Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Australia: Bipartisan deal exploits Bondi shootings to impose expanded “hate crime” laws
After days of crisis within the political establishment, the Albanese Labor government formed a partnership with the right-wing Liberal Party to push far-reaching “hate crime” laws through both houses of parliament in just over 12 hours yesterday.
First and foremost, the legislation allows for the outlawing of political groups and imprisonment of their supporters on the false basis that opposition to the ongoing Gaza genocide constitutes antisemitic hatred of Jews.
Interviewed on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7.30” program last night, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland made that clear. She confirmed that a group could be prohibited if it accused Israel of genocide and said Israel should not exist, and as a result Jewish Australians felt harassed or intimidated.
That amounts to a ban on opposing the racist Zionist state of Israel itself.
This is a further bipartisan attack on dissent and basic democratic rights, conducted on the pretext of responding to the Islamic State (IS)-inspired mass shootings that killed 15 people at a Jewish religious event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14.
By conflating the reactionary terrorist attack with the widespread anti-genocide sentiment in Australia and globally, the legislation seeks to intimidate and suppress expressions of opposition to the ongoing mass killing of Palestinians being committed by the US-backed Israeli regime and the Australian government’s complicity in the genocide.
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The immediate aim of the “hate crime” bill is to enable the Labor government to legally shut down or stifle anti-genocide demonstrations, which it has sought to do since the Israeli government began its murderous rampage in Palestine in October 2023.
But the legislation does not stop there. Its provisions could apply to statements or protests against any government, entity or group committing war crimes, including the Trump administration, on the grounds of making its supporters feel threatened.
The historic character of Labor’s legislation is underscored by the fact that the “hate group” banning powers expand provisions, first imposed in 2002 under the banner of the “war on terrorism,” to proscribe organizations decreed to be supporters or advocates of terrorism.
As the Socialist Equality Party warned from the outset in 2002, such powers set precedents for the broader outlawing of political parties. Terrorism is defined in sweeping political terms, such as an act of violence or harm seeking to influence government policy for a political, ideological or religious cause.
The Albanese government’s bill further attacks the stand taken against authoritarianism in 1951 when the majority of voters rejected a constitutional referendum by the right-wing Menzies government to outlaw the Communist Party. That plan was defeated despite the feverish whipping up by the media and political establishment of Cold War anti-communism amid the Korean War.
2. One year after DeepSeek, Chinese AI surges
The possibility that China may catch up to the US in AI development and even surpass it is being widely canvassed.*****
Writing on the AI race FT columnist Tej Parikh said it should be viewed more as a marathon rather than a sprint and on that basis, China was in a better-placed position. There were two components to achieving tech dominance: innovation and diffusion.
“The US—with its high investment, quality chips and proprietary ecosystem—may be better placed to win the sprint to the best model. China is best positioned to integrate its good-enough models into physical application and proliferate them around the world,” he wrote.
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But Chinese AI developers acknowledge they face major problems caused by the bans on the most advanced chips.
At a conference earlier this month, Tang Jie, the founder of Zhipu, said the chances of catching up to the US were slim and the gap may even be widening.
“While we’re doing well in certain areas, we must still acknowledge the challenges and disparities we face,” he said.
But in a demonstration of the ultimate impossibility of preventing the spread of technology in a globalized production system, ways are being found to get around the impact of the bans imposed by the Trump administration.
Chinese firms are developing connections with companies running data centers in Southeast Asia and the Middle East to rent their computing power and so get access to the most advanced chips from the US AI chip giant Nvidia. While there are problems, it is legally compliant, at least for now.
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Maintenance of its supremacy in the AI battle is becoming an existential question for the US. The AI boom is estimated to have contributed almost 1 percentage point to the US growth rate in the first three quarters of last year and the AI boom is the mainstay of Wall Street.
The massive investment running into trillions of dollars is dependent on sufficient returns being generated by application.
But if for any reason this is undermined, for example, by new and more advanced technologies being developed or by the US simply being outmuscled in markets by its China rivals—or even the perception that such events could take place—then the outcome could be a major financial and economic crisis.
Such developments are not on some distant horizon.
[H]onest artists are appalled at the thought of appearing at a venue with “Trump” stamped on it. They are carrying out their own version of a “general strike.”
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Dancer, choreographer and teacher Martha Graham (1894-1991) is an immense name in dance and music not only in the US but worldwide. She is associated with “reshaping” the dance world and her methods, the “Graham technique,” continue to be taught.
In the 1930s, influenced by the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler and the Spanish Civil War, Graham turned her attention to these tumultuous events and registered her response in dance form in a number of pieces. Several members of her company, including Marjorie Mazia (Woody Guthrie’s second wife), Anna Sokolow, Sophie Maslow and Jane Dudley, were associated at one time or another with left-wing politics.
In 1936, the Nazi regime invited Graham to represent the US in the Art Competitions scheduled to be part of the Olympic Games in Berlin.
Graham rejected the invitation:
I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible. In addition, some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany.
The decision by many artists to repudiate any connection with the fascistic Trump administration or its “performing arts” wing in our day stands in this principled tradition.
4. Oxfam report shows billionaire wealth surged in 2025: The case for expropriation
The report, titled “Resisting the Rule of the Rich,” explains that the world “has reached a critical juncture” in which “extreme inequality” is destroying democratic forms of government.
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The title of the Oxfam report, “Resisting the Rule of the Rich,” promises to give a political answer to the surge of social inequality. But the reader is left with an assortment of modest social reforms: taxes on billionaires, campaign finance reform and closing tax loopholes.
Senator Bernie Sanders never tires of demanding that the oligarchs “pay their fair share.” But what is their fair share? The capitalist class, like the slave owners of the American South and the aristocrats of pre-revolutionary France, do not create wealth: They appropriate it through the exploitation of the laboring class, which produces all the wealth in society. As in past revolutionary periods, the issue is not one of securing modest reforms from an entrenched ruling class, which it will not allow, but of overturning the entire social structure that sustains its power.
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The Socialist Equality Party calls for the formation of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school and neighborhood to unify the working class in a common offensive for its social and democratic rights, independent of the pro-capitalist trade union apparatus. This must be connected to the development of a revolutionary leadership in the working class, committed to the fight for socialism in the United States and internationally.
5. UK National Coal Mining Museum management issues disciplinary threats against strikers
Striking workers at the National Coal Mining Museum for England (NCMME) in Wakefield, Yorkshire have rejected a revised offer from management which threatened them with investigation and disciplinary action when they return to work. The strikers are members of the Unison trade union which said that for many workers the package was “worse than one presented to staff that prompted the walkouts”.
More than 40 museum workers, most of them underground mine guides, have been on strike for five months since August 20 battling low pay. The mine guides, many of whom are former miners including veterans of the 1984-5 strike are on £12.86 while other staff are on £12.60 per hour. These rates sank closer to the national minimum wage in April last year of £12.21 per hour for workers 21 and over.
According to Unison, the latest proposal—the details of which have not been disclosed—contains a clause stating that “the museum will investigate staff and discipline them when they return to work.” Workers responded by overwhelmingly rejecting the offer.
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Threatening disciplinary action against workers rejecting a derisory pay offer is no error of judgement or joke; it is a calculated attempt to intimidate and sets a far wider precedent.
Unison’s minimizing of management’s coercive methods is to justify their continued isolation of the dispute. The blocking of any genuine solidarity action is based on bankrupt appeals to management goodwill, trustees and local politicians. Labour Party Wakefield Council leader Denise Jeffery told a rally in December she had met with the chief executive of the museum to get around the table to resolve the dispute stating: “We’re talking peanuts to fix this. But I have a real fear they don’t want to do that.”
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The museum remains partially open, but underground tours—its main attraction—and the pit railway are suspended due to the absence of trained guides. The NCMME is a registered charity governed by a board of trustees overseeing multiple funding streams, of which Wakefield Council is only one.
Located at the former Caphouse (Overton) Colliery, the site was worked from the 18th century until its closure in 1985. It reopened as the Yorkshire Mining Museum in 1988 and gained national status in 1995. The museum’s underground tours, reaching depths of 140 meters, offer visitors insight into the brutal conditions of coal mining and are uniquely guided by former miners sharing first-hand experience. Its library and archive include a first edition of Georgius Agricola’s De re Metallica (On the Nature of Metals [Minerals]) who among many other things stipulated that a miner should have a knowledge of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic, architecture, drawing and law.
The dispute at the museum has led to posturing by the Labour Party over “mining heritage”: a fig leaf to mask the social devastation caused by the closure of all remaining 170 pits employing almost 190,000 since the strike. Today there are no deep mine coals in Britain after the closure of Kellingley colliery in December 2015.
The so-called “regeneration” projects overseen by Labour councils in areas such as Yorkshire have involved using the resulting unemployment to lure inward investment on the prospect of the supply of low wages. This has produced new legions of workers in insecure low paid jobs in the service sector and in workplaces such as warehouses run by retail and logistics firms like Amazon and ASOS. The antics of NCMME shows that the industrial heritage of the area is no less exploited for profit.
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The real significance of the 1984–85 miners’ strike lies in the contemporary fight against those who co-authored the defeat of the heroic year-long struggle against Thatcher’s state orchestrated attacks – the Labour and trade union bureaucracy. They had already embraced the pro-market restructuring which has paved the way for the looting of the economy and unprecedented levels of social inequality, as union leaders used anti-strike legislation to police their own members. The World Socialist Web Site marked the 40th Anniversary of the 1984-5 strike with an assessment containing invaluable lessons for the class struggle today.
This addressed the 2022-4 nationwide strike wave with 5 million working days lost, triggered by the cost-of-living crisis and the ruthless sacrifice of health to private profit in the COVID pandemic which developed as part of the emergence of working class struggle internationally. But Unison along with the entire union bureaucracy demobilised this based on one sellout after another to help put in power a Starmer government to the right of Blair and any Labour predecessor in history and serves as a direct tool of big business and austerity.
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The five-month isolation of Unison members at the coal mining museum highlights a broader imperative: to remove the dead hand of the union bureaucracy that has blocked resistance across councils, the NHS, and other workplaces. This would unleash workers’ collective strength in a genuine fight that draws together all confronting austerity, irrespective of sector, profession, or employer.
This will not come from Unison officials. To realize this workers need to form rank and file committees to fan out to their genuine allies against Labour and every other section of the political establishment.
A starting point for this is opposing Unison’s attempt to downplay the gravity of threats made by the employers at the mining museum. The basic principle of “an injury to one is an injury to all” must instead be asserted by workers themselves to establish genuine solidarity action to assist them in a push back against such dictatorial methods and will contribute to the necessary development of a far wider fightback.
During their rampage in Amsterdam, a year prior, Maccabi’s hooligans tore up Palestinian flags, hit taxis driven by Arabic drivers with crowbars, and chanted pro-genocide slogans.
7. The only way to fight the Al-Qaeda regime in Syria is to fight imperialism
As a result of an imperialist-backed proxy war, HTS was brought to power in Damascus with the support of Washington and Ankara and now it seeks to consolidate its control of the country by violently suppressing all minorities, including the Kurds.
8. New Zealand PM promises deeper austerity and military build-up
After promising greater military spending, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon expressed support for US imperialism’s criminal attack on Venezuela.
9. Sri Lanka’s new “anti-terror laws” foreshadow sweeping attacks on democratic rights
Colombo’s draft legislation reproduces all the essential features of the existing draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act.
The latest right-wing extremism scandal in the German army is not an isolated case, but the expression of a deeply rooted development that has taken on a new quality with the return of German militarism and the preparation for war against Russia.
11. New York nurses remain defiant as hospitals dig in
As hospital executives again slander nurses as irresponsible, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders intervened at the picket lines on Tuesday to make appeals for negotiations.
Anger and determination are growing among workers and youth in Minneapolis, as the Trump administration escalates its campaign of repression and state violence, spearheaded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and backed by the threat of direct military intervention.
On Tuesday, protests continued across the city, with growing support for a general strike on Friday, January 23, to force the removal of Trump’s paramilitary forces and the prosecution of the federal agent who murdered Renée Nicole Good. There were also protests Tuesday in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, New York, Ohio, New Mexico, California, Kansas, Virginia and other states.
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Governor Tim Walz and the Democrats are seeking to direct opposition to the courts and the midterm elections, but this will not stop a dictatorial president who flouts the law and threatens that any election, if held at all, will be under conditions of martial law.
Even as Trump escalates repression, the Democratic Party is actively financing it. Congressional Democrats recently voted for legislation providing $10 billion in additional funding for ICE, despite widespread public opposition.
Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, admitted that ICE is “out of control” while nonetheless justifying the funding. She warned that blocking the bill could disrupt other federal agencies, even as ICE continues operating without restriction due to tens of billions already allocated under previous legislation.
This cynical maneuvering exposes the Democrats’ role as enablers of authoritarianism. Their complaints about Trump’s methods serve only to obscure the reality that they support the same machinery of repression against the working class.
Equally revealing is the role of the trade union bureaucracy. The president of Teamsters Local 638 has issued statements nominally supporting a “state-wide community and labor action” on January 23, while simultaneously warning members that they are “not legally permitted to strike” due to no-strike clauses.
The Minnesota Nurses Association, whose members include 22,000 nurses and other healthcare workers, also claimed to support the “Day of Truth and Freedom” but has instructed its members to report to work since their contract includes no-strike provisions.
The situation in Minneapolis poses urgent strategic questions. Workers cannot allow their struggle to be strangled by bureaucratic obstruction. The fight against ICE repression, state violence and authoritarianism requires independent organization and leadership.
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The defense of democratic rights is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism itself. The same ruling class that wages war abroad and enriches itself through exploitation is now deploying paramilitary forces and troops against the population at home.
Minneapolis workers and youth are confronting not merely an abusive administration but the advanced decay of American democracy. Their struggle is part of a broader movement of the working class to assert its own power and fight for a socialist alternative to dictatorship, repression and war.
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
