation, arrests averaged about 1,100 per week. Trump has more than doubled that figure in months and has declared his goal of deporting 1 million people this year.
The claim that the operation targets “criminals” is a lie. ICE has shifted away from jail-based arrests to mass workplace raids at car washes, construction sites and food processing plants. Immigrants are targeted whose only “crime” is seeking work.
Political opposition is also being criminalized. Yaa’kub Vijandre, a longtime Dallas resident and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, has been detained for nearly three months and faces deportation to a country he has not lived in since childhood. His “crime” is refusing to become an FBI informant and continuing to speak out against US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza. If this is grounds for detention, it is grounds for the persecution of anyone.
Those seized are routinely denied basic constitutional rights. The recent CBS 60 Minutes investigation, which was pulled from airing, documented the illegal rendition of nearly 300 immigrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison under the Alien Enemies Act. They were held for months without lawyers under conditions amounting to torture. Similar conditions have been documented at detention facilities across Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, New Jersey and Louisiana.
What is being built is a nationwide deportation machine. ICE acting director Todd Lyons has openly stated that the goal of the Trump administration is to become the “Amazon” of deportations: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”
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Trump’s deportation campaign serves three interconnected purposes.
First, the campaign against immigrants is aimed at dividing the working class. Immigrant workers are scapegoated for conditions created by the ruling class itself—stagnant wages, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and collapsing social services. By directing the anger of native-born workers against immigrants rather than against the corporations and billionaires responsible for decades of deindustrialization and austerity, the political establishment seeks to prevent the development of a unified working class movement. A divided working class cannot fight back.
Second, it serves as a diversion from political crisis and the criminality of the ruling class. New revelations tied to the Epstein network continue to implicate Trump, while the administration slashes social programs, carries out overseas military strikes and attacks workers at home.
Third, immigration repression provides the legal and political framework for expanding police state powers against the entire population. The same justifications used to deploy troops in cities and deport residents without due process will be used against striking workers and political opponents regardless of immigration status.
5. Demand the immediate release of UK pro-Palestine hunger strikers threatened with death
On Friday, a group of United Nations experts including Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, intervened to denounce Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s treatment of the protesters. Their statement declared, “These reports raise serious questions about compliance with international human rights law and standards, including obligations to protect life and prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
They added, “Preventable deaths in custody are never acceptable. The state bears full responsibility for the lives and wellbeing of those it detains... Urgent action is required now.”
The Labour government is spearheading a global campaign of state repression against opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
None of the protesters—who are on remand—has been found guilty of anything. They have all suffered ill treatment and unjustified blocks on communication with the outside world, due to the court’s arbitrary and unjust claim that charges against individuals arrested for Palestine Action (PA) protests have a “terrorist connection.”
In a vicious and desperate action, the Trump administration is threatening to sue jazz musician Chuck Redd for $1 million. Redd canceled his annual Christmas Eve jazz concert to protest the decision of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board of trustees to change the venue’s name to the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”
The threat against Redd is part of the Nazi-like effort to bring popular culture, education and art into line with the administration’s agenda. The Kennedy Center has been transformed from a public arts institution into a weapon of intimidation against any artist who refuses to kowtow to far-right politics.
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In an email to the Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the addition—illegal, in fact—of Trump’s name. “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said.
Redd’s departure from the “Trump Kennedy Center” is yet another blow to the center’s already fatally damaged prestige. Redd is a widely respected musician who gained international recognition playing with the Charlie Byrd Trio and Great Guitars, later performing with figures such as Dizzy Gillespie and Mel Tormé, leading bands linked to the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and teaching at the University of Maryland School of Music.
By pulling out, Redd joins a literal stampede of artists and producers out the Kennedy Center’s doors, refusing to be associated with Trump’s takeover of the institute. Among them are Issa Rae, Shonda Rhimes, Hamilton‑affiliated personnel and other prominent figures, withdrawing or relocating projects rather than perform under a banner bearing the president’s name.
This growing group was joined last week by the American College Theatre Festival, which has collaborated with the Kennedy Center for 58 years. On Monday, the event’s organizers announced they would suspend the festival’s affiliation, citing “circumstances and decisions that do not align with our organization’s values.”
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The renaming and the threat against Redd need to be seen as part of a systematic authoritarian reshaping of cultural life in the US. Following in the footsteps of the Nazis in 1930s’ Germany, Trump’s attack on “degenerate art,” “woke” productions and drag performances allegedly corrupting youth is integrally connected to the social and political counterrevolution his administration represents. Whereas the Nazis claimed to be “purifying” the Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) to create a “healthy” (and obedient) population, Trump’s regime does so in the name of inaugurating a national-patriotic “Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” a code name for its own full-scale attempt to politically intimidate and terrorize.
7. Australian high school students oppose social media ban
Teenagers in the industrial city of Newcastle, north of Sydney, speak out against the Labor government’s legislation to bar them from accessing social media platforms.
This interview is the second extended discussion between Professor Reiss and the World Socialist Web Site examining the accelerating assault on vaccines and public health in the United States. Building on earlier analysis, the conversation explores how law, science and public health institutions are being reshaped under the current administration, and what these changes reveal about the broader social and political breakdown.
Less than three days ahead of the holiday break, as postal workers laboured under the added burden of the Christmas rush, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) bureaucracy suddenly sprang a surprise of new tentative agreements on its 55,000 members in a short press release. The agreements for urban postal operations (UPO) and rural and suburban mail carriers (RSMC) are designed to facilitate the destruction of tens of thousands of full-time jobs in the coming years. This is the goal being pursued by Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger and the Mark Carney-led Liberal government, which wants to set a precedent with Canada Post for a massive assault on all public services.
Throughout more than two years of bargaining, CUPW has worked consistently to smother opposition among rank-and-file postal workers to the ruling class’s drive to return the Crown corporation to profitability. This has included CUPW’s national leadership acting arbitrarily to enforce a government strike ban and sabotaging a national strike earlier this year by unilaterally imposing bogus “rotating” job action confined to isolated local stunts. When the union bureaucracy was compelled to sanction strike action on two separate occasions by the militancy of postal workers, the union leadership ensured that the strikers remained isolated from all other sections of workers and sabotaged any struggle directed against the Liberal government, which has used its powers to support management’s assault on workers at every turn.
These actions were all the more criminal given that the issues involved in the contract struggle—the use of new technologies like AI to accelerate exploitation, job security, decent wage increases and the defense of workers’ right to strike—are common to all workers and could have served as a starting-point for a broader mobilization of the working class as a whole against capitalist austerity and the restructuring of public services to meet the demands of the financial oligarchy.
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Capitalist globalization in the 1980s eliminated the material conditions that allowed the unions in a previous period to secure limited gains for workers within a national framework. From then on, they became tools of management to extract concessions from workers on behalf of management with the aim of guaranteeing “competitiveness” and the profits of the union bureaucracy’s “own” national ruling elites. This rule applies to all unions, whether the once militant and nominally “left” CUPW, or more openly company unions like Unifor or the UAW in the US.
These are the basic issues at the heart of the postal workers’ struggle. Those forces, like the union bureaucracy, rooted in nationalism and a pro-capitalist outlook must accept the profit motive, which dictates ever worsening conditions for postal workers to cover shareholder payouts. Moreover, they divide workers along national lines under conditions in which the onslaught being waged by the capitalists on the working class is global in scope.
9. Optus report whitewashes Australia’s emergency phone breakdowns
The telecommunication company’s report seeks to absolve management of any responsibility for the fatal events of September 18, when some 605 calls to emergency services numbers failed to connect.
16. World Bank, ILO reports show depth of Cyclone Ditwah disaster in Sri Lanka
Last week, the World Bank and International Labour Organization (ILO) issued assessment reports on the massive damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, driving the country deeper into economic crisis and further devastating the living conditions of workers and the poor.
The cyclone developed in the Bay of Bengal in late November and entered Sri Lanka on November 28, exiting the next day. It engulfed all of the country’s 25 districts in floods and triggered hundreds of landslides. The official death toll stands at 639, with 203 missing and thousands injured, some critically.
The World Bank’s Global Rapid Post-Disaster Damage Estimation report puts a preliminary figure on the total damage to Sri Lanka’s economy at $US4.1 billion, or about 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Around 2 million people—roughly 500,000 families—across all 25 districts were affected.
However, the ILO’s preliminary assessment estimates that 16 percent of national GDP—around $16 billion—is at risk due to the disaster. The widely differing figures only underscore the enormous scale of devastation across the country.
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The ILO also estimates that Ditwah affected the jobs of 374,000 workers, with income losses reaching $48 million per month and has recommended emergency financial assistance and labor-intensive recovery programs.
These are not figures that can be addressed through patchwork measures. The devastation of the lives of the masses has already driven many into poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine triggered an unprecedented economic crisis in 2022, compelling the then government to default on foreign debt.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe responded by securing a $3 billion IMF bailout and began implementing its harsh dictates from 2023, including hikes in value-added tax, electricity and water tariffs, sweeping cuts to public spending, and the privatization of state-owned enterprises to guarantee debt repayment from 2028 onward.
Since coming to power, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has pressed ahead with implementing all the IMF’s austerity measures.
When the cyclone struck late last month—amid the deepening economic crisis and IMF-imposed austerity—22 percent of Sri Lankans were living below the poverty line, with another 10 percent barely above it. The disaster will vastly intensify the social catastrophe confronting the masses.
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Workers and the poor must oppose the government’s plans to impose the huge costs of cyclone recovery on the masses. They are not responsible for the cyclone catastrophe or the underlying capitalist crisis.
Responsibility for the disaster and mass suffering squarely falls on successive Sri Lankan governments that have failed to take essential measures necessary to mitigate the impact of such events.
Governments around the world, particularly of the major capitalist powers, all of which place profit and national interest above elementary social needs, are responsible for the unabated impact of global warming that has increased the severity of cyclones.
All opposition parties, including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, United National Party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Tamil bourgeois parties are making hollow criticisms of the government for the delay in aid distribution and reconstruction. All these parties have similar records in past disasters and provide no alternative to the ruling JVP/NPP.
10. German government abolishes basic welfare support
On the Friday before Christmas, the German parliament gave its blessing to the budget proposed by the coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD). This marks the launch of a policy that cuts social spending, abolishes the “citizens’ income” (basic welfare) and expands precarious work in order to finance rearmament, war and the further enrichment of the wealthy.
This is the policy demanded by the far -right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the Bundestag (parliament), Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the AfD, screeched: “Mr. Chancellor, finally abolish this citizens’ income!” Last week, an SPD minister complied with the AfD demand. On 17 December, Federal Labour Minister Bärbel Bas (SPD) announced a cabinet decision according to which citizens’ income is to be abolished and replaced by “New Basic Security.” Parliament is expected to decide on this in January.
The “New Basic Security” will in future be accompanied by harsh sanctions, cuts and tightened rules regarding what is deemed acceptable work that an unemployed person must accept or lose benefits. If an appointment at the job centre is missed, benefits are to be cut by 30 percent for three months, amounting to around €150 less per month. (The current basic social security rate for single adults is €563 per month). In the event of further missed appointments, benefits will be reduced in stages. After the third violation, they can be reduced to zero.
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Around 5.5 million benefit recipients are affected by these measures. In the longer term, however, the attacks threaten many more workers. In the current situation of accelerated job destruction, particularly in the automotive and supplier industries, these decisions provide the government with the necessary instruments to effectively blackmail the unemployed. Under the Damocles sword of sanctions, those laid off will be forced as quickly as possible to accept poorly paid, precarious jobs.
This will lead to a longer-term deterioration in social conditions, because it will become more difficult to save for retirement under such circumstances. Pensions are already the next target in the government’s sights. At present, pensions account for 20 percent of federal spending and are the largest single item in the budget. The government has now appointed a commission tasked with working out fundamental “reforms” by June 2026.
Essentially, the aim is to shift old-age provisions away from the pay-as-you-go pension system, where current contributors partially fund the existing retirees, towards self-funded pensions and private provisions. Shortly before Christmas, Finance Minister and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (SPD) presented a proposal for a new private pension system that the government intends to partially subsidize. Klingbeil claimed: “We want a private pension for everyone: for all generations and all incomes.” But the shift towards self-funded pensions will inevitably further widen the gap between rich and poor.
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These attacks on working people can only be understood in connection with the pro-war policy and Germany’s grasp for world power. To make Germany and Europe “fit for war” and geopolitically capable of action—above all against Russia, and increasingly in the growing conflict with the United States—the government has created several “special funds” and is taking on debts running into the trillions. For military projects, it has suspended the debt brake to finance the most massive rearmament program of the German army since Hitler. The defence budget will rise next year to €82.7 billion and, including the special funds, to €108 billion. The aim is to reach military spending of 3.5 percent of GDP (€153 billion) by 2029. When investments in war-ready infrastructure are included, the figure rises to as much as 5 percent.
Since 2020, UPS has steadily installed Lytx DriveCam devices in its delivery trucks. These systems use artificial intelligence to analyze driver behavior, directly contradicting claims by Teamsters leadership that the 2023 contract banned driver-facing cameras.
According to the 2023 UPS-Teamsters contract “Vehicles may not be equipped with inward-facing cameras.” It further stipulates that if a forward-facing camera device includes an inward facing recording device “Any functionality included in driver-facing cameras (including their driver recording and monitoring functionality) will be disabled and rendered inoperable to prevent recording and monitoring of in-cab activities.”
At companies like Amazon management has used recorded footage to issue write‑ups, justify firings, intimidate workers or shift blame to the shoulders of workers for incidents that are caused by overwork or management failures.
Yet, Lytx DriveCam devices are explicitly designed to monitor drivers. Lytx DriveCam devices feature two image sensors, one facing forward and one facing inward, that are paired with other vehicle sensors such as GPS and accelerometers. The standard device records video of the road and the driver, using AI and “Machine Vision” to detect distracted driving or safety issues and warn drivers. With the standard setup, employers can monitor workers and drivers can even review footage of themselves. Ostensibly, this is used to improve safety and ensure accurate accountability in the event of an accident. In reality, however, it is primarily a tool for invasive corporate monitoring of employees.
UPS has claimed compliance with the contract by asserting that the inward-facing camera does not “record” the driver. In a letter to Teamsters Local 776, UPS stated that audio and inward-facing video recording had been disabled. However, the same letter confirmed that as of September 2023, the inward-facing sensor still issues audible alerts to drivers for distracted driving.
However, the letter confirms reports from workers that “As of September 2023, the inside sensor will provide audible alerts to the driver only. Any associated alert and event data has been disabled and not available in the Lytx portal.” This means that the alert is, ostensibly, not available to management for review and is only issued to the driver.
How is the Lytx DriveCam device able to issue audible alerts of distracted driving if it is disabled from recording the driver?
It can only do this by processing data collected by the inward-facing sensor, using AI to detect events and issue warnings. This is in direct violation of the first sentence of the clause in the contract, which clearly states that inward-facing cameras are prohibited.
12. Israel’s far-right government seeks to tighten its grip on power
The far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is advancing a series of measures in the Knesset aimed at strengthening its powers as it continues its wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and prepares for another offensive against Iran.
With his coalition of hard-right and ultra-religious parties trailing in the polls, the raft of new bills and regulations is Netanyahu’s last opportunity to cement his rule before elections that must be held by the end of October 2026. These will take place amid highly febrile political tensions: five elections took place between 2019 and 2022 with voters split down the middle over support for Netanyahu.
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Discussions are under way on a highly controversial bill to establish a politically appointed probe into the failures surrounding the October 7 attack, an approach widely seen as a government whitewash. Opposition parties and bereaved families have demanded instead a state commission of inquiry, the highest level of public inquiry, whose make-up would be determined by the judiciary, anathema to the Netanyahu government.
The bill states that if either the coalition or opposition does not cooperate in the process or cannot settle on a candidate, the Knesset speaker will choose instead, giving the coalition effective control since opposition figures have pledged to boycott the politicized inquiry. Attorney General Baharav-Miara denounced the legislation, describing it as “tailor-made” for the “personal” needs of the government.
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While Israel’s National Insurance Institute has yet to publish its official poverty report for 2024, the latest by Latet, an Israeli anti-poverty advocacy group, released two weeks ago, reveals increasing poverty in a country with one of the highest rates of inequality in the OECD group of advanced economies. A record 39 Israelis featured in Forbes magazine’s 2025 World’s Billionaires list, the highest number since the ranking began.
Household expenses have risen dramatically since the war; almost 27 percent of households—more than 2.8 million people, including 1.8 million children—suffer from “food insecurity”, a rise of nearly 29 percent in 2025.
Poverty is not confined to the traditional “disadvantaged population groups”; about a quarter of aid recipients are now the “new poor”, pushed into hardship over the past two years, including the lower middle class and self-employed army reservists who have lost their businesses due to their lengthy service. Two months after the so-called ceasefire, most reservists have still not returned to civilian life. Many won’t have jobs to return to as more than 46,000 businesses went bankrupt during the war.
The report says that “many middle-class families are collapsing under the burden of the soaring cost of living, the plutocratic economy and the ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ attitude”. The more prosperous, educated middle class in Israel is considering emigration, while tens of thousands of families have already emigrated.
It describes in startling terms “a socioeconomic state of emergency” with impoverished senior citizens unable to buy medications or afford other treatments and abandoned to their fate. Many have been forced to take out loans and buy on credit, not for luxury goods but basic necessities.
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Income is going down for almost everyone except reservists. While reserve duty was once seen as a service to the country, Israel now has a de facto mercenary force, many of whom follow their own rules and/or form vigilante groups with settlers who go on the rampage in the West Bank and Gaza.
The government secured resources for the war—calculated by The Marker at about $34,000 per household—by purchasing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons on credit, to the extent that soon the government will have to take out loans to cover the interest payments on older loans. It has also channeled funds to the constituencies represented in the coalition—the settlers and ultra-Orthodox—while public transport, public services and higher education budgets have declined dramatically.
13. IYSSE in Germany: “We do not want to die for the interests of the rich”
The reintroduction of conscription passed by Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, marks a decisive escalation of Berlin’s pro-war policy. Under the pretext of an alleged “Russian threat,” an entire generation of young people is being prepared for a new imperialist war, while the ruling class is pushing through the largest rearmament offensive since the founding of the Federal Republic following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. In an interview with broadcaster RT, Tamino Dreisam, spokesperson of the International Youth and Students for Socialist Equality (IYSSE) in Germany, sharply condemns this development and links the spontaneous outrage of young people with a conscious socialist and internationalist perspective.
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Dreisam described the task of the the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Trotskyist movement associated with it, not merely in reflecting the anger that already exists, but in
In the final part of the interview, Dreisam turned to the perspectives for the coming months and years. Militarization was proceeding “together with mass layoffs in industry ... every week thousands of workers are being laid off, anger is growing.” Indeed, it was becoming clearer by the day that the costs of rearmament and the pro-war policy are being paid for through social cuts, plant closures and a massive redistribution of social wealth upwards. “The central question,” he emphasized, “is whether the working class will understand that these issues are connected with militarism, with social cuts and mass layoffs, that they are connected with class rule, with capitalism.”
Dreisam summarized this perspective in a clear conclusion: “We are heading into major class battles, and the outcome will be decided in this struggle, in the building of a conscious socialist movement.” This succinctly captures the line developed by the World Socialist Web Site since the beginning of the new war offensive: preventing a third world war, rejecting the reintroduction of conscription and defending democratic and social rights are inseparably linked with building an international revolutionary leadership in the working class. The central task consists in transforming the spontaneous outrage of youth and workers against war and social cuts into a conscious, organized movement for the seizure of power by the working class and the socialist reorganization of society.
On December 24 around 11:00 a.m., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents opened fire in Glen Burnie, Maryland, nearly killing a man. Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, an immigrant from Portugal, was shot by ICE agents after he allegedly attempted to flee a targeted kidnapping operation.The shooting took place in a residential suburb, while children were home for the holiday. According to the Baltimore Banner, ICE claimed that Sousa-Martins tried to drive away instead of submitting to custody. ICE alleged that he drove into agency vehicles attempting to box him in and that officers were in the pathway of the van. An ICE spokesperson claimed agents “defensively fired their service weapons, striking the driver.” After he was shot, Sousa-Martins’ van veered off the road and struck a tree, injuring a passenger.
Sousa-Martins and his passenger, who was injured in the crash, are both recovering at a local hospital. A Glen Burnie resident and eyewitness, James Hick, told the Banner reporters, “Shot him three times. I see him laid out.” He added, “Guy didn’t deserve to be killed, but he shouldn’t have tried to run them over.” Another neighbor, who did not wish to be identified, told the Banner she saw ICE agents shooting at Sousa-Martins from inside their own vehicles.
No video has been released to corroborate any ICE statements. No claims issued by ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or any agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should be accepted at face value. Agents and their leadership routinely lie, including in court.
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The branding of resistance as “terrorism,” the construction of mass detention warehouses and the creeping deployment of National Guard troops are all components of the expanding police-immigration apparatus aimed not only at immigrants but at the entire working class.
15. Joseph Hansen—the FBI’s asset in the SWP
This 2025 Summer School lecture by the assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United Kingdom, Thomas Scripps, examines material which has been published in recent years regarding FBI investigation and infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party, and the additional light it shines on the findings of Security and the Fourth International.
16. Australia: Worker dies at Cleanaway’s Ravenhall waste facility
The death in Melbourne’s western suburbs on December 17 is the fifth fatality linked to the recycling and waste management company over the past 18 months.
17. Richard Linklater's Blue Moon: Rodgers and Hart, without much music
Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s new film, uses the evening of the premiere of Oklahoma, the first of the famed musical collaborations between composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, to depict the closing chapter in the life of Lorenz Hart, Rodgers’ previous partner.
Rodgers and Hart were the team behind 26 Broadway musicals over a period of some 20 years. Their partnership began when Rodgers, born in 1902, was not yet out of his teens, and Hart was in his mid-20s. In the 1920s and 30s Rodgers and Hart, in Broadway shows like Babes in Arms and The Boys from Syracuse, created such timeless standards as “My Funny Valentine,” “Manhattan,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “With a Song in My Heart,” “Bewitched” and “Blue Moon,” the song that gives the current film its title.
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Certain choices made by the filmmaker have resulted in disappointing and unsatisfactory results. First and foremost is the decision to focus the movie almost entirely on the very end of Hart’s life, and the alcoholism and depression that led to his death. These are legitimate subjects to explore, of course, but there is little else to this film except 100 minutes of talk about the professional problems and emotional emptiness in Hart’s life. This makes for interminable dialogue that does not add up to an illuminating and interesting cinematic experience.
With almost no exceptions, the entire audience for Blue Moon will have lived their whole lives after Hart’s death. The youngest viewers of this story were born more than a century after Hart. They will come away from this film knowing how he died but will see little of how he lived and what he achieved in his 48 years.
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Another issue that gets mostly overlooked in Blue Moon, aside from one or two references, is the historical period of the Rodgers and Hart collaboration, and how this external world found its reflection in their songs. This is not a simple matter, but it bears some examination. Rodgers and Hart first found fame, in such shows as The Garrick Gaieties from 1925, at the height of what is sometimes called the Jazz Age, or the “Roaring 20s.” It was a time of growing crisis. This was the period of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, both published a century ago. The increasingly speculative boom ended in the crash of 1929.
Hart’s lyrics, in the 20s as well as during the Depression decade of the 1930s, reflected an urban sophistication that was part of this post-World War I era. The Rodgers and Hart musicals expressed the moods of a prosperous urban middle class, a layer seeking a good time and at times living for the moment. The songs also reflected a precariousness, however, the feeling that the good times would not last or, by the 1930s, that they would not return.
There is a sadness in many of Hart’s lyrics. Barely five feet tall, he may have been thinking of his own melancholy, including his lack of romantic fulfillment and his conviction that no one could love him, but the songs also touched a chord for many who wondered what the future had in store for them.
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The music that Rodgers composed with Hammerstein had a different quality, a broader appeal, compared to his earlier work with Hart. The teams worked differently. With Hart, Rodgers composed first and then waited for Hart to come up with the lyrics, while with Hammerstein the lyrics came first. This could partly explain how Rodgers’ music changed, in tune with Hammerstein’s lyrics, which had less satire and sophistication, and were directed toward broader layers of the population.
These are some of the issues that are raised in considering the career of Larry Hart. Linklater has made a film that deals, as noted above, primarily with Hart’s death and not with his life. There is some similarity between his approach and that of Bradley Cooper, the director of the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro (2023). In both cases the focus remains on questions of the inner life, of psychology and identity, whether gender, sexual or racial, and not on the actual careers and the legacies of the musical figures themselves.
18. Australia: Unanswered questions about the Bondi Beach shootings
The trickle of information from the police regarding the Bondi Beach shootings continues to raise more questions than it answers. It leaves huge gaps not only in what happened in the immediate weeks preceding the terrorist attack but in the background of the two alleged gunmen—Sajid Akram, 50, and his son, Naveed Akram, 24.
On Sunday December 14, the Akrams armed with two shotguns and a rifle allegedly opened fire on hundreds of people attending a “Chanukah by the Sea” event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach marking the start of the Jewish Hanukkah festival. Fourteen people were killed on the spot while another later died in hospital and another 40 were injured.
Police shot and killed Sajid Akram. His son was shot in the stomach and survived in a critical condition. He was charged last week on 59 counts, including 15 of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of committing a terrorist act, and has been transferred to Sydney’s Long Bay jail.
A court this week released a redacted version of police documents related to the formal charging of Naveed Akram which had been placed under an interim suppression order last week. The new order was only made after an application backed by several media outlets.
While the detail provided is limited, the police documents make it clear that the terrorist shootings were planned at least two months in advance. Yet the police and intelligence agencies claim that they had no knowledge of what was about to unfold on December 14, even though the domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, had in 2019–20 carried out a six-month investigation of Naveed Akram’s associations with groups influenced by the terrorist Islamic State (IS) organization.
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Even though they are responsible for licensing firearms, the NSW police have provided no explanation as to why Sajid Akram was given a gun licence after his son had come under ASIO investigation in 2019. Sajid Akram was also reportedly questioned by ASIO. The application for the license was made in 2020, but only granted in 2023 and used to purchase six weapons.
The number of weapons and type should also have raised suspicion, given the owner lived in suburban Sydney. Moreover, three of the six were the same type and model of shotgun purchases—a clear indication that the guns were not simply for personal use. Both the shotguns and the Beretta rifle, while not automatic or semi-automatic weapons, were capable of relatively rapid fire.
Also unexplained is a report in the Daily Telegraph that Naveed Akram was given a Class 1 Security License in August 2024, enabling him to work as an unarmed security guard and to monitor security systems. Less than a year later, in June 2025, the license was revoked. The police, who issue the licenses, have not explained why.
19. Venezuela’s oil and the crisis of US imperialism
The aim of the Trump administration is to create conditions of maximal pressure to force the removal of President Nicolás Maduro and install a government subordinate to US strategic and corporate interests. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s decision to award its prize to the US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado must be understood within this broader campaign of regime change—combining economic strangulation, military escalation and political maneuvers aimed at fracturing Maduro’s domestic support, particularly among wealthier layers of Venezuelan society.
It is not a particularly hidden point that, lurking behind all of these developments is the unique, strategic role Venezuela plays in the global economy—the largest holder of so-called “proven” oil reserves in the world.
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On paper, Venezuela possesses the largest volume of what are classified as proven oil reserves in the world—roughly 300 billion barrels. At current rates of global crude oil consumption, approximately 30–31 billion barrels per year, this would be enough to supply the world for about a decade. To place this figure in context, Saudi Arabia reports close to 270 billion barrels of proven reserves, Iran roughly 210 billion, Russia around 80 billion and the United States approximately 145 billion.
These are startling numbers, and they underscore the enormous strategic significance of Venezuelan oil within the framework of US imperial ambition. At the same time, they require careful qualification. “Proven reserves” are not a purely geological category; they refer to reserves that national authorities classify as economically recoverable at prevailing prices and under existing technological and political conditions. Within OPEC in particular, such figures are widely recognized as politicized and inflated since reserve size historically influenced production quotas and geopolitical standing.
Venezuela’s oil reserves are real, vast and located at relatively shallow depths. From an economic and technical standpoint, however, they rank among the most difficult oil deposits in the world to exploit. The overwhelming majority of these reserves are concentrated in the Orinoco Belt, a massive onshore formation containing extra-heavy crude. Unlike conventional oil fields, the oil in the Orinoco does not flow naturally. It is extremely viscous—closer in consistency to molasses than to liquid petroleum—and requires continuous mechanical lifting, dilution and processing merely to be transported.
One way to characterize Venezuela’s oil endowment is therefore as simultaneously vast and deeply constrained: the largest hydrocarbon accumulation on earth, but one that is slow, capital-intensive and highly dependent on continuous imports of machinery, diluents and industrial inputs. This is why independent industry assessments diverge sharply from the headline reserve figures. Rystad Energy, for example, estimates Venezuela’s long-term economically recoverable oil at closer to 27 billion barrels—an order of magnitude smaller than the official reserve claims.
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The Trump administration’s blockading of tankers, repeated extrajudicial strikes and the deployment of the largest US armada in the Caribbean since 1962 are the instruments of a concerted drive to reassert imperial control over Venezuela’s oil and to deny strategic gains to China. It must be seen within a broader explosion of imperialist militarism, as American, and with it, global capitalism, faces existential crisis.
20. India’s Modi government intensifies war on the poor by gutting rural job guarantee program
The Modi government is gutting the rural job “guarantee,” fulfilling a longstanding demand of the most rapacious sections of the ruling class who have long derided its cost and complained that it “boosts” rural wages.
Gary Tyler, the political prisoner who was sentenced to die in the electric chair at age 17 in 1976, has published an autobiographical book, Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison (with Ellen Bravo). Framed for murder, Tyler was held on death row for two years and spent nearly 42 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.
Stitching Freedom is a remarkable book that workers and young people entering into struggle should read, both for its profoundly moving personal narrative and its searing critique of the American capitalist system.
It is at once a history and a warning, whose contemporary significance jumps out at the reader. The cruelty inflicted on Tyler by the capitalist state under both Democrats and Republicans—who kept an innocent man in prison for decades—is a salutary lesson. The bipartisan nature of the class war against the working class is especially evident today in the horrific rise of social inequality, poverty, and the growth of the repressive state and its brutal use, especially among immigrants.
22. Turkish metalworkers must prepare rank-and-file committee led strike against wage misery!
The escalating offensive against wages, jobs and working conditions is the ruling class’s response to the global crisis of the capitalist system.
23. BMA colludes with Starmer government against resident doctors following strike
The Starmer–Streeting government, backed by the union apparatus, is enforcing an agenda on behalf of the oligarchy: austerity, market expansion and hikes in military spending.
24. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
New Zealand:
Pakistan:
South Korea:
Vanuatu:
25. 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.
