Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
New York City police arrested at least 13 nurses Thursday during Day 25 of the four-week strike by 15,000 nurses across the city. The arrests took place outside the headquarters of the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) on Manhattan’s West Side, marking a sharp escalation by the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani as negotiations continue behind closed doors.
The arrests underscore that the strike has entered a new stage and pose the necessity for a broader movement of the working class in defense of the nurses. Police action against healthcare workers fighting for safe staffing and basic protections demonstrates that the struggle cannot be confined to closed-door negotiations or isolated protests. What is required is the expansion of the strike and the mobilization of broader sections of workers to defend nurses and to provide the material support necessary to sustain their struggle, including full strike pay.
Nurses were arrested after blocking the entrance to the hospital lobbying group’s offices at 555 West 57th Street, where they had gathered as part of a strike action targeting hospital executives coordinating management’s response to the walkout. Cops in riot gear, including units from the NYPD’s notorious Strategic Response Group (SRG), were deployed to carry out the arrests. GNYHA represents more than 280 hospitals and medical centers and plays a central role in negotiations with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA).
The arrests were carried out under the authority of Mayor Mamdani and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani retained from the previous administration, asserting continuity in policing policy in order to reassure the city’s billionaire corporate and financial oligarchy. Mamdani has recently publicly embraced a law-and-order posture, including praising the police shooting of 22-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Jabez Chakraborty during a mental health crisis in his home.
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Earlier in the day, NYSNA promoted a “day of action,” bringing in officials from the AFL-CIO, the NAACP and Democratic Party figures to join nurses on the picket line at Mount Sinai Hospital. The union highlighted tentative agreements on artificial intelligence protections and some local hospital issues, while continuing negotiations with hospital management at the Javits Center, presenting these developments as evidence that talks were moving forward. But recent reports indicate that NYSNA is prepared to accept a concessions contract, including its retreat on wages from 30 to 18 percent over three years, and an agreement on health insurance that creates a future committee to identify cost savings.
The role of the union bureaucracy has been to channel nurses’ opposition into carefully managed protests and appeals to Democratic Party officials while insisting that the struggle remain confined to closed-door negotiations with hospital executives. In spite of massive support for the strike from the city’s population, this strategy has left nurses increasingly isolated as hospital management, backed by city and state authorities, moves to impose a settlement favorable to corporate interests.
The arrests of nurses were not an isolated incident. Just blocks from Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, police also arrested students at Columbia University protesting federal immigration enforcement, amid an ongoing crackdown on campus opposition that last year included the detention and threatened deportation of student activist Mahmoud Khalil. The proximity of the arrests underscores the broader turn to repression as social opposition intensifies in New York City.
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The ongoing strike by 31,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii, and the growing support for a general strike in response to the ICE murders in Minneapolis, demonstrate the potential for a broader movement of the working class against inequality and dictatorship.
The New York Nurses Rank-and-File Committee, founded last week to “assert democratic control over bargaining and strike strategy, declared in its founding statement: “Healthcare workers defend life. When wealthy executives starve hospitals of staff and resources, they endanger patients; when the state kills a nurse in the streets, it signals that no one in the working class is safe from repression. Our struggle for staffing ratios, living wages and full benefits is inseparable from the defense of democratic rights.”
It has been barely a month since Mamdani assumed office as mayor of New York City. But in that short time, he has already accomplished a great deal—in comprehensively betraying and repudiating the oppositional sentiment that propelled him into office. Caesar, in Gaul, “came, saw and conquered.” Mamdani, in New York’s Gracie Mansion, has compromised, colluded and capitulated.
The latest in an endless train of disorderly retreats came on Thursday, with Mamdani’s endorsement of right-wing Democrat and New York Governor Kathy Hochul in the upcoming gubernatorial primaries. While still a lowly assemblyman, Mamdani described Hochul’s support for the genocide in Gaza as “disgusting” and denounced her political agenda as “Republican-lite.” That was just two years ago.
But in a statement published in The Nation, Mamdani, his disgust turned to admiration, justified his endorsement of Hochul by praising their “shared commitment to government that is equal parts competent and trustworthy.” Hochul, he wrote, “has chosen to govern” in the spirit of “transformation,” and he held up their collaboration as a model of effective government.
Amidst all the political pablum, Mamdani didn’t mention that more than 15,000 nurses have been on strike in New York City for nearly four weeks, demanding safe staffing, livable wages and basic workplace protections.
Hochul, a millionaire stalwart of the Democratic Party establishment, “has chosen to govern” by playing a central role in efforts to break the strike. Even before the walkout began, she issued an executive order declaring a “state of emergency” to allow hospitals to import out-of-state nurses without New York licenses. Since then, hospitals have spent more than $100 million on scab labor, while striking nurses have gone without health insurance or strike pay.
Earlier this week, hundreds of nurses marched through freezing temperatures to Hochul’s Midtown Manhattan office, chanting, “Vote her out!” and denouncing her for “putting our lives in jeopardy.” Just hours later, Hochul extended the strikebreaking measure, underscoring her contempt for the nurses and her loyalty to the millionaire hospital executives and the oligarchs who sit on the boards of the very hospitals the nurses are striking against.
Mamdani has staged photo ops on the picket lines while stabbing nurses in the back: working behind the scenes with Hochul and the leadership of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) to shut the strike down.
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The endorsement of Hochul is only the latest in a series of filthy betrayals and maneuvers that have defined Mamdani’s first month in office. Just 10 days earlier, Mamdani praised the police officers who shot 22-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Jabez Chakraborty in Queens. Chakraborty, who was experiencing a mental health crisis, was gunned down by NYPD officers after his family called 911 seeking help. As the family was detained, interrogated and denied access to their wounded son, Mamdani chose to express his “gratitude to the first responders who put themselves on the line each day to keep our communities safe.”
This was followed by a crackdown on a peaceful anti-ICE protest in Manhattan, where the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG)—long denounced by civil rights groups—arrested multiple demonstrators. Mamdani had previously pledged to disband the SRG.
On Thursday, the same police agency arrested 13 nurses protesting outside a New York City hospital and a dozen faculty, staff and students at Columbia University protesting Trump and the actions of ICE.
These actions have been overseen by Jessica Tisch, whom Mamdani reappointed as police commissioner as one of his first acts as mayor. A billionaire heiress and leading architect of New York’s vast surveillance state, Tisch was central to the NYPD’s crackdown on anti-genocide protests and the detention of immigrants in collaboration with ICE.
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All the actions taken by Mamdani since his election as New York’s first “socialist” mayor are a continuation of the right about-face that he executed abruptly with his meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on November 21.
At the time, the DSA and pseudo-left supporters of Mamdani hailed his embrace of Trump as a tactical masterstroke to win the fascist president’s support for the “affordability agenda.”
What a fraud. In fact, Trump, an old New York conman, sized up Mamdani and understood what he was dealing with: another petty-bourgeois political flunky looking for a pat on the head. Mamdani wanted nothing more than for Trump to pass the word to the Wall Street power brokers that they had nothing to worry about. The “Big Apple” remained in a safe set of hands.
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In his endorsement of Hochul, Mamdani wrote that the two “have fought to protect New Yorkers from ICE” and defended “our democracy,” These statements are lies. Since his meeting with Trump, Mamdani has refrained from issuing any substantive public criticism of a president who is waging war on the Constitution and implementing a presidential dictatorship. According to multiple reports, the two remain in regular contact, and Trump recently praised Mamdani for his budget plans, declaring that “Zohran is finally being honest about how bad it really is.”
When Mamdani was elected in November, the World Socialist Web Site understood the objective significance of the broad opposition that propelled him into office. But it did not pander to the prevailing illusions. The pro-capitalist class character of the new administration would quickly emerge. “But what will Mamdani do,” we warned, “when workers enter into struggle? Inevitably, the logic of class interests will assert itself. Mamdani will bow to the demands of the financial and political establishment.”
And so he has. Mamdani is conducting himself as a conventional, right-wing capitalist politician.
In doing so, Mamdani continues a pattern set by his political predecessors. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Left Party in Germany, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States—all promised to break with austerity and inequality; all capitulated to the financial elite they claimed to oppose.
Mamdani is distinguishing himself only by the speed with which he has cast aside whatever principles he claimed to have....
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But Mamdani has not been without a reliable chorus of political accomplices: from the DSA, which proclaimed upon Mamdani’s victory, “socialism wins!”; to its affiliated Jacobin magazine, which declared that “Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Points the Way Forward”; to Socialist Alternative, which published a breathless editorial declaring “Full Steam Ahead To Fight Trump & The Democratic Party Establishment.”
When the World Socialist Web Site refers to the pseudo-left, this is not an epithet but an accurate political definition. They are bourgeois politicians of the second rank, who function as critical instruments of capitalist rule. In social terms, they represent layers of the affluent upper middle class, closely tied to the corporate and state apparatus, seeking only a more comfortable position within the hierarchy of wealth and power.
For workers and young people who voted or supported Mamdani, it is necessary to draw sharp political lessons. The fight for socialism requires a complete and irreconcilable break with the Democratic Party and the establishment of the political independence of the working class. The way forward lies not in illusions about reforming the existing system but in turning to the growing struggles of the working class and forging the revolutionary leadership required to put an end to capitalism, fascism and war.
3. Layoffs by US firms tripled in January, as mass job cuts accelerate to Great Recession levels
More than 108,000 layoffs were announced by US firms in January, the highest total for the start of the year since 2009, the second year of the Great Recession. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which produces the widely-cited monthly report on layoffs, hiring levels also fell to their lowest point since the firm began tracking the data in 2009. January’s layoffs were more than double the total recorded in the same month last year and triple the level announced in December.
In 2025, US companies announced more than 1.2 million layoffs, the highest level since 2020, the first year of the pandemic. The figures for the first month of 2026 already indicate that the pace of job destruction is accelerating into the new year.
The wave of layoffs is part of a global jobs bloodbath, driven by a ruthless global search for new sources of profit to sustain uncontrollable levels of debt and financial bubbles on which the wealth of the oligarchy rests. The other side of this global war on the working class is imperialist plunder, expressed in the attack on Venezuela and the impending attack on Iran.
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Another major center of job cuts is the federal government, where around 300,000 layoffs were carried out last year. The Trump administration is slashing social programs, regulatory agencies, and all other government functions that do not directly contribute to boosting corporate profit, war or police repression. A new rule announced by the White House on Thursday strips job protections from 50,000 higher-level federal employees.
A key element is the weaponization of artificial intelligence to attempt to replace entire sections of the workforce. Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, recently warned that AI is “hitting the labor market like a tsunami, and most countries and most businesses are not prepared for it.” While businesses cited AI as a factor in only 55,000 layoffs last year, Goldman Sachs predicts that the figure will rise to 20,000 a month this year in industries exposed to the new technology.
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A tremendous upsurge of class struggle is already beginning in the United States in response to the impossible economic situation confronting workers and the oligarchic dictatorship of Trump. Demands for a general strike, initially raised in protests against ICE murders in Minneapolis, will only grow over the course of the year.
A significant aspect of the mass layoffs is their concentration among middle-class professionals. This represents a dramatic and extremely rapid reversal for some of the few sections of the workforce that were able to maintain a relatively decent standard of living in recent years.
The tech industry alone has cut more than 478,000 jobs since the start of 2024, according to Challenger, making it one of the sectors most exposed to AI-driven restructuring. The development of the new Claude Cowork platform, for example, touched off a selloff of tech stocks this week, as it threatened the future of a whole series of companies offering software-as-a-service products to corporate clients.
As one tech worker told the Austin-American Statesman: “We are not hourly employees. We are not struggling. We are not at food banks. We are usually pretty well educated … But when we talk about the jobs that are lost, and we talk about bookkeepers, or accountants, or customer service agents, a lot of these jobs that people are able to support their families with and make a good living doing, those are now going to be taken over by AI.” In reality, hundreds of federal employees were already forced to line up at food banks during last year’s government shutdown, a warning of what lies ahead.
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San Francisco, along with the broader Bay Area a long-standing center of the US tech industry, recorded a net loss of 4,400 jobs last year, according to government statistics cited by the San Francisco Standard. The primary drivers of job losses were tech, with 4,500 jobs eliminated, and professional and business services. The main sources of new employment were hospitality and leisure, low-wage jobs catering to a small layer enriching itself on massive inflows of Wall Street cash. This process has driven housing prices in the city, already among the highest in the country, to new heights.
While the potential of AI is tremendous, it is being implemented in an irrational and unplanned manner that is inevitable under capitalism. Harvard Business Review notes that “To understand the productivity impact of gen AI requires disciplined experiments and measurement, which few organizations have done.”
A massive speculative bubble has developed around artificial intelligence, which one economist has described as 17 times larger than the dot-com bubble of 2000 and four times the real estate bubble that produced the Great Recession. Actual cost savings from AI deployment are reportedly developing far slower than anticipated, and may take years to fully realize. Nevertheless, vast sums continue to pour into the sector, with $1.6 trillion invested in new data centers and AI startups through 2024, and an estimated $375 billion more expected in 2025, according to Reuters.
The run-up on Wall Street has enriched a tiny layer at the top, with US billionaires increasing their combined wealth by $1.5 trillion last year. At the same time, it is laying the groundwork for a massive financial crisis in the near future that will far exceed the crash of 2008–09. The rise in gold prices indicates that this crisis is already calling into question the viability of the dollar and the credibility of US government debt.
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This underscores the decisive importance of conscious preparations for a mass movement by the working class, acting as an independent and leading force against mass layoffs, austerity and the broader assault on democratic and social rights.
The haphazard release of millions of documents, emails, pictures and videos as part of the Epstein files last Friday has shaken the rotten foundations of the Trump administration.
In the days since the files’ release, it has become clear to millions of people that the administration, and the ruling class as a whole, is engaged in a massive cover-up aimed at protecting not only the deeply implicated fascist in the White House but dozens, if not hundreds, of politicians, celebrities and wealthy figures who cavorted with the deceased convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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While the files are still being sifted, what has been revealed thus far conclusively proves that many people continued to interact with Epstein after his 2008 conviction precisely because they were seeking to make use of his extensive sex trafficking network.
There are several emails in which Epstein and unnamed individuals discuss young people and children in lewd detail, while also apparently sharing photographs.
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While millions of people continue to pore over the files, Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein’s, is eager to move on. Speaking in the White House on February 3, Trump said, “I think it’s really time for the country to get on to something else. Now that nothing came out about me, other than it was a conspiracy against me, literally, by Epstein and other people. But I think it’s time now for the country to maybe get onto something else.”
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It is obvious from both the character of the release and the statements of Trump and [US Deputy Attorney General Todd] Blanche that the US government is doing everything in its power to cover up and conceal the fact that Epstein was a central intermediary within the ruling class, providing drugs, financial advice and young people to wealthy and connected politicians as part of an international cabal advancing the interests of the financial oligarchy above all else.
The ongoing cover-up underscores not only the criminal character of the entire US ruling class but also the fact that justice for Epstein’s victims will not come through the capitalist courts or appeals to the parties of big business. The only social force capable of ending the system that produced such a degenerated and criminal elite is the working class, united and imbued with a socialist program aimed at expropriating the oligarchy and redirecting the wealth of society toward human need and social enrichment.
5. Hundreds of ABP meat packers in Dungannon, Northern Ireland facing redundancy
338 workers at Anglo Beef Processors (ABP) in Dungannon, Northern Ireland are facing redundancy following the company’s announced intention to close its retail packing operation, based in the town’s Glanville industrial estate.
Workers’ livelihoods are to be sacrificed to maintain ABP’s profit margins. An ABP spokesperson cited “market place conditions” and claimed “stream-lining our operations is a necessity to achieve operational efficiencies, maintain our competitiveness and strengthen our business for the long term.”
The closure threatened plant was part of Linden Foods, taken over by ABP in 2021. ABP’s Glanville slaughterhouse in the same industrial estate is to continue working, as are ABP operations in Lurgan, Newry and Lisnaskea.
Dungannon is a small town, population just over 16,000, and the closure will devastate it. A mental health charity worker, Glena McDowell-Kahn, told the local Impartial Reporter, “There will be a real knock-on effect on the town. We have a large Timorese community—many of whom work in the factory—as well as Polish, Lithuanian and local workers. Financially and emotionally, this will have a huge impact.”
Dungannon was reported in the 2021 census as having the highest proportion, 34.5 percent, of foreign born residents of any town in the North of Ireland, many recruited in recent decades to work in the meat industry.
The workers are being sacked by one of the largest meat processing companies in Europe. Founded in 1954 by Larry Goodman as Irish Food Processors Ltd, the company expanded over the decades to its current position as a major supplier of meat and other food stuffs to supermarkets in Ireland, the UK and Europe. The ABP Food Group site proclaims annual turnover of €5 billion, 14,000 workers, 45,000 farm suppliers, and 50 production locations across 9 countries, principally Ireland, the UK and Poland. In 2019, ABP was reported as carrying out 20 percent of all cattle kills in Ireland and 15 percent in the UK, proportions which are likely to have increased.
Goodman is one of Ireland’s richest men, showing up on the list of Irish billionaires in 2020 with a personal worth, along with wife Kitty, and sons Laurence and Mark Goodman, estimated at €2.46 billion. At the time, Ireland boasted the fifth highest number of billionaires per capita of any country in the world.
As long ago as 1991, his operations were the principal subjects of a three-year tribunal, launched by the Irish government, following an ITV World in Action documentary into “allegations regarding illegal activities, fraud and malpractice in and in connection with the beef processing industry...”
Allegations investigated by the “Beef Tribunal” included re-packaging substandard meat, regulatory evasion, tax evasion, subsidy abuse and political influence peddling.
A 2019 investigation by the Irish Farmers Journal (IFJ) placed Goodman and ABP at the center of a complex structure of private companies with no employees, based in tax havens across Europe, whose purpose was to provide loans to subsidiaries of the Goodman group. Goodman registered his companies in the same tax havens, ABP Group is itself registered in Jersey.
At the time, the IFJ estimated Goodman’s operations as paying a tax rate of 0.3 percent, compared to Ireland’s nominal tax rate of 12.5 percent. Goodman stepped down in 2023 and has subsequently transferred much of the direction of his business empire to his family. The business retains interest in plastics, property, infrastructure and health clinics.
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The Unite trade union, which organizes sections of ABP workers, has thus far been completely silent.
Yet the basis exists for a powerful struggle by ABP workers in defense of their jobs. In March 2020, 60 workers in one of the Dungannon ABP plants refused to start their shifts in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers reported a “total lack” of social distancing measures on the boning line, in the canteen and at entrances and exits. Staff were reported to be still being allowed to work despite showing symptoms. The Dungannon walkout followed similar actions at ABP’s Lurgan plant and at Moy Park, which processes poultry.
As recently as October last year, 150 meat packers, trimmers, distribution, kill line and boning workers at ABP’s Craigavon plant, 20 miles from Dungannon, voted to strike for a pay increase above the miserable 3.2 percent offered by the company. The strike was called off by Unite at the last minute following a promise of further talks and an “improved offer”. No outcome has been made public. At the time, Unite warned that major supermarkets including Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Aldi would face meat shortages as they are all supplied by ABP.
The refusal by the union apparatus to even make a statement points to their absolute commitment to preventing any struggle by ABP workers across the company’s sprawling international operation in defense of the workers facing redundancy in Dungannon.
If ABP workers in the Craigavon works alone can close down meat sales at major supermarkets, then a united struggle by ABP’s 14,000 workers in Ireland, North and South, the UK and Europe would instantaneously force a retreat. This will not come about through the Unite apparatus but poses the construction of independent rank-and-file committees in every ABP plant, committed to a united struggle in defense of workers’ jobs, living standards and rights.
6. Resident doctors in England renew strike mandate for pay restoration and to end employment crisis
Resident doctors in England have voted decisively to continue their fight for pay restoration and to resolving the employment crisis within the National Health Service (NHS).
The result of the re-ballot of 54,000 members of the British Medical Association (BMA) announced February 2 returned a 93 percent majority for strike action on a 53 percent turnout.
The mandate to extend strike action until August 2026 shows the determination of resident doctors to defy Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has spewed vitriol including the accusation they are “holding the country to ransom.”
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Labour’s shock therapy dressed up in the bogus language of “reform” must be met with opposition by the one million plus healthcare workforce who have the necessary respect to win support across the working class.
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As resident doctors re-balloted in England, the BMA called off the first strike action over pay restoration in Scotland by around 5,000 resident doctor members in the NHS in January. The two-year deal the BMA struck with the Scottish National Party (SNP) government to veto strike action in 2023 was another supposed “journey to pay restoration” that left pay erosion standing at 17 percent going into the current dispute.
In the on-line vote over a revised pay which closes on February 10. the BMA is recommending the deal which still leaves resident doctors 11.6 percent worse off in 2025-26 and 6.2 percent in 2026-27. This is their “credible road map.”
Resident doctors can draw encouragement from the strikes by doctors in France, Spain and the unprecedented strike action in the US by 15,000 of nurses in New York now entering its fourth week. which has been joined by over 30,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses in California and Hawaii.
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NHS Fightback, as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Committees, is fighting to build a new leadership among health workers in the UK as part of a unified international counteroffensive of the working class.
7. Turkish CHP holds “Social Peace and Democracy Conference”
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) held a “Social Peace and Democracy Conference” in Istanbul Saturday, January 31. Taking place amid US threats of military attacks on Iran, the conference addressed issues such as conflicts in the Middle East, the Kurdish question, and “democratization.”
The first session, “Peace at Home, Peace in the World: National and Regional Experiences,” featured compelling presentations by Hüseyin Oruç, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the İHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), and Galip Dalay from the UK military thinktank, Chatham House.
IHH is an Islamist aid organization that works in line with the foreign policy of the Erdoğan government. IHH was a major supporter of jihadists in Syria throughout the regime change war.
The work of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) is in clear alignment with “democratic” imperialist policies. Former US Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, as well as former Turkish President Abdullah Gül (Justice and Development Party /AKP), are among the recipients of the Chatham House Prize. In 2023, during the US-NATO war against Russia, the prize was given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The guests of the second session, “Building a Democratic Future: Citizen Will, Equality, and Inclusion,” were members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy Commission, established in the context of ongoing negotiations between Ankara and Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
While the ruling AKP declined the invitation, the Islamist New Welfare Party, one of the former AKP leaders Ali Babacan’s DEVA Party, the Future Party led by former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Islamist Felicity Party, as well as the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and the Stalinist Labor Party (EMEP) spoke. It was announced at the last minute that representatives of the fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP), who had been invited to the session, would be unable to attend. Apart from the AKP, these parties constitute the political spectrum with which the CHP is seeking an alliance.
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While the AKP and MHP describe the goal of the negotiations as a “terror-free Türkiye” the CHP adds the guise of “democracy” to this. Özel said, “We are fully committed to ending terrorism, silencing weapons, and resolving this issue on a democratic basis... That is why we call this process the ‘terror-free and democratic Türkiye process’ and continue to strive for it.”
Since the start of the latest negotiation process in October 2024, numerous CHP members, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, whom Erdoğan sees as his main rival in the next presidential election, have been arrested, and democratic rights have been further eroded.
The elimination of the de facto Kurdish autonomous administration in Syria and the liquidation of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an ally of the PKK, is a common red line for the Turkish ruling class. Özel said, “The news of reconciliation coming from Syria has delighted us all,” in response to the US-backed integration agreement, under which most of the territory controlled by the SDF and all its energy resources were transferred to the Damascus regime.
However, Özel is careful in his language, believing that he cannot win the presidential election without the support of the DEM Party, which is in the process of repairing its relations with the government: “We clearly reject the old, destructive, exclusionary rhetoric that targets Kurds, undermines their honor, and seeks to reproduce the perception that ‘Kurd equals terrorist.’ We have not yielded to any policy that hurts Kurds in Türkiye or their relatives in Syria, and we will not yield. The Justice and Development Party government must also be a guarantor of peace and reconciliation in Syria, not a party to the conflict.”
A section of Özel’s speech drew attention to the social and political disasters that the crisis of the capitalist system has dragged humanity into, while revealing that the CHP, by its very nature, cannot offer a progressive response to this. “We are facing the threat of a renewed destabilization of the current system, which has witnessed two world wars, proxy wars, regional conflicts, and cold wars. Democracies are weakening. Insecurity is increasing. Inequalities are deepening,” Özel said, adding, “The system of capital accumulation is changing. Corporations manage both capital and wars. Peace, unfortunately, is being turned into a fairy tale, negotiated by superpowers hand in hand with global capital. This is what is happening in Gaza, for example. Those who committed genocide, who killed 71,000 people, are now starting a de facto occupation under the guise of peace, like champions of democracy.”
The conclusion that the working class must draw from this situation is that it must fight for workers’ power and international socialism against the capitalist system, which is the source of social inequality, imperialist war, genocide, and dictatorship. Because without a frontal attack on the ruling class’s power and wealth, no fundamental problem can be overcome.
However, Özel, who views the issue from the perspective of the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie, which is deeply tied to imperialism and is part of the problem, does not question either imperialism or capital in his proposed solution. Instead, he calls on the working class to surrender to the bourgeoisie’s power in the face of these problems: “In such an atmosphere, Türkiye’s survival depends on a political line that fosters unity and solidarity at home and prioritizes reason and calmness abroad.”
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The speeches and the profile of the participants revealed the fundamental message of this conference: Amid the instability and crisis created by imperialist aggression in the Middle East, the Turkish ruling class and its imperialist allies could better defend their interests through a government established under the leadership of the CHP.
8. Australia: Labor government pressing ahead with demolition of Melbourne public housing towers
Following a December ruling by the Victorian Supreme Court, the state Labor government has escalated its campaign to demolish 44 public housing towers in inner Melbourne and hand the land to private developers.
Housing Minister Harriet Shing has announced a second phase, now targeting towers in Albert Park, Flemington, Kensington, North Melbourne, St Kilda and Prahran, adding to two in Richmond and South Yarra already earmarked for destruction.
The first tranche of five included two Carlton towers emptied in 2023 on the pretext that defective sewer stacks were irreparable, and three towers in Flemington and North Melbourne from which over 90 percent of residents have been forced out through an oppressive relocation program.
The newly named seven are part of a group designated for older persons, housing extremely vulnerable elderly residents with many in their eighties and nineties. The announcement underscores the brutality of the demolition program as a whole, and the determination of the Labor government and its agency, Homes Victoria, to press ahead in the face of opposition.
Elderly tenants were blindsided by relocation letters ordering moves from midyear, after being repeatedly told their towers would be the last to be demolished.
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Residents’ lawyers advanced six grounds of appeal, including procedural fairness under the Housing Act, Charter protections (including protection from arbitrary interference with the right to home) and exclusion of hearsay evidence tied to secret cabinet documents. But they were unsuccessful.
One resident who attended the court case told the World Socialist Web Site, “They abused us. We didn’t get any consultation. No one consulted us. They knocked on the door and they forced us to sign the papers without knowing what we were signing. So it was unfair.”
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There is another legal avenue available, which is being pursued through a High Court challenge.
But the progress of the case underscores the futility of relying on the courts to block the demolition.
That line has been advanced by the Greens and pseudo-left groups, such as the Victorian Socialists and Socialist Alliance. Together, they have presented the court challenges, as well as a state parliamentary inquiry that concluded last year, as the primary vehicles for opposing the demolition.
The Greens and the pseudo-left have connected this to claims that the state Labor government can be pressured, through moral appeals and adverse publicity, to abandon the demolitions. As the mounting tally of evictions demonstrates, the opposite is the case. The more opposition is expressed, the more the Labor government doubles down.
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An alternative perspective is required if the demolition is to be defeated and homes saved.
That perspective must be not of appealing to the Labor government, but of waging the most determined political fight against it. Labor’s assault on the towers is not an aberration. It is a particularly sharp expression of its character as a ruthless party of big business, committed to making the working class pay for a deepening budget deficit and a broader crisis of the capitalist system.
Residents must turn to their fellow workers, not the courts or parliaments. The struggle against the demolition has to be connected to the fight for the broader interests of the working class as a whole, against cuts to wages, the cost-of-living crisis and austerity cuts, including mass public sector sackings by the very same Victorian Labor government.
A particular appeal should be made to construction workers, who will be tasked with directly imposing the demolition, as well as those public sector employees who are being forced to oversee it. There should be a campaign for a black ban and strikes on any work on the towers, until the entire demolition plan is overturned. Such a struggle can only go forward independently of, and opposed to, the union bureaucracies, which are partners of the Labor government and openly or tacitly back the demolition and its other pro-business policies.
The Neighbourhood Action Committee (NAC) was established by residents last year, with the political assistance of the Socialist Equality Party, to organize such a fight. It has put forward demands for which such a struggle must be fought, including:
- Hands off the towers! Not a single resident to be displaced or forced out of their home! Refurbishment and renovation, not demolition!
- For a massive expansion of public housing! Billions for housing supply, not for big business and the banks!
- Housing is a social right! Every member of society must be entitled to decent quality and affordable housing, as a basic precondition for life.
These demands raise fundamental questions related to the organization of society. They cannot be met under conditions where every element of social life is subordinated to the insatiable profit drive of the largest corporations and the banks, which dictate government policy.
They raise the need for the expropriation of the banks, the property developers and the construction companies, which make vast fortunes from a housing crisis that produces misery for millions of people. These businesses should be transformed into public utilities, under the democratic control of the working class, as part of a broader transformation of society to meet social need, not profit. That is the fight for socialism.
9. No Other Choice from South Korea: Doesn’t “necessity knows no law” cut both ways?
No Other Choice is a semi-comedy, semi-tragedy, directed by veteran South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Joint Security Area, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, The Handmaiden). It is inspired by Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, previously adapted as a film by Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras (Z, Missing) in 2005 (also The Ax).
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No Other Choice follows a paper-making employee, in a lower management position, Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), discharged after many years at the same firm, who decides to find a comparable, well-paid job at any cost. “To put food in my family’s mouths … there’s nothing I won’t do,” he explains early on, with what turn out to be menacing implications.
At the outset, Man-su is rather pleased with himself and his life. “I’ve got it all,” he mutters in the film’s opening sequence. He has managed through hard efforts to acquire his charming childhood home, he has a pretty, athletic wife, two children (including one possible musical genius) and two dogs.
Needless to say, as we largely expect, Man-su hardly has time to count his blessings when his paper firm is hit with job losses after a takeover by an American corporation.
Before a group of workers slotted to be laid off, Man-su rehearses his speech of protest to the new owners:
As soon as you take over, you say you’ll cut 20 percent of the production line? And you ask for a list of names to fire? Names of veterans who taught me their craft? Names of young men who came of age in this factory. Innocent workers who lovingly cared for these machines, you want me to point a gun at their heads? I can’t do it. Guns are meant to be aimed at one’s enemies! I cannot give you that list. You Americans say to be fired is to be “axed”? Know what we say in Korea? Off with your head! So being fired is having your head chopped clear off with an ax! “If you don’t start a union we guarantee a job for life.” That beautiful tradition tossed out like old shoes!
A company official ultimately responds: “I’m sorry, no other choice.” That line, the title of the film, is repeated various times under disparate circumstances.
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No Other Choice captures something of the instability, convulsiveness and insecurity of life under capitalism today. Secure, decent, “guaranteed” employment is a thing of the past.
Man-su:
“After slaving for 25 years, they gave me 25 minutes to clear out. I walk out of the office, and the security guard had my things in a box already and was standing there, holding it. They wouldn’t let me go down the hallway, where I’d always walked.” “Sent you out the back door?” “Exactly.”
At a time of widespread job destruction, with far more to come, Park’s film has struck a chord and not only in South Korea. The final sequence occurs in a “fully automated factory” equipped with a “lights-out system … Since AI doesn’t need lights turned on.” So, the workforce “will have to be reduced, right?,” an official is asked. “That’s the whole point of the system, No other choice.” “How can you go against the times?”
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The capitalists say they have “no choice” except to do what they do. Along the same lines, in more verbally elevated times, the various rulers declared on the eve of World War I, that “necessity knew no law,” that war and violence were their only choice. Trotsky had an answer for that, noting that such ruthless, lawless claims and conduct on the part of the ruling elites would bring about “a profound change” in popular thinking. And, what’s more, the possessing classes, “to their consternation, will soon have to recognize this change.” Workers who have gone through harsh experiences, as soon as the first serious obstacle faces them, will cry “We have no other choice!” when the attempt is made to hold them back at the command of bourgeois law.
10. Trump’s “critical minerals” conference aimed against China
Through its dominance of the global supply of rare earths and critical minerals, vital for high-tech products, from phones to jet engines and weapons, China was able to hit back against Trump’s tariff war by rapidly cutting off supplies.
This forced a US backdown and the announcement of a tariff war truce for at least 12 months. But this did not mean the war was over. Far from it. The Trump regime is now desperately seeking to organize global supply chains that bypass China, to be in a better position to resume hostilities when it considers the time is ripe.
This was the purpose of the convening of the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial by the US State Department and its head, Marco Rubio, in Washington this week, attended by representatives of some 50 countries.
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On the eve of the gathering, Trump announced that the US would establish a stockpile, named Project Vault, of “essential raw materials” across the US that could be tapped by manufacturers in time of need. It will be financed with $2 billion of private capital and $10 billion from the US Export-Import Bank, the largest allocation of funds it has made in its history.
The fund will buy key minerals, not only rare earths but other metals, such as copper and lithium, which companies will be able to draw upon for a fee in emergency situations.
The development of such a stockpile, however, only has a limited effect. The key issue is securing continuous supply.
That was the aim of the meeting—to establish partnerships with the US and create a supply chain for some 60 minerals which the US Geological Survey has deemed “vital to the US economy and national security,” and which face potential disruption.
Reporting on the outcome, the State Department said the US had signed bilateral framework agreements or memorandums of understanding with 11 countries. But significantly, they were mainly smaller powers—the tiny Cook Islands was one—and no agreements were reached with major European countries.
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The State Department said reliable supply chains were indispensable to all the attendees, and that “we must work together to address the issues in this vital sector.”
But given the actions of the Trump regime, there are major trust issues and a reluctance to take part. At this stage, the US wants participants to sign a non-binding framework agreement that would give it access to critical minerals.
The template for the framework is the agreements with Australia and Japan and the language used in memorandums of understanding with Thailand and Malaysia last year.
The agreement with Australia, which is regarded by the US as a vital cog in its war preparations against China, was signed during a visit by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last October. Underscoring the significance of the agreement, Albanese said it was an historic elevation of the alliance with the US which has been in place since World War II.
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Processing of rare earths is the key question, for despite their name they are relatively plentiful in many cases. But the problem is separating them from other elements with which they are found—a costly and often environmentally dirty process. At present, China has around 70 percent of rare earths but processes around 90 percent of them, a situation which has led to rare earths mined in the US being sent to China for refining.
11. California worker killed in US Foods distribution facility
Juan Jacobo, a veteran US Foods worker with approximately 20 years on the job, was killed on January 21 while working in the company’s distribution yard in Livermore, California, a major logistics hub serving Northern California. He died during active yard operations, highlighting hazardous conditions in the logistics industry and longstanding safety issues at the facility.
As of this writing, the precise circumstances remain under investigation, but accounts from workers and union representatives confirm that Jacobo was killed in an on-the-job industrial incident involving heavy equipment. The Livermore yard operates as a high-risk environment characterized by constant tractor and trailer movement, limited visibility, and crowded staging areas. About 200 drivers are based at the facility.
No major media outlet has reported on Jacobo’s death. This silence reflects the marginalization of workplace fatalities in corporate media coverage, which systematically underreports the daily toll of industrial deaths and avoids scrutiny of the roles played by corporations, regulators, and union leadership in failing to prevent them.
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He leaves behind a wife and five children. In Alameda County, where housing and living costs are among the highest in the state, the sudden loss of wages, benefits and future pension income represents a catastrophic blow to the family. For Jacobo’s coworkers, the death has been deeply traumatizing, occurring approximately 10 months after the ratification of their first union contract, which was promoted as addressing workplace safety concerns.
Coworkers expressed deep sympathy and remember Jacobo as a steady and respected presence in the yard, a “cool cat” who embodied the collective spirit forged during their 2025 strike.
Teamsters Local 853 Vice President Ray Torres issued a statement on the union’s Instagram account:
“Teamsters 853 member Juan Jacobo, who worked at US Foods in Livermore, tragically passed away on the job on January 21st. Teamsters Local 853 is holding a candlelight vigil for Juan this coming Tuesday, February 10, at 6pm at the US Foods yard in Livermore. If you can make the time, Juan’s wife and five children would take comfort in knowing that he was part of a community that respected and valued him and his work. Let’s show them they are not alone in their grief.”
The statement made no reference to the circumstances of Jacobo’s death, offered no assessment of what safety measures failed, made no mention of the contract’s safety provisions, and outlined no steps the union would take to address conditions at the yard or prevent future deaths.
The response from some of Jacobo’s coworkers on the union’s social media was notably bitter. “They’re only mourning because they lost union dues from him,” wrote one. Others concurred.
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Drivers at the facility voted to unionize with Teamsters Local 853 in 2024 in response to years of safety concerns and poor working conditions. Workers authorized a strike on January 14, 2025, and walked out on March 2, 2025, maintaining picket lines for multiple weeks. The strike was explicitly fought for improved safety provisions, among other demands. A contract was ratified on March 12, 2025.
According to the union’s ratification announcement, the agreement included “safety language that allowed the drivers to determine whether routes and trucks are safe to work, and authority to remedy safety concerns.” The announcement characterized these provisions as “badly needed” protections that workers had secured through their collective action.
Jacobo’s death occurred approximately 10 months after this contract went into effect. The question this raises is not merely whether specific contract language was violated, but whether the safety provisions negotiated by the union proved adequate to protect workers’ lives in practice. The fact that a 20-year veteran died during routine yard operations suggests that either the contract provisions were insufficient, inadequately enforced, or both.
12. Trump falsifies the history of the Mexican-American War
The origins of the Mexican-American War are complex, involving the political histories of two countries, but the basic logic can be stated simply. This is to be found not in Mexican aggression against the United States, as Trump claims, but in the expansion of American slavery into Mexico.*****
[US President James K.] Polk’s assertion that “American blood” had been shed on “American soil”—a claim that Trump recycles as good coin—has long been viewed by historians as among the most cynical casus belli in American history. This takes on its full meaning only when considered alongside its rivals for the dubious distinction: McKinley’s promotion of the sinking of the USS Maine to justify war with Spain in 1898 and the seizure from it of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines; Wilson’s use of the Zimmerman Telegram to enter World War I against Germany in 1917; and Lyndon Johnson’s exploitation of the bogus “Gulf of Tonkin incident” to vastly expand the American presence in Vietnam in 1964. More recent years have seen the “weapons of mass destruction” claims against Iraq and the allegations of “narco-terrorism” against Venezuela. In each case, a manufactured or exaggerated pretext functioned as the tripwire for wars whose economic, political and strategic aims were already in place and would have been pursued regardless.
In the case of the Mexican-American War, Polk’s actions were the product of the determination of Southern planters and speculators to acquire new territory, it being widely understood that the slave system depended on expansion for its survival. Moreover, the leaders of the Democratic Party, which dominated American politics at the time, believed that territorial expansion would submerge the explosive slavery question beneath a wave of national patriotism.
The Democratic-aligned media had even developed an ideology that shrouded this expansionism in a quasi-religious and racial cloth: Manifest Destiny, coined by journalist John O’Sullivan in 1845, which presented expansion at the expense of the Indians, Mexicans and Canadians as ordained by providence.
The war against Mexico at first appeared to fulfill these promises. US forces routed Mexico’s unprepared army, occupying Mexico City in September 1847—an event that Trump’s proclamation celebrates. But even when viewed through the lens of military history, the triumph suggests its own star-crossed fate. The very officers who served together against Mexico would, little more than a decade later, lead the Confederate and Union armies against each other in the Civil War, among them Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and James Longstreet, for the secessionists; Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Winfield Scott Hancock for the Union.
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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formalized the seizure of an immense expanse of territory, transferring to the US what would become California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, while confirming the earlier annexation of Texas. No previous American war had yielded territorial gains on this scale.
But the new border attempted to divide what could not, in the long run, be made separate: an integrated regional economy and a population bound together by ties of labor, community and commerce. In 1848, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens and Native Americans were abruptly transformed into conquered minorities within the US. Over time, far larger numbers crossed the same border line—not as invaders, as claimed by Trump, who has never worked a day in his life, but as workers drawn north by the relentless demands of American capitalism.
Today, the principal prizes of the 1840s conquest—California and Texas—are economic giants with large, diverse working populations deeply interconnected to Latin America and Asia. Mexican and Central American workers live and labor alongside US-born workers not only in these states, where they and their descendants make up about 40 percent of the population, but across the country, from the Rio Grande to Minnesota’s packinghouses and fields. The attempt to target them is a desperate effort to deny history and objective reality, and to reimpose national and racial divisions on a working class forged through nearly two centuries of economic integration.
Trump’s invocation of the Mexican-American War does not merely falsify history. It revives a political tradition that seeks to smother social contradictions with nationalism and war. History records the outcome of that experiment: the war against Mexico did not stabilize American society—it helped tear it apart. The same resort to chauvinism and external aggression today will likewise accelerate, not avert, the reckoning that is coming.
13. 1,200 autoworkers in Canada lose their jobs as GM ends third shift at Oshawa Assembly Plant
The midnight third shift at General Motors’ Oshawa auto assembly plant was eliminated by the US-based automaker following the completion of the Friday, January 30 shift. The ensuing layoffs affect up to 1,200 workers throughout the auto supply chain in the industrial belt just east of Toronto. Some 500 direct GM jobs in the plant will be axed along with another 200 third-party workers who laboured side by side with the GM employed assembly workers. In addition, across the supply line, it is expected that about 500 more auto parts workers will lose their jobs. Almost all are members of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.
The layoffs in Oshawa are part of a jobs bloodbath sweeping North America, with major companies like Amazon, UPS, and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, announcing the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs since the beginning of the year. This onslaught by the ruling class is fueling mounting opposition, as expressed in the mass protests in Minneapolis against Trump’s drive to establish a dictatorship in the US, and major strikes by health care workers in New York and on the US west coast during the first month of 2026 alone. These developments underscore how autoworkers determined to defend their jobs against ruthless exploitation by the highly profitable automakers must link up their struggle with those of other workers in Canada and the US facing similar attacks.
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Standing squarely alongside Ontario Tory Premier Doug Ford, Unifor officials have responded to the elimination of the third-shift at Oshawa GM plant with a predictable call for stepped up trade war measures against the US. Ford has denounced Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney’s deal with China to slash tariffs on a limited annual consignment of Electric Vehicle imports in exchange for Beijing rolling back its tariffs on canola and other Canadian foodstuffs . For Unifor, Doug Ford, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), and the entire corporate-political establishment, tariffs are acceptable only when wielded on behalf of Canadian capital against workers in other countries.
Unifor President Lana Payne recently remarked, “We can’t allow Trump to pit province against province, sector against sector and worker against worker. We need to stand together and hold the company accountable.” This is balderdash! For generations, the union’s entire approach to its relations with the auto bosses has been an unabashed nationalism, pitting Canadian auto workers against their counterparts in the US and Mexico in a fratricidal struggle for product placements and jobs. This nationalist policy, enshrined under the 1985 split of the continent-wide United Auto Workers (UAW) into competing Canadian and American contingents, remains the poisonous centerpiece of the auto unions on both sides of the border.
14. Washington pressures Mexico to halt supply of oil to Cuba
On January 23, Reuters reported the Sheinbaum administration was reviewing whether to continue shipments to the island amid mounting US pressure, citing three senior government sources who expressed “growing fear that the United States could take unilateral action on [Mexican] territory” if the shipments continued.
On January 26, Bloomberg reported that Pemex had in fact backtracked on plans to send another shipment of crude oil to Cuba.
That same day Trump declared on social media that “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” while Politico reported that the administration was weighing a total blockade of oil transport.
Mexican officials reported observing at least three US Navy drones conducting flights over Mexico's Bay of Campeche in January, following the routes taken by tankers when carrying Mexican fuel to Cuba.
On January 28, Sheinbaum insisted that Mexico would continue sending aid shipments of crude oil to Cuba. She described the shipments as humanitarian in nature, and told reporters the oil exports to Cuba and other unspecified countries would be evaluated on “a case-by-case basis.”
After a lengthy phone call between Trump and Sheinbaum on January 29, in which Sheinbaum claims Cuba was not discussed, Trump signed an executive order branding Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” In a further manifestation of the extraterritorial reach of the embargo policy against the Caribbean nation, it threatened that Washington could impose tariffs on goods from countries that sell or supply oil to the island.
In the executive order, titled “Addressing Threats from the Government of Cuba to the United States,” the US president mentioned Havana’s relations with countries such as Russia and China, and stated that “Cuba brazenly harbors dangerous adversaries of the United States.” Cuba was absurdly depicted as a safe haven for Hamas and Hezbollah, just as Venezuela had been.
In response, Sheinbaum warned that this latest measure could “trigger a far-reaching humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, “directly affecting hospitals, food and other basic services of the Cuban people.”
She said, “Mexico will look for different alternatives, obviously in the defense of Mexico, as well as to help the Cuban people in a humanitarian way who are going through a difficult time, all in accordance with what has historically been our tradition of solidarity and international respect.” Mexico would “make it known that a humanitarian crisis for the Cuban people must be prevented.”
Sheinbaum said further that Mexico will maintain its historical position of solidarity with Cuba, and explained that her government will seek to resolve the problem through diplomatic channels. To that end, she instructed Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish immediate contact with the US government, in order to learn precisely the scope of the decree published by Trump, even though its naked brutality was crystal clear.
US Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican and right-wing Cuban immigrant, immediately denounced Sheinbaum’s position in a post on X, deriding it as a “pathetic decision.”
“This major betrayal will not be tolerated in the slightest,” he wrote. He threatened that Sheinbaum “had better keep that very much in mind ahead of the renegotiation of the free trade agreement,” a reference to the US-Canada-Mexico regional trade pact (USMCA) that is up for review this year.
No further oil shipments from Mexico to Cuba have occurred since January 29, nor at this time are any expected.
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Rhetorical lamentations, limited humanitarian aid and nationalist “Mexico first” rationalizations serve merely as a cloak to conceal the naked defense by the Sheinbaum administration of the profit interests of the Mexican capitalist class. Expecting major windfalls, the Mexican ruling elite has long agreed to become a key partner in US imperialism’s drive to recolonize Latin America—a policy whose catastrophic consequences in Venezuela and now Cuba are only a warning of what is to come, including within Mexico itself.
15. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
