Jan 17, 2026

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. The Minnesota general strike and the re-emergence of class struggle in the United States

On January 8, the day after the ICE murder of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the World Socialist Web Site posted a statement explaining that “the logic of events is moving inexorably toward a general strike against the Trump regime: a mass, coordinated intervention by workers across every industry to bring the machinery of repression and exploitation to a halt.”

One week later, in response to growing pressure from working people outraged over the daily brutality inflicted by Trump’s paramilitary forces, a coalition of local trade unions and community organizations in Minneapolis has called a general strike for January 23. 

The Minnesota AFL‑CIO has so far failed to endorse the action, and its official webpage—under the slogan “A Day of Truth and Freedom”—carefully avoids the word “strike,” instead urging workers to call in sick, consumers not to purchase anything and businesses to close voluntarily. The union apparatus, closely tied to the Democratic Party, is attempting to counteract a growing sympathy for a general strike that is taking hold among broad layers of the population.

However, the very fact that the general strike has entered political discussion is itself an expression of a new stage in the class struggle and the social and political polarization of the United States. It reflects a growing sense within the working class that traditional political channels—court challenges, appeals to politicians, electoral maneuvers and pressure campaigns—are incapable of halting the rapid turn toward dictatorship. 

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The strike of 15,000 nurses in New York City, the largest in the city’s history, is an early sign of opposition that will grow in 2026, as is, in a different form, the fact that the Detroit autoworker, who was suspended for calling out Trump earlier this week, raised more than $800,000 via GoFundMe in a few days from tens of thousands of people.

This growing opposition must be transformed into a conscious, organized movement. There exists a long and powerful tradition of class struggle in the United States, including of the general strike. From Philadelphia in 1835, to St. Louis in 1877, to Seattle in 1919 and San Francisco and Toledo in 1934, the decisive factor has never been the militancy of the call alone, but whether the working class entered the struggle consciously and independently, in opposition to the institutions seeking to contain it. 

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Trump’s brazen impunity is the product of a prolonged absence of organized working class resistance in the US. Over decades, the labor bureaucracy dismantled the workers’ movement while the ruling class enriched itself through imperialist war and a massive transfer of wealth. In this vacuum, the most ruthless sections of the bourgeoisie have come to believe they can act without constraint.

The assault on the working class was reinforced by an ideological campaign to deny its very existence as a social force. In a country once defined by frequent strikes and mass confrontations between labor and capital, the Democratic Party, official academia and the political pseudo-left advanced ideologies—above all, racial and gender identity politics—that rejected Marxism, denied the reality of class struggle and dismissed the role of the working class as a revolutionary force.

The re-election of Trump marked a violent realignment of the state to reflect the reality of oligarchic rule in the United States. Moreover, the extreme character of its actions, both on the domestic and international levels, reflects the intensity of the crisis confronting American capitalism—expressed in the devaluation of the dollar, the staggering buildup of debt and the rampant speculation that underlies the wealth of the oligarchy.

This is the backdrop to the realignment from below that is beginning to take shape, through the growing resurgence of open class conflict as the central axis of social and political life. Moreover, the development of the class struggle in the United States will have immense international repercussions, shattering the myth that American workers are uniquely reactionary or incapable of collective struggle. 

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The fight against Trump requires the construction of new organizations in the working class that can unify the defense of democratic rights and opposition to dictatorship with the growing social struggles of workers. It is necessary to impart to the emerging class movement a clear political strategy, connecting the fight against fascism to the fight against exploitation, war and the capitalist system itself, in the US and internationally. This depends, above all, on the conscious intervention of the Marxist movement in the working class. 

The perspective of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International has always emphasized the revolutionary role of the American working class as a decisive component of the international working class. 

The SEP has fought consistently against all efforts to subordinate workers to the Democratic Party and its affiliated organizations. Through the initiation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), the ICFI has developed the organizational form for a rebellion against the pro-corporate trade union apparatus. And most recently, the ICFI and WSWS has launched Socialism AI as a vital tool for the political education of workers and youth in the great lessons of the 20th and 21st centuries, above all, the strategic experiences of the Marxist movement. 

In the actions of the Trump regime, the American oligarchy is crossing a Rubicon, from which there is no turning back. The issue confronting millions of workers and young people is the most fundamental: socialism or barbarism.

The World Socialist Web Site urges all working people who want to stop the descent into fascism and war, who want to fight for a future based on equality, democracy and peace, to draw the necessary conclusions and join the SEP

2. 31,000 Kaiser nurses prepare to walk out in California, Hawaii as conditions emerge for a general strike

A strike of 31,000 nurses and healthcare professionals has been announced by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) at Kaiser Permanente on the West Coast. The strike is set to involve roughly 20 hospitals and 200 clinics in California and Hawaii.

The strike expresses the growing opposition among health care workers, and the working class more broadly, to intolerable conditions imposed by corporate health systems and enforced by an increasingly authoritarian political establishment.

This is the same group of workers who launched a five-day strike last October, with the last full day coinciding with the October 18 nationwide No Kings protests. Those demonstrations were some of the largest in US history, with an estimated 7 million marching against the fascistic Trump administration.

The upcoming strike centers on the same unresolved issues, including chronic understaffing, sub-inflation pay increases and growing economic and retirement insecurity. These are the exact same issues at stake in the ongoing strike by 15,000 nurses in New York City, a struggle which has drawn overwhelming support from workers across the area and the country. It also is set to begin three days after a general strike next Friday in Minneapolis against the ICE rampage in the city which led to the murder of Renée Nicole Good.

The Trump administration’s attack on public health has deepened since October. The Centers for Disease Control is rolling back vaccine recommendations for children and the measles are spreading a quarter century after the disease was eliminated in the US. The decision by Trump to cut off funding for supplemental Obamacare health subsidies has led to a staggering 1.4 million people losing their health insurance just over two weeks into the new year.

But the conditions are rapidly emerging in the United States for a mass movement in the working class against inequality and dictatorship. In the forefront are healthcare workers battling the consequences of for-profit healthcare and the subordination of patients’ lives to profit.

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Initiative must remain in the hands of the rank and file. At Kaiser, union officials have kept rank-and-file nurses and health professionals working without a contract for months. “Safe staffing” clauses in nurses’ contracts across the country are either toothless or remain dead letters, and hospital systems routinely flout even legal staffing mandates with impunity.

In particular, Kaiser nurses must organize to impose their democratic decision to strike and be prepared to override any attempt to cancel or limit the strike over their heads. The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), for example, canceled strikes at 11 of 15 hospitals before they even had contracts finalized, much less voted on.

Kaiser nurses must appeal to their coworkers in United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, who work as clinical laboratory scientists (CLS) and medical laboratory technicians (MLT). They have a separate two-day strike scheduled for January 22 and 23. To maximize their impact, workers from both unions should instead coordinate their timing and walk out together.

UNAC/UHCP is part of the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which covers 23 local unions covering dozens of hospitals and hundreds of clinics from Hawaii to Washington D.C. The entire membership must be engaged in joint actions organized through rank-and-file strike committees.

Kaiser exemplifies for-profit healthcare in America, thinly disguised by its “nonprofit” status. It generated $12.9 billion in net income in 2024 and $7.9 billion for the first three quarters of 2025. Despite this, Kaiser claims it cannot afford to invest adequately in staffing, retention and patient safety.

According to a UNAC/UHCP report, Kaiser also is investing in “companies like CoreCivic and the GEO Group, which run ICE detention centers and provide health care and living conditions so substandard they border on criminal.” ICE raids remain an ever-present danger at hospitals across California and the United States.

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The deliberate starving of health systems produces preventable illness and death, even as billions are funneled into corporate profits and financial speculation. In the same cities where Kaiser nurses struggle to care for patients, schools and public services are being slashed and essential social programs dismantled.

The situation demands a new strategic approach. Nurses on both coasts and in Hawaii must unite with workers in Minnesota and beyond in a common struggle against fascism, war, repression, and exploitation. Central to this strategy is the formation of rank-and-file committees independent of union bureaucracies and big-business parties, capable of coordinating actions across industries and regions.

The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has been established to provide the organizational framework and political leadership for this fight.

It seeks to link opposition to dictatorship and repression with the broader struggle of the working class against war, inflation, job cuts and social misery. The Kaiser strike must become part of this international counteroffensive, guided by the independent mobilization of workers themselves.

3. “I support a general strike”: New York nurses call for broader struggle

Approximately 15,000 nurses in New York City concluded their fifth day on strike on Friday. Mediated negotiations between the union, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), and hospital representatives resumed for the first time since the strike began on Thursday evening for New York Presbyterian and on Friday for both Mount Sinai hospitals. Montefiore has still refused to return to bargaining.

As of Friday evening, no major movement has been reported over the key issues of nurse-to-patient ratios, safety and adequate health care coverage for workers.

The hospital executives remain intransigent. A New York Presbyterian spokesperson repeated their characterization of nurses’ demands for rational staffing levels as “unreasonable” and refused to continue bargaining on Friday. The hospital rejected the union’s revised offers and refused to make a counterproposal according to a NYSNA statement.

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Open bargaining is a critical issue for the strike, preventing backroom dealing, hidden clauses and rushed agreements that leave workers without full knowledge of their contents. Striking nurses must insist that it is a precondition for negotiating any settlement.  

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The strike is approaching a critical juncture and not only because it faces the obstinate dictates of corporate management. There is immense support for striking nurses across the working class, and conditions are ripening for the potential expansion and transformation of the strike. 

In response to the murderous ICE occupation in Minneapolis, which Trump is poised to expand, popular opposition has reached the point where several local unions in Minneapolis have been compelled to issue a call for a general strike on January 23. 

Meanwhile, 31,000 nurses and other health workers in California and Hawaii delivered a 10-day strike notice to Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare companies in the United States. The strike would hit more than two dozen hospitals and other facilities in Southern California and Honolulu. The key demands are essentially the same as those in the New York City strike: safe staffing levels and pay increases to improve patient care, prevent burnout, and provide workers a modicum of economic stability.

The nurses’ strike in New York City is not simply a struggle against management and high-paid hospital executives. It is also an element of an intensifying class struggle that must serve as a rallying point for a powerful counteroffensive to fight for the needs of the working class against the profit interests that dominate every aspect of social life.  

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The World Socialist Web Site spoke with striking nurses on the picket line at New York-Presbyterian on Friday. Addressing the outrageous situation where the hospitals have completely cut off health benefits to nurses who sacrifice day in and day out to care for sick patients, a striker told the WSWS, “I don’t have any health insurance at the moment. Even when I had my insurance, I couldn’t come to this hospital to see the specialist that I work with every day. And that’s one of the things that I’m out here for, because I think it’s atrocious that I help make these doctors great. I keep up with the technological advances, but I can’t be taken care of by them."

"And on the day I retire, I get no health benefits. They end literally on the day I retire.”

4. Washington menaces Iran at UN Security Council amid mounting signs of an impending US military strike

Washington’s preparations for a military onslaught on Iran have nothing to do with alleged concern for the democratic rights of its 93-million-strong population. On the contrary, Trump, senior officials in his administration, the corporate-controlled media and political leaders from the imperialist powers in Europe are cynically exploiting Tehran’s crackdown on protests to justify an imperialist-orchestrated “regime change” operation to bring to power a pro-Western government in Tehran. This is viewed as an essential step in the consolidation of American imperialist hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East, and the sidelining of China and Russia, which have significant economic and military ties respectively with Tehran.

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The latest round of protests initially broke out among the bazaar merchants, shopkeepers and small business proprietors, who have traditionally served as a key pillar of support for the regime, but have been hit hard by the collapse in the Iranian currency’s value and the broader economic crisis. They spread in some areas to include university students and drew in some workers as individual participants. However, the longer the protests went on, the more right-wing and explicitly pro-imperialist they became. Although accurate reports are sparse due to the regime’s imposition of an internet blackout over a week ago, the government’s admission that over 100 security personnel were killed, including in armed attacks on police stations, indicates a significant level of armed violence among the protesters.

A wave of ruthless repression was launched by the regime resulting, according to one government official’s account cited by Reuters this week, in the deaths of 2,000 people. A US-based human rights group, HRANA, puts the death toll even higher at over 2,600. Estimates of the numbers detained range from an official Iranian government figure of 3,000 to 22,000, according to human rights observers.

While there can be no doubt about the brutality of the regime’s repression, the fact that media outlets have reported a subsiding of protests over the course of this week also points to the lack of social support they enjoyed from the working class and rural toilers. Iranian workers did not participate in the demonstrations en masse and as a class, a reflection of the pro-imperialist, bourgeois character of the movement’s demands. The main spokesman in the foreign media for the protests has been Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the hated Shah, who ruled the country with an iron fist as a US puppet prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

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Iranian workers require first and foremost their unconditional political independence from all factions of the bourgeoisie, including those championing imperialist intervention and those still loyal to the Islamic Republic. The most important precondition for this is unflinching opposition to all forms of imperialist intervention. Workers must oppose imperialist-orchestrated “regime change” and call for the immediate lifting of all punitive sanctions against Iran. This fight demands the closest unity between Iranian workers and the working class throughout the region, which has long suffered the predations of imperialist wars, and divide-and-rule tactics that have fueled fratricidal religious, ethnic and national conflicts. It also necessitates an appeal for class unity with workers in the imperialist centers of North America and Europe, where Trump and the European imperialists are making workers pay for the imperialists’ war machines and bullying tactics against Iran by slashing jobs, banning strikes and destroying public services.

Developing this struggle is possible only on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program, which is implacably hostile to imperialism and the bourgeois nationalism of the clerical regime in Tehran. The Iranian regime ultimately seeks to cut a deal with imperialism, or to maneuver between it and its rivals like China, which has bought up large quantities of Iranian oil over recent years and supplied Tehran with a critical economic lifeline. But under conditions of a rapidly escalating redivision of the world among the major powers, which is leading towards a third global imperialist war, such a policy is no longer viable.

The alternative lies in the repudiation of bourgeois nationalism and a turn by workers in Iran to the fight for a workers’ government as part of the United Socialist States of the Middle East. This is the program fought for by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

5. Trump’s vendetta against federal death row inmates: Sends prisoners who received commutations to “Alcatraz of the Rockies”

In an unprecedented escalation of state-sanctioned vengeance, the Trump administration has launched a systematic campaign to dismantle the humanitarian protections afforded to 37 federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted by former President Joe Biden. 

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Donald Trump has maintained a relentless rhetorical assault on the individuals spared by his predecessor, describing Biden’s commutations as a “stain on our justice system” and a “betrayal” of victims’ families. Labeling these men as “monsters,” “liars” and “the worst killers in our country,” Trump has utilized social media to bypass legal nuance and demand savage retribution, at one point telling the commuted prisoners to “GO TO HELL!”

This inflammatory language serves as the ideological foundation for an executive agenda that views the death penalty as a means to “restore order” in the interest of class rule. On his first day in office, Trump signed Executive Order 14164, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” which formally directed the attorney general to expand capital punishment. The order specifically targets the 37 commuted individuals, instructing officials to ensure they are held in conditions “consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes.” Trump has signaled an intent to seek the death penalty for an expanded list of offenses, including drug trafficking, human trafficking, the killing of law enforcement officers, and capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. 

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The administration has already begun the process of transferring these men to ADX Florence in Colorado, the only true federal “supermax” facility. Known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the prison is designed for those considered threats to “national security” and those who have committed extreme violence against prison staff. As of late 2025, 10 former death row federal prisoners had been moved to the facility. 

Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi justify these moves not in the interest of security, but as extrajudicial punishment intended to ensure that confinement conditions “match” the prisoners’ crimes. Life at ADX is defined by near-total social and sensory deprivation, with inmates kept in concrete cells smaller than a standard parking space for 22 to 24 hours a day. Human contact is restricted to a few minutes of verbal exchange through steel doors, and all exercise is conducted alone in high-walled cages known as “dog runs.” These conditions are so extreme that a former warden described the facility as “a clean version of hell” and “much worse than death.”

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Because the 37 men are protected from federal execution by the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause, the administration is exploiting the “separate sovereigns” doctrine. This legal loophole allows state and federal governments to prosecute the same crime independently. Under Trump’s directive, the attorney general is evaluating whether these offenders can be charged with state capital crimes.

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The ACLU and other organizations have filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 21 of the 37 prisoners, alleging that the administration is conducting a “sham process” designed to inflict pain. The suit argues that the administration’s actions violate several bedrock principles:

  • Bill of attainder and ex post facto clauses: The administration is retroactively increasing punishment for a specific, identifiable group of people without judicial process.
  • Clemency power: By weaponizing confinement conditions to nullify the effect of previous commutations, Trump is unconstitutionally interfering with the plenary authority of a previous president’s exercise of mercy.
  • Procedural due process and equal protection: The lawsuit alleges that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) departed from established policies—such as downgrading medical “care levels” without any change in physical health—to satisfy a retributive vendetta.

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Judith Lichtenberg, professor emerita of philosophy at Georgetown University who has taught at Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland and the District of Columbia Jail, argues that the American prison system violates three core principles of criminal justice. First, it rejects proportionality, as the punishment (indefinite solitary confinement) often exceeds the severity of any disciplinary need. Second, it fails to treat like cases alike, targeting a specific group of 37 men for harsher treatment than others who have had their sentences vacated or commuted. Finally, it violates the axiom that punishment should not do more harm than good. In its current form, the system is spectacularly ineffective at rehabilitation and inflicts a staggering burden on the families and communities of the incarcerated.

Moreover, efforts to increase the use of capital punishment at the federal and state level is a rejection of Enlightenment principles established by thinkers like Cesare Beccaria. In 1764, Beccaria denounced state killing as a “public assassination” and a “ritual act of vengeance.” While modern European law recognizes any execution as an inherent violation of human rights rooted in dignity, the US remains an outlier of extraordinary harshness in league with regimes like Saudi Arabia and Iran. The current administration’s reliance on capital punishment is a direct contradiction of the humanistic norms that have shaped democratic societies for centuries.

Trump’s aggressive federal stance has already influenced a resurgence of state-level judicial violence. South Carolina resumed executions after a 13-year hiatus, recently employing a firing squad, while Alabama and Florida have accelerated their execution schedules. Even in states with previous moratoriums, such as North Carolina, officials are taking steps to revive the machinery of death. Experts suggest that while Trump has no direct authority over state courts, his rhetoric signals to political allies that the expansion of the death penalty is once again a primary objective of the capitalist state. This trajectory toward state-sanctioned killing and indefinite isolation is not merely a “tough on crime” stance; it is the social normalization of cruelty in a society that has abandoned the pursuit of justice for the theater of vengeance.

6. Blackout in Berlin: Pretext for erection of a police state

On January 3, at around 6 a.m., an arson attack on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal in Berlin-Lichterfelde triggered the longest power outage in Germany’s post-war history.

Due to the destruction of five 110 kV high-voltage and 10 10 kV medium-voltage cables, not only did the main supply fail, but also the grid redundancy capacity, which ensures that if one line fails, another takes over. A rapid restoration was therefore impossible. Grid operator Stromnetz Berlin could only restore supply gradually; all users were only back on the grid by noon January 7, while mobile phone networks recovered in stages.

Around 50,000 households, with approximately 100,000 people, as well as over 2,200 businesses in Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, Wannsee and Lichterfelde were affected. Lifts remained stuck, street lighting failed, cold chains, critical for maintaining perishable goods and some medicines were affected, mobile communications collapsed and S-Bahn trains, schools, daycare centers and grocery stores remained closed.

High-rise housing was hit particularly hard: in 22-storey buildings, people with impaired mobility were trapped in their rapidly cooling apartments due to the failure of the lifts, and from the seventh floor upwards the (cold) water supply failed because electric pumps came to a standstill.

The healthcare system faced an acute situation: hospitals had to switch to emergency power generators, which only allow for minimal operations. Surgeries, dialyses and complex treatments were cancelled, medical practices and pharmacies remained closed and vital medications spoiled without refrigeration. In care homes, ventilation and oxygen devices failed, staff worked under catastrophic conditions, and evacuations were improvised—a consequence of the attack on a central lifeline of modern major cities.

The authorities cared little about the emergency and reacted at a snail’s pace. Only after 33 hours did the Berlin Senate (state executive), led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), declare a major incident and request support from the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). Mayor Kai Wegener (CDU), who in response to media inquiries revealed that he had spent the entire day in his home office organizing help, went to play tennis after the disaster broke out, as it was later revealed.

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While those politically responsible largely ignored the plight of the population, within hours they began to politically exploit the attack on the power grid. The act of sabotage is being ruthlessly used to advance the expansion of a police state and the militarization of society as a whole.

Although, to this day, virtually nothing is known about the perpetrators of the professionally executed act, it was immediately denounced by establishment politicians and the media as being carried out by “left-wing extremists” and all opposition from the left was defamed as “terrorist.”

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The claim that the attack on the power supply of a major city has anything to do with left-wing politics is obviously absurd. The term “left,” insofar as it has any meaning at all, signifies a policy in the interest of workers and youth, of pensioners, the sick and others in need, and requires their democratic participation.

An anonymous attack on urban infrastructure, upon which the existence, health and even the lives of tens of thousands of uninvolved people depend, achieves the opposite. It provides the ruling class with a welcome pretext to strengthen the repressive state apparatus, restrict democratic rights and suppress political opposition.

The only evidence that this involved a “left-wing extremist” attack consists of two letters claiming responsibility from a “Volcano Group” (Vulkangruppe). According to these, the attack was directed against “fossil fuels,” “the rich,” the “imperial way of life” and the “over-exploitation of the earth.”

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Even if the perpetrators of the Lichterfelde attack turned out to be climate activists from the anarchist milieu, the act was an expression of political disorientation and abysmal despair, which has extremely reactionary political consequences.

One does not protect the environment by destroying the infrastructure upon which working people rely. The protection of the environment, like all major social questions, is inseparably linked to the fight against the capitalist social system, which produces only war, social destruction and authoritarian regimes. This requires the mobilization of the broadest sections of the working class, the youth and sections of the middle class for a socialist program.

7. United Kingdom: Striking Further Education workers speak from the picket line at London college

World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with picketing educators outside the Working Men’s College in Camden, London during this week’s Further Education (FE) strike in England. Workers at 17 FE colleges began a three-day walkout on Wednesday.

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Strikers saw the dispute as one not just with the college, but with the government. One said, “The government needs to step up and give us the funding we need so that we can take care of our staff and also be able to meet the demand of the community. We’re here to serve the community and we’re not able to meet the demand at the moment.”

Cutting education is “a case of the wrong priorities.” It’s “especially disappointing that they say there’s not the money, they say we need growth and then we can invest in public services, but suddenly they’re able to produce huge amounts of funding for things like defense. It doesn’t really square up, it doesn’t make sense to me.” 

8. Royal Mail workers in London condemn war against Venezuela and express solidarity with US workers against Trump

Postal workers at Mount Pleasant Mail Centre, Royal Mail’s central sorting and distribution hub in London, have been speaking to the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) about the US attack on Venezuela, threats against Iran and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis last week.

A WSWS reporting team distributed the statement “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela! Release Maduro!” on Wednesday afternoon. Many workers stopped to express their shock and anger, reflecting discussions taking place among co-workers in stark contrast to the Starmer government’s continued support for the US President.

Workers condemned Trump’s actions in Latin America and within the United States, describing him as a “despot” and his administration as being led by “Nazis” with the same ambitions as “Hitler in the 1930’s.”

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“Trump is like a new Hitler. The killing of Renee Good was the kind of action you would associate with the SS [Hitler’s shock troops]. He wants the oil [in Venezuela] and is threatening everyone. Trump must be stopped; the question is how you stop him. There is escalation towards war everywhere. The media is controlled by the same people as Trump. What kind of world are our children going to inherit?”

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Due to an almost total media blackout in the UK, workers at the Mail Centre had no knowledge of the widespread anti-ICE protests in the US. The team explained the scale of social opposition in America, referencing coverage on the WSWS: the No Kings protests, popular actions against ICE Gestapo raids, and strikes such as nurses in New York staging the biggest walkout in their history.

The team also informed postal workers of the launch of Socialism AI and how it can help dynamically answer questions—like those posed by workers about the lessons of the 1930s, and how war and fascism can be stopped—from a socialist, historically grounded standpoint.

One postal worker said they wanted to send a direct message of solidarity to their brothers and sisters in the US:

“Stand up, fight and defeat Trump, he is a dictator; we do not want dictators, we need to stop them. We have not forgotten Gaza either. Here in the UK, Starmer’s [Labour Party] government is attacking our rights as well, making us suffer a cost-of-living crisis. We have nothing.” 

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Speaking on the worsening conditions at the Mail Centre they said, “Labour is privatizing the service and the union is in cahoots with management. Postal workers’ wages are going down by £80 a week because they removed overtime pay and driver’s allowance, while management are getting bonuses. The mail is backed up by at least three days all the time.” 

These conditions are the result of the Communication Workers Union (CWU)’s collusion with the £3.6 billion take-over of Royal Mail completed last May, bringing the privatized service under the sole ownership of billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. The union bureaucracy has policed opposition from below and worked with management to dismantle the mail service and convert it into a low-wage, parcel-driven operation on behalf of the billionaire-owned EP Group.

The development of mass working-class opposition to the rule of the oligarchy is bound up with the fight against wars waged for control of sources of wealth and key resources. Starmer’s authoritarian government is seeking to maintain Britain’s role as junior partner to US plundering operations around the globe.

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The fight to defend jobs, oppose exploitation and social inequality must be combined with opposition to imperialist gangsterism. Workers confront global transnational corporations backed to the hilt by the powers of the state; they require an international strategy to fight back.

9. Israel’s recognition of breakaway Somaliland fuels the fires of regional conflict

In a highly provocative move on December 26, Israel announced that it would formally recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state. The territory unilaterally declared independence from Somalia in 1991. As the first country to do so, Israel’s move, driven by its strategic aim of controlling access to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, has triggered alarm across the Horn of Africa and beyond.

Somaliland, in north-western Somalia, lies east of Djibouti which hosts military bases for the United States, China, France and several other countries. Home to around five million people living in extreme poverty, with high unemployment and insecurity, Somaliland’s main asset is the port of Berbera. Situated on the Gulf of Aden near the Bab el Mandeb strait, the gateway to the Red Sea, and opposite Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, Berbera occupies a position of enormous strategic value. 

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, have signed a joint declaration establishing full diplomatic relations, including the opening of embassies. This follows a year of discussions in which the establishment of an Israeli military base and the resettlement of forcibly displaced Palestinians from Gaza were reportedly raised, although Somaliland’s foreign minister denied the reports at the time.

Netanyahu justified the move as consistent with “the spirit of the Abraham Accords”, which have provided for the deepening of military and intelligence ties between the Gulf petro-monarchs and Israel. In so doing, he revealed Somaliland’s motivation: securing US recognition that could unlock trade, loans and investment in the impoverished country, forced by decades of diplomatic isolation to function as an autarkic economy.

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Somalia responded by denouncing Israel’s actions as a “deliberate attack” on its sovereignty. The African Union likewise rejected Israel’s move, saying it risked “setting a dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent”. More than 20 states, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, made similar statements. 

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With Ankara positioning itself as the principal guarantor of Somalia’s unity and sovereignty, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is a direct threat.

The clash reflects a broader geopolitical rivalry. Turkey offers rhetorical support for Hamas in Gaza and insists on maintaining a unified Syrian state under the regime of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, while Israel prefers a fragmented, decentralised Syria that can no longer act as a regional counterweight. Both states pursue their aims through proxy forces, military bases and aerial strikes, each seeking to reshape the regional order in line with its own interests.

In the eastern Mediterranean, the antagonism is even sharper. Israel, Greece and Cyprus remain committed to the EastMed Pipeline, designed to transport gas to Europe while bypassing Turkey entirely. Ankara views this as part of a broader attempt to “encircle” Turkey economically. Israeli arms sales to Cyprus are another antagonising factor.

The timing of Netanyahu’s recognition of Somaliland was deliberate. It came just days after a summit in Jerusalem to form a “strategic alliance” between Israel, Greece and Cyprus aimed at countering Israel’s regional isolation. Netanyahu took aim at Turkey, saying “To those who fantasize they can restore their empires and their rule over our countries I say: forget it. It’s not going to happen. Don’t even think about it”.

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President Donald Trump publicly dismissed the idea of recognising Somaliland, remarking, “Does anyone know what Somaliland is, really?” Yet this flippant remark contradicts his own administration’s strategic planning. Project 2025, drafted by the Heritage Foundation, explicitly recommended recognizing Somaliland as a means of countering China’s growing influence in Djibouti and the wider region.

Divisions within the administration reflect competing imperialist priorities. Some officials fear that recognizing Somaliland would jeopardize military cooperation with Somalia in the US air war in the region, carried out under the banner of combating al‑Shabaab and ISIL.

Trump’s second administration has dramatically escalated aerial strikes in Somalia—more than the combined total under George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden—killing over 7,000 people. These operations, largely ignored by the mainstream media, are on track to exceed the 219 strikes carried out during Trump’s first term. 

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The combination of competing imperialist and regional interests over trade routes and resource, intersecting with the venal ambitions of the local ruling classes, has not only turned the region into a social nightmare for tens of millions, it has created a tinderbox for war with global consequences.

A major conflict—possibly between the two rival blocs of Ethiopia-Somaliland backed by the UAE and Israel, and Somalia-Egypt-Eritrea-Turkey backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar—would disrupt critical marine traffic and involve outside powers already deeply entangled in the region.

These dangers are fundamentally rooted in capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production, the division of the world into rival nation states and the relentless struggle for markets, profits and resources. Developments around Somaliland are further proof that this global system is in profound crisis, posing immense dangers to workers and oppressed people around the world.

10. Amid New York City nurses strike, Long Island Railroad unions again prevent walkout with appeal to Trump

The leaders of five Long Island Railroad (LIRR) unions have sent a letter formally asking President Donald Trump to again intervene in contract talks with New York State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which will prohibit their members from engaging in a job action on January 16. The LIRR is the busiest commuter railroad in the United States, connecting suburbs in Nassau and Suffolk counties with New York City.

This is a repeat of the bureaucrats’ action last September, when they blocked a strike by calling on Trump to appoint a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB). This legal maneuver, under the Railway Labor Act whose purpose is to all but ban strikes through endless rounds of mediation, postponing legal strike action for four months.

Trump will, as he did before, appoint mediators to a new PEB to issue non-binding recommendations. The recommendations from the last PEB were rejected by the MTA.

The unions’ move to sabotage a rail strike comes at a time when 15,000 nurses in New York City are engaged in a powerful strike against dangerous understaffing, impossible working conditions, and a defense of their own health care benefits. Moreover, support is growing across America for a general strike against impossible social conditions and the lawless Trump administration. In Minneapolis, several unions have been compelled to call a general strike next Friday against the ICE rampage through the city.

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Workers in New York City are spoiling for a fight against inequality and the corporate oligarchy, as expressed in the election of self-described democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in last year’s mayoral election. However, Mamdani has publicly supported Hochul and has not said a word about the LIRR dispute. He appeared on the picket line of striking nurses, but instead of calling for a broader fight against Wall Street has spent months attempting to reassure corporate interests, and even visiting Trump at the White House.

This shows that only action from below, with initiative taken from the rank-and-file, can force the issue.

The appeal for another intervention by the Trump White House means the workers will not be free to legally strike until May 16 of this year, which happens to be the exact date that the contract for the New York City bus and subway workers expires. There is no doubt that, if no contract has been signed by then, the LIRR union bureaucrats will try to find some other excuse to delay even further.

11. Australia: While massive fires continue, Victoria experiences flash floods

Flash floods struck Victoria’s world-renowned Great Ocean Road tourist region on Thursday, transforming idyllic coastal holiday spots into scenes of chaos during Australia’s peak summer vacation period.

The disaster erupted in the early afternoon when a “rain bomb”—an extreme short-duration downpour—unleashed a record-breaking 180 millimeters (7 inches, nearly 10 percent of the region’s average annual rainfall) of rain across narrow, steep catchments in under five hours. 

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Thursday’s sudden deluge caught visitors and locals unprepared. Thankfully, no lives were lost and no serious injuries reported, but the episode reveals the razor-thin margin between tragedy and survival in areas abandoned to the elements by successive state governments.​

The flooding compounds an already catastrophic summer crisis across Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state.

12. Australian government exploits Bondi shootings to launch historic attack on free speech

The Albanese Labor government will still try to push far-reaching “hate crime” laws through parliament, even in a modified form, despite an intensifying political crisis over its plans, and more than 7,000 submissions from organizations and members of the public against the bill.

Facing a possible defeat in the Senate, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today said the government’s bill would be split in two, with “hate group” banning and visa cancellation powers to be rushed through next week, alongside gun ownership laws, to be followed by a possible modification of the bill’s “racial vilification” provisions.

Backed by the corporate media, Labor’s assault on free speech will continue, conducted on the false pretext of responding to the reactionary Islamic State-inspired mass shootings that killed 15 people at a Jewish religious event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14. 

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Even if broken into parts, Labor’s Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 goes even further, however. It is one of the most serious assaults on democratic rights and political dissent since the right-wing Menzies government outlawed the Communist Party in 1950, only to be defeated in a referendum the next year after the High Court ruled the ban to be unconstitutional.

Labor’s bill contains arbitrary powers for the federal government to not only criminalize targeted political opinion—branded as “hate crimes”—but to declare political parties or organizations to be “prohibited hate groups.” Their members and supporters face up to 15 years’ imprisonment. That effectively overturns the outcome of the 1951 referendum to deny governments such political banning powers. 

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Nothing in the bill is genuinely about protecting anybody, including people of Jewish backgrounds, from violence or fear. Speech that allegedly “incites” violence is already a crime at the state and federal levels in Australia. Moreover, the bill even goes well beyond “anti-vilification” laws, such as the already anti-democratic section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it a civil offense to “offend” a person or group because of their alleged race, color, national or ethnic origin. 

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The Albanese government’s legislation deepens the attack on fundamental democratic rights initiated by the New South Wales state Labor government when it similarly rammed through laws just before Christmas that overturn the right to protest and hand extensive powers to the police to crack down on all forms of political dissent. The Greens assisted Labor by abstaining on that bill, helping it pass the state’s upper house of parliament.

This a wider Labor-led offensive. The Bondi Beach terrorist attack is being cynically exploited to not only ban anti-genocide demonstrations, but suppress mounting opposition among workers and young people to the plunge into war, social austerity, climate catastrophe and authoritarian forms of rule.

13. China trade surplus hits historic record

China’s trade surplus for 2025 has come in at $1.2 trillion, the largest level ever recorded for any country with no indication that it will fall significantly in the coming period despite the tariff barriers erected against it by the Trump administration and the threats by other countries to impose restrictions.

The record surplus, up from $993 billion in 2024, was achieved despite a 20 percent fall in exports to the US which was more than compensated for by the increase in exports to the rest of the world. 

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The Chinese surplus is higher by an order of magnitude than anything seen before in modern economic history. Japan’s surplus peaked in 1993 at $96 billion, equivalent to $214 billion in today’s money and Germany’s surplus reached a sum equivalent to $364 billion in 2017.

China has become the world leader in a growing array of commodities, including cars, batteries and solar panels. It is the world’s major producer of steel and its shipbuilding capacity dwarfs that of the US. Despite restrictions imposed by the US and others, its technological capacities were forcefully demonstrated last year when the startup company DeepSeek produced an AI chatbot comparable to those produced in the US at a fraction of the cost.

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The demand of the IMF and others, including some from within China itself, is that the government do more to stimulate the domestic economy and expand social services. But the regime of Xi Jinping shows no sign of doing that apart from some short-lived measures to boost consumption.

The refusal to take measures to advance growth within China is leading to problems as the government continues to grapple with stagnant consumption spending, falling investment apart from high-tech and export sectors and the drag on the economy as a result of the collapse of the property boom.

As for social services, like capitalist governments around the world, the Xi regime, despite its “socialist” pretensions, is hostile to the expansion of welfare measures to the aged and the working class more broadly.

Back in 2021, Xi declared: “Once welfare benefits go up, they cannot easily be brought down. Engaging in ‘welfarism’ beyond our capacity is unsustainable and will inevitably bring about serious economic and political problems.” 

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The official policy of the Chinese Communist Party is the “peaceful development of China” (formerly the “peaceful rise of China” but amended to try to assuage opposition from the major imperialist powers).

But changes in rhetoric do not change objective economic reality and the announcement of a record trade surplus will only intensify the preparations by imperialism to deal with China by military means.

Successive US governments, beginning well before Trump, have used every economic measure at their disposal—tariffs, export controls, bans on the use of Chinese technology in the US and globally—to try to hold back Chinese growth and technological development, regarding it as the chief threat to the global dominance of the US.

But as the trade numbers reveal, these efforts are manifestly failing. The only area in which the US enjoys clear superiority is high-tech development but that is being steadily eroded. While the US has kept silent on the record surplus—no doubt in line with the year-long trade truce with China reached last October—the “spectacular flop” of its measures, as it has been described in some sections of the media, will have been duly noted.

This means the increasing turn to imperialist war by the US as it strives to maintain its economic dominance.

14. Erfurt, Germany: Mail order fashion company Zalando closes logistics center with 2,700 employees

Zalando SE is a Europe-wide mail order fashion company based in Berlin and has been in existence for 20 years. The headquarters in Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany, was opened 12 years ago to take advantage of low wages in the east of Germany and high subsidies provided by the state. In the summer of 2012, the first 350 employees began trial operations in a warehouse in Erfurt. This was followed by additional centers in the cities of Mönchengladbach in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lahr in the Black Forest (state of Baden-Württemberg) and Peine (in the state of Lower Saxony), as well as in Poland, Italy and Ireland.

Zalando started out as an online shoe retailer. At a time when the large German department stores Quelle, Karstadt and Hertie were struggling, Zalando was able to expand its range to include fashion, sportswear, jewelry, cosmetics and accessories. Zalando founders David Schneider and Robert Gentz deliberately focused on subsidies from German states, the federal government and the EU, as well as on low wages in eastern Germany and Eastern Europe. The company’s high profits also attracted well-known corporations and banks such as Holtzbrinck, Tengelmann, J.P. Morgan, etc., which bought shares in Zalando.

The innovative start-up image cultivated by the owners collapsed six years ago. It became known that Zalando, just like Amazon, was putting its employees under enormous pressure to keep profits high. In a study for the Hans Böckler Foundation, a team of researchers from Berlin’s Humboldt University found that Zalando had a poor working environment and that its employees suffered from stress and psychological strain. In particular, they criticized the company’s use of Zonar personnel evaluation software. Zonar systematically collects evaluations from colleagues and supervisors and puts employees under constant pressure to perform. The study described the surveillance and informant system as “Stasi methods” (referring to the secret police of the former East Germany). 

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Last year, Zalando acquired the mail order company ABOUT YOU, a spin-off of the traditional German outlet Otto Versand, for over a billion euros. Zalando’s management simultaneously initiated a far-reaching restructuring. While the logistics center in Erfurt is to be closed, a modern new center will soon be opened in the city of Giessen.

Management justifies the closure of the Erfurt center with so-called “redundancies,” parallel operating processes that have led to excess capacity since the takeover of ABOUT YOU. This “optimization of processes” will result in 2,700 employees losing their livelihoods. At the first signs of a downturn and losses, managers are responding with relocations, layoffs, plant closures and even more pressure on workers.

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Company planning for life after job losses, transfers and employment companies are ultimately just stepping stones to unemployment. What is needed are reasonably paid, permanent and secure jobs for all employees and wages that allow them to live decent lives with their families. The needs of workers are more important than the profit interests of a tiny and rarefied upper class.

To enforce this, the independent rank-and-file committees, acting on decisions arrived at democratically, must prepare industrial action, including strikes, blockades and, as a last resort, workplace occupations. To this end, it is important to immediately establish contact with colleagues in all Zalando locations and also to reach out to employees in other companies, industries and countries. Zalando has announced that, in addition to the closure in Erfurt, it will also terminate the contracts of three other external service providers outside Germany. Their employees must be located and contacted immediately and the motto must be: one for all and all for one!

15. United States: While Ford Kentucky Truck UAW officials pad their salaries, conditions at plant worsen

The recent audit of the finances of United Auto Workers Local 862 at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant (KTP) in Louisville illustrates the chasm that separates the privileged union apparatus from rank-and-file workers struggling to make ends meet.

KTP is one of Ford’s largest North American manufacturing facilities and a major profit center for the company, employing over 8,000. Production workers at KTP and the neighboring Louisville Assembly Plant (LAP) are members of United Auto Workers Local 862.

The results of the Local 862 audit, published in December, documented large, unexplained salary increases for top local officers; the disbursement of union funds to businesses owned by officers or their relatives without competitive bidding or documentation; and other irregularities. These include the holding of pre-signed checks, unauthorized debit card purchases, missing receipts for hundreds of expense vouchers, and lax controls over overtime approvals and other disbursements.

At the same time that corrupt Local 862 leaders have been stuffing their own pockets, a broader scandal has erupted in the UAW as a whole. As documented in recent reports by the court-appointed UAW monitor, the UAW apparatus headed by Shawn Fain maintains a “toxic culture of division and retaliation at the highest levels of the organization.” This has included the use of frame-up tactics against factional rivals on the International Executive Board, including Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and Vice President Rich Boyer, to strip them of their duties.

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As of this writing, no Local 862 officers have been formally cited or disciplined as a consequence of the audit report.

Since 2023 all of the auto companies have carried out mass layoffs, including the wholesale firing of temporary workers who were falsely promised full time jobs. The UAW has not opposed any of these attacks, including the recent layoff off 1,100 workers at General Motors Factory Zero EV plant in Detroit and layoffs at the Ford’s Dearborn REV C plant and Blue Oval SK battery operations in Kentucky.

16. US invasion of Venezuela exposes bankruptcy of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party

Imperialism’s turn to unabashed neocolonial war and the rise of the class struggle expose the bankruptcy of “populist” parties like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) party. Hostile to the independent mobilization of the working class in struggle against the capitalist state and for workers’ power and socialism, they call to unify the people—that is, to unify capitalists and workers based on nationalism. This anti-Marxist position only works to subordinate workers to bourgeois nationalist forces and block the necessary struggle against imperialism. 

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Opposing imperialist war requires building an international movement in the working class. In countries targeted for conquest, the task of this movement is to take control of the resources targeted for imperialist plunder out of the hands of rotten capitalist elites. In imperialist countries, the goal must be to take control of the economic resources of society out of the hands of a ruling class bent on wars of plunder abroad and dictatorship and social plunder at home. In both cases, this objectively leads the working class towards a struggle for socialist revolution.

LFI opposes the building of such a movement in France, however. It seeks to block the growth of the class struggle by forming an alliance, which it currently calls the New Popular Front (NFP), with the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS) and the Stalinist and Green parties and union bureaucracies. This alliance has worked relentlessly to subordinate the French working class to Macron. 

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Macron has applauded Maduro’s abduction, hoping French imperialism could also benefit from the plundering of Venezuela despite rising tensions with the Trump administration. This indicates the urgent necessity not only for renewed working class struggles against Macron, but of a political break with Mélenchon and the NFP, who have played the leading role in enabling Macron to rule against the people.

This requires building rank-and-file committees in the working class, independent of the union bureaucracies like those in the NFP, to coordinate workers’ struggles, block sell-outs as in the 2023 pension struggle and link them to workers’ struggles internationally. Unifying rising workers’ struggles against imperialism in the United States, Latin America, Europe and beyond requires fighting to build a socialist anti-war movement in the working class, based on a perspective of transferring power to the working class and pursuing socialist policies.

17. French youth speak out against Trump’s illegal invasion of Venezuela

The Trump administration’s illegal invasion of Venezuela is provoking an explosion of anger in France and worldwide. The decision of the hegemonic imperialist power to kidnap an elected president, in an operation whose stated goal is to take over Venezuela and seize its oil revenues, signals the descent of world capitalism into unrestrained imperialist barbarism. French President Emmanuel Macron’s initial decision to hail the invasion provoked deep disgust among the masses.

World Socialist Web Site reporters interviewed students in the Paris area on US imperialism’s intervention in Venezuela.

18. NTSB report reveals Boeing knew of fatal defect in UPS plane that killed 14 in Louisville

A report released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board reveals that Boeing was aware of a structural defect in the engine mounting system that caused a UPS cargo plane to crash in Louisville, Kentucky, in November 2025, killing 14 people. The company had documented four previous failures of the same component on three different aircraft but concluded the defect would not create a safety hazard.

The NTSB investigative update provides damning evidence that both Boeing and UPS possessed knowledge of a recurring mechanical failure years before the disaster, yet took no meaningful action to prevent it. The crash of UPS Flight 2976 on November 4, 2025, which killed three crew members and 11 people on the ground, was entirely preventable.

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UPS has a documented record of opposing safety regulations. According to FAA records, the company objected to an FAA airworthiness directive that would have required inspection of wiring harnesses inside the engine pylons of MD-11 aircraft. UPS claimed the inspection would take too long and that Boeing lacked replacement parts for the obsolete planes. This objection concerned the very aircraft type and the very area of the plane where the fatal structural failure occurred.

The corporate press has reported these facts in a sanitized manner, merely reciting facts and technical details. The New York Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, and the BBC all note Boeing’s prior knowledge of the bearing failures but stop short of drawing the obvious conclusion: Boeing and UPS knowingly operated aircraft with a defective component that had already failed multiple times, and 14 people died as a result.

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This disaster must be understood in the broader context of capitalist aviation. The MD-11, originally manufactured by McDonnell Douglas before its absorption by Boeing in 1997, has the second-worst safety record of any commercial aircraft still in service. Airlines phased out passenger service on these aircraft years ago because newer models are more fuel-efficient. However, UPS and FedEx continued operating dozens of them for cargo flights, where profit margins on aging equipment outweighed concerns for crew safety.

The Louisville crash occurred during the longest government shutdown in US history, with NTSB investigators working without pay. Air traffic controllers faced the choice between working complex technical jobs for free or taking unpaid leave to support their families. The Federal Aviation Administration had furloughed 25 percent of its workforce. These conditions did not directly cause the crash, but they reflect the broader assault on safety oversight and regulatory capacity.

Boeing, meanwhile, continues to receive billions in government contracts despite its long record of safety failures. Earlier in 2025, criminal charges against the company over the 737 MAX scandal, which killed 346 people in two crashes, were dropped.

UPS has pursued an identical trajectory. The company reported net income of $5.7 billion in 2024 and $6.7 billion in 2023. It reopened its Worldport facility in Louisville the day after the crash, ensuring that package processing continued without interruption. In the weeks following the disaster, UPS Airlines President Bill Moore assured investors that the company had leased replacement aircraft and was putting more packages on trucks to make up the capacity difference from grounding the MD-11 fleet.

The Teamsters union, which represents UPS workers, issued only a perfunctory statement after the crash. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who has emerged as a vocal supporter of the Trump administration, blocked a potential strike by 340,000 UPS workers in 2023 and negotiated a contract that he hailed as historic. That agreement paved the way for mass layoffs and the continuation of the precarious part-time work system that leaves many UPS employees unable to afford housing without roommates.

The Democrats issued equally perfunctory statements, reflecting their subservience to Wall Street and major military contractors. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, appeared at press conferences expressing sympathy for victims while taking no action to hold Boeing or UPS accountable for the preventable deaths. This continues the policies of the Biden administration, which did not prosecute Boeing for the deaths of passengers and crew in the 737 MAX 8 crashes and intervened to block railroad workers from striking over safety concerns in 2022. 

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Disasters like the November Louisville air crash will continue as long as the aviation and logistics industries remain under the control of a corporate oligarchy concerned only with quarterly earnings and stock prices. The operation of these essential systems must be transferred to public ownership and placed under the democratic control of the working class as part of the fight for socialism.

19.  Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia and the Pacific

Australia:

Victorian public sector health workers escalate industrial action
 
Holcim building materials factory workers in Queensland begin industrial action
 
Royal Hobart Hospital food preparation workers demand improved pay and conditions

Bangladesh:

Cause unknown: over 100 garment workers fall sick during protest

India:  

Tamil Nadu malaria prevention workers protest in Chennai

Himachal Pradesh childcare workers demonstrate over colleague’s death

Pakistan:

Balochistan government employees demands wage hike and allowances
 
Power sector workers protest IMF-driven privatization

South Korea:

Seoul city bus union ends strike with inferior pay deal

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

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.