Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is an extraordinary documentary directed by Sepideh Farsi, an Iranian filmmaker living in exile in Paris. In early 2024, Farsi traveled to the Egyptian-Palestinian border to document the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but was prevented from entering the enclave.
In April 2024, Farsi found herself in Cairo, where she filmed Palestinian refugees in the Egyptian capital. She met a man who had just gotten out of Gaza. He told the filmmaker about Fatima Hassouna, a “young, brilliant and talented photographer.”
The film begins when Farsi first contacts the 24-year-old photojournalist in the north of the territory, and enlists her in documenting life under murderous Israeli siege. After just two conversations, the idea arises of making a film through interviews with Fatima as she describes her life and those of the people trapped in the bombarded coastal strip. The rich and lively conversation between the two women lasts for nearly a year. “Both of our lives are conditioned by war,” says the director, who faces arrest if she returns to Iran.
On April 15, 2025, Farsi shares publicly the news of her documentary film’s selection by the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and Fatima expresses her desire to attend the world premiere of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. Farsi ends the cellphone call requesting Hassouna’s passport. On the following morning, April 16, Fatima Hassouna and nine relatives are killed in their sleep in a targeted Israeli airstrike. This is how the fascist Netanyahu regime responds to the exposure of its crimes.
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In the documentary, Fatima describes the unbearably harsh living conditions as well as the mass killings of her relatives. The photojournalist is constantly interrupted by poor internet connection. The video calls are intertwined with Fatima’s photography, mainly focused on the incredible suffering of the Gaza population.
The film’s title comes from an expression Fatima uses to describe working as a photographer in Gaza: “It’s like putting your soul on your hand and walking,” meaning that every time she goes out, she carries her life openly, exposed to death at any second. This phrase captures the film’s core theme of the will to survive in the middle of catastrophe.
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Gaza journalists like Fatima face extreme, often fatal risks under blockade and during assaults, including murder, injury, harassment and starvation while trying to report. Gaza has been one of the deadliest places in the world for journalists, with reporters and camera crews killed or injured in murderous Israeli airstrikes, shelling and shootings while working or at home. The film’s press kit reports that “Since October 7th, 2023, at least 211 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army.”
Media workers report being hit in clearly marked “Press” gear, and newsrooms, cars and press equipment are destroyed or damaged in attacks. Phone calls from the IDF obviously warn them to stop reporting, as well there is harassment, detention and ill-treatment during raids and military operations.
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With foreign correspondents largely barred from entering Gaza, local journalists bear almost the entire burden of reporting, often without protective gear, backup teams or safe exit routes.
Access to information is systematically restricted: press freedom groups document blocked access to sites, broken equipment, confiscated devices and orders to leave under threat of arrest.
The US operation in Venezuela ordered by the would-be dictator Donald Trump has elicited concern and anger among workers and youth in Britain.
Not so much as a pale reflection of this has been shown in the protests organized by the Stop the War Coalition under the figurehead of Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, attended by a few hundred people. These were called as bankrupt appeals to Keir Starmer’s government of warmongers—already reviled as genocide defenders in Gaza—“to stand up to Trump” and defend international law.
On Saturday, a Socialist Equality Party campaign stall outside the Town Hall in Sheffield, South Yorkshire attracted workers and youth for discussions and to take copies of the leaflets: “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela! Release Maduro!”, and “Venezuela and Ukraine highlight bankruptcy of Britain’s anti-war movement”.
3. Signatories including former Guantánamo detainees defend UK’s pro-Palestine hunger strikers
Two-dozen former hunger strikers have released an open letter to Keir Starmer’s Labour government in defence of the Palestine Action political prisoners refusing food and at imminent risk of death.
Heba Muraisi has spent 72 days on hunger strike, Kamran Ahmed 65 days, and Lewie Ciaramella 51 days (fasting every other day as he is type-one diabetic). They are among 29 young people—the Filton 24 and Brize Norton 5—held on remand for over a year in exceptionally repressive conditions for alleged participation in direct action protests against the Gaza genocide.
Starmer’s government refuses to even meet with the prisoners, their legal representatives or their families.
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The letter’s signatories have histories of imprisonment at the hands of the Israeli government in Palestine, the British government in Ireland and the American government in Guantánamo.
They write “as survivors of state violence,” explaining, “The Palestine Action political prisoners began their hunger strike when they had no other choice. The state’s decision to rely on the use of the classification of ‘terror’ to enforce the systematic repression of those who refuse to conform has left them with no other alternative as they seek the rights they are entitled to by law.”
Their letter demands: “An urgent ministerial meeting with families and legal representatives”, “Immediate bail for the Palestine Action prisoners”, the “Dropping of terror charges designed to criminalise dissent”, “Fair trial conditions free from fear-driven narrative and political interference”, “Immediate access to independent medical care chosen by the prisoners” and “An end to censorship and restrictions on family visits.”
A veil of silence has been drawn over the event in the media, whose corporate owners and political handlers understand the explosive significance of a letter highlighting the dictatorial record of the “war on terror”—written by many of its victims. In their words, the use of terror legislation to target Palestine protesters “is not a new phenomenon”:
the use of the word “terror” has long been used to manufacture fear, to poison public perception, to justify the repeated violation of even the most basic human rights. Once this label is attached, rights become conditional, liberty becomes transactional, and the presumption of innocence evaporates. The rule of law that is so proudly claimed to be upheld is swiftly desecrated in the face of a singular word, deployed by unscrupulous politicians determined to protect their own interests: “terrorist”.
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Most of the signatories are former Guantánamo Bay detainees. They include Lakhdar Boumediene, lead plaintiff in the Boumediene v. Bush case which sought to secure the right of detainees to challenge their detention in US courts, and Mansoor Adayfi and Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, whose writing raised international awareness of the crimes committed by the American government.
Their intervention coincides with the British government paying “substantial” compensation to Abu Zubaydah, the first man subjected to CIA torture under the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation”. He was waterboarded 83 times, locked in coffin-shaped boxes and physically assaulted.
Agents working for British intelligence services MI5 and MI6 passed questions to his CIA torturers. They observed in internal communications that his treatment would have “broken” 98 percent of UK special forces soldiers.
Zubaydah is still held in Guantánamo, without charge, 24 years after being kidnapped by the US in Pakistan in 2002. His international legal counsel Professor Helen Duffy commented, “The compensation is important, it’s significant, but it’s insufficient,” adding that the UK and other governments “share responsibility for his ongoing torture and unlawful detention”.
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The lawless violence rubber-stamped by Starmer as DPP under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is now directly employed by him at the head of a Labour government. He is overseeing a massive strengthening of the authoritarian powers of the state, from the proscription of Palestine Action to the intimidation of journalists, draconian sentencing and restrictions on mass demonstrations. Labour’s treatment of the hunger strikers is the most brutal example to date of anti-democratic crackdown.
Workers in Britain have been outraged by the murder of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE. The Socialist Equality Party (US) described the killing as the “intended consequence of the massive paramilitary mobilization that the Trump administration has unleashed in cities across the country, the spearhead for the broader conspiracy for dictatorship.”
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The long and extensive record of oppression inscribed in the biographies of the open letter’s signatories is deeply significant. It underscores that what the hunger strikers and all pro-Palestine protesters confront is not just Starmer, his government, or even the British political establishment, but a global imperialist system: a sprawling apparatus of violence and coercion serving the interests of a capitalist oligarchy and political elite.
Confronting such an enemy requires the development of a mass movement against all imperialist wars—from Venezuela to Gaza to Ukraine—and attacks on democratic rights. Moreover, that movement must be built in the working class as the sole social force capable of defeating the imperialist governments.
In a calculated move, [President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] failed to mention in his speech the enormous implications of the US invasion of Venezuela for Brazil’s “vigorous democracy.” The aggression of US imperialism against Brazil’s northern neighbor sets a dangerous precedent for all Latin America. A central aim of Trump’s attack was to send a clear message that any government that stands in the way of the United States will face the same fate as Maduro.Neither did Lula mention the systematic interventions of the Trump administration in the politics of Brazil and the whole region promoting fascistic forces that are heirs to the US-backed military dictatorships of the 1970s.
Lula and his administration have, in fact, done everything possible to avoid further straining relations with the Trump administration.
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The fate of Nicolás Maduro foreshadows an escalation of direct intervention by US imperialism in Brazilian politics, which is aggressively advocated by the far-right opposition linked to Bolsonaro. These fascist forces have already begun to exploit the Trump administration’s offensive against Venezuela to boost their campaign for the release of Bolsonaro and the others convicted for the January 8 coup attempt.
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The Lula government will face a growing crisis until the October 2026 general elections, which will coincide with the escalation of the Trump administration’s offensive against the region and the entire world. As shown throughout the history of Latin America in the 20th century, bourgeois nationalism is incapable of offering a progressive response to the crisis of US imperialism and its increasingly rapid turn toward dictatorship at home and war abroad.
On the contrary, Lula’s failed appeals to “multilateralism” and his defense of “national sovereignty” only disarm the Brazilian working class against the dangers it faces. The threat of imperialist intervention in Brazil and all of Latin America, including the imposition of a new military dictatorship, can only be stopped by an international movement of the working class against capitalism and its pillars, including the alleged parties of the nominal left such as Lula’s PT.
5. Political war breaks out between White House and Federal Reserve
In an extraordinary video statement Sunday night, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell revealed that the Trump administration has subpoenaed him and threatened him with criminal prosecution, in what he called an effort to use the investigative resources of the Department of Justice to force changes in Fed monetary policy.
Powell said that allegations that he had lied in testimony before Congress about cost overruns in the renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters were nothing more than a pretext. “This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings,” he said. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
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While Attorney General Pamela Bondi declined to comment on the “ongoing investigation” and Trump himself claimed to be completely unaware of the probe, there is no question that the White House ordered the targeting of Powell in order to assert its control over the US central bank.
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As a legal matter, the investigation into Powell is an obvious frame-up. The renovation of the nearly century-old headquarters of the Fed, which consists of two large buildings, has encountered obstacles typical of such projects, including extensive contamination by asbestos and lead in structures completed in 1930. The cost has risen from $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion, paid for by the Fed from its own resources, derived from fees paid by the banking institutions it regulates.
The real motive for the investigation, as Powell pointed out, was Trump’s insistence that the Fed should slash interest rates more quickly than it judged prudent. This is a dispute within the capitalist ruling elite, in which Trump speaks for the hedge funds, crypto swindlers and other speculators and conmen, who clamor for lower interest rates in order to sustain their debt-fueled operations.
Powell speaks for the more traditional Wall Street interests, including the major banks and investment firms, who fear a resurgence of inflation which would both undermine the global domination of the US dollar and threaten to trigger a movement from the working class seeking wage increases to offset rising prices.
The issue goes beyond the level of interest rates, as Wall Street Journal economics correspondent Greg Ip acknowledged: “The criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell isn’t ultimately about the Fed’s headquarters, or Powell, or even interest rates. It’s about power. President Trump intends to take control of the central bank, no matter what the law or the courts say.”
In other words, seizing control of the Fed is a key step in Trump’s drive to establish a presidential dictatorship.
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The fears expressed in the corporate media over Trump’s threat to the “independence” of the Fed reflect the concern in the financial oligarchy that the president personally, rather than Wall Street, will be directing the setting of interest rates. Trump tweeted last month on Truth Social that “anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman.”
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The so-called independence of the Fed does not mean political neutrality; it means that the Fed will be guided solely by the fundamental interests of the capitalist class, without regard to the electoral calendar or the immediate concerns of particular politicians. In the past, this led to conflicts when presidents feared they would pay a political price for Fed actions that resulted in mass unemployment.
Trump’s intervention against Powell goes far beyond this. He is asserting dictatorial authority over all the institutions of the capitalist state. His opponents within the ruling class, for their part, fear that blatant political manipulation of US interest rates will undermine global confidence in the dollar, which has long functioned as the world’s principal reserve currency.
This conflict has profound consequences for working people. The working class must intervene, not on the side of either faction of the oligarchy, but on the basis of its own class interests, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, and fighting for the socialist reorganization of society. This includes the nationalization of the banks and the control of finance by a workers’ government.
6. New York City nurses strike begins year of growing class struggle
Fifteen thousand New York City nurses at four hospitals launched the largest healthcare strike in the city in decades on Monday morning. The battle in New York is the first of what will be many major struggles by the working class in 2026, which will be the defining feature of the new year in the US and internationally.
In just the first two weeks of the year, the Trump administration has launched the criminal invasion of Venezuela, threatened war against Iran and overseen and defended the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good.
Through Trump, the capitalist oligarchy has declared war on the working class. The year ahead will be defined not only by imperialist aggression and dictatorship, but also by mass layoffs, a surge in industrial accidents, and rising prices driven by Trump’s tariffs and trade war. The ruling class is determined to squeeze every drop from workers in order to pay for the deepening crisis of the global capitalist system.
These attacks are already provoking opposition, expressed in a growing wave of protests. But the decisive issue is the development of a mass working class movement that is independent of the corporate-controlled political system and the pro-capitalist trade union apparatus, which is working consciously to block and derail opposition.
Nurses are fighting against conditions that are universal in hospitals across America: dangerous understaffing, extreme overwork and inadequate pay. Taking place in the center of the world financial system, the strike pits nurses against the ruling class and the entire political setup.
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The same process is mirrored in every other industry and aspect of life, including education, housing and social programs.
The working class will be thrust into struggle because it cannot accept industrial slavery and dictatorship. These struggles will increasingly reveal the class character and function of those who falsely claim to speak on behalf of workers.
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The laws of history are more powerful than any bureaucratic apparatus. Attempts to sabotage and suppress the class struggle will only further discredit these organizations. But the decisive question is the extent to which this social logic is translated into independent organization.
The key to this development is the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), new forms of organization and a new strategy to unite workers in a broad movement against inequality and dictatorship. This is the only realistic strategy, because under present conditions, every major question runs up against the need for a frontal assault on the so-called “right” to profit.
The World Socialist Web Site urges nurses to form rank-and-file strike committees to take democratic control of their struggle. These committees must fight for the expansion of the strike to all 15 affected facilities, organize independent oversight of picketing and negotiations, and mobilize nurses to actively oppose any attempt to shut down the strike prematurely or send them back to work on the basis of vague promises that are never fulfilled.
At the same time, these committees should reach out to broader sections of the working class—educators, transit workers, city employees, and others facing inflation, job cuts, and collapsing public services. The fight to defend healthcare must be linked to the struggle of the entire working class against the subordination of social rights to the profit interests of the capitalist oligarchy.
Every healthcare worker knows that the conditions they face are rooted in the subordination of life, health and the interests of the working class to profit. Hospitals are run as business enterprises governed by the ruthless dictates of insurance companies and corporate executives. The result is a system in which even the most basic medical care is denied to vast sections of the population, while healthcare workers are driven to exhaustion and burnout.
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The profit interests of the capitalist class are fundamentally incompatible with further human progress. To win the fight for healthcare, jobs, education and democratic rights, the working class must consciously emerge as the decisive political force in society and take aim at the capitalist system itself. That means fighting for socialism, including the expropriation of the banks and corporations, the transformation of the healthcare giants into public utilities and the reorganization of society under the democratic control of the working class for the benefit of all.
7. “It’s us against the executives”: Striking nurses in New York City speak from the picket line
Nearly 15,000 nurses in New York City walked off the job Monday morning in the first major strike of the new year. Nurses at New York Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospital systems staffed boisterous picket lines throughout the day, carrying strike placards and homemade signs that provided a glimpse of the conditions they are struggling against. “Closets are for clothes, not for babies,” one sign read. “Who takes health care away from ‘heroes’?” another asked.
The walkout, which was pared back by the New York State Nurses Association’s last-minute deals with eight hospitals, is nonetheless the largest nurses’ strike in history in New York City. It comes three years after the last major nurses’ strike in the city, which involved two of the same hospital systems, Mount Sinai and Montefiore. A key issue then, as now, is unsafe staffing levels that have led to impossible conditions for nurses.
Not only have staffing levels remained dangerous for patients and untenable for workers, but the hospital executives are demanding workers accept cuts to their own health benefits. They have also refused to address safety concerns, which have increased as the social crisis in New York City has deepened and nationwide, as the Trump administration spearheads the dismantling of the public health infrastructure.
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with striking nurses on the picket line at New York Presbyterian Monday about the conditions that have provoked this struggle and the political issues behind them.
8. Germany: Greens and Left Party support massive social cutbacks in Saxony
In Saxony, the land of collapsing bridges, local and state politicians declare that “the poor financial situation impacts directly on investments in municipal infrastructure” and that finances “are definitely not sufficient to maintain or improve the condition of our roads.”
The Greens and the Left Party cynically justified their support for the state budget by claiming they had prevented worse. Both parties support the war policy of the federal government, which has been a major factor in rising costs while federal subsidies were cut to finance rearmament.
When the Greens were in government at federal and state levels, they implemented the austerity budgets themselves. Now, with Sebastian Scheel (SPD), a former Left Party member is even serving as state secretary in the Saxon Ministry of Economics. Scheel, who had previously made a name for himself with the austerity budget imposed by the Berlin Senate (state executive), quit the Left Party in 2024 because its support for the pro-war policy did not go far enough for him.
However, as is so often the case, the Left Party plays a particularly foul role outside parliament. While occasionally feigning criticism of the cuts and pro-war policies, to provide itself with an alibi, it says that approving the austerity budget is an “anti-fascist” act, claiming otherwise the Alternative for Germany (AfD) would be strengthened. Yet it takes meticulous care to isolate from one another all movements expressing opposition, waiting for them to run out of steam. If it organises small protests against cuts in the state and municipalities, or against the AfD, it avoids any reference to the pro-war policies that it supports itself.
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The “lesser evil” policy of the Left Party and the Greens also tramples underfoot a central lesson of German history. Just as liberals and Social Democrats once supported Reich President Hindenburg to “block Hitler” coming to power—only then for Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Reich chancellor—they now support right-wing CDU politicians like Merz and Kretschmer to “block the AfD.” Just as in the past, they are paving the way for the fascists, who profit from both the social devastation and rearmament.
9. White House threatens “lethal force” against Iran
Trump’s latest threats echo those he made after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in late December. The Washington Post reported that strikes against Iran were a major topic of discussion at the meeting. “If Iran is trying to build up again,” Trump said at the meeting, “we’ll knock the hell out of them.”
Leavitt added on Monday: “The truth is, with respect to Iran, nobody knows what President Trump is going to do except for President Trump.”
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The Iranian government has responded to Trump’s threats with pleas for negotiations. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared Monday: “We are not looking for war, but we are prepared for war—even more prepared than the previous war. We are also ready for negotiations.”
Iranian state media broadcast images Monday of pro-government rallies in several cities, along with funeral processions for security personnel killed in the unrest. The Guardian reported that tens of thousands gathered in Tehran’s Enqelab Square for a rally organized under the banner “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism.” State television, which had initially aired heavily censored coverage of the protests, switched to broadcasting the pro-regime demonstrations, saying they had been organized to promote “national unity.”
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The threats from Trump come amid protests across Iran triggered by the collapse of the rial and soaring inflation. According to the Financial Times, annual inflation hit 42 percent in December, while food inflation soared to 72 percent, with the price of bread rising 113 percent. The rial has lost 45 percent of its value against the dollar in 2025 alone.
The economic crisis is the direct product of decades of US sanctions. Between 2000 and 2012, the Iranian economy grew an average of 4.4 percent annually. Since the reimposition of sanctions, growth has slowed to just 1.9 percent. Oil exports, the mainstay of the Iranian economy, dropped from 2.8 million barrels per day in May 2018 to as low as 300,000 barrels per day after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in his first term.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in a statement Sunday night, “Because of the Islamic Republic’s repression—itself an indication of the regime’s ever narrowing social base—and the relentless hostility of the Western corporate media to an Iran not directly subservient to imperialism, it is difficult to get a precise picture of the protests in Iran.”
“But any progressive tendency in Iran would have to immediately repudiate Trump’s ‘support,’ denounce the threat of imminent US military action and call for the immediate lifting of the punitive sanctions that are strangling Iran’s economy.”
10. Australia: Writers’ festival director Louise Adler resigns in protest over Randa Abdel‑Fattah ban
The censorship of Abdel‑Fattah and the forcing out of festival curators and administrators who defend free speech and refuse to comply with Labor’s pro‑Zionist dictates are not isolated incidents. They form part of an escalating, global pattern of government interference in the arts, through which the ruling class seeks to police cultural institutions and crush mounting opposition to imperialist war and domestic authoritarianism.
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Note: the entire Adelaide Writers’ Week for 2026 has been cancelled as a result of the mass boycott by writers protesting censorship. The World Socialist Web Site will write further on this.
11. Protests and student walkouts expand, as Trump escalates Minneapolis occupation with 1,000 agents
In a major escalation of Trump’s plans to establish a presidential dictatorship, multiple outlets reported on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to flood Minneapolis with an additional 1,000 federal agents, intensifying what is already the largest federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota history. Since the start of “Operation Metro Surge” in early December, more than 2,000 immigration Gestapo have been deployed to the city as part of this occupation.
The ongoing mass deportations and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) murder of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 have provoked widespread anger in Minnesota and across the United States. Over the weekend, protests were held in every major US city and hundreds of rural towns in opposition to fascism and the murderous immigration Gestapo.
In defiance of immigration agents and threats from the Trump administration, workers, students and residents have continued to resist kidnapping operations. On Monday, hundreds of students at multiple high schools across the Minneapolis metro area engaged in peaceful protests and walkouts in opposition to the immigration police and the murder of Good.
At Roosevelt High School, hundreds of students walked out of class and held an afternoon rally. The school was the site of a violent kidnapping operation last week that ended with several students suffering tear gas exposure and at least one school worker detained. At Monday’s rally, students chanted against ICE and carried signs reading “Beat the heat, melt the ICE,” “No human is illegal,” and “ICE is the domestic terrorist.”
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In the wake of the killing of Good, Trump administration officials have doubled down on their slanders of the slain mother as a “domestic terrorist” and a “deranged leftist,” while glorifying her killer, Jonathan Ross, as “brave.” As of this writing, Ross faces no charges. In an appearance on Fox News Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt smeared Good as a “deranged lunatic woman” and falsely claimed that she was attempting to use her “vehicle as a weapon,” which she asserted “justifies” the government’s claim that it was “domestic terrorism.”
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained Department of Homeland Security documents on “Operation Metro Surge” indicating that the agency is seeking volunteers for the occupation. Klippenstein reposted a leaked memo from Border Patrol Acting Assistant Chief Joshua Andre Post requesting 300 personnel to be surged to Minneapolis. Klippenstein reported that agents are reluctant to volunteer for the operation. He cited an unnamed “high level career official at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington,” who said there is “genuine fear that ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington are creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around.”
Every day in Minneapolis–St. Paul, immigration thugs are violating workers’ democratic rights and inflicting violence on those who peacefully protest or record their operations. In scenes reminiscent of Nazi Germany, heavily armed agents of the state are going door to door in residential neighborhoods, demanding documentation to prove citizenship and serving administrative warrants and orders of final removal.
Furious that residents continue to peacefully film and follow ICE kidnapping operations, Border Patrol agents on Monday abruptly stopped their vehicles at a busy intersection and deployed chemical munitions, gassing dozens of bystanders and reporters. After deploying the tear gas, the agents quickly drove away, leaving a cloud of stinging and nauseating gas.
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The kidnapping operations are targeting workers regardless of immigration status. In video taken Monday, CBP agents are seen approaching drivers in their cars and demanding documentation.
Dozens of videos are circulating on social media showing residents confronting immigration Gestapo, demanding they leave.
Seeking to prevent a social explosion, in response to the federal occupations, Democratic officials in Minnesota and Illinois on Monday filed lawsuits against the Trump administration seeking to halt the kidnapping operations. At a press conference, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the occupation violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which affirms that the federal government possesses only powers enumerated in the Constitution, with all other powers belonging to the states or to the people.
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While these lawsuits make their way through the courts, the Trump administration is deliberately creating the conditions to invoke the Insurrection Act and move toward the declaration of martial law. The working class cannot rely on the capitalist courts, which have already granted Trump sweeping immunity for “official acts while in office,” or the Democratic Party to defend democratic rights.
The only social force capable of halting the drive toward dictatorship is the working class, organized independently and imbued with socialist consciousness. The elimination of the immigration Gestapo requires the overthrow of the capitalist system itself.
12. Protesters speak out against fascist barbarism at nationwide Renee Good rallies (with videos)
Over the weekend, mass anger erupted across the United States as more than 1,000 protests and walkouts were held in cities and towns nationwide against the police murder of Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis.
World Socialist Web Site reporters intervened at protests across the country speaking with workers and students opposed to the federal occupation of Minneapolis and attacks on immigrants.
13. SEP (Australia) holds well-attended meeting on Bondi terror attack
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) held an online public meeting Sunday, to provide a socialist assessment of the mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14 and its aftermath. The meeting was attended by more than 160 people from across Australia and around the world, many of whom were attending their first SEP meeting.
Speakers Oscar Grenfell, Cheryl Crisp and chair Max Boddy exposed both the reactionary character of the terror attack and the ruthless exploitation of the tragedy by the political establishment, led by state and federal Labor governments, as a pretext for a deepening assault on democratic rights. They insisted that the only progressive response to the atrocity lies in the independent mobilization of the working class on a socialist program against genocide, war and authoritarianism.
Opening the meeting, Boddy, assistant national secretary of the SEP, stressed that the Bondi attack, in which 15 people were murdered and dozens more wounded at a Hanukkah celebration, was “a reactionary, cowardly act of terrorism and must be rejected without qualification.” He emphasized that Jewish people in Australia and internationally bear no responsibility for the Zionist Israeli regime’s imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza.
Boddy explained that the shooters adhered to the communalist, sectarian ideology associated with Islamic State, which diverts the anger produced by imperialist crimes into ethnic and religious hatred. This ideology, he said, “is profoundly anti-working class and counter-revolutionary,” seeking to divide workers and block the development of a unified struggle against capitalism, the real source of war and oppression.
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Grenfell, a leading writer for the World Socialist Web Site and member of the SEP national committee, delivered a detailed political analysis of the Bondi shootings and their aftermath, which, he stressed, could only be understood by drawing upon historical experience.
Grenfell drew a parallel with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the US, which claimed almost 3,000 lives.
“Almost overnight,” Grenfell said, “the American ruling class and its allies seized upon September 11 to carry out policies that would impact the lives of hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people,” including the war against Afghanistan, the longest-running imperialist war in modern history, and the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.
At the same time, September 11 was used as a pretext for “a massive restructuring of political life domestically, centered on boosting the powers of the state and attacking democratic rights.”
Grenfell characterized this as “the classic case of a murky terrorism incident immediately being exploited by the ruling elite to pursue unstated aims,” and said the same is true of the Bondi attack.
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Crisp warned that an analysis of the Bondi terror attack could not stop at denunciation. “Whatever the purported aims of the terrorists,” she explained, “their actions have been seized upon as a pretext to push a wider political agenda… that poses an existential threat to democratic rights and to the political independence of the working class.”
Crisp situated the Australian developments within a rapidly escalating world situation, drawing particular attention to the Trump administration’s neo‑colonial assault on Venezuela and the police execution of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis in the opening days of 2026. She explained that “imperialism abroad and repression at home are two sides the same coin.”
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Crisp presented a concrete outline of the implications of this assault for the working class and the programmatic basis upon which it must be fought:
- Political independence
Workers must break from the illusions that any section of the bourgeois state—including Labor—can be appealed to for protection.- Defend democratic rights as class rights
The right to assemble, to protest, and to organize are the class weapons of workers everywhere.- International working class solidarity
Only a united international working-class movement can confront the capitalist redivision of the world and its drive to war.- Organize democratically in workplaces and communities
We call for the formation of rank-and-file committees in workplaces, in public services and in universities that are independent of the bureaucratic and conciliatory union structures.- Political leadership and a revolutionary program
The construction of a Trotskyist vanguard, internationally coordinated, is the strategic task in the present conjuncture.- The role of the SEP
Our party stands for the independent political organization of the working class.Crisp concluded by stating that “the murder at Bondi is a human tragedy that must be grieved. But the political use to which it is being put must be resisted by organized working-class action. The capitalist class will never hand us democracy; we must fight for it. The global drive to war and dictatorship will not be reversed by appeals to the capitalist state. It can only be ended by the international working class taking political power and reorganizing society on the basis of genuine democratic control and social need.”
14. Australia: Victoria bushfire catastrophe exposes Labor’s broken promises and indifference
Bushfires across the Australian state of Victoria have now burned close to 400,000 hectares of land, destroyed roughly 500 buildings and claimed at least one life, laying bare the criminal indifference of the political establishment to an entirely foreseeable catastrophe.
Authorities report that around a dozen major fires are still burning, with dozens more smaller blazes and hotspots across central and northeastern Victoria days after the worst of a heatwave has passed.
Police on Sunday announced the first confirmed fatality of these bushfires. Max Hobson, a beloved cattle farmer in his 80s, perished while trying to save his herd. The former mechanical engineer and project manager had only recently taken up full-time farming. Hobson’s body was discovered roughly 100 metres from his vehicle along a remote dirt road in Gobur, just a 10-minute drive from his home which was destroyed in the ferocious Longwood fire complex.
Hundreds of families from Longwood, Ruffy, Walmer–Ravenswood South, the Castlemaine region and along the Murray River near Walwa have returned to find their homes, sheds and livelihoods reduced to ash. Among the hundreds of structures destroyed are at least 179 homes, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), with that figure expected to grow in the coming days as fires continue to burn out of control across the state.
The Longwood complex in central Victoria and the Walwa–Mount Lawson fires on the New South Wales border remain among the largest and most destructive, but at least 10 other significant bushfires are still active, including in the heavily forested and rural-residential areas near Castlemaine and Ravenswood South northwest of state capital Melbourne.
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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s visits to bushfire-affected areas—such as her trip to Natimuk on Monday, 12 January, alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s appearance in Bendigo on Sunday, 11 January—are cynical, politically motivated photo opportunities designed to deflect from the government’s criminal unpreparedness and offer hollow assurances amid the ongoing devastation.
These were carefully choreographed events where Allan and Albanese—flanked by emergency workers—announced a meager $19.5 million “relief package.” Apart from the fodder relief, this package includes just $5 million for a recovery support program, $2 million for a recovery hotline, $1.5 million for emergency accommodation and $1 million for mental health support.
The one-off payments are an insult to families who have lost everything and demonstrate the contempt of the Labor governments and the ruling class they represent for ordinary workers, farmers and other members of the rural and regional communities who have been affected. The combined state and federal governments are providing just $680 per adult and $340 per child for families affected by the fires, and up to $2,380 per family.
Another one-off grant is being offered for some uninsured families of up to $52,250, presented as generous aid to help find temporary accommodation for families who have lost their homes. This will not come close to replacing even a modest rural home, let alone farm infrastructure, vehicles and lost income.
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Despite the obvious and long foreseen dangers of global fire seasons intensified by climate change, successive governments in Australia have refused to provide the necessary resources to prevent such catastrophes.
Fire authorities and scientists had cautioned months ago that spring growth would swiftly evolve into a highly combustible state in January, and that climate change driven heatwaves would produce extreme to catastrophic fire weather across southeastern Australia. Instead of massively expanding professional firefighting capacity and infrastructure, the Victorian Labor government has continued to rely on overstretched volunteer brigades in the CFA [Country Fire Authority], while federal Labor, like its Coalition predecessors, starves disaster preparedness and climate mitigation programs of funds even as hundreds of billions are poured into the military and into subsidies for the fossil fuel and mining giants.
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The CFA, which is responsible for most of the state’s country areas, has long warned of aging truck fleets, insufficient full-time staff and an over reliance on volunteers who must somehow balance firefighting with paid work and family responsibilities. Many of these volunteers fought against blazes for long hours while their own properties, homes and livelihoods were destroyed.
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Far from a coordinated government response, working people are leading the relief effort. Communities have already organised fundraisers, feed drives, and shared meals while local businesses provided accommodation. From donating ammunition to bringing jams to exhausted volunteer firefighters, local residents are sustaining each other.
Six years after the 2019–20 Black Summer infernos exposed the complete ineptitude of Australia’s disaster response architecture, the Victorian bushfires have shattered the empty promises of reform peddled by the Albanese Labor government and its Liberal National predecessors.
The Albanese government touted a nationally coordinated disaster response through the establishment of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in 2022 which was tasked with disaster coordination and risk reduction through the $200 million annual Disaster Ready Fund (DRF).
So far, the DRF has funded hundreds of projects to the tune of $600 million, but these have been disconnected state mitigation projects criticized by a 2025 Australian National Audit Office report as being only “partly appropriate” and their selection “not open or transparent.” These projects have delivered zero additional firefighting capacity.
A unified national service—with professional crews, standardized communications and guaranteed resources—has not been created under a profit system that treats working people’s lives as expendable while billions flow to coal barons and the armed forces.
15. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Bolivia:
Canada:
Windsor Titan Tool and Die lockout hits 150 days
Puerto Rico:
Hundreds protest in support for Venezuela
United States:
Workers for Solano County, California, set to strike
16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
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.
