Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: February 2-8
- 25 years ago:
London Underground workers strike against privatization scheme
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
South Korean military executes 1,400 civilians in two separate massacres
100 years ago:
2. “Obey now. Grieve later”: Teachers' unions suppress resistance to fascism
As students walked out in opposition to fascistic attacks that threatened their communities, friends and families, teachers were ordered to do the opposite: remain in their classrooms, obey administrative directives and suppress any collective response, under the guise of “student safety.”
Union locals issued directives to teachers warning against participation in protests, reminding them of school districts’ policies on staff conduct, and instructing educators to enforce attendance and disciplinary rules against student protesters. These interventions were intended to block the participation of educators in actions framed as part of a national general strike, which threatened to draw teachers into a mass movement independent from the union apparatus.
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The unions’ stance of containment reflects a long-standing political orientation articulated most openly by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee.
In its review of Weingarten’s “Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy,” the World Socialist Web Site noted that she aims to disarm educators and workers, redefining “resistance” as “keep teaching” while voting for Democrats in the November midterms—which Trump is determined to hold under conditions of fear and repression, if they take place at all.
Action that escapes the narrow legal and electoral channels imposed on it by the bureaucracy and the corporate political establishment is treated as a threat to be neutralized. This suppression is carried out through the unions’ appeals to legalism, framed as professionalism, procedure and contractual obligation. Teachers are instructed to comply with administrative authority in the moment and defer any objections to grievance processes afterward.
Given the grievances are to be handled by the same officials passing on district threats against teachers, it is obvious these “grievances” will go nowhere. It amounts to an injunction in all but name, isolating educators from coordinated action with students and broader sections of the working class.
3. New York nurses: Expand the strike to defeat mass firing threats from management!
Management at NewYork-Presbyterian, Montefiore and Mount Sinai has issued an ultimatum aimed at crushing the strike by 15,000 nurses in New York City. After more than three weeks on the picket lines, the hospitals have declared that unless nurses return to work within roughly two weeks they will be permanently replaced. They have also said they will not return to the bargaining table unless the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) presents what they call a “bare-bones proposal.”
“They will be able to remove any gain we made in previous contracts: pensions, healthcare, certification differentials,” a striking nurse told the World Socialist Web Site.
The hospitals are attempting to break the strike by exhaustion and fear, forcing nurses to choose between surrender and unemployment.
The lynchpin of management’s strategy is the strategy for defeat by the NYSNA officials, who have isolated the strike to four out of 15 hospitals and have left nurses on the picket line without strike pay in the cold for three weeks. The union announced that it has already sent “a streamlined proposal,” a euphemism for the “bare-bones agreement” demanded by management. They are scheduled to meet Monday with hospital officials to try to end the strike, according to the New York Post.
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To defeat management’s threats, nurses must organize to take the initiative out of the hands of the NYSNA officials. The fight cannot be waged through closed-door negotiations, legal maneuvers or appeals to corporate politicians. It requires independent organization and democratic control by nurses themselves. This is why healthcare workers took the step last week of forming the New York Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee.
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The hospitals believe these conditions allow them to threaten mass firings and impose contracts by fiat. But management has seriously misread the situation. They are acting as though the nurses have no support and the working class is in retreat, when in reality a broader movement is emerging:
More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers are on strike in California and Hawaii. They are fighting the exact same issues as New York City nurses, above all, unsafe staffing ratios. This shows the conditions exist for a national movement in defense of public health.
In Minneapolis, mass protests against ICE raids have drawn more than 100,000 into the streets, with tens of thousands protesting in support around the country. Calls are being raised nationwide for a general strike.
The strike has overwhelming support among workers in New York City, who know that nurses are fighting for their patients, not just themselves. Across the country, anger is intensifying over social inequality, the enrichment of a tiny financial elite, and the use of police and state violence to suppress opposition.
The hospitals’ threats are not expressions of confidence, but of nervousness. They are attempting to preempt a broader convergence of struggles by crushing the nurses before such a movement can take shape.
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Over recent days, NYSNA officials have enforced tighter, anti-democratic control of the picket lines, where numbers have been thinner than at the start of the strike. It is blocking nurses from speaking to reporters from the World Socialist Web Site or distributing copies of the statement by the New York Nurses Rank-and-File Committee calling for an immediate expansion of the strike and the provision of strike pay.
That statement warned that “the bureaucracy of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) is preparing to shut down the strike on management’s terms.” It declared: “The strike can be won, but only if healthcare workers take matters into their own hands. … Healthcare workers must control the strategy and decisions of this struggle.”
Making an appeal to the widening opposition throughout the country, the statement explained: “Healthcare workers defend life. When wealthy executives starve hospitals of staff and resources, they endanger patients; when the state kills a nurse in the streets, it signals that no one in the working class is safe from repression. Our struggle for staffing ratios, living wages and full benefits is inseparable from the defense of democratic rights.”
It concluded with a six-point program to win the strike:
Expand the strike in New York now. Organize to bring out nurses at the nonprofit hospitals where strike notices were rescinded; coordinate stoppages and joint pickets to disrupt hospital operations until demands are met.
Nurses must hold an emergency meeting to agree upon contractual red lines, including specific, enforceable staffing ratios, wage requirements and other terms without which no agreement can be made.
No end to the strike without a full tentative agreement and a democratic vote.
Provide immediate strike pay and other funding to ensure that workers can hold out until our demands are met.
Organize roving pickets to reach out to transit, logistics, education, public-sector and other healthcare workers to prepare coordinated, cross-industry actions.
Popularize and build for a sustained, nationwide mobilization, including an open-ended general strike, to defeat the Trump administration’s occupations and systematic violations of the Constitution.
The issues posed by this strike go far beyond the fate of a single contract. What is being decided is whether nurses will accept a future of permanent understaffing, eroding wages and authoritarian dictates enforced by the state and the union bureaucracy, or whether they will assert their collective strength as part of a growing movement of the working class.
4. Venezuela privatizes oil at US gunpoint: The dead end of “21st Century Socialism”
Barely four weeks ago, US special operations troops invaded Venezuela, breached its most secure facility, Fort Tiuna, and abducted de facto President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, killing upwards of 100 people in the operation. Since then, the fate of the couple has disappeared from the media in the United States as they remain locked up in a notorious Brooklyn federal detention center. They have appeared once in court to plead not guilty to trumped up US “narco-terrorism” charges and are due to reappear for pre-trial motions only on March 17.
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While the now “interim president” [Delcy Rodriguez] may have [herse;f] drawn... a fine line [about collaborating with President Maduro's kidnapping by the US] , there are ample suspicions in Venezuela that the “flawless,” “surgical” operation to seize Maduro and Flores encountered no effective opposition because of collaboration on the part of elements within the Venezuelan security forces.
This supposition found significant support from Moscow’s ambassador to Venezuela Serguéi Melik-Bagdasarov, who told an interviewer from the Russian television channel Rossiya-24 that the US operation had succeeded thanks to the negligence and collaboration with US intelligence on the part of Venezuelan officials. Describing these actions as “treason,” the ambassador said the collaboration began much earlier than the January 3 raid. He claimed that Moscow knew the names of those who “worked systematically for United States intelligence.”
The remarks were echoed last week by Russia’s Permanent Representative at the UN Vasily Nebenzya in an interview with the same TV channel: “In Venezuela, a betrayal undoubtedly took place and they talk openly about that. Some higher-ups essentially betrayed the president,” he said.
While there may well have been a betrayal in terms of the personal fate of Maduro, there is no reason to believe that he would have advanced any significantly different response to the gangsterism of the Trump regime. As his own statements and those of Trump made clear, he was prepared to hand Washington everything. The only sticking point was the demand that he cede the presidency and leave Venezuela.
Moreover, the deal reached between the Maduro government and Chevron for the exploitation of Venezuelan oil under an “anti-blockade” measure provided a clear precedent for the wholesale privatization now under way.
The fundamental driving force behind the tumultuous developments since the criminal US attack of January 3 is not treasonous behavior on the part of the Rodríguez family or elements within the Venezuelan military command but rather the historical dead end of chavismo and its “21st Century Socialism,” and more generally of bourgeois nationalism and the so-called Pink Tide movement throughout Latin America.
In its heyday under Chávez, the chavista government was able to use the surplus income provided by booming oil prices to pay for social assistance programs that benefited the most impoverished layers of society.
With the collapse of the commodity boom, which came on the heels of Chávez’s death and the succession of Maduro, along with a tightening US sanctions regime, poverty once again began to rise and the government increasingly imposed the brunt of the country’s economic crisis on the backs of the working class.
As a result, Venezuela became one of the region’s most impoverished and unequal countries, with 31 percent of the wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1 percent, even as the bottom half of society held just 3.6 percent.
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Now chavismo in its latest iteration under Delcy Rodríguez presides over a puppet regime whose economic, military and foreign policies are dictated by Washington. One has to go back to Cuba under the Platt Amendment (1903-1934) or Nicaragua and Haiti under US military occupation to find a more nakedly neo-colonial domination by Yankee imperialism of the lands to its south.
The government’s principal independent function consists of defending the interests of its core constituencies, including the security forces and the so-called boliburguesía, a wealthy layer of Venezuelan capitalists who made their fortunes off of government contracts, corruption and financial speculation.
The Venezuelan working class has paid a terribly heavy price for this ignominious trajectory of the movement founded by Hugo Chávez, with masses plunged into poverty, millions driven to emigrate and those fighting to defend wages and conditions denounced as “counterrevolutionaries” and repressed.
The fate of chavismo has exposed the reactionary role of all the pseudo-left groups, including most prominently the Pabloite and Morenoite organizations, that promoted illusions that the “Bolivarian Revolution” in Venezuela had opened up some new road to liberation from imperialist oppression and even to socialism.
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The bitter lessons of the shipwreck of chavismo, and more broadly the whole of the Pink Tide movement, must be assimilated by the most advanced layers of the working class in the struggle to build a new revolutionary leadership in the form of sections of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International.
4. Two months after Cyclone Ditwah: Sri Lanka’s humanitarian catastrophe continues
Cyclone Ditwah struck Sri Lanka on November 27–28, 2025, unleashing the country’s worst natural disaster since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Two months into the catastrophe, the government has failed to adequately address the scale of the devastation. Millions are facing deepening poverty, while workers and displaced families stage protests demanding safe housing and genuine reconstruction.
The figures reveal the true magnitude of the disaster. The official death toll stands at 649, with 173 still missing. Approximately 2.3 million people—nearly 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population—have been directly exposed to flooding.
The World Bank estimates direct physical damage at $US4.1 billion, equivalent to 4 percent of GDP, with total economic losses estimated at between $6 and $7 billion. The cyclone inundated 1.1 million hectares and damaged 720,000 buildings—6,000 homes have been completely destroyed and over 108,000 partially damaged.
The city of Kandy recorded the highest death toll, with 243 confirmed deaths and 69 missing. In Nuwara Eliya, home to Tamil-speaking plantation workers, there were 81 deaths and 32 people still missing.
The devastation exposes the total failure of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government’s response and its chronic lack of disaster preparedness.
Meteorologists issued warnings nearly two weeks in advance, forecasting 200 to 300 millimeters of rainfall, with some models predicting up to 500 millimeters. Despite these warnings, authorities failed to issue timely multilingual SMS alerts, evacuate high-risk communities, mobilize local administrations, or pre-position rescue teams.
This criminal negligence was compounded by decades of environmental mismanagement, unregulated hillside construction, deforestation, and reckless land-use policies that transformed a foreseeable natural event into a social catastrophe.
More than two months after the cyclone, 170,000 people remain displaced or living with host families. As of January 23, 6,680 individuals were accommodated in 85 designated relief centers—temporary shelters in schools, religious sites, and community buildings never meant to house people for extended periods.
The government’s strategy of encouraging displaced families to secure rental housing has effectively privatized recovery, pushing vulnerable families deeper into debt. Safety centers face significant protection issues, including inadequate privacy, poor lighting, and insufficient space segregation, elevating the risk of violence, particularly for women and girls.
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While limited aid was provided by a few NGOs and voluntary organisations in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah, that support has since dried up. “Now no one is looking at us,” victims said.
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Immediately after the disaster, the government—anticipating mass opposition to its inadequate preparations and response—imposed draconian emergency powers. A senior minister openly urged police to use emergency regulations to suppress dissent. Multiple statements, including from Grama Niladharis (village officers), told the media that relief distribution is being politicized, with aid channeled to consolidate support in selected areas while Tamil communities in the North and East are neglected.
The worsening social catastrophe has generated immense anger. On January 5, approximately 200 workers from the Concordia and Eskdale estates in Kandapola held a protest march, declaring that they would not leave temporary shelters until they were provided with safe accommodation. Workers called for an end to the “slave line-room system,” noting that their line-rooms remain death traps with severe structural cracks. While the government has announced a land-donation scheme for permanent housing, bureaucratic delays continue to choke relief distribution and delay alternative accommodation.
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The UN has allocated just $4.5 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund and in December launched a Humanitarian Priorities Plan seeking $35.3 million to support 658,000 of the most vulnerable Sri Lankans. The World Bank contributed $120 million from existing projects, but this amount must be stretched across healthcare, water, education, agriculture, transport, and communications in the affected districts. For a country already mired in deep economic crisis, these sums are shamefully inadequate.
The UNDP warned that Sri Lanka “cannot shoulder more debt for rebuilding,” cautioning that additional borrowing risks pushing the nation “off the debt cliff.” With 85 percent of government revenue already committed to debt servicing in 2026, the government will be unable to allocate the desperately needed funds for genuine reconstruction.
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Plantation workers’ protests demanding safe housing and land rights must be expanded beyond the affected estates. Their fight for decent housing, secure land tenure, and dignified working conditions must become part of a broader mobilization of the working class fighting for the reconstruction of devastated communities and against government and employer attacks on jobs, wages, and working conditions.
The slow and grossly inadequate international aid response underscores the reality that capitalist governments everywhere will never provide genuine solutions to the worsening natural disasters impacting the masses around the world, particularly in underdeveloped countries.
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As fresh rains continue to threaten further flooding and landslides, time is running out for affected communities. The humanitarian crisis will only deepen unless the current trajectory of inadequate aid, bureaucratic obstruction, and the IMF-imposed program of austerity is fundamentally challenged and reversed.
5. Europe’s imperialist powers line up behind regime change in Iran
The threat of a war launched by the imperialist powers against Iran, a former colonial country, is very high. The US has an aircraft carrier strike group positioned in the Middle East with more vessels on the way. Speaking in Tehran Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, warned, “They should know that if they start a war this time, it will be a regional war.”
Bolstering Trump’s war threats, the European Union (EU) decided last Thursday to place Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on its “terror list” alongside Al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic State. The imperialist double standards are jaw-dropping, given that Berlin, Paris and Brussels have lauded the new Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaida leader who currently heads an authoritarian regime waging brutal military campaigns against the country’s Kurdish and Alawite minorities.
The question of who and what are defined as “terrorists” corresponds entirely to the aggressive ambitions of the imperialist powers. They hope through Al-Sharaa to open up Syria to European and US capital, while sidelining Iran and Russia. In the case of Iran, the European powers and Washington are pursuing the installation of a pro-Western puppet regime to facilitate the exploitation of the country’s energy reserves, guarantee the security of shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz and strengthen imperialist hegemony over the broader Middle East region.
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The European imperialists gave unflinching support to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, which they and their American counterparts viewed as a step towards regime change in Tehran by destroying its regional allies. The devastation of Hamas in Gaza from October 2023 and Hezbollah in Lebanon during a months-long bombardment in 2024, as well as the repeated strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, isolated Tehran. While Israel’s military operations were dependent most of all on the supply of American weaponry, the European powers contributed mightily to the slaughter. Germany was the second-largest source of Israel’s arms imports after the US, and all European governments systematically repressed anti-genocide protests at home.
This bloody record has not stopped the representatives of European imperialism from attempting to cloak their predatory ambitions in the most “humanitarian” garb. If one took the statements of EU officials and foreign ministers from national governments across the continent at face value, the decision to sanction the IRGC was taken due to their outrage over the mass repression of protesters in Iran, which the Tehran regime has admitted led to some 3,000 deaths.
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These spokesmen for imperialism must take the population for fools. The European powers have not so much as batted an eyelid as their provocative warmongering against Russia helped instigate and fuel a conflict that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians in the “meat grinder” of eastern Ukraine. A study published last week estimated total casualties from the war at 2 million. For Brussels, Berlin and Paris, these “sacrifices” are justified when it is a matter of ensuring that their banks and major corporations secure their pound of flesh by plundering Ukrainian and Russian natural resources and cheap labour after the fighting stops. As French President Emmanuel Macron put it in a message to Trump, which the US President subsequently made public, the European powers and American imperialism can “do great things on Iran.”
The mounting rivalry between the European imperialists and their erstwhile American imperialist ally is one of the factors driving Europe’s aggressive push to escalate the war with Russia and promote war with Iran. Trump’s attempt to exclude the Europeans from a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised fears among the European ruling class that, after investing so much in the war, they could be cut out of the profits if US capital obtains preferred access to the region. The sharp divergence in Transatlantic relations was on full display throughout January over the question of who will control Greenland, an island with substantial raw materials for exploitation and a critical geostrategic and economic location in the Arctic.
The same applies to Iran. The European powers are ever more dependent on the US for their energy supplies. After all but abandoning cheap Russian gas imports following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, American liquified natural gas (LNG) imports rose almost four-fold between 2021 and 2025, and now account for some 57 percent of the continent’s LNG imports. America now supplies about 27 percent of all natural gas imports, with analysts projecting that this could rise to a majority by 2030. Should the US carry out a regime change operation in Tehran without European participation, the continent’s dependence on Washington and US oligarchs for critical energy supplies could become even greater.
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Leading European politicians, like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party, the largest party in the European Parliament, have openly called in recent days for the European imperialists to establish their own “nuclear deterrent” because the US is no longer a European ally. In a speech last week, Merz, invoking the spirit of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, declared that German imperialism must once again “learn to speak the language of power politics” in order to deal with the “harsh wind” of a “world of great powers.” These policies entail a frontal assault on the European working class to take back all of the concessions the ruling elites were forced to make in the post-war period, a process which is already well underway.
Workers in Europe must oppose the looming war against Iran and the resurgence of inter-imperialist antagonisms by building an anti-war movement with American workers in struggle against capitalist exploitation and barbarism.
6. Major financial oligarchs helped Kevin Warsh secure Trump’s nomination for Fed chair
US President Trump’s decision to nominate Kevin Warsh for the post of chairman of the US Federal Reserve, announced on Friday, is the outcome of a protracted balancing act.
After denouncing the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, who steps down in May, as a “knucklehead” and a “moron” for not cutting interest rates fast enough, Trump wanted his new appointee to be more supportive of his demands, if not to carry them out completely.
At the same time, he needed someone who would at least be regarded as a “safe pair of hands” by the traditional financial establishment and be well regarded by the financial oligarchs on Wall Street.
In the end, the other contender for the top job, Kevin Hassett, a close Trump adviser and the director of the National Economic Council, and who considered he had the position lined up at the beginning of December, was considered too close to Trump and would not have credibility with the all-important bond market.
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An article in the WSJ on how Warsh obtained the position cast some light on the mechanisms and operations, carried on behind the scenes, which determine how such things are decided.
The article noted that Warsh had something which Hassett lacked. It was “an extensive network of CEOs, finance bigwigs and creatures of the GOP establishment that he had cultivated over decades. He relied on that network to stay solidly in the conversation. It didn’t hurt that his father-in-law, Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, is a major Republican donor and longtime Trump acquaintance.”
He also had the backing of JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon and longtime hedge fund chief Stanley Druckenmiller, whose estimated wealth is around $11 billion, and is described as the mentor of Trump’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent. Warsh is a partner in Druckenmiller’s family company.
According to the WSJ article, in December, “Wall Street insiders began calling administration officials to make the case for Warsh, with the explicit goal of edging Hassett out of contention.”
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In April last year in the immediate wake of the turbulence set off by Trump’s liberation day tariff hikes, he delivered a major address to an International Monetary Fund forum which he claimed was a “love letter” to the Fed but in reality was a message to Trump that he was fully aligned with his attacks.
In that speech Warsh claimed that major economic problems came from “inside the four walls of our most important institutions.”
As Financial Times economic commentator Chris Giles noted at the time, the speech was a “job application.”
But even so under conditions where a “US president is blowing up the postwar rules-based economic system and the world has just suffered a once-in-a-century pandemic it is just weird to say the main problems come from within the economic institutions such as the Fed.”
But the “weirdness” served a definite purpose. It was an overture, if not a “love letter,” to Trump.
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It remains to be seen how Warsh’s nomination will proceed in Senate confirmation hearings under conditions where there is clearly a conflict between sections of the financial oligarchy which Trump represents—those more directly based on speculative operations depending on lower interest rates—and those advancing more traditional Wall Street views that the orthodoxies of the past must be continued to maintain the stability of the US financial system.
This issue has assumed concrete expression with the judicial investigation into the laying of criminal charges against Powell over testimony he gave to Congress over the cost of renovations to the Fed building. Powell has denounced the investigation as an attempt to subordinate the Fed to the president.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, has said no nomination by Trump will go through until the charges against Powell are withdrawn or adjudicated.
But beyond the immediate issues of Trump and Warsh and their maneuvers, there is the objective crisis of US capitalism.
Trump may consider that having got his man in charge at the Fed he will be able to proceed with his agenda.
But there are more powerful objective forces at work than these individuals. The appointment of Warsh and his call for “regime change” does not change economic facts: the crisis of US debt which daily threatens the stability of the financial system; the real prospect that the AI boom could be a bubble and burst and set off a crisis; and the growing lack of confidence in the US dollar expressed in the spectacular rise in the price of gold, to name but a few.
7. Senate Democratic leadership votes to fund Trump’s wars abroad and at home
The military the Democrats voted to fund had been repeatedly deployed against American cities. Since taking office, Trump has sent thousands of National Guard and active-duty troops into Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New Orleans—at a cost of nearly $500 million in 2025 alone. “It’s a war from within,” Trump declared in explaining the deployments. “I told Pete, we should use some of these cities as training grounds for our military.”
The vote exposes the fraud that the Democratic Party opposes the Trump administration’s reign of terror in Minneapolis or anywhere else. They refuse to use the power of the purse to rein in the administration because they speak for the same financial oligarchs who gathered at Trump’s inauguration—the billionaires and Wall Street executives who seek war abroad and repression at home.
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Neither Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont nor Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York publicly criticized the vote by the Senate Democratic leaders to fund the military or even issued a statement about it.
The Democrats are not an opposition party. They support the same policies and priorities as Trump, with only minor tactical differences. They serve as a safety valve, channeling popular anger into harmless posturing while ensuring the machinery of war and repression continues to function. The Senate vote follows the January 22 House vote of 341-88 to advance the defense funding package, with the a majority of Democrats voting in favor.
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Trump has already announced he will seek $1.5 trillion for the military in fiscal 2027.
8. Epstein files reveal criminality of American oligarchy
While documents are being released, every element is covered in deceit, including what is released and what information is redacted. In a statement released Friday evening signed by 20 of Epstein’s victims, the signers wrote: “This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors. Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected.”
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Beyond the specific individuals involved, the Epstein scandal reveals the character of a social class. The American oligarchy has amassed its wealth through parasitism, speculation and fraud. It is, in its social being, in its mode of acquisition, a criminal class at the summit of American politics. Its fortunes are the product of financial manipulation, corporate swindling, war profiteering and the exploitation of billions of people.
The oligarchy feels itself above the law. Trump is the personification of this class—brazenly criminal, contemptuous of democratic norms, openly inciting fascist violence and plotting war. His administration views the Constitution as a worthless piece of paper, international law as irrelevant. It declares the right to murder individuals, citizen or non-citizen, with, in the words of Vice President JD Vance, “absolute immunity.”
The American ruling class is wallowing in political, social, legal and moral degradation. The Epstein scandal holds up a mirror to itself.
Revelations have emerged about the total lack of safety precautions at the Violanta biscuit [cookie] factory near the city of Trikala in the Thessaly region of central Greece, where five female workers died in a huge blast and fire in the early hours of January 26.
In a press conference last Wednesday, Anastasios Michalopoulos—the chief of Greece’s Unified Coordination Center for Operations and Crisis Management (ESKEDIK)—gave a summary of the fire service’s initial findings on the causes of the explosion, presenting evidence of an extensive propane gas leak from underground pipes.
“The leak is estimated to have lasted for several months, with detection equipment recording extremely high concentrations of propane. This significant release of propane, migrating through the ground, traveled a distance of approximately 25 meters and accumulated in an underground space, where, in the presence of sparking caused by the facility’s electromechanical equipment, led to an explosion,” he revealed.
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The latest revelations directly implicate the ruling New Democracy (ND) party. In 2007, while working as a freelance electrical engineer, Dimitris Papastergiou—the current Digital Governance Minister—signed off on the factory’s fire protection protocols.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Papastergiou tried to downplay his role, stating that subsequent surveys of the factory were signed off by other engineers. This claim was contradicted by the fact that he also signed off on the factory’s 2011 permit.
Papastergiou was subsequently elected mayor of Trikala in 2014, serving two terms until 2023, when he joined the government as a minister after ND won a second consecutive absolute majority.
There is widespread anger at the deaths nationwide, with protests beginning in Trikala just hours after the fatalities.
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The fact that the factory was a death trap raises point blank the responsibilities borne by the trade union bureaucracy. The Trikala Labour Centre denounced the explosion and deaths as an “employer’s crime,” but evidence points to the fact that nothing was done by the unions to prevent it.
Speaking to Proto Thema (Lead Story) last Monday, Dimitris Armagos—the president of the Trikala Labour Centre—revealed that the union participated last summer in an inspection of the factory alongside the Labour Inspectorate.
Armagos said, “During our visit, we identified issues and made specific observations, mainly concerning the emergency exits and the system for detecting possible LPG gas leaks used in the ovens.”
Despite the gravity of these dangers, no effort was made to alert the workers to the violations. Armagos added, “We documented and pointed out the problems we identified at that time. Beyond that, I do not know what happened.”
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Seeking to capitalize on the Trikala deaths, the pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) stated that the government bears “responsibility for the anti-worker policies that it has been implementing for the past six years, for the record workplace accidents, the systematic undermining of labor inspectors and the enforcement of grueling working hours.”
But Syriza bears as much responsibility for the onslaught on workers’ health and safety, having been in power between 2015 and 2019. Swept into office with a landslide victory in January 2015 on an anti-austerity platform, Syriza abandoned its mandate within weeks.
Over the next four years, Syriza imposed austerity measures even more savage than those carried out by previous social democratic and New Democracy administrations.
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Whether under Syriza or New Democracy, the paltry fines issued for health and safety violations—when they are issued at all—are easily written off as the grisly “cost of doing business.”
10. Deadly landslide in West Java exposes consequences of government neglect
A deadly landslide tore through Pasirlangu village in West Bandung, West Java, on January 24 in the pre-dawn hours. At least 74 people have been confirmed dead. The number of dead will almost certainly rise, since six are still missing, likely buried in the mud.
Local authorities described the scene as catastrophic, with entire structures swept away by a torrent of mud, rock, and debris. Far from being an unavoidable “natural” tragedy, the catastrophe is the entirely predictable outcome of chronic under-investment in public infrastructure, environmental degradation, and the austerity measures of the administration of President Prabowo Subianto.
According to early reports from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), the landslide struck at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time, engulfing houses in Pasirlangu village on the slopes of Mount Burangrang. Residents were asleep, compounding the deadliness of the event.
At least 30 homes were destroyed, and over 200 people evacuated to shelters, where they were dependent on limited amounts of emergency supplies of food, clothes, and medicine. Rescue workers reported that the terrain remained dangerously unstable for days after the initial collapse, with repeated minor slides hampering search efforts. Among the dead were 23 members of Indonesia’s elite marine force, who had been training nearby.
The immediate trigger for the landslide was the extreme rainfall that had pounded West Java for days. Indonesia’s meteorological agency had issued warnings of severe weather for a full week prior to the disaster, noting the likelihood of heavy downpours and hydrometeorological hazards.
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The region’s geological instability is not new. West Bandung sits atop deeply weathered volcanic formations that are highly prone to landslides when saturated. The slopes of Mount Burangrang and the surrounding highlands have long been recognized as among the most dangerous in Indonesia.
Imam Achmad Sadisun, a geologist at Bandung Institute of technology, explained that the mudslide was caused by the breakdown of a natural landslide dam; the natural barrier allowed material and water to collect and saturate the mountain soil.
In the last several years alone, multiple landslides and mudflows have struck West Java, killing dozens and displacing thousands. In December 2024, floods and landslides killed at least 10 people and caused widespread destruction. In early 2019, another landslide in West Java killed at least 15 people. While precise tallies vary, Indonesia records hundreds of landslides annually, with West Java consistently among the hardest‑hit provinces.
The latest disaster is therefore part of a recurring pattern. The frequency of such events has increased in recent years, driven by deforestation, unregulated development, and the intensifying effects of climate change. The effects of deforestation in making such events more likely is known; the absence of tree roots makes slopes more unstable and the ground more prone to giving way. Climate scientists have also connected this pattern of repeated extreme rainfall and disaster to global climate change, noting that warmer sea‑surface temperatures in surrounding oceans are increasing the likelihood of intense downpours during the monsoon.
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Despite the well‑documented risks, the affected communities were left with little more than generic weather advisories. Residents of landslide-prone areas were simply told to “remain vigilant and evacuate immediately if [they] hear rumbling sounds, see soil movement or believe conditions are unsafe.” There were no effective early‑warning systems in place capable of detecting slope movement or alerting residents during the night.
Indonesia’s national disaster framework nominally includes rainfall‑threshold monitoring, automatic rain gauges, and community‑based early‑warning networks. In practice, however, these systems are patchy, underfunded, and unevenly implemented. Rural districts like Cisarua and Pasirlangu—areas most vulnerable to landslides—are often the last to receive technological upgrades or infrastructure investment.
The austerity measures implemented by President Prabowo Subianto early in his term have also contributed to the further erosion of already limited public safety systems. The disaster management agency had 50 percent of its funding cut resulting in fewer field personnel, and delays in upgrading early‑warning technologies.
The landslide and resulting deaths were the outcome of political decisions. Deforestation, quarrying, and unregulated construction in the Bandung highlands have all contributed to destabilizing slopes and increasing runoff during heavy rains. Climate change increases the severity of the monsoon seasons. The working people of Indonesia are being made to pay the price for a system that prioritizes military spending and corporate profit over public safety and social welfare.
11. Victorian Labor government defunds peak writers’ body as unions work to contain opposition
Writers Victoria, a 37-year-old organization serving about 3,000 members, has been given emergency funding until June 2026—a timed shut-off valve. Unless other financial backers are found, the organization will not be able to pay wages, cover rent, honor contracts with tutors, or provide professional assistance, and will shut down. This would make Victoria the only mainland state without a state government-funded peak organization for writers.
Like other arts bodies, Writers Victoria has faced years of shrinking government support. These cuts, combined with rising operational costs, pushed the organization close to insolvency in 2024.
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Writers Victoria provides invaluable assistance to writers through low-cost classes, feedback and mentoring. Its destruction will mean courses run by for-profit agencies aimed at those who can pay full rates, and fewer opportunities for working-class people to develop their own voices and stories.
Labor, and the financial interests it serves, are hostile to these concerns. The political elite fears serious artistic work that sensitises the population, encourages critical thinking that challenges the existing order and, above all, the profit system. Its priority is to meet fiscal “targets” demanded by big business and the banks, which means eliminating government spending on education, health and other essential social services that do not bolster profits.
Creative State 2028, the Victorian government’s so-called strategy for the arts, claims to “champion our vibrant literary culture, diverse writers, publishers, bookshops and readers.” This is so much hot air. Those seeking CEP grants are required to submit detailed “risk assessments” and multi-year strategic plans. As Creative Victoria makes clear, applications are judged and funding is only given to “resilient” groups if they maximize “return on investment” in the state’s annual $41 billion arts sector.
A petition has been launched on the Parliament of Victoria website, with more than 2,500 people calling on the government to reverse the decision and restore funding. These appeals will fall on deaf ears.
Cultural workers—writers, librarians, museum and gallery staff, educators—must reach out to nurses, teachers, rail and transport workers confronting Labor’s attacks.
This means establishing rank-and-file committees, independent of and opposed to the union apparatus, to fight for a socialist and internationalist program. Such policies would include increased spending in all areas of social need, including the arts, and the recognition that free access to arts, literature and culture is a basic social right of the working class.
12. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani praises NYPD shooting of emotionally distressed 22-year-old
Last Monday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), praised officers of the New York Police Department (NYPD) after they shot 22-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Jabez Chakraborty while he was experiencing a mental health crisis at his family’s home in Queens.
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The Chakraborty family responded with a statement declaring, “After all this, we saw Mayor Mamdani’s statement applauding the NYPD officers that shot our son, threatened and lied to us, and kept us from seeing our son for over 24 hours. Why is the mayor applauding officers who recklessly almost killed our son in front of us?”
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Since his brief statement on the January 26 shooting, Mamdani—along with the New York City chapter of the DSA and the national DSA—has remained entirely silent on the police shooting of Jabez Chakraborty and the detention and harassment of his family.
Mamdani’s praise for the NYPD is not accidental. It underscores the fact that the DSA, a faction of the Democratic Party, has become a political representative of the capitalist state in New York City. This has occurred not only through Mamdani’s support for NYPD killings, but through the entire political trajectory the administration has pursued since Mamdani’s primary victory in June, particularly his November meeting with Trump at the White House.
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For Mamdani and the ruling class, the police are seen as necessary instruments to maintain “order” in response to growing popular opposition. In a further illustration of Mamdani’s anti-working class policies, the administration is leading efforts, in close collaboration with New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the trade union bureaucracy, to shut down the strike of 15,000 New York nurses.
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The DSA’s silence on both the NYPD’s killing of Chakraborty and the violent crackdown on anti-ICE protesters, its continued political support for Mamdani, and its collaboration with the union bureaucracy in suppressing the nurses’ strike, all underscore the class interests the DSA serves. While posturing as a force for “social justice,” the DSA is working to defend the capitalist order, enforce austerity, and prop up the institutions of state repression.
Mamdani, the DSA and the broader pseudo-left represent privileged layers of the upper middle class that are politically and materially tied to the capitalist ruling elite. While they trade in empty “left” rhetoric, these forces are fundamentally hostile to the working class and the fight for socialism. Their role is to block the emergence of an independent movement of workers and youth against war, fascism, police violence, social inequality and exploitation.
13. Australian PM invites Canadian leader to visit
Over the past week there has been a remarkable silence in the Australian corporate media over the invitation issued by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney to visit Australia and deliver a speech to the parliament in Canberra in March.
Albanese’s announcement, made in a January 25 television interview, came only three days after Carney addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he declared that the “rules-based international order” had “ruptured.”
The silence reflects the anxiety and uncertainty wracking the ruling class, including the Albanese Labor government itself, about the obvious risks involved in seeking to balance, however cautiously, between the Trump administration and those in Washington’s firing line, such as Canada and the European powers, under conditions where US tariff wars and military aggression have torn apart the post-World War II global order.
Carney’s speech came amid the political fallout globally from US President Donald Trump’s threats to seize Greenland, a move that could precipitate the collapse of the post-World War II NATO alliance and put the US on a collision course with its erstwhile European imperialist allies.
Carney did not name Trump, but the target of his message was obvious. Carney denounced “great powers” for “using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage” and said so-called “middle powers” such as Canada “must act together” against this.
Trump’s response to Carney in his own speech at Davos was threatening. “Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
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As the World Socialist Web Site explained: “Carney’s remarks were a damning admission by the leader of one of the G7 imperialist powers that an imperialist-led struggle to repartition the world economically and territorially, akin to that which culminated in the imperialist world wars of the last century, is underway.”
Albanese’s response reflects the vulnerable position of the Australian capitalist class. Along with their Canadian counterparts, they have been the closest allies of the US since World War II. During the post-war “international order,” they benefited—as Carney himself said in his Davos speech—from the dominance of US imperialism, on whose military might and corporate investment they depended heavily to assert their own predatory interests.
The “America first” drive by the oligarchic Trump administration to restore US dominance after years of economic decline, above all against China but also at the expense of one-time US allies such as Canada and the European imperialist powers, threatens a catastrophe. In the case of Australia, its economy is tied substantially to raw material exports to China, its largest single market by far, as well as to investment flows from the US.
In unveiling Carney’s visit, Albanese anxiously sought to couch it in terms of Australia potentially acting as “a stabilizing force at a time where, quite frankly, there is a lot of turbulence and turmoil in the world.”
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So far, there has been no reported public reprisal threatened by the White House, but behind the scenes Albanese’s move would certainly have been noted there. Albanese may have made himself a target, even more so than one of his predecessors, Kevin Rudd.
Rudd was ousted as prime minister in 2010 by US “protected sources” inside the Labor Party after he suggested that the Obama administration should make some accommodation to the rise of China as an economic power in the Indo-Pacific region. Ever since, the Labor Party—in government and in opposition—has been unequivocal in support of the US-led drive to war against China that Obama initiated with his “pivot to Asia.”
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In his January 25 television interview, Albanese made an effort to maintain a balancing act with Washington by also unveiling the appointment of Greg Moriarty as the next Australian ambassador to the United States, replacing Rudd, who quit this month, a year early. Moriarty is a longtime pro-US Washington military and diplomatic insider, and ardent advocate of the aggressive AUKUS military alliance against China.
Since 2022, Albanese’s government has sought to satisfy Washington’s demands, first under Biden then Trump, by transforming Australia into a platform for war against China. Via the expansion of the AUKUS commitments and other arrangements, Labor has escalated US access to bases across the country and agreed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines and other US weaponry.
Despite all these efforts, the escalating conflicts between US imperialism and its rivals have thrown the Australian capitalist class into a profound crisis. The worldwide “shocks” will mean higher military spending and an even greater offensive against the living standards and social conditions of the working class than has already occurred under the Labor government since it took office in 2022.
14. Lecture at the University of Michigan on Ignatz Waghalter and the Negro Symphony Orchestra
Largely forgotten today, composer Ignatz Waghalter made significant contributions to the world of classical music. With the rise of Nazi power, he fled with his family from Germany to the United States where he became involved with the development and direction of the historically important Negro Symphony Orchestra.
In Michigan recently, independent scholar David Goldfarb described Waghalter's legacy:
"Waghalter believed deeply that art should serve society, and said that “music, the strongest citadel of universal democracy, knows neither color, creed nor nationality.” In practice, that sense of universal democracy included women. The orchestra stated in its calls for musicians that it was open to women… Mildred Franklin was the concertmaster of the Negro Symphony Orchestra, which is a testament to Waghalter’s and the orchestra’s sense of egalitarianism."
The renowned singer and University of Michigan music professor George Shirley, now 91, provided a powerful contribution to the lecture by describing how music transcends all racial, national and ethnic divisions:
"The use of the term race represents the problem, because there’s only one race, the human race. Ethnic, tribal differences, yes, but one race. We are all human animals, one race biologically. And I would argue that history shows us to be the worst species of life on the face of this planet when it comes to the one thing that really is most important—that is, being humane. So I would like to argue for throwing the socially constructed term race in the garbage can. Maybe we can look at each other in a different way, because we are all the same, except for our ethnicity, for the color of our skin…
What is music? It’s the original language. Neanderthals did not have words. When we’re brought into this world, we don’t have words."
In a sense, music came to the human species before words and was integral to the birth of language.
15. Measles outbreak rips through Dilley child detention center, as nationwide epidemic deepens
The outbreak at Dilley is unfolding amid a nationwide resurgence of measles that has reached a critical inflection point. In South Carolina, a massive outbreak has now surpassed the 2025 Texas epidemic to become the largest single outbreak since measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. As of late January 2026, South Carolina has confirmed 847 cases, overwhelmingly concentrated in Spartanburg County. At the national level, persistent transmission clusters—most notably in Utah—drove the total number of confirmed measles cases in 2025 to 2,267, the highest annual count since 1992.
This resurgence reflects a profound collapse of herd immunity that is both geographically concentrated and statistically stark. National kindergarten measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage has fallen to 92.5 percent, well below the 95 percent threshold required to prevent sustained transmission, with thirty-nine states now failing to meet this standard. South Carolina has emerged as the epicenter of this breakdown, where school vaccination rates in Spartanburg County hover near 90 percent, creating conditions for uncontrolled spread.
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This vulnerability extends beyond measles. Public health data show that nearly 20 percent of kindergarteners in southwest Utah lack protection against polio, while national pediatric uptake of the 2025–2026 COVID-19 vaccine remains at a dismal 7.6 percent.
This public health regression is the direct result of the systematic dismantling of public health infrastructure that accelerated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, now in its seventh year. The sustained erosion of vaccination programs and surveillance capacity has created conditions in which 94 percent of recent measles cases have occurred among unvaccinated individuals.
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While infectious disease experts warn that these developments signify a public health system in induced collapse, the current administration has instead worked to normalize the disaster. CDC Principal Deputy Director Ralph Abraham recently dismissed the impending loss of measles elimination status as merely the “cost of doing business.” Such official indifference constitutes a historic betrayal of the working class, subordinating the right to life and population health to the so-called “freedom” of anti-science ideology and political expediency. This outlook has been fully embodied in Kennedy’s antivaccine positions and hostility to scientific authorities, which now dominate among the leadership of the nation’s public health apparatus.
A third “Megapicket” of refuse depots was held last Friday at three sites being struck by workers in dispute with Birmingham City Council (BCC).
The workers have been on strike for over a year, since January 6, 2025, and on indefinite strike since March last year. They are opposing the Labour-controlled authority’s imposition of brutal pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year by deleting the safety-critical role of 150 loaders—the Waste Collection and Recycling Officer (WRCO)—and a similar downgrading of drivers.
These are part of overall cuts of £300 million being imposed by the council and unelected commissioners appointed by the Conservative government in September 2023—maintained by the Starmer government since Labour came to office in July 2024.
The “Megapicket – 3D” was held at three yards in the city—Atlas, Perry Barr, and Smithfield—and two yards in Coventry, where the Labour authority has used its wholly owned subsidiary Tom White Waste to assist strike-breaking operations in Birmingham.
The Labour council once again shut the yards for the day to resume collections over the weekend, as they have done before. As with the previous events staged in May and July last year, the performative “solidarity” on show was a bogus affair, lacking any genuine mobilization of the working class.
The megapickets were organized by the Strike Map group, in collaboration with the Stalinist Morning Star and a section of the left-talking Labour and trade union bureaucracy. Its aim was to portray the Birmingham workers’ strike as being on the cusp of victory, backed by a wave of “solidarity,” to conceal the fact that their strike is as isolated as ever.
This is the responsibility of the “leverage” strategy of Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham and National Lead Officer Onay Kasab, aimed at pressuring the council back to negotiations—ended in July. It has tied strikers up in futile PR stunts, without mobilizing the working class against the precedent being set by the Starmer government against any defiance shown to its austerity agenda.
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As the World Socialist Web Site explained in opposition to the political pantomime of the “Megapicket”:
Birmingham bin strikers have won the respect of workers across the country. They have taken a heroic stand. But they cannot win on their own and so cannot let Unite’s leadership continue to suffocate their action.
A collective, free and open discussion must be held among all affected workers and decisions taken on the next steps in the struggle. It is for the rank and file to decide their red lines and how to enforce them against the employers.
As a first step, links must be established with other council workers across the city and refuse workers and Unite members across the country. It is here that the strength to win the dispute can be found, in the wider working class with their own long list of grievances against the government and their employers—a force far greater than [Birmingham City Council leader John] Cotton, the commissioners, and Starmer.
17. United Kingdom: Birmingham bin workers defiant on the picket line
Striking Birmingham bin workers spoke with the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on Friday as they picketed at Perry Barr and Smithfield, two of three council yards hit by the action, alongside the Atlas site in Tyseley. Reporters distributed the article “Birmingham bin strike: Rank-and-file workers must decide a new strategy to end their isolation.”
More than a year after beginning their struggle, with walkouts from January and indefinite strike action from March 11, workers remain determined to defeat the Labour council’s attack on pay, jobs, and safety. The council is driving through pay cuts of up to £8,000 and deleting the safety-critical post of loaders—the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO)—with a similar downgrade of drivers.
Workers said they had not waged a year-long fight to accept a lump-sum payoff that fails to compensate for their major loss of earnings, legitimizes downgraded roles, and paves the way for unsafe working conditions. They emphasized that the dispute has become a confrontation not only with the council but with Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which has intervened to back its flagship authority and establish a precedent against workers nationally.
Strikers remained kettled behind steel barriers away from the yard gates. This is the result of a standing High Court injunction to remove pickets from peacefully slowing down waste trucks and making appeals to the replacement agency workforce brought in by the Labour authority to break the strike.
Among the concerns expressed was the isolation of the strike and attempts by Unite to end the dispute on terms that were not the same as workers’ red lines.
This was a world away from the themes of the stage-managed third “Mega-picket,” bringing together an assortment of union leaders—alongside Labourite, Green, and Your Party representatives—who have not lifted a finger to stop the strike-breaking operations to mouth phrases of “solidarity”.
18. Workers and young people in the UK speak on Gaza and Minneapolis
Socialist Equality Party members ran a stall at the Russell Square assembly point, distributing copies of the article “Trump administration threatens new war against Iran” and discussing the situation in the Middle East, the US invasion of Venezuela and threats against Greenland and Cuba, and the mass protests against Trump’s ICE occupations and murders.
They also spoke with some demonstrators. Please visit this article at the World Socialist Web Site to view videos and read what the demonstrators had to say.
19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
