There are actually clear rules regarding fire safety. One escape
route is sufficient for up to 50 people; if there are more, at least a
second escape route is required, and minimum widths are also mandatory.
For 300 people or more, fire alarms, alarm systems and marked escape
routes are also required. Virtually all of these requirements were
disregarded.
It was not until a week after the fire disaster that
the mayor, Nicolas Féraud, admitted that fire safety inspections had not
been carried out in the bar for six years. They should actually be
carried out and recorded annually.
*****
Switzerland is currently in the process of revising its cantonal fire
safety legislation. A relaxation of the rules is planned by 2027, which
will further reduce state control. Strictly in line with the motto
“more market, less state,” certain owners will in future be able to
replace official inspections with private expert reports.
The
tourism industry in particular welcomed and promoted this relaxation.
And in Valais, fire safety is the responsibility of the municipalities,
whose council members are often themselves the operators of hotels,
bars, mountain railways, ski lifts and shops.
*****
When the US company Vail Resort offered to practically buy up the
municipality of Crans-Montana, taking over 85 percent of all public
facilities, ski lifts and chairlifts, luxury hotels and shops, it was
welcomed with open arms. Everything else was subordinated to the luxury
tourism boom.
Politicians from all Swiss parties are currently
talking big about “security” when it comes to armament, nationalism, the
purchase of F-35 fighter jets and the militarization of society, but in
reality they are sacrificing people’s protection and safety for profit.
Crans-Montana is a telling example of this. The World Socialist Web
Site wrote:
(The fire disaster).. is part of a chain
of developments in which profit or power interests take precedence over
human life—the coronavirus pandemic, the increase in fatal workplace
accidents, the genocide in Gaza, the reintroduction of conscription in
Germany—in which profit or power interests take precedence over human
lives.
The protection and safety of the population
will remain an empty phrase as long as the working class does not rise
up to organize independently of all bourgeois parties and trade unions
and establish democratic control over their working and living
conditions.
On Monday, nurses marched to the office of Governor Kathy Hochul, a
right-wing Democrat, to protest her efforts to break their strike. At
the strike’s outset, Hochul declared a disaster emergency to allow
nurses licensed in other states and in Canada to practice in New York.
Just
hours after the protest concluded, Hochul extended the emergency
declaration, demonstrating her contempt for the nurses and her alignment
with the billionaire trustees who control the hospitals. In her
statement extending the declaration, Hochul insulted nurses’
intelligence by claiming that the measure was “not intended to afford
leverage to any party in collective bargaining.”
Earlier this week, negotiations resumed between the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and the three healthcare systems that operate
the four striking hospitals. Speaking with one voice, hospital
management demanded that the union submit a “bare-bones” proposal.
NYSNA
immediately complied, emphasizing its desire “to bring hospital
executives back to the table” and “get nurses back to work.” It made no
effort to fight back or mobilize its broader membership against the
hospitals’ intimidation tactics.
In a statement Monday, NYSNA admitted it had “significantly revised and
moderated our proposals.” These euphemisms amount to a declaration of
surrender. Yet even this subservience failed to appease management. The
hospitals’ latest proposals ignored safe staffing—the nurses’ central
demand throughout the three-week strike—and failed to offer adequate
protections against workplace violence, another key issue.
*****
From the start, NYSNA has weakened and divided its members. It
encouraged nurses to appeal to Democratic politicians like Hochul, who
brought in strikebreakers, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who feigns support
for the nurses while touting his “partnership” with the governor.
*****
The striking nurses enjoy strong support from coworkers at
other hospitals, fellow healthcare workers and the broader working
class. The strike can be won if this support is actively mobilized and
the strike is expanded to include all the hospitals where strike notices
were withdrawn.
Last week’s announcement that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) will operate on Italian soil during the Milan–Cortina Winter
Olympics provoked an outpouring of opposition in Italy.
The ICE
agency is infamous worldwide for its politically-driven executions of US
citizens in Minneapolis. The announcement of its arrival in Milan
follows the assault by ICE agents of two Italian journalists covering
protests in Minneapolis last week. The video,
viewed hundreds of thousands of times, provoked an outcry and demands
that Italian authorities take a stand against the Trump administration.
ICE agents attempt to intimidate Italian journalists in Minneapolis
*****
Workers took to social media to denounce the deployment of ICE in Italy,
calling for protests and sit-ins over the weekend. They also launched a
Change.org petition
against ICE, which has already gathered 37,000 signatures. An
outpouring of comments on X denounced ICE’s lawlessness against the
American people, as well as warning that ICE could use the same
murderous tactics during the Olympics.
Several thousand people joined in protests on Saturday and Sunday
against ICE on the Piazza XXV Aprile in Milan, blowing whistles and
singing Bruce Springsteen songs, in solidarity with anti-ICE protests in
the United States.
The square commemorates April 25, 1945, the
first day of the general strike and armed insurrection of Milan workers
called by the Committees of National Resistance of the Italian
resistance against Nazi and Italian fascist authorities in the city. On
April 28, resistance fighters captured and shot Italian fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini. The next day after that, Mussolini’s corpse was
publicly exhibited on Milan’s Piazzale Loreto.
This eruption of outrage against ICE has provoked a crisis for
Italy’s fascist prime minister, Georgia Meloni, who has cultivated ties
with Trump and far-right megabillionaire Elon Musk. Her party, the
Brothers of Italy, descends from the Italian Social Movement (MSI)
formed in 1946 by former members of the Italian fascist regime against
whom workers had risen up in Milan and across Northern Italy in 1945.
The
Meloni government has tried to portray cooperation with Trump, the
would-be Führer of America, as enhancing Italy’s prestige and capacity
to host “orderly” games. Italian authorities initially denied reports
that ICE would be present at the Games. They then tried to downplay
ICE’s role, suggesting it would only assist with security for US
athletes.
*****
The ICE squads illegally occupying Minneapolis and other US cities
operate without democratic constraints. Videos of the targeted execution
on January 24 of Intensive Care Unit nurse Alex Pretti by immigration
agents in Minneapolis, after the similar murder of mother Renée Nicole
Good on January 7, have starkly shown this to hundreds of millions
worldwide. By deploying ICE in Milan, Meloni is legitimizing murder and
intimidation of migrants and protesters in Italy and across Europe.
Meloni’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, snapped back at criticisms
of ICE in Italy, saying that the ICE agents in Milan are “not going to
be those who are on the street in Minneapolis.” He added, “it’s not like
the SS are coming,” referring to the Nazi paramilitary organization
that helped suppress the German labor movement, organized the Holocaust
and led the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and European
resistance movements.
Tajani’s attempt to lull Italian workers to
sleep is based on a political lie. In reality, with ICE, Trump is trying
to build an organization as similar as it can to Nazi paramilitary
groups. ICE is an organ of state terror overseeing mass repression,
deportations, mass detention and extrajudicial murder on behalf of a
ruling class that views the entire working population as disposable.
*****
Those who call to avoid creating an incident with ICE, issue appeals
to Meloni or treat the ICE presence in Milan as a local security issue
are seeking to disorient and demobilize this growing anger in the
working class. Italy’s union bureaucracies have worked relentlessly to
isolate strikes against Meloni, limit them to one-day actions and block
the construction of a movement to bring down her government.
What
is required is not more appeals to Meloni, but independent, organized
working-class resistance by the rank-and-file, linked internationally to
similar struggles that are emerging around the world, above all in the
United States, against far-right dictatorship.
The Socialist Equality Parties in the United States and Europe and the
International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees are fighting
to build such an independent movement. Workers and youth must oppose
ICE’s arrival in Milan and the attempt to turn the Olympic games in the
city into a laboratory of militarism and repression. Opposition to ICE,
in Italy as in the United States, must be made the point of departure of
a struggle of the working class to remove far-right governments from
office and transfer power to the working people.
Dehin Wasantha in bandages after being attacked for passing out leaflets
[Dehin] Wasantha told the court that following the assault, he and [Lakshman] Fernando
made their way to the Moratuwa Police Station to lodge a complaint. He
stated that this occurred despite their injuries and the physical
difficulty they experienced in reaching the station.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has
consistently explained in articles and statements that the attack was
not an isolated street brawl, but a politically driven attempt to
prevent it from organizing among university workers and students. It has
situated the attack as part of a broader pattern in which trade union
bureaucracies and pro-government unions act to defend capitalist
austerity, protect ruling-class interests, and suppress rank-and-file,
internationalist working-class politics.
Violence by union
officials tied to the SLPP, the SEP argues, is an attempt to intimidate
workers and block the growth of a socialist and anti-war movement that
would challenge the capitalist order and International Monetary Fund
austerity measures.
*****
While the violent attack on the exercise of democratic rights drew
international concern from defenders of civil liberties, the university
administration has remained silent about the assault, despite a formal
complaint by Wasantha in his capacity as an employee of the university.
All the trade unions at the university, including those affiliated with
the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power
government, have followed suit, exposing their anti-democratic
character.
According to information cited by the SEP, the
University of Moratuwa has not announced the outcome of any internal
inquiry into the events of November 30, 2023. The absence of any
publicly available findings raises serious questions about the
responsibility of universities to ensure the safety and democratic
rights of students and staff on and around campus.
The proceedings
in the Moratuwa Magistrate Court continue to examine contested
questions of fact, the actions of the accused, and the credibility of
the various accounts presented. Further hearings are expected as the
prosecution and defense continue to present evidence.
The SEP has
stated that while it is pursuing the case through legal channels, it
does not view this process in isolation. It emphasizes that the defense of democratic rights ultimately requires broader independent political mobilization by workers and students. At the same time, it has
reiterated its demand that those responsible for the assault be held
accountable through the judicial process.
Demonstrating its total support for the mass slaughter of the
Palestinians, the federal Labor government is preparing to welcome
Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the country for an official state
visit. Herzog is due to arrive in Australia next Monday and remain for
four days.
The Laborites, at the federal level and in the states, have made
clear that they will roll out the red carpet for one of the chief
butchers of Gaza. The visit will include a massive security mobilization and an attempt to ban protests against the Israeli leader in Sydney,
Australia’s most populous city.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
publicly invited Herzog to visit in the week following the December 14
attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. That antisemitic atrocity, targeting a
Hanukkah celebration, was perpetrated by two Islamic State-inspired
terrorists, one of whom had previously been on the radar of ASIO, the
domestic intelligence agency.
The invitation to Herzog was
presented as an opportunity for him to condole the Australian Jewish
community and to himself mourn the lives lost. That can only be
described as an obscenity.
It is based on the fraudulent conflation of the Israeli state, a
fascistic outpost of imperialism in the Middle East, with the Jewish
people internationally. Such an argument is itself antisemitic,
identifying all Jews, many of whom are deeply opposed to Israel’s
persecution of the Palestinians, with a criminal regime.
Herzog has no business shedding crocodile tears over the deaths of
innocent civilians, whatever their ethnicity or religion. His
relationship to mass murder and terrorism is that of a perpetrator, not
an opponent.
*****
Of particular relevance to Herzog’s visit to Australia, ostensibly to
express his horror over a terrorist attack, is his government’s own
terrorist attack on Lebanon. In September 2024, the Israeli intelligence
agency Mossad detonated explosives contained in tampered pagers across
Lebanon. At least 42 people were killed, including children, and
hundreds more were injured.
Herzog was not uninvolved. In the days
after the attack, he fronted the Israeli response, angrily denouncing
any suggestion that his regime was responsible. Those statements were
later exposed as a fraud, including when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu gratuitously gifted US President Donald Trump a golden pager
in celebration of the attack.
*****
The attempt to present Herzog’s visit as simply relating to the Bondi
attack is a sham. In reality, the invitation was a signal of Labor’s
full support for the Israeli regime, including its ongoing attempts to
ethnically-cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the renewed threats of the
Trump administration to carry out war against Iran.
Throughout
the Gaza genocide, the Labor government has supported Israel
politically, diplomatically and materially, including through the
continued export of advanced weapons components. But it has frequently
sought to obfuscate that reality, through cynical references to the
importance of civilian life. With the invitation to Herzog, the mask is
off and Labor is openly identifying itself with the genocidal regime and
its leadership.
*****
The visit and the assault on popular opposition are no doubt shocking
and angering masses of people. The critical question is to draw
political lessons.
Throughout the genocide, the Greens and
pseudo-left organizations such as Socialist Alternative and Socialist
Alliance, have promoted the fraud that with sufficient pressure, Labor
would end its support for the genocide.
They covered up the
reality that Labor’s support for some of the worst war crimes since the
Holocaust was not an aberration. It was an expression of Labor’s essence
as a party of imperialist war and reaction, and was inseparably
connected to its participation in an eruption of militarism globally,
including in US-led preparations for war against China.
After more than two years of protests, Labor has not shifted to the left, it has shifted dramatically to the right.
That underscores the need, not for fawning appeals to the government,
but for the most determined political struggle against it. Such a
struggle must be based on the mobilization of the working class,
industrially and politically and a socialist perspective, aimed at
abolishing the root cause of war and reaction, the outmoded capitalist
system itself.
Nurses are on the front lines of the ruling class’s war on society.
They have borne the consequences of the government’s refusal to
implement public health measures during the pandemic—decisions made to
protect corporate profits. Now, the country is even less prepared than
before. An estimated 260 million Americans were infected with COVID-19
last year. The US is also on the verge of losing its measles elimination
status, with outbreaks emerging in ICE concentration camps.
Other sections of the working class are also pressing for a fight:
On Thursday, 40,000 graduate students across the 10-campus University of California system begin a strike authorization vote.
On Sunday, contracts expired for 30,000 oil refinery workers, responsible for two-thirds of US oil refining capacity.
Contracts
have expired for most major California school districts, with strikes
already authorized in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
A major contract covering 30,000 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) at Stop & Shop is set to expire later this month.
Bargaining
begins this month for the next contract for city postal carriers. On
February 22, demonstrations are planned against the deadly cost-cutting
that has already claimed the lives of postal workers.
Throughout
the year, contracts will expire for hundreds of thousands of New York
City public sector workers, including subway workers in May.
And on September 1, contracts for 25,000 steelworkers are set to expire.
A
profound change is underway, one that is reaching ever deeper into the
ranks of the working class. After more than four decades of suppressed
struggles—following the betrayals and defeats imposed in the 1980s—the
American working class is beginning to move once again.
*****
The movement against Trump and dictatorship must be anchored in the
social power of the working class. The ongoing strikes must be
supported, expanded and unified across industries. The protest movement
must develop an explicitly class-conscious and anti-capitalist
orientation, aimed at mobilizing the immense economic strength of the
working class. It must assert itself as the leading force in the fight
against dictatorship, drawing behind it students and broad layers of the
middle class now entering into struggle.
This means combining the
fight against dictatorship and war with the defense of the economic and
social interests of the working class. Recognition of the organic
connection between the Trump administration’s attack on democratic
rights and the domination of society by a corporate-financial oligarchy
must be made the basis of the political strategy of the working class.
*****
In Minneapolis, the unions have demanded that workers continue to
honor “no-strike clauses” written into contracts over decades, even in
the face of a fascist threat. In Chicago, the teachers union called for
afterschool protests at local Target stores while actively deleting
Facebook comments from members calling for strike action.
The
prevailing attitude among the union bureaucracies is summed up by the
infamous phrase adopted by a San Diego teachers union: “Obey now, grieve
later.” In other words, submit now, fight never.
*****
The union apparatus is integrated with the corporate political
establishment and supports the same nationalist “America First” agenda
promoted by Trump and the Democrats alike. Breaking free from this
stranglehold requires that workers reject this poison and unite with
immigrant workers and workers all over the world against inequality, war
and dictatorship.
The strikes and protests now erupting across the country are animated
not only by specific contract issues but by a deep and growing anger
over intolerable levels of exploitation and inequality. A tiny financial
oligarchy controls staggering wealth while working people are forced to
choose between groceries and rent.
The IWA-RFC encourages the
building of committees that can break the grip of the bureaucracies,
transfer power to the rank and file and establish real democratic
decision-making power.
Such a movement must confront not only the
corporations but the political system that exists to defend their wealth
and power. The working class cannot advance its interests within the
framework of this corrupt system. It must build its own political
leadership and fight to reorganize society based on equality and human
need, not profit.
That means taking aim at the foundations of capitalist rule. The fight
for workers’ power is inseparable from the fight to expropriate the
billionaires and place the economy under the democratic control of the
working class. The fortunes of figures like Elon Musk and Jeff
Bezos—pillars of the fascist right and profiteers of mass
exploitation—must be seized and used to fund healthcare, education,
housing and jobs.
The passage of the spending bill in the House on Tuesday was a
carefully calibrated maneuver between the Democratic and Republican
leaderships. The bill passed the House by a narrow 217–214 margin.
Twenty-one Republicans—primarily from the fascistic House Freedom
Caucus—voted against the bill. The Democrats responded by supplying the
exact number of votes needed to offset Republican defections.
These
votes demonstrate that the Democratic Party functions not as an
opposition but as an enabler of the Trump administration. Its priority
is to ensure the uninterrupted funding of the US military while
diverting popular opposition with calls for meaningless cosmetic changes
to the administration’s efforts to establish a presidential
dictatorship.
*****
This is a continuation of the role the Democrats have played since
January 6, 2021. After a fascist mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt
to overturn the 2020 election, Democratic leaders rushed to rehabilitate
the Republican Party. President Biden declared, “We need a Republican
Party. We need an opposition that’s principled and strong.” After Trump
won the 2024 election after large portions of the US financial oligarchy
swung behind him, Biden shook his hand in the Oval Office and pledged
the transition would be “as smooth as it can get.”
The Washington Post
editorial board, speaking for a substantial section of the political
establishment, published a column Monday titled “Better oversight will
help ICE rebuild needed trust.” It declares: “Lawmakers of goodwill in
both parties should understand that true accountability won’t impede ICE
agents from going after threats to public safety.” By treating ICE’s
rampage as a PR problem requiring “better oversight” rather than as a
component of Trump’s drive toward dictatorial rule, the Post effectively
endorses the crackdown itself.
The mass opposition to Trump—to the ICE killings, the military
occupations, the threats of war against Iran and across Latin
America—must not be diverted into the Democratic Party. The Democrats
are not seeking to stop Trump. They are seeking to manage the political
fallout from his fascist policies while ensuring that militarism and
domestic repression continue without interruption.
Both parties
represent the same financial oligarchy that has massively enriched
itself under Trump. In the first year of his second term, the combined
wealth of American billionaires grew by $1.5 trillion—a 22 percent
increase—to $8.2 trillion. Elon Musk alone gained $305 billion. Both the
Democratic and Republican parties serve this class, which demands the
expansion of war, dictatorship and social inequality.
On Monday, President Donald Trump called on Republicans to
“nationalize” elections and “take over the voting” in at least 15
states. Trump has repeatedly called for the federal seizure of
elections in states he is projected to lose, while simultaneously
directing federal law enforcement to seize voting infrastructure.
Trump’s
actions over the past 48 hours are a continuation of the coup attempt
that began on January 6, 2021, now being carried out through the powers
of the federal government itself.
*****
On Monday, the same day Donald Trump first called on Republicans to back him in “taking over” elections, the New York Times confirmed
that Trump has personally intervened in an active FBI investigation in
Georgia. The paper reported that Trump spoke directly to frontline
agents through Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as voting
equipment was seized in Fulton County.
The Times
reported that Gabbard “appeared on site at the search” and “used her
cellphone” to call Trump. The president then “addressed the agents on
speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking
them for their work on the inquiry,” according to three people familiar
with the call.
The paper further reported, citing a U.S. official,
that Trump “personally ordered Ms. Gabbard to go to Atlanta for the
search, and coordinated her actions with Andrew Bailey, one of two
deputy FBI directors.”
The significance of Trump’s direct intervention cannot be overstated. By
placing himself in direct contact with frontline FBI agents conducting
an election-related investigation, Trump is reviving the same criminal
logic he employed on January 2, 2021, when he personally pressured
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed
to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Then, as now, Trump was not seeking
evidence of wrongdoing but demanding that state officials and law
enforcement manufacture a result that would negate an election he had
lost by more than 11,000 votes. The presence of the director of national
intelligence at the scene and Trump’s direct communication with
investigators demonstrate that this effort has now been escalated from
political coercion to the active use of the federal security apparatus
to override democratic outcomes.
The events in Georgia follow similar coercive tactics in Minnesota
where Attorney General Pam Bondi sent an extraordinary letter to
Governor Tim Walz last month demanding that Minnesota turn over voter
rolls and SNAP (food stamp) data to the federal government in exchange
for a reduction in the number of immigration agents occupying the state.
The demand exposed the fraudulent claim that the federal occupation,
which has already resulted in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti,
was aimed at targeting the “worst of the worst,” revealing instead that
it was being used as leverage to coerce political compliance.
Trump
has spent the first year of his second presidency federalizing National
Guard elements and deploying them to major cities alongside his
so-called “mass deportation operation,” in which thousands of masked
federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and
Border Protection have assaulted, murdered and kidnapped workers and
residents with impunity. These and other federal police forces, can be
positioned to intimidate voters, suppress turnout in targeted urban and
working class areas, and seize ballots and voting rolls following an
election.
Trump’s turn toward dictatorship is driven not only by
his collapsing political support, but more fundamentally by the
deepening crisis of the capitalist system itself. The United States is
no longer the unchallenged global superpower it once was and now carries
more than $40 trillion in debt, the product of decades of war,
speculation, and financial parasitism. To impose austerity on the
working class required to defend fictitious Wall Street valuations and
sustain the wealth of a tiny financial oligarchy, the ruling class can
no longer govern through democratic forms. The dismantling of elections,
the expansion of the local and federal police forces and the military,
and the concentration of power in the executive are not personal
aberrations of Trump, but the means by which American capitalism is
seeking to resolve its historic breakdown at the expense of the working
class.
On the other end of the pole, millions of workers and students have
taken to the streets across the country against the immigration Gestapo,
police violence and state repression. Tens of thousands of healthcare
workers in New York City and California are on strike, while thousands
of oil workers and teachers are preparing to join them. Calls for a
general strike to abolish the immigration police and drive Trump from
the White House are growing, particularly in Minneapolis and other
cities facing the brunt of the federal occupation.
The principal
obstacle to a massive social explosion that would sweep Trump from power
and reallocate billions towards healthcare, education and housing is
not the strength of the administration, but the intervention of the
Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy. Even as Trump
accelerates his drive toward dictatorship, the Democrats are ensuring
that his repressive apparatus remains fully funded and operational.
*****
The crisis now confronting the United States cannot be resolved through
elections that are being openly rigged, seized, or prepared under
conditions of repression and martial law. Trump’s drive toward
dictatorship is not an aberration but the product of a capitalist system
in terminal breakdown, incapable of reconciling social inequality,
imperialist war, and mass opposition through democratic forms.
On January 29, students, faculty and alumni at Texas A&M
University gathered at Academic Plaza to protest the censorship of more
than 200 courses following the Board of Regents’ ban on classroom
discussions of race and gender last fall. More than 300 people attended
the rally, voicing opposition not only to the academic repression
unfolding at Texas A&M and universities nationwide, but to the
broader drive toward authoritarianism by the ruling class.
At the
beginning of the spring semester, faculty revealed that over 200 courses
had been flagged or canceled following amendments to A&M’s Civil
Rights Protection and Compliance and Academic Freedom, Responsibility
and Tenure policies that were approved by the university system board
the previous semester. The anti-democratic measures, aimed at
prohibiting the “advocation” of “race and gender ideology,” mandate
per-semester reviews of syllabi for core courses and have reportedly
relied on AI to flag material for noncompliance. This followed the
firing of an instructor for discussing gender in the classroom and the
forced resignation of university President Mark A. Welsh.
Many
participants at the rally carried homemade signs drawing attention to
the parallels between the ongoing assault on democratic rights and the
policies of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. One sign read, “Goebbels would be
proud of TAMU.” Others condemned the reign of terror carried out by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis and across the
country, likening the agency to the Gestapo and calling for a general
strike.
Among the speakers were Martin Peterson, a professor forced to remove a
passage from Plato from his syllabus, and Dr. Leonard Bright, whose
graduate-level Ethics course was canceled despite having fully
documented that discussion of the banned topics was academically
necessary. Their remarks exposed the far-reaching implications of the
ban, which has affected not only the liberal arts but also curricula in
public health and other scientific disciplines. Both denounced the
intimidation and silencing of academics being carried out by university
administrations.
*****
The event was hosted by the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP), the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA),
MOVE Texas and other student organizations. The Party for Socialism and
Liberation (PSL) also participated. While representatives of these
Democratic Party-aligned groups at times alluded to the crisis of
American democracy and the threat of fascism, they did not provide a
political perspective capable of explaining the origins of the crisis or
offering a way forward.
The PSL endorsed the call for a general strike—a demand that emerged
from workers and students in Minneapolis and is gaining broader support
nationally—but failed to explain what a general strike is or how it can
be built. Instead, it called for consumer boycotts, school walkouts and
individual absenteeism to mark a national day of action on Friday,
January 31.
While
cuts in the healthcare system are driving more and more hospitals into
insolvency, health workers are threatened with cuts in real wages and
layoffs. The trade unions are isolating the struggles and preparing new
sellouts.
*****
It is not only healthcare workers in Germany who confront attacks on
wages, working conditions and public healthcare provision in principle.
The strike movement in the US makes clear that this is an international
problem that can only be solved by an international movement.
In
New York, around 15,000 nurses at several hospitals have been on strike
since mid-January. They are demanding better staffing ratios,
appropriate wages and social benefits. On the West Coast, more than
31,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente, a giant company in the healthcare
sector, went on an indefinite walkout. Here too, employees are making
similar demands on the company.
These struggles are directed
equally against a healthcare system driven by profit at the expense of
staff and patients. While hospital operators act against strikers using
strikebreakers and legal manoeuvres, they rely above all on the unions,
which try to isolate and weaken the struggles.
Workers everywhere
in the world can only fight effectively for their demands if they form
their own fighting organizations. For this, independent rank-and-file
action committees must be built, which are directed against the
pro-capitalist and nationalist policies of the trade unions and enable
workers to develop resistance internationally and on the basis of a
socialist perspective.
Yesterday’s decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board to
begin lifting interest rates again will severely affect millions of
working-class families, shattering whatever remained of the Albanese
Labor government’s claims to have “turned the corner” in resolving the
cost-of-living crisis.
Not only did the RBA, the capitalist class’s nominally “independent”
central bank, raise its cash rate to 3.85 percent from 3.6 percent. Its
forecasts indicated a re-acceleration of inflation, increasing the
likelihood of two more 0.25 percent rate hikes by the end of the year,
accompanied by deeper cuts to workers’ real wages.
Yesterday’s
rate hike alone will add about $105 a month, or nearly $1,300 a year, to
repayments on average home mortgages, which now sit at around $700,000
in working-class areas due to soaring house prices.
While many corporate media commentators say households can handle this,
recent Roy Morgan survey data estimated that it could cause “huge
financial losses” for many people, throwing 1.3 million households into
mortgage stress. Mortgage stress is generally defined as spending 30
percent or more of pre-tax income on home loan repayments.
*****
The RBA admitted the resurgence in inflation was more broad-based and
persistent than it had expected when it made three 0.25 percent cuts
last year, largely driven by fears of a global recession triggered by
the Trump administration’s tariff war.
Significantly, in comments
not reported in the corporate media, the RBA’s statement on monetary
policy warned that this prospect could quickly re-emerge, with severe
implications for Australian capitalism. “The recent escalation in
geopolitical tensions has had a limited economic effect on Australia and
its trading partners to date,” it said.“However, these pose upside risks to the global inflation outlook, particularly in the near term.”
Noting
the depreciation of the US dollar and rising prices for gold and other
precious metals, the bank stated: “If key downside risks to economic
activity were to materialize or be reassessed by financial markets, this
could prompt a sharp tightening in global financial conditions with
potential consequences for the global economy and, in the extreme,
financial stability.”
In other words, the global shock waves produced by the Trump
administration’s economic warfare to try to reassert post-World War II
US dominance could produce a crash that would dramatically further
worsen economic and social conditions internationally, including in
Australia.
*****
The ruling class has seized upon the rate hike to escalate a drumbeat of
demands for the Albanese government to further slash social spending in
the May federal budget, if not before.
Today’s Murdoch media Australian carries an editorial
demanding a “wholesale pruning of public spending” such as “increasing
Medicare bulk billing, relieving student debt, free TAFE places and
generous childcare handouts.”
Business chiefs are insisting that
the government must cut at least $50 billion a year from essential
social services. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI)
issued this demand on Monday in its pre-budget submission to the
government, specifically targeting the National Disability Insurance
Scheme (NDIS), childcare, aged care and health.
Such brutal cuts
are supposedly designed to tackle inflation and overcome “unsustainable”
budget deficits over the next decade. In reality, the only concern in
corporate boardrooms is to ramp up profits at the expense of the working
class.
*****
In efforts to satisfy the corporate elite and money markets, Prime
Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have boasted that
the Labor government has delivered “$114 billion in savings” since
taking office in 2022, but that is nowhere enough to satisfy the
financial oligarchs.
At the same time, the Trump administration is
demanding that military spending rise to 5 percent of GDP, far above
the Labor government’s latest pledge to reach 2.4 percent by
2033–34. That inevitably means diverting billions of more dollars a year
into AUKUS-related military outlays at the expense of social programs.
These marching orders are being handed to the Labor government under conditions of enormous anxiety in ruling circles over the disintegration
of the Liberal-National Coalition that has been, together with the
Labor Party, a central pillar of the political establishment since World
War II. Today’s Australian editorial lashed the Liberal and
National leaders for not resolving their “internal squabbles” and
“holding the government to account.”
Far from “squabbles,” the
continuing Coalition bust-up is a sharp expression of an historic crisis
of the entire parliamentary set-up that has defended capitalist rule
since World War II. That has increased the dependence of the ruling
class on the Albanese government and its partners in the union
bureaucracy to deepen the assault on working-class conditions, and this
is already fueling social and political discontent.
Washington is ramping up aggression against Mexico. This is reflected
along three axes: its war proclaimed against Mexican drug cartels, its
push for Mexico to abandon its longstanding relations with Cuba, while
pressuring Mexico as to its oil production, and an aggressive stance
over renewing its trade pact with Mexico.
*****
A year ago, the Trump administration designated six Mexican cartels
as “foreign terrorist organizations,” a move Mexican President Claudia
Sheinbaum then criticized as threatening Mexico’s sovereignty.
In
November, NBC News reported that the US military was already training
for ground operations in Mexico. On January 8, in the wake of the
January 3 US invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, Trump
said that the United States was “going to start now hitting land, with
regard to the cartels,” a remark that increased expectations that a US
military strike on a cartel target in Mexico was forthcoming.
*****
After a lengthy phone call on January 12 with Trump, Mexico’s
President Sheinbaum purported to “rule out” US “military action” in
Mexico, claiming that Trump had said only that the United States could
provide “additional assistance” to combat cartels if Mexico requested
such help.
At the same time, Sheinbaum called for “stronger
coordination” with the US on maritime security. She said, “we want to
continue working as necessary to further strengthen coordination within
the framework of defending our water sovereignty and the territorial
integrity of Mexico.”
Soon thereafter, on January 22, alleged drug
trafficker Ryan Wedding, a 44-year-old former Olympic snowboarder
wanted on US drug trafficking and murder charges, was apprehended in
Mexico City under murky circumstances. Sheinbaum claimed that Wedding
turned himself in at the US Embassy in Mexico City. His lawyer disputed
the surrender narrative.
*****
As to trade talks with the United States, Sheinbaum told reporters on
January 29 that “there’s nothing concrete yet, but things are
progressing very well.”
Mexico is seeking relief from tariffs the
Trump administration has imposed on a range of Mexican goods, including
steel, aluminum and vehicles.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met on Wednesday, January 28 with
Mexican Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard to discuss bilateral trade
relations and the upcoming USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada) “Joint Review.”
According to Greer’s office “both sides recognized substantial progress
in recent months and agreed to continue intensive engagement to address
non-tariff barriers.”
Sheinbaum is advocating for maintenance of the current trilateral trade
pact. She said she discussed Canada during her January 29 call with
Trump, and that she spoke in favor of “maintaining the USMCA with the
three countries.”
*****
Even if Mexico, the United States and Canada don’t agree to extend
the USMCA during this year’s review process, the pact by its terms would
not be terminated for 10 years, until 2036. Trump, however, is fully
capable of blowing up those terms and the pact.
Amid these
controversies and geopolitical tensions over trade, the Mexican economy
delivered a record export performance that barely prevented a recession
after the economy shrank 0.3 percent in the third quarter. December saw
exports climbing 17.2 percent compared to the previous year, so exports
reached $664.8 billion in 2025, a 7.6 percent increase, the strongest
growth since 2022.
This created Mexico’s first trade surplus
since 2020—a modest $771 million that nonetheless contrasts sharply with
2024’s $18.5 billion deficit. Capistrán Carmona told Forbes
that exports will once again be Mexico’s economic engine in 2026,
forecasting growth above 5 percent. But that is wishful thinking at
best.
Regardless of the ruling Morena party’s populist guise, the interests
of the Mexican ruling class foreclose any response that rallies
Mexicans in defense of democratic and social rights. It instead requires
that the Mexican working class continue to supply cheap labor for
finance capital. And if growth stagnates, there will be growing
pressures by creditors to cut Morena’s limited social programs and
pensions.
At the same time, the Mexican ruling class as a whole is
fearful that opposition to the government will grow over its
subservience to Trump, exposure of corruption and planned social cuts.
Under these conditions, the trajectory is further class struggle, economic oppression and US depredations and piracy.
A 71-year-old worker was killed on Monday, January 19, after falling
into a large industrial container at the Bayway Chemical Plant in
Linden, New Jersey. According to police, the man was working on top of a
6,000-gallon vat being filled with mineral oil when he fell inside.
Emergency responders recovered his body from the container, where he was
pronounced dead at the scene.
The worker, a resident of Iselin, New Jersey, was employed as a
subcontractor at the Bayway Chemical Plant, which is operated by
Infineum, a global chemical company that produces lubricant additives.
Neither his name nor the subcontracting firm that employed him have been
released.
The incident is being investigated by the Linden Police
Department, with a separate inquiry launched by the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA). No findings have yet been released by
either agency.
In a statement, Infineum claimed that it would
conduct its own internal investigation into the death and that it was
“cooperating with all agencies in their investigations.”
The
Bayway Chemical Plant, operated by Phillips 66 affiliate Infineum, is
part of a network of aging industrial facilities that line New Jersey’s
manufacturing corridor. The sprawling complex extends across a large
tract of land adjacent to residential neighborhoods, underscoring how
hazardous infrastructure is routinely embedded within working-class
communities.
Many of these facilities—built decades ago and operating far beyond
their intended lifespan—are marked by deteriorating equipment, extensive
chemical handling systems and constant maintenance demands. Despite
corporate claims of safe, modern operations, workers routinely confront
dangerous conditions involving bulk liquids, confined spaces and
elevated platforms—hazards frequently intensified by deferred
maintenance and the use of subcontracted labor.
That the victim
was employed as a subcontractor is a critical aspect of the case.
Subcontracted workers are routinely assigned the most dangerous jobs in
industrial settings, including maintenance, cleaning and tasks involving
confined spaces and large containers.
This employment arrangement fragments responsibility between plant
operators, contracting firms and regulatory agencies, allowing
accountability for serious injuries or deaths to be deflected or
delayed. In many cases, the identity of subcontracting firms is not
publicly disclosed, and workers’ safety concerns are lost as
responsibility is shuffled between contractors and plant owners.
*****
The death in Linden follows a series of recent workplace fatalities in
which official investigations were announced, not to expose the
conditions that led to the deaths, but to contain scrutiny while
operations continued uninterrupted.
A short list includes the deaths of U.S. Postal Service workers Nick
Acker, who was killed after becoming trapped in a mail-sorting machine
during maintenance, and Russell Scruggs Jr., who died after falling and
striking his head at a processing facility, as well as the death of
Stellantis autoworker Ronald Adams Sr., who was crushed while performing
maintenance work at an engine plant in Michigan. In each case, lethal
hazards emerged in the course of routine operations, and official
inquiries functioned to process the fatalities as isolated incidents,
severed from broader questions of workplace organization, safety
practices and responsibility.
Workplace fatalities remain a
regular feature of life in the United States. Federal data show that
thousands of workers are killed on the job each year, with many more
suffering life-altering injuries.
Older workers and subcontracted
employees—like the 71-year-old killed in the Linden incident—are among
the most vulnerable, routinely exposed to hazardous conditions with
limited protections and little public accountability when deaths occur.
These conditions are being intensified by the dismantling of workplace
safety regulations under the Trump administration, following decades in
which such protections have been systematically weakened by successive
administrations, both Democratic and Republican.
*****
The continuing toll of workplace deaths reflects what Friedrich Engels
described as “social murder,” in which workers are killed by conditions
deliberately tolerated in the pursuit of profit. These deaths are
outcomes of a social system that subordinates human life to production
and treats worker deaths as an acceptable cost.
In comparison with the bombastic and commerce-oriented US Golden
Globes and Oscar ceremonies in Hollywood, the European Film Awards
(EFA), whose 38th edition took place this year in Berlin January 17, is a
more sober affair offering somewhat more room for political and social
commentary.
Nonetheless, tellingly, the date of this year’s
ceremony was moved forward from early December to mid-January evidently
in an attempt to better position European films for the Academy Awards
ceremony in mid-March.
The most notable political issue addressed at this year’s 38th awards
ceremony was the situation in Iran. After a brief opening announcement,
the stage was given over to the veteran Iranian director Jafar Panahi
who was greeted with a standing ovation. Panahi has a lengthy history,
having directed a number of remarkable works in the 1990s and early
2000s: The White Balloon, The Mirror, The Circle, Crimson Gold, Offside.
Speaking
about the current developments in Iran, Panahi declared: “When truth is
crushed in one place, freedom is suffocated everywhere [...]. That is
why no one is safe anywhere in the world. Not in Iran. Not in Europe.
Not in the United States. Not anywhere on this planet. And that is
precisely why our task as filmmakers and artists is more difficult today
than ever before. If we are disappointed with politicians, we must at
least refuse to remain silent.”
*****
Panahi is an important filmmaker and critic of the reactionary
Iranian regime, but the readiness of the EFA to provide him a stage for
his comments should give pause for thought. German chancellor Friedrich
Merz has made clear his own support for a regime change orchestrated by
the Trump government, and in a recent interview Panahi shamefully
refused to criticize a return to power by the late Shah’s son Reva
Pahlavi.
It should be noted that while Panahi criticized Israel
for its massive bombardment of Iran in June 2025, calling for the
intervention of the United Nations, he has failed publicly to condemn
the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Panahi’s outrage is selective. Following
previous mass mobilisations against the regime, Panahi and other
dissidents threw their weight behind the bourgeois Green movement. The
danger remains that following the latest mass movement against the
regime, Panahi and related dissidents could support either the return of
the Shah’s son or even a regime change operation organized by the Trump
government.
In 2011, writing in unequivocal defense of
Panahi and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and other victims of the
Iranian government’s “barbaric treatment,” we noted that such a defense
“should not be taken, however, as an expression of agreement with those
who champion the [upper middle class] Green movement.”
*****
All that being said, Panahi’s It was Just an Accident is no
doubt a serious attempt to come to grips with certain aspects of Iranian
social and political reality. The film is based on his own experiences
as a prisoner in Tehran’s dreaded Evin prison. Throughout his
incarceration, Panahi, like other prisoners, was blindfolded and never
able to see the face of his interrogator/torturer.
*****
The Norwegian filmmaker and actress Liv Ullmann was honored for her
career with a lifetime achievement award and, with US president Trump
obviously in mind, declared in her acceptance speech: “I am Norwegian,
we give a Nobel Prize to someone who deserves it, and suddenly it goes
to someone else. It’s so strange ... and that’s why I’m happy that we
have laws that say that if you misuse the Nobel Prize, it can be taken
away from you. Someone with power in the US may be disappointed. He will
lose it, and I am happy about it.”
In her rather smug statement, what Ullman failed to point out, however,
was that the actual recipient of the Norwegian peace prize, the
right-wing Venezuelan war hawk and CIA stooge María Corina Machado, was
just as unqualified to receive the prize as the US president.
*****
The prize for best film went to Sentimental Value from
Norwegian director Joachim Trier. The film centers on the figure of an
older, egocentric Norwegian filmmaker Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) who
tries to reconnect with his adult children whom he largely neglected as
their father. One of his daughters, Nora, is an actor.
*****
In Sentimental Value we are treated to a number of scenes
dealing with the inside workings of both the theatre and film
industries—the stresses and strains behind the scenes of leading theatre
and film productions. This clearly went down well with the over 4,200
film professionals who decide which films should receive the EFA prizes.
*****
The second biggest EFA prize winner was the apocalyptic road movie Sirât by French director Óliver Laxe. Sirât (according
to Islamic faith, the road to paradise) deals with the raver scene in
Morocco where European social outcasts gather to escape the stress of
modern society by dancing to trance music in the middle of the desert.
*****
Against a background of war and genocide Laxe’s film pays tribute to a
group of people who seek, in the words of the director, “transcendence”
rather than coping with reality.
*****
A final mention should be made for the film On Falling, which
did win the ceremony’s Honorary Discovery Award. Made by Portuguese
director Laura Carreira and produced by Ken Loach, the movie deals with
the extreme exploitation of workers in an Amazon-type warehouse,
reflecting the experiences of countless workers all over the world.
Unifor Local 88 Plant Chair Mike Van Boekel revealed last month that
discussions have been held with General Motors management on producing
military vehicles at the currently idled CAMI auto assembly plant in
Ingersoll, Ontario. The discussions are “pretty secretive,” he said. “It
looks like there’s a market for it—we just need a green light from the
government to go ahead and do it,” he enthused.
Officials at GM
and in the federal Liberal and Ontario Progressive Conservative
governments have thus far remained non-committal about converting the
CAMI plant to military production, and have not been forthcoming with
details.
The federal Ministry of Industry—which formed a working
group with GM, the union and the right-wing Progressive Conservative
provincial government after GM shuttered the CAMI plant last October—has
declared the expansion of Canada’s armaments industry a governmental
priority.
For her part, Lana Payne, president of Unifor, Canada’s
largest private-sector union, joined with Ontario Premier Doug Ford to
pressure Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government on the
basis of a bogus cross-class appeal to common national interests between
bosses and workers. “Canada must respond with a real industrial
strategy that defends Canadian jobs, leverages our market, and pushes
back on Trump’s economic bullying,” said Payne.
Unifor has led the
entire union bureaucracy in championing reactionary “Team Canada”
nationalism in response to US President Donald Trump’s threats to annex
Canada as the 51st US state and destroy its industrial base as part of
his “America First” agenda. In so doing, Unifor has urged workers to
line up behind the former central banker and blue-chip executive Carney,
who in the name of opposing Trump has spearheaded a dramatic shift
right.
Carney’s Liberal government is imposing sweeping public
spending austerity and mass lay-offs to pay for an explosion in Canada’s
military budget and handouts to the financial oligarchy. Unifor
endorses this agenda, as shown by a series of policy papers released
over several years advocating the creation of a “national industrial
strategy” based on the strengthening of aerospace and “defense”
manufacturing, i.e., domestic production of military equipment for war.
*****
Last October, company management suspended all production
at the CAMI plant indefinitely. It cited decreased market demand and
high inventory levels for its BrightDrop electric delivery van as the
reason for the shutdown. About 1,000 assembly workers lost their jobs.
After
production of the Equinox internal combustion vehicle ended in 2021,
workers at the plant had been forced to struggle through a lengthy
layoff for e-vehicle retooling. This was followed, in the ensuing years,
by sporadic periods of downtime and continuing layoffs.
The
closure decision came alongside Stellantis’ move to indefinitely
mothball its assembly plant in Brampton, Ford’s continuing idling of
production at its Oakville facility and last week’s elimination of the
third shift at GM Oshawa. It is closely tied to moves by the Detroit
Three auto companies to go all in on US President Trump’s strategy of
using tariffs and other economic sanctions to “reshore” manufacturing
capacity to the US.
The Carney government has placed rearmament at
the center of its economic strategy, channeling vast public funds into
weapons procurement and building a domestic military-industrial base.
Ottawa’s budget and policy documents commit hundreds of billions to
expanding armaments production over the next decade and a new “Defense Industrial Strategy” that treats every firm as a potential “defense”
supplier. This agenda aims to equip Canadian imperialism to wage war
around the world as a new redivision of the globe between the great
powers escalates.
*****
The additional monies to stoke the Canadian war machine will come from
the blood and sweat of the working class in the form of more cuts to
public services, public sector jobs, Medicare and other social supports
and the overall living standards of workers from coast to coast. And in
expectation of working-class resistance to this class-war agenda, the
Carney government, with the support of all the parliamentary parties,
has already embarked on an assault on the basic democratic rights of the
population. Major strikes are quickly outlawed on the orders of the
government as a matter of course. Rights to assemble and protest are
being squeezed. Critics of government policies find themselves
cancelled, vilified, charged with offenses and even jailed.
*****
Military vehicle production is already growing at Canadian industrial
facilities. Roshel’s Senator-style armored combat vehicle, built in
Brampton, Ontario, has been supplied in the hundreds to the Ukrainian
military since the beginning of the US/NATO-instigated war with Russia.
Just last November, ICE placed an expedited order with Roshel for a
fleet of 20 of these armored vehicles to support its fascist-style
raids on immigrant communities across the US. Photographs have already
shown them appearing on the streets of Minneapolis, where ICE agents
shot and killed two people last month.
In London, Ontario General
Dynamics has for decades produced light-armored vehicles for the
Canadian Armed Forces. Over the past decade, the company has fulfilled a
lucrative contract with the despotic Saudi Arabian regime to provide
742 vehicles worth $15 billion. So controversial was this project that
Unifor officials, who organized workers in the plant, tried to keep the
contract with the Saudis “under wraps”
until, much to Unifor’s embarrassment, then NDP leader Tom Mulcair
wielded the information to attack Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a
2015 federal election debate.
*****
Nationalism and pro-imperialist militarism offer no basis upon which
workers can defend good-paying, secure jobs under conditions of an ever
deepening capitalist crisis. The task facing workers in Canada
threatened with layoffs due to the trade war with the US and the
accelerating shift from civilian to war production is to unify their
struggles with workers in the United States, who are engaging in ever
broader struggles against Trump. “America First” protectionism and “Team
Canada” nationalism express the interests of competing imperialist
powers, both determined to offload the costs of their conflicts onto the
working class. Workers across North America must advance their
independent class interests by adopting a socialist-internationalist
program and fighting together for the establishment of workers
governments that put social needs before private profit by transforming
the banks and key industries into public utilities under workers’
control.
As President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government deepens cooperation
with the Donald Trump administration, Türkiye is attempting to mediate
against the US’s upcoming attack on Iran. In recent days, Turkish
government officials have voiced growing concerns and made efforts to
establish diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran.
Iranian
President Masoud Pezeshkian announced on social media that he had
instructed Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to begin negotiations with
the US. Erdoğan embarked on a two-day trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt on
Tuesday and said that discussions would cover “what can be done to
prevent the Iran crisis from escalating further.”
According to a report on Axios,
“White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas
Araghchi are expected to meet on Friday in Istanbul together with
representatives of several Arab and Muslim countries to discuss a
possible nuclear deal, according to two sources with knowledge and a
U.S. official.”
This meeting was planned after a meeting between
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Araghchi in Ankara on January
30. During a joint press statement, Fidan said, “...we are against
resorting to military options to resolve the issues. We do not believe
that [the military option] will be very effective. We advocate
negotiation and diplomacy.” “We call on the parties to come to the
negotiating table,” Fidan said, adding that negotiations “will pave the
way for Iran’s integration into the international system.”
Fidan stated in an interview with Al-Jazeera
television at the end of January, “It’s wrong to attack Iran. It’s
wrong to start the war again. Iran is ready to negotiate on the nuclear
file again.”
*****
A new imperialist attack on Iran, with its population of 93 million,
carries the danger of turning into a regional war that rapidly draws in
US-allied forces, including Türkiye. Such a war would deepen
geopolitical instability across the Middle East, radicalizing the
working-class and youth masses who despise imperialism and Zionism,
thereby shaking the collaborative regimes.
The Trump
administration, has amassed a large military buildup in the Middle East
and threatened Iran with a new war following last June’s illegal attack.
Meanwhile, 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.”
In mid-January, while Trump threatened to strike Tehran, exploiting
the ongoing protests in Iran for its own benefit, an unnamed senior
official reportedly stated that Iran had asked regional states to
prevent a US attack. According to Reuters, the same official said,
“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to
Türkiye, that US bases in those countries will be attacked.” Türkiye
hosts the Incirlik air base, which the US uses for its operations in the
region. The radar base in Kürecik provides intelligence against Iran
and its allies.
After Venezuela, the Trump administration wants to seize Iran’s energy
resources and control the energy and supply chains of its global rivals,
primarily China. Türkiye, led by Trump’s “friend” Erdoğan, fears that a
large-scale US-Israel war against Iran could negatively affect it as
well, and is playing the role of “good cop” in helping Washington
achieve its goals through negotiation. Türkiye’s ruling elite is
concerned that such a war could eliminate Iran’s role as a
counterweight, further increasing Israel’s regional influence and
encouraging Kurdish separatism in Iran.
*****
The Turkish bourgeoisie is not a victim of 35 years of imperialist
aggression now targeting Iran in the Middle East, but an accomplice. The
Turkish ruling elite directly aided the US in its crimes across the
region, from the attack on Iraq to the regime change wars in Syria and
Libya. As a result of these imperialist attacks and regime change wars,
Ankara has established strong ties with the Kurdistan Regional
Government in Iraq, despite occasionally threatening it. On the other
hand, Türkiye has attempted to suppress the de facto Kurdish autonomy
that has emerged in Syria and make it subordinate to the new Damascus
regime.
Türkiye’s ruling elite played a hypocritical and
facilitating role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, made possible with US
support. Ankara aided Israel’s war machine by indirectly continuing
trade and facilitating the flow of Azerbaijani oil through Türkiye.
Meanwhile, as competition with Israel intensified in Syria and the
Middle East in general, Erdoğan attempted to position himself as a
defender of the Palestinians by using anti-genocide rhetoric. Ankara
also played a role in getting Hamas to accept Trump’s new colonialist
Gaza “peace” plan. Erdoğan now gladly accepts membership in Trump’s
“Peace Council” in Gaza.
The current border between Türkiye and
Iran is largely based on the 1639 Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin. Since this
treaty ended the Ottoman-Safavid War of 1623–1639, the two countries
have not fought each other. Iran is also a major supplier of natural gas
to Türkiye, with 15-20 percent of Türkiye’s annual consumption supplied
by Tehran.
However, neither the concerns of the Turkish ruling
elite nor the bankrupt attempts at compromise by the bourgeois-clerical
regime in Iran can put an end to imperialist aggression and the new
colonial war in the Middle East. Imperialism pursues total submission
and domination everywhere. There is no way forward other than a
revolutionary strategy that will eliminate imperialism.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi (Socialist Equality Party), the Turkish
section of the International Committee of the Fourth International,
calls on the working class in Türkiye, the Middle East, and worldwide to
unconditionally oppose and take action against the threats of war
against Iran, a historically oppressed country, by US imperialism and
Israeli Zionism. US-NATO bases in Türkiye must be closed, and Ankara’s
support for imperialist-Zionist aggression must end.
Two workers employed as
underground guides at the museum gave interviews. Both had formerly
worked as miners at the UK’s last remaining deep coal mine – Kellingley Colliery, before it was closed in 2015.
*****
Asked to respond to management allegations of “abuse, harassment
and extreme bullying” by those on strike, Trevor said, “Well, the
bullying and the insults, that’s what we received because they
[management] had a security company here originally and from day one,
all they wanted to do was antagonize us to get a reaction. Yeah,
provocation. We believe that they brought in a proper antagonist, you
know, who stood there just called us every name under the sun. You’ve
probably seen the videos. I just went up and said, “who are you?” You
probably saw the reaction I got off him. I didn’t curse and swear at
him. Yeah, we just asked who he was. We got abuse.
“He threatened
us. He says, tomorrow I’ll have 100 people here. He said, basically they
will knock us off the picket line. Well, he didn’t come the next day.”
A
veteran of the 1984-85 Miners’ strike, when the full force of the
British state was employed to smash the miners’ struggle and the media
regularly vilified them, Trevor recounted the series of horrendous
provocations employed by management against the pickets.
*****
Trevor recounted how he had narrowly avoided a car that was driven at him.
Proving
that for those like Trevor the job is a labor of love and a million
miles away from seeking financial rewards, he concluded, “Pay is nothing
to us really. It’s our heritage. It’s what we’re fighting for. That’s
what means more to me than anything else, more than any pay or anything
like that.”
*****
Russ was asked why after five months on strike, over pay that is
close to the minimum wage, did he think management has chosen
confrontation rather than settling a dispute:
“They
can clearly afford it. I don’t know. It’s just a question of, ‘I’m in
charge. You’ll do what I say’. It’s very Victorian values. It’s not
democratic. We’re a very democratic union. We go on numbers, so we’ll
have meetings every so often, and rather than one person saying we’re
going to do this, we vote on things, and it’s done democratically...
We’ll never accept anything where they’re going to discipline somebody.
“They’ve
taken advantage of our goodwill. We did everything here on basic wages.
Built everything and willing to help share our history and this
heritage. We need to tell people how big it is.”
There was a
palpable sense among the pickets that their struggle was part of
something much larger. Russ added; “It’s just not just. The poor old bin
workers [Birmingham refuse workers],
they’re not asking for anything. Not asking for a change in the system.
And they’re going to take eight grand [£8,000] a year off them. What do
you do if they’re going to take eight grand a year off you? It’s
similar to our dispute. And I just can’t believe the Labour government
is letting all this happen.” The discussion continued among the
pickets over broader political and historical issues with copies sold of
a WSWS pamphlet marking the 40th Anniversary of the 1984-5 strike which addressed the lessons for the class struggle today.
A recognition that this is part of a broader clampdown by the Starmer
government to impoverish workers underlines the need to overcome the
isolation of just 40 workers making a defiant stand: Unison the largest
union in the UK has 1.3 million members.
As the WSWS article
explained: “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.”
The social inequality charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation summarized two decades of UK poverty data starkly: “Nothing’s changed? Everything’s
changed. It’s worse.”
Poverty remained consistently high the last 20 years and the JRF
anticipates no change under the Starmer led Labour government due to
continuing low economic growth and stagnation—the trajectory since the
global financial crash in 2001.
Overall poverty blighted between
20-22 percent of the population from 2005/06 up to the general election
2024. This translates to one in five or 14.2 million people, including
two in every 10 or 7.9 million adults of working age, three in 20
pensioners and three in every 10, or 4.5 million children.
The
areas with the highest poverty rates include the capital, London, at 26
percent, the West Midlands region at 24 percent, the North West at 23
percent and Yorkshire and Humber at 23 percent. Across the UK, figures
for Wales are 22 percent, Scotland 20 percent and Northern Ireland 17
percent on average from 2021-24.
Most disturbing, the number and proportion of children living in
poverty rose the last three years, up 600,00 from pre-pandemic levels.
In 2017, the Conservative government introduced the sadistic two-child
benefit cap that limited benefits to the first two children in a family.
The
Starmer government have trumpeted their row back of the two-child
benefit limit, but the JRF points out that Labour’s Child Poverty
Strategy will still leave 4 million children in poverty by 2029/30.
Relative poverty in the UK is defined as earnings 60 percent below the
national median income, at present £39,000, less than £23,400. The small
reduction in the latest overall poverty figure to 21 percent reflects
the fact that average incomes have fallen.
*****
The number of people classed as destitute, “unable to stay warm, dry
and fed,” more than doubled from 2017 to 2022 to 3.8 million, including
one million children. Between 2021/22 and 2023/24 the number of people
classed as food insecure increased by 60 percent.
The disabled,
some ethnic minorities, larger families or single parent families,
informal carers, and those in rented accommodation are at particular
risk.
*****
Disabled people are at higher risk of poverty than the general
population, due to extra health costs and inability to work. The poverty
rate for this group is 28 percent (8 percent higher than those not
disabled). The disabled are caught in the crosshairs of the Starmer
government’s intent to massively reduce the welfare bill.
The
policy of both Labour and previous Tory governments is to get the sick
and disabled off benefits and into work, enabled by tortuous assessments
and the trap of benefit sanctions which are easily incurred.
*****
Despite the government promising to invest in the most deprived
districts, a study by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods predicts higher unemployment and crime in the industrial wastelands of
the Midlands and the North.
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.
