President Donald Trump’s declaration Monday on a right-wing podcast that
the Republican Party should “nationalize” elections and “take over the
voting” in Democratic-controlled cities and states is the signal for an
intensified effort to rig the 2026 elections or cancel them outright.
Trump repeated his demands in remarks to the press on Tuesday in the
Oval Office and then at greater length in an interview with Tom Llamas
of NBC News, with excerpts broadcast by the network on Wednesday night.
In unmistakably racist terms, Trump singled out Detroit, Philadelphia
and Atlanta, all majority-minority cities with African American mayors,
for vilification as “corrupt.”
Significantly, Llamas expressed no
disagreement with Trump’s nonstop lies about the 2020 election, nor did
he point out that Trump’s effort to seize control of the electoral
process in selected states and cities is a blatant violation of the
Constitution. As billionaires tighten their grip on the corporate
media—the purges at CBS and the Washington Post are current examples—the multi-millionaire “journalists” are accommodating themselves to the new order.
*****
Most recently, FBI agents raided the election office in Fulton
County, Georgia (Atlanta), an action supervised on the spot by FBI
Deputy Director Tom Bailey and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi
Gabbard. Trump himself spoke directly to the FBI agents through a
connection established by Gabbard, who has been suggesting that China
interfered in the 2020 vote.
All of these actions have been in
support of Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 election because
of the votes of “illegal immigrants” brought into the country by
Democratic administrations, although non-citizens cannot vote, and very
few attempt to do so. This is invariably linked to some form of the
fascist “Great Replacement Theory,” which claims that immigrants from
Africa, Asia and Latin America are being brought into the United States
by the millions in a deliberate effort to “replace” the white
population.
In the openly neo-Nazi version, the perpetrators of this supposed
campaign are Jewish billionaires. In Trump’s slightly sanitized version,
it is the Democratic Party. “So they’ve sent all of their people,
millions and millions of people,” he said Monday, referring to
immigrants. “We have to get them out. And by the way, if Republicans
don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a
Republican.”
Trump’s campaign against the 2026 elections thus combines his “stolen
election” lies from 2020, which were the basis for the attempted coup
of January 6, 2021, and the ongoing campaign of state terror against
immigrants, being waged by masked, heavily armed agents of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The
end result would be an election rigged by the use of police terror to
intimidate anti-Trump and particularly minority voters. Fascist former
aide Steve Bannon hailed Trump’s comments, calling for ICE agents to
“surround” polling places in November.
Alternatively, should such
methods prove unworkable, Trump might simply declare that the vote
results in certain areas of the country should be disregarded. Or, as he
told an interviewer last month, the elections should be cancelled
altogether due to the supposed “great success” of his administration.
The
United States has held elections every two years for Congress and every
four years for president without interruption since the adoption of the
Constitution in 1789. The Great Depression, foreign wars and even the
Civil War did not prevent voting from taking place. If Trump now openly
muses about putting an end to elections—in the year which marks the
250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—it is because
American capitalism faces a crisis of even greater dimensions.
*****
No doubt Trump fears that a heavy defeat of the Republicans in the
2026 elections would weaken his administration. But he is not
principally concerned about the Democratic Party gaining seats in the
House and Senate. He has long since taken the measure of the Democrats.
It was Barack Obama who first welcomed him to the White House after his
victory in 2016, declaring that after the “intramural scrimmage,” the
Democrats and Republicans were “on the same team.” It was Biden who
declared, after Trump’s failed coup of January 6, that he wanted a
“strong Republican Party.” And the Democratic response to the violence
of ICE and CBP has been to file lawsuits and wring their hands.
The New York Times
demonstrated the prostration of the Democrats before Trump with an
editorial raising his threat to the 2026 election, but beginning with a
rebuke of Democrats who criticized voter ID requirements as an effort to
suppress minority turnout. The editorial noted that Trump himself told
the Times that he “regretted not sending the National Guard to
seize voting machines after the 2020 presidential election.” Yet in
response to this implied threat of military force, the Times could only appeal for more people to serve as poll workers and watchers.
*****
Trump does not command a mass fascist movement. He seeks to carry out
what the coup failed to accomplish five years ago by using the armed
forces of the executive branch to establish a presidential dictatorship.
The obstacle to this is not the Democratic Party but the working class,
the vast majority of the American population.
The would-be
dictator fears the mass movement that erupted in Minneapolis against the
murderous invasion by ICE and CBP agents, and the intensification of
the class struggle shown in the coast-to-coast wave of nurses’ strikes
and the impact of mass layoffs and falling living standards on working
class consciousness.
*****
The growing strikes, mass protests and calls for a general strike point
the way forward. Preparations must be consciously made to unite workers
across industries, regions and national lines in a general strike aimed
at defeating Trump’s drive to dictatorship. The working class must build
an independent political movement whose goal is to break the power of
the financial oligarchy and overturn the capitalist system that is
driving society toward dictatorship and war.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro met with US President Donald Trump
at the White House on Tuesday in a closed-door session lasting over two
hours. The meeting came just days after Trump brazenly threatened Petro
with military action akin to last month’s US invasion of Venezuela and
abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
The encounter, hailed by
Trump as a “complete success,” was yet another capitulation by a
figurehead of Latin America’s bankrupt “Pink Tide.”
Like New York
pseudo-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who recently visited the White
House to kiss Trump’s ring and pledge partnership, Petro arrived hat in
hand, pledging collaboration.
On the eve of the meeting with
Petro, Trump told reporters in his usual thuggish style: “He was
certainly critical before that but, somehow after the Venezuelan raid,
he became very nice.” Post-meeting, Trump gushed that Petro was
“terrific.”
Petro now apes Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s
playbook: stifling public criticisms of US policy, sweet-talking the
would-be fascist emperor, and offering full-fledged collaboration plus
additional tributes. Most recently, Sheinbaum has stopped oil shipments
to Cuba, leaving the country with just days worth of fuel after Trump
threatened to impose sanctions on Mexico.
The shift is significant. Petro once denounced NATO powers’ direct role
in the Gaza genocide, the execution of 126 fishermen, including
Colombians, with US missile strikes on their boats since last September,
and the Pentagon’s kidnapping of Maduro.
*****
As Petro hobnobbed with Trump, Slate published the harrowing
account of a Colombian mother whose family fled death threats in
Colombia in 2022, only to endure the “Liam Ramos nightmare” at the
Dilley, Texas migrant concentration camp before deportation. Her
daughter suffered vision and hearing damage plus a bacterial infection
after two months in hellish conditions. “My daughter is only 6 years
old. She should not know chains or handcuffs or the terror of her family
being torn apart,” she wrote from Colombia. “ICE treated us like
animals. Officers intimidated, restrained and deported us without regard
for our humanity. … My daughter is traumatized and cries every day.”
Meanwhile,
in Washington, Petro continued his rhapsodic description of the White
House: “Different ways of thinking, different regimes, different powers
can come together. There’s no need to fight. ... ‘I like you,’ he told
me.”
*****
Petro’s trajectory embodies the political pedigree and degeneration
of the so-called “Pink Tide,” a series of left nationalist governments
that used proceeds from high commodity prices to implement limited
social reforms.
In 1977, at age 17, he began university studies
and joined the M-19 guerrilla group until its 1991 transformation into a
“respectable” bourgeois party. The fighting included efforts to reclaim
land from US-backed fascist paramilitaries. In October 1985, Colombian
Army forces—founded, financed, and trained by Washington—captured and
tortured him for days. He was not freed until February 1987.
In
1991, he entered Congress as part of the ex-guerrilla bloc, and as early
as 1994, he met Venezuelan Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez, who launched
“Bolivarianism” and the Pink Tide after his 1998 election as president.
Declassified
documents reveal US training, funding, and intelligence enabled the
massacre of over 6,000 demobilized guerrilla members in Colombia during
this period, with Petro himself under constant threat.
Notwithstanding
this bloody history, under Petro, Colombia remains a NATO global
partner and Washington’s closest military ally in Latin America, hosting
US troops and bases.
Petro’s pilgrimage underscores the terminal
crisis of “left” nationalism across Latin America. Self-styled
progressives like Petro, Lula, Sheinbaum and the Venezuelan Bolivarian
remnants, preserve capitalist exploitation while capitulating to US
imperialism’s demands.
Trump’s threats can only succeed insofar as these regimes serve to
suppress any independent revolutionary movement of the working class.
The national bourgeoisies they represent manage capital within the
imperialist-controlled nation-state system, offering repression, cheap
labor and resources at home and collaboration abroad.
Colombia’s
NATO status, joint anti-drug operations, and bases make it Washington’s
unsinkable aircraft carrier for subjugating the hemisphere. Petro’s
“frank gringos” line whitewashes this as “liberty,” while migrants rot
in US camps. The “Pink Tide” now openly services Trump’s neocolonial
blitzkrieg across the region.
An explosive series of mass protests and general strikes in Colombia
against austerity, inequality and repression were channeled by the
pseudo-left and the trade union bureaucracy behind the election of Petro
in 2022. The political disaster this has wrought is plain to see and
now it is high time to draw fundamental political lessons from the
experience of the “Pink Tide.”
The Latin American working class
cannot fight extreme inequality and defend its democratic rights—above
all against imperialist oppression—through politicians like Petro or any
other capitalist party. Only the independent mobilization of the
working class for power can achieve this as part of the world socialist
revolution.
The ongoing strike by 31,000 nurses, technicians, and other
healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii has
entered its second week, amidst an eruption of strikes and protests
across the country. For three weeks, 15,000 nurses in New York City have
been on strike; thousands of Kaiser pharmacists and technicians are set
to join the pickets on the west coast in the coming days.
Kaiser
Permanente pleads poverty when it comes to vital issues such as safe
staffing ratios and pay increases to ensure staff retention. But it has
quietly agreed to pay $556 million to settle allegations of Medicare
fraud with the state of California, underscoring that “non-profit”
healthcare operates no differently from any other corporation.
The
settlement stems from Kaiser’s systematic exploitation of the Medicare
Advantage (MA) risk-adjustment system, a federally mandated program
designed to compensate insurers for patients with more complex health
needs. Under MA, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
pays private insurers a fixed monthly amount per enrollee, adjusted
upward for documented illnesses. Such a system creates a strong
financial incentive to maximize coding of diagnoses, turning patient
records into revenue-generating instruments.
Federal prosecutors
allege that between 2009 and 2018, Kaiser carried out a multi-state
scheme to inflate risk scores through automated and coercive practices.
The primary tool was the retroactive use of medical record “addenda.”
Typically intended to correct minor errors shortly after a visit,
addenda were instead repurposed as a revenue tool.
*****
Physicians and facilities were assigned risk-adjustment targets and
tracked on internal dashboards, with financial incentives or penalties
tied to coding output. Court filings estimate that roughly 500,000
unsupported diagnoses were added, generating approximately $1 billion in
improper Medicare payments.
The $556 million settlement, while
large by most measures, represents only a fraction of the alleged
overbilling and a minor cost for an institution with billions in
reserves.
The practices exposed at Kaiser are widespread throughout the
healthcare industry. UnitedHealth Group (UHG) has faced multiple similar
allegations, using its vertically integrated structure and vast data
systems to identify diagnoses that increase Medicare payments. Meanwhile
they are accused of ignoring evidence that existing diagnoses were
unsupported or incorrect and therefore required repayment of previously
overbilled funds. In both cases, corporate control over clinical data
was used to maximize revenue.
*****
Kaiser’s “non-profit” status is a sham. In 2024, it reported $115.8
billion in operating revenue, $12.9 billion in “net income,” and nearly
$67.4 billion in financial reserves, while executive compensation
approached $93 million. Against this backdrop, a $556 million settlement
amounts to a routine operating expense.
Beyond financial
misconduct, the most damaging consequence of risk-adjustment fraud is
the corruption of patient medical records. Inaccurate coding creates
permanent records of fictitious or exaggerated illnesses, distorting
care and exposing patients to unnecessary treatment or stigma.
Investigations show millions of Medicare Advantage enrollees carry
serious diagnoses without follow-up care, underscoring how illness has
been transformed into a revenue stream.
UNAC/UHCP, the union covering striking workers, has issued statements
portraying Kaiser’s actions as a moral lapse or a failure of management
ethics. Its January 2026 report named “Profit Over Patients” frames the
issue as “mission drift,” rather than the predictable outcome of
subordinating healthcare to market imperatives.
*****
Privatization of Medicare has been a bipartisan project carried out
over decades. The Reagan administration introduced prospective payment
systems that encouraged competition and for-profit hospital operations.
Under Clinton, Medicare+Choice (later Medicare Advantage) allowed
private insurers to profit directly from public funds. Bush expanded the
program further, diverting billions from public resources into private
hands.
Subsequent administrations, from Obama’s Affordable Care
Act to the Trump-era Direct Contracting and Primary Care First models,
deepened the focus on cost control and profit, often at the expense of
patient needs. Value-based payment models reward savings over care,
incentivizing providers to see more patients in less time, restrict
treatments, and shift care to cheaper alternatives.
*****
The ongoing strike by 31,000 by nurses, laboratory technicians, and
other staff is against understaffing, burnout and unsafe conditions
driven by relentless cost cutting. That this takes place even as
management extracts revenue through inflated risk scores and financial
maneuvers shows this struggle is inseparable from a broader question of
whose social interests dominate healthcare, whether medicine is
organized to meet human needs or to generate profit.
The Washington Post announced Tuesday that it is eliminating
more than 300 journalists—roughly one-third of its 800-person newsroom.
The paper is shuttering its entire sports section, closing its books
desk, suspending its flagship “Post Reports” podcast and gutting its
foreign and metro coverage. The entire Middle East team was laid off,
including the Cairo bureau chief. The Asia editor position was
eliminated, along with the New Delhi and Sydney bureau chiefs.
Correspondents covering China, Iran and Turkey were cut.
The layoffs at the Post
are part of a wave of mass job cuts in 2026 that is on pace to eclipse
2025—itself one of the worst years of layoffs in recent history. In
January alone, Amazon announced 16,000 corporate job cuts targeting core
product and engineering roles, with over 2,000 in the Seattle area. UPS
eliminated 30,000 positions on top of 48,000 cut in 2025, bringing
cumulative layoffs to 78,000. The company is closing or reducing
operations at 28 facilities. Pinterest cut 15 percent of its workforce.
Meta laid off more than 1,000 workers in its Reality Labs division as it
pivots from the metaverse to AI.
According to the Challenger,
Gray & Christmas outplacement firm, US employers announced 1,206,374
job cuts in 2025—a 58 percent increase over the previous year and the
highest level since the 2020 pandemic. This was the seventh-highest
annual total since tracking began in 1989.
*****
The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who purchased it in 2013 for
$250 million, promising that his business interests would not affect the
paper’s coverage. His net worth has soared from approximately $110
billion in 2022 to over $250 billion today. His wealth increase of $140
billion over four years could cover the Post’s reported $100 million
annual losses for 1,400 years. Instead, Bezos is gutting the newsroom
while using his fortune to curry favor with Trump.
In October 2024, Bezos ordered the Post not to endorse a
presidential candidate for the first time in 36 years—even though the
editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris and
had written that Trump was unfit for office. More than 250,000 readers
canceled their subscriptions in response.
*****
Artificial intelligence is increasingly cited as justification for
mass layoffs. According to Challenger, AI was responsible for 54,836
announced job cuts in 2025. Since 2023, when this category was first
tracked, AI has been cited in 71,825 layoff announcements. Amazon,
Microsoft, Workday, Salesforce, HP and Chegg have all pointed to AI
investments as rationale for workforce reductions.
The impact of
AI on the news industry has been substantial. According to industry
analyses, Google’s AI Overviews have reduced click-through rates to news
sites by 30 to 55 percent. AI chatbots provide virtually no referral
traffic to publishers—their click-through rates are 96 percent lower
than traditional search. A SearchEngineWorld study found that referral
traffic from Google has dropped by up to 64 percent for some publishers.
News organizations expect search traffic to fall 43 percent by 2029.
The layoffs of 2025 and 2026 have corresponded to a massive increase
in the wealth of the financial oligarchy of which Bezos is a part. In
the first year of Trump’s 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, becoming the first person
to surpass $700 billion in net worth.
The 15 richest Americans
saw their wealth surge by 33 percent—more than double the rate of the
stock market—gaining $800 billion collectively. The top 1 percent of US
households now own 31.7 percent of all wealth, the highest share since
the Federal Reserve began tracking in 1989.
The ruling class is
committed to using artificial intelligence and automation—despite the
fundamentally progressive character of this technology—as a battering
ram against the working class. AI, which could reduce the burden of
labor and expand access to information, is instead being deployed to
eliminate jobs, suppress wages and concentrate wealth in ever fewer
hands. The same billionaires who are laying off hundreds of thousands of
workers are using their fortunes to purchase political influence and
shape government policy in their interests.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties represent this financial
oligarchy. The working class cannot defend its interests through either
capitalist party but must build an independent socialist movement to
expropriate the wealth of the billionaires and place the resources of
society under democratic control.
Early
Wednesday morning, another incident became known in a long series of
deadly confrontations between migrants and the border forces of
Mediterranean states.
A boat carrying an estimated 35 people,
traveling from the Turkish coast to the nearby island of Chios, was
rammed by the Greek Coast Guard. At least 15 people were killed.
Twenty-six injured individuals were taken to hospitals, including 12
children. Two surviving women lost their unborn children. As of
Wednesday, the search for additional missing persons had not yet been
completed.
The exact circumstances of the collision remain
unclear. According to the Coast Guard, a patrol discovered the migrant
boat and ordered it to turn back. Dangerous maneuvers by the speedboat
allegedly followed, and during the ensuing pursuit the vessels collided.
This version of events has not yet been independently verified. Serious
doubts are warranted, as border guards have repeatedly drawn attention
through brutal, unlawful and inhumane actions that have led to the
deaths of refugees.
In the past year alone, there were several
cases in which refugee boats capsized while being pursued by the Coast
Guard. In October 2025, a man and a boy died off the island of Rhodes
under such circumstances. Human rights and maritime rescue organizations
regularly accuse Greek authorities of pushing migrants back into
international waters or shortly after they reach Greek waters, without
examining their right to asylum, thereby placing them in
life-threatening distress at sea.
*****
European states are responsible for these deadly migration routes and
the associated human suffering. Their migration policy is designed to
recruit skilled workers trained around the world, while sealing off
Europe to people without immediate “economic value.”
Those
affected by the most recent disaster off Chios are predominantly people
from Afghanistan, a country devastated by years of war in which the
European powers were also involved. Today, the Islamist Taliban rule
there with brutal arbitrariness. Welthungerhilfe (WWF, World Without
Hunger) describes the situation as “catastrophic.” According to the UN,
97 percent of Afghanistan’s population lives in poverty, and more than 1
million children under the age of five are severely malnourished. The
education system has collapsed, and roughly two-thirds of the population
is illiterate. Who could be more in need of protection than the people
from Afghanistan?
*****
Just last week, the European Commission announced a further
tightening of its migration and asylum policy. The responsible EU
Commissioner, Magnus Brunner, stated: “We must use all the means at our
disposal if we want to decide who is allowed to enter the European Union
and who must leave it again.” This should be understood as a clear
warning. Among the planned measures is the establishment of deportation
centers outside EU territory in order to deliberately undermine asylum
rights and deter migrants.
This so-called “deterrence” also
includes state-organized terror against boat refugees in the
Mediterranean. Violence and injustice against those seeking protection
are to be institutionally entrenched in the planned “return hubs”
outside Europe.
The constant escalation of measures against
refugees is also part of the construction of a European police state.
The accompanying legal and moral boundary shifts do not affect migrants
alone. The repressive apparatus can quickly be deployed against the
entire working class as soon as resistance to social cuts and war
policies grows, as current developments in the United States clearly
demonstrate.
Defending the fundamental and human rights of refugees and migrants is
not only an act of necessary solidarity. It lies in the direct interests
of the European and international working class and is a central
component of the struggle against fascism, militarism and war.
At a closed-door “National Cabinet” meeting on Friday, Australia’s
Labor government, headed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, reached an
agreement with the states and territories to impose sweeping austerity
cuts to disability support. The deal will drive annual growth in
spending on the $52 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
down to 5–6 percent, from about 9.5 percent last year, amounting to cuts
of tens of billions of dollars over the coming decade.
Central to
the agreement is Labor’s “Thriving Kids” program, advanced as the first
stage of a new “foundational supports” regime; cut-price programs,
outside the NDIS, based on already overstretched state-level health,
education and community services. Thriving Kids targets children aged
eight and under with developmental delay and/or autism assessed as
having “low” to “moderate” support needs.
Its purpose is to shunt
tens of thousands of children off the NDIS by blocking access and funneling both existing and future participants into cheaper, state-run
programs, dumping the burden of care onto families and chronically
underfunded pre-schools, schools and hospitals.
*****
Under Thriving Kids, children assessed as having “low needs” will
have no access to funded therapeutic disability support, forcing
families, who are able, to pay for private services. Parents will be
directed to token parenting programs, peer groups, supported play
activities and phone advice lines. Allied-health professionals, where
involved at all, appear only in advisory or group roles, not as
providers of treatment.
Children classified as having “moderate”
needs will receive only marginally more: limited, time-restricted access
to allied-health services delivered through hubs or education settings
and tightly controlled by referral pathways. There is no guarantee of
continuity or duration. Once these short interventions end, families are
pushed back onto overburdened “universal” services.
The comments of Health Minister Mark Butler confirm that Thriving Kids
has nothing to do with helping children with disabilities “thrive,” but
is aimed at slashing funding. He explained that at present, 120,444
children receive “low or moderate” supports through the NDIS, costing
the federal government $1.8 billion annually. National Cabinet has
pledged $4 billion over five years, which includes all the costs of
roll-out, to replace this funding, with only half coming from the
federal government. In other words, federal funding for these children
over five years will drop from $9 billion to just $2 billion.
*****
Thriving Kids advisory group chair Professor Frank Oberklaid made
clear that very limited assistance will be available under the program,
declaring that “many, many children just need a bit of support over six
or 12 months in order to thrive.” The “many, many children” that he is
talking about are those whose parents had to jump through a maze of
regulatory hoops to prove that their children require ongoing
assistance.
The original design of the NDIS was as a cost saving
scheme to limit disability support to the very needy and to open up a
new arena for profit to private providers. The market-based program
allocated individualised budgets to families and carers who could then
shop around for services. The fact that the scheme was expanded beyond
the original forecasts only exposed the fact that a vast unmet need
existed before its introduction.
Thriving Kids' impact on families
will be severe. When it was first announced in August last year,
Adelaide mother Lisa Goodwin, whose twins are autistic, described it as
“a betrayal of our children,” insisting that “autism is a lifelong
diagnosis.” She explained that she had to apply three times before her
children were accepted onto the NDIS and then spent years fighting
funding cuts through appeals.
*****
A tragic episode last week in Western Australia has brought the
enormous pressures facing parents looking after autistic children into
sharp focus. In Perth, 16-year-old Leon Clune and 14-year-old Otis Clune
were found dead alongside their parents in their Mosman Park home, in
what police have described as an apparent murder-suicide.
Both
boys had severe autism, with Otis non-verbal. Friends, teachers and
support workers described the family as exhausted and isolated, caring
full-time for children with complex needs amid chronic sleep
deprivation. They had reportedly had their NDIS supports cut.
Thriving
Kids is only one element of Labor’s broader assault on disability
support and functions as a test case for deeper and wider cuts. By
targeting children with so-called “low or moderate” needs, the
government is establishing the principle that entire layers of disabled
people can have their supports reduced, capped or withdrawn in the name
of “sustainability.”
Already, over the past year, the managements at Australia’s 39 public
universities have eliminated almost 4,000 jobs nationally. This is the
sharp edge of a pro-corporate and pro-military restructuring. It has
been aided and abetted by both the campus trade union apparatuses—the
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public
Sector Union (CPSU)—which have opposed any unified action by staff and
students across the country.
Definite conclusions must be drawn from these bitter experiences under the Labor government.
Despite
outrage and opposition by staff and students, displayed in repeated
protests, this offensive has been allowed to proceed, enabled by union
deals featuring “voluntary redundancies” and sham “consultation”
processes in union-management enterprise agreements.
The onslaught
on jobs, accompanied by course closures, especially in humanities, and
soaring workloads, can only be understood and fought by placing it
squarely within a world wracked by the US-led imperialist military
aggression and threats, staggering inequality, the rise of authoritarian
rule and a global offensive against democratic rights to suppress
rising working-class opposition.
The naked “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 catastrophic plunge into another world
war.
*****
In Australia too, education funding is being weaponized to enforce
political conformity and suppress critical thought and dissent.
Following
the December 14 terrorist Bondi Beach massacre, the Albanese government
established a witch-hunting “antisemitism education taskforce,” chaired
by businessman David Gonski and Jillian Segal—the Labor government’s
Zionist “antisemitism envoy.”
This body poses a serious threat to
democratic rights and academic freedom by equating political opposition,
particularly to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, with antisemitism, providing
a framework for censorship, curriculum changes, victimizations and
repression in schools and universities. Under the guise of combating hatred, the Labor government also has introduced laws allowing for the
banning of political groups by ministerial decree.
While
allocating vast sums for AUKUS submarines and other weaponry directed
against China, Labor is continuing to starve the universities of
adequate funding, along with schools, hospitals, the NDIS and other
social programs.
This is intensifying the deterioration of
conditions in the universities over the past four decades—producing huge
class sizes, the casualization of the workforce and the ever-greater
reliance on corporate funding and student fees, both domestic and
international.
According to official statistics, federal funding for higher
education has been declining since the 1970s, under Labor and
Liberal-National governments alike. Funding per student has been slashed
from around $32,000 in 1974 to some $12,000—a cut of about two-thirds.
Labor’s
continued financial squeeze, reinforced by reactionary nationalist cuts
to international student enrollments, is aimed at compelling the
universities to integrate themselves more fully with the demands of big
business and the military, as set out in the government’s Universities Accord.
The Accord insists
that universities must transform both their teaching and research in
partnership with employers, and in line with the building of a war
economy, including through the AUKUS pact, which is a preparation for a
US-led war against China.
The Accord blueprint ties funding to
universities signing “mission-based compacts” with Labor’s new
Australian Tertiary Education Commission, above all to serve “national
priorities” such as defense and critical minerals.
The Accord
report specified “micro-credential” courses to meet the requirements of
employers, along with “work integrated learning” and “degree
apprenticeships,” including AUKUS apprenticeships. Hundreds of such
courses are being rolled out, including at the newly merged Adelaide
University, where integration into the AUKUS military buildup is well
underway.
*****
Opposition exists throughout the universities to the job destruction,
course closures, pro-corporate restructuring and suppression of
dissent. But the NTEU and CPSU leaders have for years blocked any
unified fight by staff and students.
Instead, the union
apparatuses have pressured educators into applying for “voluntary”
redundancies, like the deal pushed through at Western Sydney University
(WSU) last August, which displaced hundreds of staff members,
particularly professional staff, forcing many to fight each other for
new jobs or to leave.
The NTEU and CPSU have already this year
struck another such deal at WSU, this time for a near four-year
enterprise agreement that provides further real pay cuts—3.2 percent
annually, compared to the resurgence of official inflation to 3.8
percent—and traps staff in the same kind of enterprise agreements that
facilitated last year’s job carnage.
This is a warning that the unions will seek to impose similar sellouts everywhere in 2026.
*****
Just quitting the unions in disgust, as many workers have done, is
not an answer. Instead, staff and students must actively take matters
into their own hands. For that, new democratic forms of organization—independent rank-and-file committees (RFCs)—must be built
and the existing ones at WSU and Macquarie University must be developed.
RFCs
need to be formed everywhere to link up with workers in Australia and
worldwide through the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees. Our struggle on campus must be connected to working‑class
resistance internationally.
At the union’s annual press conference on January 26 and in further
statements IG Metall chair Christiane Benner has called for
protectionism and trade war as integral elements of the union’s
so-called “Initiative for Jobs and Economic Recovery: Future Instead of
Relocation.” Benner warned, “The situation in Germany is extremely
serious; we need new strategies.”
Amid the most severe attacks on
workers since World War II, Benner and IG Metall stand squarely with big
business and the federal government. IG Metall’s new strategy amounts
to “Germany above all others,” a program steeped in German economic
nationalism. We are currently seeing where this leads in the US. As the
representative of the US economic and financial oligarchy, US President
Donald Trump is attempting to rescue American capitalism through war
against the working class at home and military operations against his
rivals abroad.
There, too, the Trump administration can be sure of
the support of the union apparatus. The sister union of the IGM in the
US, the United Auto Workers (UAW), immediately after Trump’s second
takeover, openly declared through its president Shawn Fain that the
union was prepared to cooperate with his administration—especially on
issues of economic nationalism and tariffs.
Currently, the UAW is
doing everything it can to sabotage a general strike in Minneapolis and
nationwide against Trump’s ICE murderers and his dictatorial
aspirations.
This is insane: on both sides of the Atlantic, the
union apparatuses are standing firmly behind their respective
governments and corporations, advocating trade war and ultimately world
war.
*****
[IG Metall] repeatedly assures employers and the government it will
continue to suppress resistance in the workplace: “As IG Metall, we take
responsibility in companies and society,” it says in its initiative.
“We contribute to stabilization with our collective bargaining policy,
our company alliances, and our political commitment.”
Benner
emphasized this last Monday: “IG Metall, its works councils, and the
employees have delivered. The employees in our sectors are foregoing
billions. Without us, the situation in German industry would already be
bleak,” she claimed.
This is an obvious distortion of the facts. The employees are not
voluntarily “foregoing” these billions; they are being forced to do so
by their own union. The truth is that IG Metall and its works councils
have handed the corporations and companies jobs and wages on a silver
platter. Each of the many job massacres in 2025 bears the signature of
the works councils and union officials. This is what saves the
corporations billions.
At VW, they have pushed through salary cuts of up to 20 percent and
the elimination of 35,000 jobs—more than one in four; at Thyssenkrupp
Stahl, they have pushed through the elimination of 11,000 jobs—out of a
total of less than 27,000. The same applies to Porsche, Mercedes, ZF,
Bosch, and many companies in the metal and electrical industry. Last
year, an estimated 60,000 jobs were lost nationwide, particularly in the
Ruhr region (mainly in the steel and metal industry) and in
Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria (mainly in the auto industry). Since the
downsizing plans drawn up by the IGM last year will allow corporations
to cut thousands more jobs in the coming years, there is no end in
sight.
To end this downward spiral, the workforce needs its own new strategy. This must follow three basic principles:
The
struggle must be waged independently of IG Metall and all other union
apparatuses, which work closely with the state, the government, and
corporations and act as company police toward the workers.
The
struggle must be waged internationally, overcoming the divisions created
by IG Metall, the UAW, and others. The VW corporation alone has nearly
700,000 employees worldwide, including nearly 300,000 in Germany.
Including suppliers and service providers, millions are linked in a
single process. Only by fighting together and refusing to be played off
against each other can the attacks be repelled and conditions for all
workers improved. Such a struggle must be the starting point for a broad
offensive by the working class against the war drive and the attacks on
workers.
The struggle must not be guided by the profit logic of
corporations and the interests of individual nation states, as the
unions propagate. The needs of workers must be at the center. Enormous
technological developments, above all artificial intelligence, make it
possible to improve the lives of everyone to an unprecedented level. But
under capitalist conditions, the same technology leads to mass layoffs,
war, and destruction. This cannot be accepted.
In order to
organize the struggle on the basis of these principles, action
committees independent of the union bureaucrats must be established in
every factory and every department, which must network internationally
and organize a counterweight to the government and management.
Fresh revelations tying Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network to senior
figures of Britain’s ruling elite—former Labour Party minister/key
adviser Lord Peter Mandelson and the former Prince Andrew—have embroiled
Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Epstein, who died in suspicious
circumstances in a prison cell in 2019, operated for decades as a
highly connected middleman for the rich and powerful. He trafficked
underage girls to a clientele of billionaires, politicians, diplomats
and intelligence operatives.
The latest tranche of files released
by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had Mandelson named in almost
6,000 of them. He was forced to resign from the ruling Labour Party on
Sunday and stepped down Tuesday from the House of Lords.
Mandelson
walked when it was revealed that he had passed confidential UK
government information to Epstein. Downing Street has been forced to
pass information to the Metropolitan Police to investigate. On Tuesday
evening a Met commander, Ella Marriott, stated that the force had
received “a number” of complaints, including from the government, of
“alleged misconduct in public office”.
A previous batch of released documents forced the prime minister to
sack Mandelson last September, less than a year after appointing him US
ambassador in December 2024. In those, Mandelson urged Epstein to “fight
for early release” shortly before he was sentenced to 18 months in
prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
The day before
Epstein began his June 2008 sentence, Mandelson wrote, “I think the
world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.”
He urged Epstein to be “incredibly resilient,” adding, “Your friends
stay with you and love you.”
Despite being warned by the
intelligence services of Epstein’s extensive connections to Mandelson,
Starmer still went ahead and appointed this venal
right-winger—associated more than anyone else with Tony Blair’s New
Labour project and its political crimes. He notoriously said that
Blair’s government was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy
rich.”
Among the latest revelations are that Mandelson gave Epstein advance
notice of an imminent €500 billion European Union (EU) bailout of the
Eurozone in 2010.
*****
One of the documents uncovered by the Financial Times
reveals that Mandelson told Epstein in a December 2009 exchange how he
could assist in watering down a tax on bank bonuses announced by Brown’s
Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Under the measures, bonuses over
£25,000 in the finance industry were to be liable for extra 50 percent
tax rate. Epstein asked, “[A]ny real chance of making the tax only on
the cash portion of the bankers bonus?” Mandelson responded, “Treasury
digging in but I am on [the] case.”
In another email Epstein asked Mandelson whether he should ask JP Morgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to phone Darling over the issue. Mandelson
replied, “Yes and mildly threaten.”
*****
Mandelson received $75,000 from Epstein in 2003 and 2004. While
claiming he has no recollection of receiving the money, Mandelson has
admitted Epstein made smaller payments to his husband.
In the
latest trove of documents, another photo was published of Mandelson,
this time in Epstein’s luxury Paris apartment where Mandelson is
pictured in his underpants with an unknown woman. Images of Epstein and
Mandelson go back as far as 2002–2003. Previous exposures uncovered a
“birthday book” compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein’s long-time
associate and partner in crime) for his 50th birthday in 2003, where
Mandelson described Epstein as his “best pal”.
Far from
Mandelson’s claims now that he regrets ever spending time with Epstein,
he continued to consort and encourage the convicted criminal after he
served 13 months of the 18 month prison sentence. One email shows
Mandelson asking Epstein (on the day he was released from prison), “how
is freedom feeling”, to which Epstein replied: “She feels fresh, firm
and creamy.”
Mandelson responded: “Naughty boy.” He asked, “How
shall we celebrate?” to which Epstein responded, “With grace and modesty
(those are the names of two strippers)”.
On Wednesday, Starmer’s crisis deepened when Conservative leader Kemi
Badenoch invoked the parliamentary mechanism known as a “humble
address.” She demanded the publication of all electronic communications
between Mandelson and Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, as
well as between ministers and Mandelson, covering the six months prior
to his appointment and the period “during his time as ambassador.”
Feeling too weakened—with his own and Labour’s poll numbers
tanking—to allow the request to be put to a vote, Starmer put an
amendment stating that the government would release as much as possible
with regard for “national security or international relations”.
However,
this compromise faced a rebellion by backbench Labour MPs, including an
intervention from the floor by Starmer’s former deputy Angela Rayner,
who last year was forced to step down in a tax sleaze scandal. The prime
minister had to make further concessions, agreeing that any documents
deemed a national security risk should be referred to the Intelligence
and Security Committee (ISC) in Parliament—calculating that the body
will agree to restrict the documents and allow Starmer to limp on in
office.
Starmer is also contending with the horrific stench of Andrew
Mountbatten-Windsor’s sordid connections with Epstein; he has already
lost his royal title due to the scandal and been forced by his brother,
King Charles, to vacate his Royal Lodge mansion in the grounds of
Windsor Castle.
Nine
further days of strike action were due to begin on February 2. The NEU
claimed the agreement as a “victory” and that “strikes work”. But the
ATLP remains committed to balancing its deficits and the NEU is fully on
board as partners.
The National Education Union (NEU) called off the strike of 800
teachers who work for the Arthur Terry Partnership Learning Trust (ATLP)
across the Midlands last Thursday. The Trust, which runs 24 schools, is
in a financial crisis was attempting to impose 100 redundancies.
Following
eight days of solid strike action, supported by staff and parents
throughout January, the NEU announced ending the strikes stating that
following negotiations, the Trust has withdrawn the threats of
redundancies and restructuring and the CEO of ATLP has been removed.
Nine further days of strike action were due to begin on February 2.
The NEU claimed the agreement as a “victory” and that “strikes work”.
However, while teachers, staff and parents will be relieved to hear that
the threat redundancies have been lifted the ATLP remains committed to
balancing its deficits and in this endeavour, the NEU is fully on board
as partners.
The Trust issued a statement that it had agreed to
pause all current restructuring and redundancy consultations and would
“take every step possible so that any future compulsory redundancies are
a last resort”.
*****
The NEU’s public outcry over the funding crisis, which the union says
has left schools with £1 billion less in funding this year, belies its
role as partners with private sector operators which run the Academies
for profits. It is this corporate partnership that unions are embedded
in that poses the greatest risk to education and one that teachers must
confront to mount a successful counteroffensive. The NEU never addresses
how it is that the government has Academized some 80 percent of
secondary schools and 46 percent of primary schools. Funding and wages
are at the same level as 2010 and this was on their watch.
*****
According to ATLP’s latest accounts its deficit is around £10
million, which it is committed to legally resolve. Any claim that this
will happen without impacting jobs, workload and quality of education is
a fiction. The Trust released a “questions and answers” email to
parents following the agreement with the NEU. There is no mistaking its
intentions.
It states, “The trust will conduct a review of all
non-staffing and central costs, with the aim of removing or reducing
these and redirecting funding back to schools’ budgets. There will be
ongoing regular meetings between the NEU and the new trust leadership
looking at reducing the top-slice, and joint negotiating and
consultation committees between union reps and management will be set up
in every school to ensure union groups are part of decisions made.
“The
Trust has needed to agree financial support from the Department for
Education [DfE] in the form of repayable loans. This support has come
with a number of conditions focused on the delivering a credible
financial recovery strategy.”
*****
There has been much criticism in the media over every child being
issued with an iPad across the Trust. The accounts say there were some
11,281 children on the schools’ rolls, each issued with an Apple tablet.
This is not uncommon and teaching and learning in today’s world
necessitates the use of technology, which every child should have access
to. The Trust has confirmed that to take this away would only scratch
the surface of their debts. “Recent internal and external reviews,
including those commissioned by the Department for Education, have
identified overstaffing as the primary driver of the Trust’s current
financial pressures”, it said.
While management at ATLP are
awarding themselves obscene pay packets at the expense of children’s
education, which the NEU have highlighted during the strike, these are
not unusual across Academy Trusts. ATLP have defended these pay awards
as “competitive”. The Trust’s accounts say key management staff received
£1,841,000 in 24/25 up from £1,149,000 23/24 for eight management
posts. This equates to £225,000 on average, almost 10 times the salary
of a teacher entering the profession and over four times that of
experienced teachers at the top end of the pay scale.
Management at the University of Sheffield (UoS) implemented a
lock-out on January 19, the first in the history of UK higher education
(HE). Such measures have been threatened before by UK universities but
had never previously been carried through.
UoS management is
refusing to pay staff who fail to reschedule teaching missed during 16
days of strike action in November and December 2025. It is demanding
that teaching lost due to industrial action be rescheduled without
additional pay. Workers who had their wages deducted while on strike are
now facing further pay losses for refusing to carry out unpaid work
they were not compensated for in the first place.
Staff are
therefore confronted with an effective “double deduction.” University
and College Union (UCU) members already forfeited 16 days’ pay during
the strike and are now expected to provide unpaid teaching. This threat
is being enforced through the university’s refusal to pay any salary
until workers accept the double deduction.
Management claims that, following the return to work in December, it
is entitled to issue a “reasonable instruction” to reschedule missed
teaching. UoS does not recognize this as additional work and cynically
argues that lost learning must be replaced in order to meet its
obligations to students.
While technically legal, this move is
regarded as a highly controversial maneuver under UK employment law:
the refusal to accept and pay for what management defines as “partial
performance” by withholding all wages.
In November 2024, Vice-Chancellor Koen Lamberts announced a £50
million budget shortfall at UoS, which he intended to address through
sweeping attacks on the workforce. He declared plans to cut £23 million
by slashing staffing and costs over the following two years. The “New
Schools” restructuring proposal reduces academic departments from 45 to
21, affecting nearly 800 staff. Between 300 and 600 workers are believed
to have taken voluntary redundancy over the past 14 months. Management
has refused to extend its no-compulsory-redundancy pledge beyond March
2025.
On November 28, 2025, striking UCU members received an
intimidating email signed by Head of Human Resources Ian Wright,
threatening a lock-out. The letter stated that all learning lost due to
industrial action must be replaced and that failure to comply would
constitute a breach of contract, warranting pay deductions of up to 100
percent. Strikers told the BBC that the letter amounted to a demand that
they “work for free to undermine the strike.”
The UCU leadership described the threat as “brutal” and
“intimidating,” arguing it was an attempt to force staff into unpaid
labour and prevent the exercise of their legal right to strike. The UCU
branch at University College London donated £5,000 in solidarity funds,
warning that if Sheffield management succeeded in “breaking the resolve
of union members, other employers are liable to follow suit.” However,
the union bureaucracy organized nothing of substance in response.
In the new year, the university wrote to staff informing them that
any academic who had not rescheduled lost teaching would have their
entire pay docked for three weeks from January 19, on top of wages
already lost during the strike. Workers who participated in the strike
and refused to reschedule teaching therefore face losing a total of 31
days’ pay—around 8 percent of their annual salary.
Management
carried out its threat on January 19. Staff who had not submitted
“satisfactory plans” to reschedule missed classes are having their
entire salary withheld until February 6, 2026, and potentially beyond.
During this period, any work performed is classified as “voluntary.”
*****
The union has had eight weeks since the initial threatening letter
demanding that UCU members work for free, yet it has organized nothing.
UCU General Secretary Jo Grady stated: “For management to now threaten
staff with withholding pay, on top of the pay lost for lawful industrial
action, is nothing short of scandalous… Sheffield management should get
back round the table and work with us to save jobs.”
Appealing
for management to return to negotiations while it ruthlessly presses
home its advantage amounts to the UCU running up the white flag. The
union’s sole aim is to suppress the key political issues and confine
workers’ struggles within acceptable limits that threaten neither
university management nor the Labour government.
*****
Management teams at universities across the country are closely
watching developments. The struggle at UoS represents the thin end of
the wedge, yet at every stage the union has sought conciliation. A
fightback at Sheffield and nationally across [Higher Education] can succeed only if it
is organized independently of the UCU bureaucracy. This requires the
formation of rank-and-file committees uniting academic and non-academic
workers with students to defend jobs and pay against the destructive
marketization of higher education.
The call by the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) to
make 2026 the year of a fightback by Royal Mail workers has provoked an
attempted push back by Communication Worker Union (CWU) postal deputy
general secretary Martin Walsh on social media.
The PWRFC statement reported on a brutal Christmas period marked by
the continuing breakdown of the mail service, as profitable parcel
deliveries were prioritized through punishing workloads imposed on staff
in understaffed delivery offices following thousands of job losses.
Walsh’s
refusal to even address this reality typifies the unaccountability of
the union bureaucracy. As the statement explained, the crisis pushing
postal workers to breaking point is the direct result of last May’s £3.6
billion takeover of Royal Mail by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP
Group, which became sole owner in order to gut the mail service and turn
it into a low-wage parcel operation.
*****
The World Socialist Web Site publishes a reply of a Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee worker to Martin Walsh and requests that rank and file postal workers "extend this discussion not
just on social media but within their workplaces away from management
and their stooges in the CWU apparatus: in genuine and open forums where
workers—union and non-union members—can draw up their red lines."
Six young people imprisoned for 500 days without conviction by the
British state for protesting at Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit
Systems near Bristol have been cleared of all charges.
Zoe
Rogers, Charlotte Head, Leona Kamio, Fatima Rajwani, Jordan Devlin and
Samuel Corner were acquitted by a jury on Wednesday, cleared of
aggravated burglary for destroying military equipment at Elbit’s
factory, including killer drones used to murder Palestinian civilians.
The charge carried a potential life sentence.
All six were arrested in August 2024 and charged with criminal
damage, aggravated burglary and violent disorder, while Corner was
charged additionally with inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent
for allegedly striking a police officer. All were held in pre-trial
detention for 17-months--way beyond the legal limit of six months.
After
deliberating for 36 hours and 34 minutes, the jury at London’s Woolwich
Crown Court—attached to Belmarsh “supermax” Prison where Julian Assange
was held for five years--announced their unanimous verdict of “not
guilty” or “no verdict” on all counts. Five of the defendants were
released from prison. Corner remains behind bars, pending a possible
appeal by the state.
*****
As with previous acquittals of pro-Palestinian protesters, a jury has
again delivered a verdict that reflects overwhelming public sentiment.
Polling by YouGov in June 2025 found over half of Britons oppose
Israel’s war on Gaza (55 percent), with 82 percent of these saying that
Israel’s actions amount to genocide. This means 45 percent of UK adults
regard Israel’s actions as genocidal. At the same time, nearly two
thirds of the British public want the UK to enforce the International
Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu if he visits the UK (65 percent).
Labour’s backing of the genocide—including Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s
vocal support for collective punishment of Palestinian civilians and
his deputy, former foreign secretary and now secretary of state for
justice David Lammy’s defense of missile strikes against Palestinian
refugee tents as “not necessarily” a crime under international law—marks
it a pariah government, fundamentally hostile to the democratic and
social aspirations of the working class and oppressed masses worldwide.
The Filton 24 prosecutions have been central to the Starmer government’s
re-casting of peaceful anti-genocide protests as “terrorism”. The
Filton 6 were arrested on August 6, 2024, less than a month after the
Labour government was sworn to office.
*****
Palestine Action was proscribed by the Labour government one year
later, on July 5, making membership of the group an offense under the
Terrorism Act punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment.
Civil
liberties group CAGE responded to Wednesday’s verdict, stating: “The
decision made by the jury critically undermines the rationale used to
proscribe Palestine Action and underscores the urgent need for that ban
to be lifted. This case was the most significant test of the
government’s claim that acts of conscience against arms companies
constitute a threat to public safety.
*****
Lisa Minerva Luxx, a member of the Filton 24 Defence Committee,
described the acquittal as a “significant victory” but warned, “There
are still 18 more defendants imprisoned across the UK in connection with
this case. They are being held under joint enterprise which means they
each have the same three charges whether they are accused of being
present at the action or not. Now that the first six have been liberated
of the most serious charge, Aggravated Burglary, and none were
convicted of a single offense, it follows that the rest must immediately
have this charge dropped against them and be granted bail.”
Luxx denounced Labour’s prejudicing of the hearing: “This was a trial by
media. Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer took evidence in this case out of
context and broadcast it on televisions and tabloids across the country
in order to justify proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, despite forewarning that this will prejudice the trial.
*****
“Now that a court of law have vindicated the first six of the Filton
24 of the exaggerated charges against them [and found that the actions
against Elbit Systems that night were reasonable], we should all expect
Shabana Mahmood to do the reasonable thing herself and lift the ban on
Palestine Action.”
The government has no intention of backing down. Little more than a week ago, London’s Metropolitan Police violently arrested 86 peaceful protestors
outside Wormwood Scrubs prison where they had gathered in solidarity
with Umer Khalid, a pro-Palestinian activist on a hunger and thirst
strike who came close to death.
Even as rolling hunger strikes
by prisoners threatened several young members of Palestine Action with
death—including one who was reportedly “skeletal”-- Lammy refused to
meet their lawyers or family members.
The Starmer government has brazenly defended its proscription of
Palestine Action. During a judicial review late last year, government
lawyers insisted the home secretary had “acted lawfully” in banning a
non-violent civil disobedience group for the first time in modern
British history. A decision by the High Court is pending.
Current
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will respond to Wednesday’s resounding
acquittal of the Filton 6 by stepping up Labour’s plans to abolish jury trials in England and Wales.
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.
