Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1.  Memorial Day 2025: Honor the memory of Ronald Adams Sr. and the other victims of class war in America

Statements about “America’s fallen heroes” from big business politicians are drenched in hypocrisy. The political representatives of American imperialism have not the slightest concern for the young people they send to occupy foreign lands and seize resources—many of whom return with PTSD, traumatic brain injuries and other lasting physical and mental scars. The Trump administration is cutting funding to the Veterans Administration even as veterans make up 20 percent of the male homeless population, and an average of 17.6 veterans die by suicide every day.

2. Five years since the police murder of George Floyd

Floyd’s murder at the hands and knees of the Minneapolis Police Department sparked mass sustained protests in the United States and internationally. But five years later the cops, supported by all capitalist parties, continue to kill record numbers of people.

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“Black Lives Matter” was embraced by the Democratic Party, corporate America and the media and flooded with hundreds of millions of dollars.

The campaign was aimed at covering up the fact that the majority of those killed by police in every country are working class, poor, or suffering from a mental health crisis. While racist and fascist attitudes are cultivated and promoted within police departments— and by the US ruling class— the police function as an instrument of class rule. They are granted extraordinary powers by the capitalist state to kill with impunity in defense of private property and the rule of the financial oligarchy.

3. Donald Trump puts US presidency up for sale at cryptocurrency dinner

In a historically unprecedented display of political corruption,  Donald Trump hosted a dinner at his national golf course in Virginia on Thursday at which he openly sold access to the US presidency in exchange for investments in his $Trump cryptocurrency.

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It is noteworthy that the Democratic Party has done nothing to mobilize the public against the blatantly illegal attack on a fundamental principle that distinguishes democratic government from authoritarianism. All the Democrats could muster was a news conference on Thursday led by Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut where they called for the passage of legislation that would ban such activities.

4. Trump’s Gulf visit sends message to China: “Back off. The
Middle East is ours”

Trump’s aim is to stoke fear into potential allies and opponents of US imperialism alike and demonstrate that they too will face a similar war of obliteration as Gaza if they stand in the way of Washington’s bid to control the world’s markets and essential resources. 

5. Photo London 2025: The enduring significance of Lee Miller’s war photography

There were thousands of photographs on display from over 130 exhibitors and 400 artists. Many of the predominantly landscape, portrait and abstract images were beautifully presented and technically inventive, but one would hardly guess the world was in political and economic turmoil. The eruption of fascism, genocide and war and the massive opposition to these developments were barely mentioned.

6. Duisburg Regional Court rules chants of “From the river to the  Sea, Palestine will be free” and “Yalla Intifada” are not punishable by law

Duisburg Regional Court [in Germany] has acquitted one of the co-founders of the now banned “Palestine Solidarity Duisburg,” Leon Wystrychowski, of the charge of “condoning criminal offenses” by Hamas.

One year of the PSDU ban: For the unity of the Arab and Jewish working class!

On May 16, 2024, North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul banned the group "Palestine Solidarity Duisburg". The ban criminalized any criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the government's war policy.

The more obvious the genocide in Palestine becomes and the more blatantly the German government supports the Israeli government politically, financially, and with weapons, the more vehemently it cracks down on opposition.

This has nothing to do with protecting Jewish life or making reparations for the Holocaust. Germany, like the United States and other European states, uses Israel as a bridgehead for its imperialist interests in the Middle East, threatening and intimidating the entire region.

7. Spain’s Morenoite Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores (CRT) peddles illusions in protest pressure on imperialism over Gaza genocide

By claiming imperialist governments can be pressured into halting genocide, the CRT works to tie the working class to the imperialist state and block a movement that can stop the genocide.

8. New Zealand’s budget for austerity and war

The budget’s austerity and warmongering will accelerate the movement to the left by workers and young people, who will come into conflict not only with the government, but with the opposition parties and the pro-capitalist union apparatus.

9. David Walsh, the arts editor of the World Socialist Web Site, interviews the literary biographer Blake Bailey about his achievements and his determination to answer his #MeToo accusers

The purging of Bailey’s book [Philip Roth: The Biography] in 2021, as we explained at the time, in “Book-burning comes to America,” set

a sinister example, intended to intimidate artists, biographers and scholars alike. The message being sent is clear: any influential figure who rubs establishment public opinion the wrong way can be denounced and dispatched in like manner.

10. Germany: Three construction workers fall to their death

The latest spate of horrific industrial accidents can only be fought  independently of politicians, corporations and trade union bureaucrats. The aim must be to reveal the causes of accidents in detail and take joint action to remedy abuses!

11. Vote ‘No’ on Pratt & Whitney tentative agreement! Build
rank-and-file committees to expand the strike and prepare a strategy for victory!

Rather than uniting with other defense workers and workers in other industries, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) is shutting down the strike because it threatens the war policies of both parties in Washington, who are openly discussing launching new wars in the Middle East and against China. While workers in the defense plants work for low pay, the new spending bill in Congress contains the largest military budget in US history, to be paid for by massive cuts in social programs and ramping up the exploitation of defense and other workers. 

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Strikers at Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut must vote “No” on the tentative agreement being put forward at Tuesday’s membership meeting. They should kick out the bargaining committee which is attempting to violate their will by forcing the contract past them sight unseen, and replace them with a new one elected solely from the rank and file, not union officials.

12. Israeli military unveils plan to internally displace entire
remaining population of Gaza

The total occupation of Gaza, the transfer of the population to concentration camps and the monopolization of food distribution by the US and Israeli militaries is the essential prelude to their plan for the forcible displacement of the remaining Palestinian population.

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To date, 53,900 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023, with hundreds of thousands wounded.

In a statement Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that 950 children have been killed by Israeli attacks over the past two months. “Children in Gaza are enduring unimaginable suffering,” UNRWA said in a post on X. “They are starving, displaced, and exposed to indiscriminate attacks.”

13. Australia: Victorian state Labor government budget sees record debt, massive cuts

Since its election in 2014, the state Labor government in Victoria has functioned as a ruthless instrument of big business and finance capital. Its latest budget involves a series of anti-working-class measures.

Thousands of public sector workers will be targeted for sacking in the next months. The government has sought to cover up its agenda for as long as possible, insisting that the total number of cuts will only be revealed after an internal “review” to be finalized in June. The budget, however, tallied $3.3 billion in cuts over the forward estimates via “stripping back inefficiency” in the public sector. Treasurer Jaclyn Symes admitted the government has “flagged up to around 3,000 [jobs]” for destruction, while leaving open the possibility of even more sackings after receiving the commissioned review.

14. UK agrees handover of Chagos Islands to Mauritius to protect key US Diego Garcia base

The UK will pay Mauritius £101 million a year, with the rent set to rise with inflation, for 99 years, at which point the lease can be renewed for up to 40 years if both sides agree. [Prime Minister] Starmer sought to justify the cost as “value for money”, even as his government plans £5 billion in welfare cuts, because it is “slightly less than the running cost of an aircraft carrier minus the aircraft”.

15. High Court case reveals damning evidence of UK Labour
government complicity in Gaza genocide

While the case centers on the issues of ... F35s, this is just one component of British imperialism’s involvement in backing Israel’s slaughter of Gaza. The Royal Air Force continues reconnaissance flights over Gaza to help plan mass murder. In March, Declassified UK published findings of an investigation they commissioned by Action on Armed Violence showing that the RAF “has conducted at least 518 surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023.”

16. This week in history:

• 25 years ago:

Space Shuttle Atlantis successfully repairs the International Space Station

• 50 years ago:

Boston longshoremen strike to defend Guaranteed Income

• 75 years ago:

Israeli army expels 120 Palestinians, sentencing many to death in Wadi Araba desert

• 100 years ago:

Home Secretary bans foreign Communists from entry to the United Kingdom

17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.

1. An interview with Dr. Peter Daszak on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wuhan Lab Lie and the defense of science— Part 3

In this exclusive interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Daszak recounts the story of his persecution and that of other principled scientists falsely accused of bearing responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.  

2. Amid new COVID-19 wave, the US Federal Food and Drug Administration places millions at risk by restricting access to vaccines

This policy marks a major departure from previous policy. It is being promoted as a way to further normalize the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and treat SARS-CoV-2 as just another respiratory virus among the many that sicken the population each year.

2. Trump’s Big Lie about “white genocide” in South Africa

The social demagogy of Trump, including his racism and xenophobia, aims at diverting attention from the real and growing crisis of this government. The nonstop circuses and scapegoating in the Oval Office, with full-scale press conferences, have replaced what were largely ceremonial meetings in the past. These are Trump’s answer to the tremors on the stock and bond markets, and above all to the growing resistance and class struggle, as workers see what trade wars, the dismantling of social spending and defiance of the Constitution mean for themselves and their families.

3. “There is no reason this should happen in a modern, civilized society”: Canadian Stellantis workers back rank-and-file investigation into death of Ronald Adams Sr.

Autoworkers during the shift change Friday afternoon at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada expressed support for the rank-and-file investigation into the death of fellow Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan on April 7.

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“These companies do everything they can to divide us and make us fight against each other,” a Windsor worker told the World Socialist Web Site. “But we’re all connected, not only in the North American economy but the global economy. We need to come together not let these employers divide us and take up the real issues at hand, including safety,” he said.

Addressing himself to the family of Ronald Adams, Sr., another worker said, “I am very sorry for your loss.” He continued, “This is the first I heard about this, that is why I grabbed your flyer. We are all brothers and sisters. This is concerning. I’m very interested in learning more details. I read about him being crushed in a machine. I want to look deeper into that.

4. A week of state killings in America: Executions in Indiana, Texas and Tennessee

The three men executed this week all died by lethal injection. As is so often the case, their lives were plagued by either mental illness, mental disability, substance abuse, or a combination of these conditions.

Legal avenues to halt their executions had been closed by the judicial system, despite arguments by their attorneys that they deserved to have their cases reexamined based on new evidence, they posed no danger to society if their sentences were commuted to life in prison, or their mental condition was such that they were unable to understand either the gravity of their crimes or their punishment.

5. Pennsylvania’s governor, local Democrats posture over closure of Chester’s hospital system

The closures also resulted in over over 2,600 layoffs, the most in Pennsylvania since the mass job cuts at Bethlehem Steel in the 1980s. This event has revealed the socially criminal mechanics of the American capitalist system, in which billionaires, under Republican and Democrat alike at every level of government, view society as their piggy bank. Such forces suck all the known value dry from essential social services and commodities and toss away what remains.

6. “I cry every day”: Chester, Pennsylvania healthcare workers speak about the devastating impact of the hospital system’s closure

Heartache and devastated lives are what remains of the community of Chester, Pennsylvania following the closure of both Crozer Hospital and Taylor Hospital at the end of April and earlier this month. The closures have left the community of 30,000 and broader Delaware County in southeast Pennsylvania without access to basic healthcare means, as well as resulted in 2,600 layoffs for healthcare workers overnight.

7. 80 years after Hitler’s war of annihilation in the east: Germany establishes combat brigade against Russia in Lithuania

Lithuania in particular was a central scene of Nazi atrocities. After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in June 1941, local collaborators actively participated in the extermination of the Jewish population. Within a few months, around 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were murdered. Of the approximately 210,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the Nazi invasion on June 22, 1941, around 195,000 were murdered by the end of the war in 1945. The majority of them had already been killed at the end of 1941.

The SS Einsatzgruppen, supported by Lithuanian militias, not only killed tens of thousands of people in massacres such as the one in Ponary, but also brutally targeted communists, trade unionists and other members of the opposition. Now, German combat troops are once again being permanently stationed on Lithuanian soil. History is either being ignored or actively rewritten in order to justify new wars.

8. 100,000 join Netherlands’ largest anti-war protest in two
decades against Gaza genocide

The mass protest followed countless events in Dutch cities and towns for this year’s 80th anniversary of Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day) on May 5, commemorating the end of Nazi occupation and honoring the estimated 300,000 resistance fighters— with up to 1 million affiliated supporters— who safeguarded tens of thousands of Jewish people from deportation to concentration camps.

9. Oppose the Trump administration’s fascist attack on international students and academic freedom at Harvard!

The attack on Harvard lies at the intersection of the Trump administration’s drive to establish a political dictatorship and its preparations for war. The executive order explicitly accuses Harvard of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party— a fabricated charge aimed at branding all Chinese students and scholars as spies and conditioning the American population for war with China.

10. Trump Department of Justice dropping police reform agreement with Minneapolis and Louisville

The Biden administration originally filed the lawsuits at practically the last minute, in December and January respectively, more than four years after the killing of [George] Floyd and [Breonna] Taylor.

11. Exhibition Rift through Europe: How the history of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is being rewritten in the interests of German imperialism

The traveling exhibition Rift through Europe seeks to replace the working class’s memory of fascist crimes with a nationalist narrative promoted by Eastern European and Baltic states. It falsely presents this as the collective memory of entire societies. In reality, it reflects the “culture of remembrance” of right-wing and fascist forces that glorify and trace their heritage to those who collaborated with the Wehrmacht and SS in their campaigns against the Soviet Union, and in the mass murder of Jews and other national minorities in their respective countries.

12. Ford Germany: IG Metall union calls off second, indefinite strike against Cologne plant closure

The 11,500 workers are prepared to fight to defend their jobs, but the union has limited them to a single 24-hour strike.

13. ICE Gestapo ambushes and imprisons Mississippi father at immigration hearing

Under the second Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is systematically transforming courthouses, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service offices, and other routine government sites into hunting grounds, deliberately shredding due process to terrorize and disenfranchise the immigrant population.

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Prior to Trump’s inauguration, Democrats in the House and Senate provided the necessary votes to fast-track the anti-immigrant Laken Riley Act which further empowers the immigration Gestapo while requiring mandatory detainment for alleged petty crimes. Both parties have overseen the massive expansion of ICE detention capacity, funneling billions to private prison corporations that profit from human misery.

14. National strike by Canada Post workers sabotaged by CUPW bureaucracy

The 55,000 postal workers confront an onslaught by management and the Liberal government, with the full backing of corporate Canada, against their wages, working conditions and jobs. The goal of this assault is to turn Canada Post into a profit-making concern by “Amazonifying” the postal service. As the World Socialist Web Site has explained in previous articles, the sweeping restructuring that they are demanding includes a vast expansion of gig work, the introduction of dynamic routing to ratchet up worker exploitation, the elimination of thousands of full-time positions, and below-inflation pay “increases.”

15. Five killed and thousands affected by latest Australian floods

This disaster follows a series of extreme weather events, including the northern Queensland floods in February, and Cyclone Alfred in southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales in March. This is a pattern of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, for which the state and federal Australian governments have done nothing to adequately prepare.

16. Unite’s Sharon Graham admits ACAS talks over Birmingham bin strike were a fraud

The World Socialist Web Site warned when Unite entered talks that the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service is a government funded mechanism for suppressing workers’ struggles in favor of the employer. Moreover, “There is no compromise on offer. Unite entered ACAS talks despite the council insisting that it would impose its original plans against the loaders but also slash the pay rate of refuse truck drivers by a fifth.”

Graham now writes that a “fair and reasonable offer” never existed, after keeping Birmingham strikers in the dark for three weeks. The wall of silence has been broken only to complain that no proposal has been forthcoming which could justify a sellout.

17. Neil Young and Eddie Vedder defend Bruce Springsteen against Trump’s attack on free speech and fascist threats

In a related development, Brian Eno, the renowned composer and music producer, recently issued a public statement sharply criticizing Microsoft for providing artificial intelligence and cloud services to the Israeli military amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. 

Writing on social media about his own history with the software monopoly— Eno created the iconic Windows 95 startup sound— he expressed dismay that a project once symbolizing technological optimism is now linked to what he describes as “the machinery of oppression and warfare.”

18. Opposing Gaza genocide demands a socialist political struggle against Starmer Labour government

The millions of workers and young people who have mobilized in defense of the Palestinians must now recognize that protest marches are not enough. No appeal to the Labour government or moral pressure placed on it and other world governments will stop the genocide.

The working class can no longer tolerate the political rule of Starmer’s government, paid for with donations from the trade unions who have stood by as tens of thousands, mostly women and children, are murdered. There must be a turn to a political and class struggle against Starmer’s war criminals: a mass anti-genocide and anti-war movement, as the spearhead of a struggle to build a new and genuinely socialist party.

19. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

Australia:

 

Snowy Mountains hydro-power construction workers in New South Wales strike for better pay and conditions

 

Queensland nurses and midwives voting on industrial action

 

PepsiCo snack food workers continue strike in South Australia

 

Flinders Medical Centre workers in South Australia strike

 

Osborne shipyard workers strike for pay parity in Adelaide

Bangladesh:

Bangladeshi garment workers demand unpaid wages

India:

Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences support workers’ protest over outstanding wages

ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists) workers in Uttarakhand hold a state-wide protest

Chandigarh state Anganwadi workers protest harassment by both central and state governments

Uttar Pradesh power utility workers protest privatization

New Zealand:

More than 1,500 staff members at the Ministry of Education held a one-hour strike

Pakistan:

Retired non-teaching staff at Federal Urdu University demand pensions

 Punjab sanitary workers protest salary delays

Philippines:

Kawasaki Motors factory workers strike for pay rise

20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

Bogdan, who is 26 years old and in poor health, is being held in a prison in Nikolaev under atrocious conditions on fraudulent charges of serving the interests of Russia. In fact, Bogdan is an intransigent opponent of the capitalist Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine. He fights for the unity of the working class in Ukraine, Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. 

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. An interview with Dr. Peter Daszak on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wuhan Lab Lie and the defense of science—Part 2

In this exclusive interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Daszak recounts the story of his persecution and that of other principled scientists falsely accused of bearing responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. The case of Nancy Wohlforth, a.k.a. Fields, and the origins of Security and the Fourth International

In 1978 Nancy Wohlforth embarked upon a career in the bureaucracy of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) and enjoyed a meteoric rise. Certainly, her activities in the Trotskyist movement proved no obstacle in the development of her career.

She became a full-time paid official in her local in 1983 and eventually rose to the position of the national union’s secretary-treasurer. At the height of her career as an OPEIU bureaucrat, she enjoyed an annual income of a quarter million dollars.

3. The bankrupt perspective of the French Morenoite Révolution permanente group’s May 24 anti-war meeting in Paris

RP tries to reconcile verbal invocations of revolution, internationalism and Trotskyism with its own ties to Stalinist, social-democratic or bourgeois liberal parties and national union bureaucracies that support war and are violently hostile to Trotskyism.

4. Sri Lanka’s major apparel company, Next, retrenches 1,500 workers

Shocked by the sudden closure, hundreds of Next workers mobilized outside the Katunayake Free Trade Zone plant on Tuesday morning. The factory entrance was sealed with no factory management personnel present.

5. Bond market concerns over Trump tax bill

The determination of the administration to continue with tax cuts, come what may, is an expression of one of the most fundamental  features of the US economy— the dependence of corporations and finance capital on money from the state.

6. Australia: Union officials offer no way to fight Labor government attack on workers’ compensation

Unions NSW, the peak trade union body for New South Wales, is holding a series of rallies around the state, protesting the Labor government’s moves to slash workers’ compensation payments for psychological injuries.

7. As talks resume at Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut, company cuts off workers’ healthcare

Striking workers must be on guard against sellout as official talks resume and demand that trusted workers, elected by the rank and file, take part in all talks and report to the membership.

8. 2 workers killed in separate fatal workplace accidents in US state of Georgia

A worker was killed at the Hanwha Qcells solar panel plant in Cartersville on Monday and another was killed at the construction site of the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America battery plant in Savannah on Tuesday.

9. US House declares war on working class and the poor, advances “Big Beautiful Bill”

Just before 7:00 a.m. on May 22, the US House of Representatives passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by a 215–214 vote. The sweeping tax and spending legislation massively expands funding for the border Gestapo and military, delivers enormous tax cuts to the wealthy, and slashes essential social programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and food assistance relied on by millions.

10. A year after historic flood, Rio Grande do Sul continues to face Brazilian government’s negligence

This month marks one year since floods caused by capitalist-driven climate change devastated Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, in one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history. This extreme weather event has exposed the utter indifference of the Brazilian ruling elite toward the lives of the state’s working population, whose living conditions have only worsened since then.

11. Presidential elections in Poland shake up the ruling camp

Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate for the Tusk government, narrowly won the first round of the presidential election. His victory in the run-off is, however, uncertain.

12. Department of Homeland Security revokes Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students

The DHS also seeks to transform Harvard and all other universities into cooperating surveillance arms of the state. In exchange for the return of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, the DHS is demanding that Harvard provide “[A]ny and all records, whether official or informal, in the possession of Harvard University, including electronic records and audio or video footage” regarding the “illegal” or “violent” activity of non-citizen students enrolled in the last five years and “any and all disciplinary records of all nonimmigrant students.”

13. Nurses carry out one-day strike at Long Beach and Alhambra hospitals in Southern California

Beyond immediate workplace grievances, the strike reflected a growing  political opposition to the subordination of life to profit among  healthcare workers.

14. US healthcare workers union president ousted by opposition slate following corruption scandal

The scandal lifts the lid on how the union bureaucracy as a whole  lives— its corrupt appetites, its essentially parasitic and hostile relationship to the workers they claim to represent and their deep ties to management and the capitalist parties.

15. California fertility clinic struck by car bomb, leaving 1 dead and 4 injured

Guy Edward Bartkus, 25-year-old resident of Twentynine Palms,  California, targeted a fertility clinic in Palm Springs with a car  bomb, killing himself and injuring four others.

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Whenever a violent outburst occurs in the United States— and they do with frightening regularity— representatives of the ruling class often employ simple criteria such as “good” and “bad” in order to moralize and individualize the actions of the perpetrator. This is done to obscure the central role of the ruling class and the historic levels of social inequality they oversee in creating the conditions that give rise to such violent outbursts.

As with school shootings and other mass outbursts of violence, Bartkus’s actions can only be understood as a byproduct of the society he existed in.

16. At Cannes film festival: Robert De Niro speaks out against Trump and dictatorship, more opposition to Gaza genocide and Kevin Spacey denounces blacklisting

De Niro finished his speech by recalling the revolutionary slogans of
the French Revolution— “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.”

17. Stop the layoffs at Mack and Volvo Trucks! Unite across plants, industries, and borders to defend jobs and oppose war!

Volvo Group’s decision to lay off nearly 1,000 workers is part of the global attack on the jobs, wages and conditions of the working class. These attacks must be resisted!

18. Kneecap rap group member charged with terrorism offense

Kneecap have refused to be cowed by their persecutors, while making clear they have never supported Hamas or Hezbollah or endorsed the killing of MPs.

19. Australian protests against Trump: The fight against fascism is a fight against capitalism!

While the protests express a growing opposition to Trump’s fascistic  agenda, the pseudo-left organizers are seeking to channel those sentiments behind Australian nationalism and a pro-war Labor government.

20. Oppose the arrest of political prisoners Ahmad Mammadli and Afiaddin Mammadov in Azerbaijan!

The World Socialist Web Site and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu, the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, regardless of our political differences with the pair, demand the immediate release of Mammadli and Mammadov, as well as all other political prisoners who are being persecuted by capitalist states around the world.

21. Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa:

Belgium:

One-day general strike in the Belgian public sector against austerity

France:

Taxi drivers demonstrate in France against attacks on pay

Germany:

Bus drivers in Lower Saxony, and DHL drivers in Leipzig walk out over pay parity

Greece: 

Workers on Ro-Ro ferries in Attica municipality defy courts and continue strike over pay and conditions

Spain:

Strike for equal pay at outsourced junior schools in Palma de Mallorca continues 

Turkey:

Rail workers’ stoppage in Bursa over pay and hours

United Kingdom:

More strikes against UK university jobs cull while union opposes unified action

Protest at London’s Ealing Council plan to close half its children’s centres

Wilson James workers at London’s Heathrow airport continue stoppages for pay parity

Iraq:

Waste collection workers begin strike over unpaid wages in Soran

Egypt:

Egyptian lawyers strike for 48-hours against new fees

Ethiopia:

Health workers defy intimidation, continue partial strike

Namibia:

Namibian fishermen continue their protests over pay and conditions

South Africa:

Care workers at home in Kimberley walk out and Gauteng doctors will withdrew services if they are not paid fully and on time

Zimbabwe:

University of Zimbabwe staff continue pay strike

18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. An interview with Dr. Peter Daszak on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wuhan lab lie and the defense of science— Part 1

In this exclusive interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Daszak recounts the story of his persecution and that of other principled scientists falsely accused of bearing responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Trump targets 350,000 Venezuelans for deportation, revoking their Temporary Protected Status

On Monday the US Supreme Court permitted the Trump administration to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants, permitting their immediate deportation.

In doing so, the Court reversed a San Francisco district judge’s order to block Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s orders from March of this year to remove TPS status for Venezuelans.

3. Trump administration violates judge’s order, banishes immigrants to South Sudan

Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security  admitted in Wednesday’s hearing that only one of the eight immigrants currently in Africa was actually from South Sudan. The other seven men, according to DHS, are citizens of Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Burma and Vietnam and had never been to South Sudan.

4. 300 million people in 53 countries at risk of starving to death

That so many people face death by starvation, under conditions of unprecedented scientific and technological developments in food production and distribution, is a devastating indictment of the capitalist system of production for private profit. The report itself was barely mentioned in the mainstream media, indicating the degree to which famine and starvation have been normalized by the world’s ruling elites.

Download the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs full 2025 Global Report on Food Crises

5. NHS FightBack holds meeting to oppose Labour government cuts and privatization

NHS FightBack held an online meeting Monday attended by health workers at the frontline of attacks on the National Health Service (NHS) by the Labour government.

The meeting was called mobilize health workers against Labour’s NHS privatization policies, including the mass transfer of staff to private subsidiaries.

6. Four fatal work accidents on Germany’s railways in just four weeks

Despite the bloody toll, neither national rail operator Deutsche Bahn nor the EVG and GDL rail unions are taking any notice. The EVG has not once this year commented on any specific work accident on the railways.

7. Trump Justice Department charges US Representative LaMonica McIver with assaulting federal officers

Following the same May 9 incident during which the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Democrat Ras Baraka, was arrested by federal Department of Homeland Security agents, one of the three members of the US House of Representatives from New Jersey who accompanied Baraka, LaMonica McIver, has been charged by the US Department of Justice for allegedly assaulting federal officers during the ensuing fracas.

8. The Pitt–Taking the side of science and healthcare workers

HBO Max’s medical drama The Pitt has struck a chord with both healthcare workers and general audiences. One of the platform’s five most-watched debuts, it has already been renewed for a second season and widely discussed on TikTok and other social media.

9. Nurses at Long Beach and Alhambra: Build Rank-and-File Committees to take the struggle into your own hands!

The strike set for Thursday, May 22 by registered nurses at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Long Beach, along with Alhambra Hospital Medical Center in Alhambra, California, is a courageous stand which deserves the support of all workers in southern California and the United States. The strike can and should become part of a broader fight pitting the working class against the corporate oligarchy which rules society.

What nurses are striking against are universal features of for-profit healthcare. This includes unsafe staffing, brutal workloads, and cuts that endanger everyone who walks through their hospital doors.

10. 55,000 Canada Post workers set to strike Friday morning, but CUPW has no plan to beat back government-management onslaught

Under pressure from the rank and file, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers was forced to issue a 72-hour strike notice on Monday. The legal ban on strike action— dictated by the former-Trudeau Liberal government when it criminalized the last strike in December— expires Thursday, May 22. This sets the stage for a renewed confrontation between postal workers and a ruling class gang-up of Canada Post management, an even more openly right-wing Liberal government under the former central banker Mark Carney, and the saboteurs in the CUPW bureaucracy.

11. Jacobin and Labor Notes promote UAW election as model for “union democracy” despite massive voter suppression

The pseudo-left publications' effort to prop up one bureaucratic apparatus (of the UAW) by criticizing another (of the UFCW) has led them into the absurd position of promoting the UAW election as a model of “union democracy.”

12. VIDEO: Attend “Trump’s war on free speech: The case of Momodou Taal”

13. Australian PM backs Zelensky and discusses strategic ties with EU

Albanese’s decision to attend the papal inauguration soon after winning the May 3 election was primarily driven by the heightened geostrategic tensions triggered by the US Trump administration’s global trade war.

14. For first time, Netanyahu names ethnic cleansing of Gaza as official war aim

In a news conference, Netanyahu said that Israel “is ready to end the war, under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel – all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.”

15. South Korean presidential election: Democrat frontrunner’s right-wing agenda

South Korea is holding a presidential election June 3 to replace former president Yoon Suk-yeol, who was removed from office for imposing martial law in a failed coup attempt in December. The Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung has capitalized on widespread anger towards Yoon and his People Power Party to emerge as the strong frontrunner in the contest.

16. Rise of the far right in Europe: A product of the anti-working class and pro-war policies of the established parties

The results of the latest elections across Europe underscore a dangerous and accelerating trend: the rise of far-right and fascistic forces and their growing integration into the heart of official politics.

17. “What are they covering up?”: Stellantis Dundee Engine worker provides details for rank-and-file investigation into death of Ronald Adams Sr.

More than six weeks after the incident, Adams’ family and co-workers have yet to receive any explanation about the causes of the fatal accident from Stellantis, the United Auto Workers union or the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Why the German government supports the genocide in Gaza

The cruelty with which the Israeli army is treating the civilian population goes almost beyond words. Since the beginning of March, it has blocked the transport of medicines, food and fuel in order to starve two million people. It is bombing the last remaining hospitals and shelters along with tents and groups of fleeing people in the almost completely destroyed region. More than a hundred people are being killed daily, in addition to the 53,000 already registered fatalities, the majority of them women and children. Eyewitnesses report the screams of the wounded who are left to their fate due to the lack of paramedics, hospitals and medicines.

But even though the extent of the war crimes can no longer be concealed, the German government continues to celebrate its unshakeable friendship with Israel.

*****

Like Germany’s support for Israel in the past, today’s support for the genocide in Gaza is not motivated by responsibility for the Shoah, but by Germany’s imperialist interests. Israel serves Germany, as it does the United States, as a military bridgehead in a region that has huge reserves of raw materials and is of central geo-strategic importance. The resistance of the Palestinians, which enjoys broad support among the Arab masses, stands in the way of imperialist control over the region. That is why it must be eliminated.

For the Palestinians, this means disaster; for Israeli workers, it is a tragedy. The Zionist state, with its right-wing extremist government, increasingly resembles the Nazi regime it was supposed to be the answer to.

2. How the Ukrainian government is trying to ban and erase the Victory Day holiday

The political gravity of the state harassment of banned Soviet symbols cannot be overstated. Technically, fascist symbols are also banned in Ukraine, but in reality, various neo-Nazi groups such as Azov, which are closely integrated into the military apparatus of the Ukrainian state, are allowed to wear various Nazi symbols on their uniforms and bodies any day of the year. Symbols associated with the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists have been integrated into official state symbols, and the fascist salute “Slava Ukraini” [Glory to Ukraine] is routinely used by President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO politicians.

*****

The attempts of the Ukrainian oligarchy to erase any public memory of the Soviet Union indicate not the strength of its position, but its weakness. The Ukrainian oligarchy is mortally afraid that the Ukrainian working class will return to the traditions of the October Revolution and overthrow it. But this is exactly what is needed. 

3. Right-wing Coalition breaks apart after Australian election debacle

While the collapse of the coalition is seemingly a further victory for Labor, it is the opposite. For the past eighty years, the two-party system has served to divert and suppress popular opposition while devising the policies of the capitalist class. In the absence of a Coalition opposition, the ruling class is entirely dependent on Labor to enforce its agenda.

4. Hundreds of nursing home workers go on strike in Western New York

Within the healthcare industry, nursing home workers are some of the lowest paid and work in some of the most challenging and physically difficult and demanding conditions. Apart from simply providing medical care, their work can include dressing, shopping, preparing meals, bathing and physically moving residents who often have limited mobility.

Moreover, COVID-19 has disproportionately hit nursing homes, killing over 200,000 nursing home workers and residents within the United States, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). This disproportionate rate of death within nursing homes is profoundly worsened by understaffing, substandard infection control and overall poor working and medical conditions common throughout long-term nursing home facilities.

*****

The strike by nursing home workers in Western New York is part of a growing movement of healthcare workers throughout the United States and, in fact, the world who are demanding better wages, staffing and working conditions.

But a real struggle cannot be entrusted to the SEIU bureaucrats, and the struggle must be taken out of their hands. Nursing home and healthcare workers must join autoworkers, educators and others in forming rank-and-file committees democratically elected of the most militant and trusted members to lead these struggles.

5. Potential measles mass-spreader event at Newark Airport, latest sign of US transit and health infrastructure free fall

Health officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Wednesday that a measles-infected traveler passed through Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal B between 12:30-4:00 p.m. on May 12, potentially exposing thousands of travelers to the highly contagious disease.

6. US Treasury Secretary issues threat in tariff negotiations

Bessent’s threat that countries which do not bow to the US demands for “good faith” negotiations will receive a letter is an indication that far from fading away, as financial markets may have hoped, the tariff war is set to intensify.

7. Trump visits Capitol Hill to whip up votes for military spending and social counterrevolution 

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with House Republicans at the Capitol to whip up support for his tax and spending package, officially known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The more than 1,100-page monstrosity is a blueprint for social counterrevolution at home and world war abroad which House Republicans are aiming to advance before the end of the month.

Efforts by the corporate media to present the legislation as a routine policy measure are a deliberate smokescreen, aimed at concealing the historic scale of the assault on social programs. If passed— requiring only a simple majority in both Republican-controlled houses of Congress— the bill will result in millions of people, including children and the elderly, being denied healthcare and food, condemning many to premature death.

*****

The working class cannot and will not passively endure this historic assault on its social and economic position. Just over 100 days into Trump’s second administration, there have already been nationwide protests and near-daily strike authorization votes from workers across the country. It is this powerful social force—the international working class—that must be mobilized to stop the pillaging of society’s resources for the enrichment of a criminal financial oligarchy.

8. Musk’s gutting of workplace safety and the investigation into the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. 

Trump has put Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and notorious violator of basic workplace safety measures, in charge of removing whatever remains of federal occupational safety and health measures and any other regulations, which the ruling class sees as an unacceptable restriction on corporate profit making.

*****

It is clear that Trump and Musk are looking to return workers to conditions of industrial slavery that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were depicted in such novels as Émile Zola’s Germinal (1884-85) about French coal miners, and Upton Sinclair’s 1905-06 classic The Jungle, about Chicago meatpackers.

These conditions have been produced by both corporate-controlled parties, including the Democrats, who are now imposing Trump’s savage austerity measures.

If anything is made clear by Musk’s record it is this: the government is no neutral arbiter. It cannot be relied upon to stop the deaths, and is in fact working to ensure ever greater profits for the financial oligarchy at the cost to workers’ safety and lives.

9. Indiana executes Benjamin Ritchie, inmate with “severe brain damage,” and denies media access

Ritchie’s attorneys had fought his death sentence, arguing that information about his intellectual disability had not been considered at his trial. He was diagnosed with Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a form of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder resulting from his mother’s daily alcohol and drug use during pregnancy. Such prenatal exposure can cause “severe brain damage,” which medical professionals say can limit cognitive functioning to a level similar to someone with an intellectual disability.

10. Australian central bank cuts interest rates amid global economic turmoil

Despite being welcomed by the Albanese Labor government as providing cost-of-living relief, the decision will have only a marginal effect on home mortgage payments and rents, which have soared since the government first took office in May 2022.

11. The Correspondent: The frameup and incarceration of Australian journalist Peter Greste

The Correspondent, the latest film by director Kriv Stenders, dramatizes the 2013 frame-up and jailing in Egypt of Australian journalist Peter Greste on bogus “terrorism” charges. The script, written by Peter Duncan, is based on Greste’s book The First Casualty (2017) which recounts his 400-day incarceration, beginning in Cairo’s infamous Tora Prison and ends with his eventual release and deportation to Australia.

12. Trump administration denounces Colombia for joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Striking a delicate balance between China and the US, Lula, Petro and other Latin American leaders want to try to benefit from Trump’s trade war. While Trump is pressuring trading partners to distance themselves from China in exchange for a reduction in tariffs with the US, Latin American leaders want to use growing relations with China to try to attract American investment to the region.

13. Pro-EU candidate Dan wins Romanian presidential elections

The pro-EU candidate and mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, has won the presidential elections in Romania, ostensibly ending a political crisis that began with the annulment of the elections in December 2024. Dan secured over 53 percent of the vote.

With a relatively high turnout of 64.75 percent— an increase of over 10 percent compared to the first round— the result reflects a broad rejection of the Trump-inspired rhetoric espoused by his far-right opponent, George Simion of the fascist AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) party.

14. Canadian postal worker calls for unified struggle with American colleagues at USPS Rank-and-File Committee meeting

“We should not be lining up behind our own ruling classes on the basis of reactionary nationalism. Unfettered by the treacherous union bureaucracies, we could unleash our collective social power to fight for credible demands to defend our jobs, and improve our wages and working conditions. This is why we are here today.”

15. The demoralized pessimism of Chris Hedges’ “New Dark Age”: David North responds:

To blame humanity in general for the genocide is to obfuscate the specific responsibility of the imperialist leaders and the system they represent for the crimes committed against the people of Gaza.

16. UK seeks to shore up relations with Europe at London summit centered on military security alliance

Geopolitically, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU significantly knocked its standing on the world stage, removing it from one of the world’s three major trading blocs, alongside the US and China. Britain also lost much of its usefulness to the US as the most reliably pro-Washington voice among the major EU powers. “Britain is back on the world stage,” [Prime Minister] Starmer announced at Monday’s press conference. 

17. Organize rank-and-file resistance to the CWU’s pact with Kretinsky at Royal Mail

The May 16 Communication Workers Union Letter to Branches is another PR exercise defending backroom deals with Royal Mail and billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group, which completed its £3.6 billion buyout on April 30.

18. Communist Party Marxist-Kenya’s “International Theoretical Conference”: Stalinist parties gather to disorientate workers and youth

Kenya, like all former colonial countries, is not a semi-feudal society but a fully capitalist one, integrated into global markets and dominated by capitalist social relations. Nairobi is a financial hub for East Africa, hosting the African headquarters or regional offices of global banks such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, and JPMorgan Chase, alongside multinational corporations including Google, Microsoft, General Electric, Maersk, and Coca-Cola. Kenya’s agricultural, industrial, and service sectors are oriented toward global export, from horticulture and tea to digital finance and call centers.

Far from being a “petty commodity economy,” Kenya is, despite being a country oppressed by imperialism, a site of intense capital accumulation, speculation, and exploitation, ruled by a bourgeoisie tied to international finance capital. It is not shaped by feudal landholding or subsistence exchange, but by wage labor, commodity production, and the imperatives of profit.

19. The fraud of Starmer, Macron and Carney’s “opposition” to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza

After nineteen months of their colluding with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as tens of thousands were killed and Gaza was destroyed, the three leaders have issued a declaration, both cynical and toothless, that they strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Imperialism launches its “final solution” to the Palestinian
question

The final stages of Israel's genocidal "final solution"—the mass murder and deportation of Gazans— is being carried with the full support of all the imperialist powers and their Arab bourgeois lackeys.

*****

What is unfolding in Gaza, a crime of monumental proportions, has the most far-reaching political implications. It exposes the essential nature of imperialism and all “democratic” capitalist governments. In his imperishable analysis of imperialism, written in 1916 in the midst of World War I, Lenin warned that the distinction between bourgeois democracies and the old monarchical autocracies was being obliterated. A century later, modern imperialist regimes, the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights, justify, support and even applaud the mass murder of an entire population.

The normalization of genocide is an inseparable component of the intensification of attacks on democratic rights, the impoverishment of the working class and the war plans of the imperialist governments. In all of the imperialist capitals, from Washington to Berlin, London and Tokyo, governments are massively expanding military spending while slashing social programs.

While the leaders of every imperialist government—and their Middle Eastern client regimes—support the genocide carried out by Israel, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population is horrified by these crimes. In cities and towns across the globe, millions of people—including countless thousands of Jews—have joined mass protests against the Gaza genocide. An unbridgeable chasm has opened between the mass of the world’s people, outraged by the genocide, and their governments.

2. Political issues revealed in Biden’s advanced cancer diagnosis

Far from “defending democracy” the Democratic Party, with Bernie  Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the forefront, sought to cover up and conceal Biden’s advanced health problems in order to install  Kamala Harris, a trusted agent of imperialism and advocate of  continuing war against Russia and genocide in Gaza.

3. Protesters at mass London demonstration denounce Israel’s Gaza genocide

 “They're cracking down on freedom of speech because they want to crack down on anyone who wants to take action against what's happening. It seems to me like it's at least British collusion with Israel because they're selling weapons and they're doing big business with it.”

4. US postal workers discuss how to fight privatization at USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee meeting

The meeting discussed the program from the Committee’s recent statement in response to the appointment of David Steiner, a member of the Fedex Board of Directors, as new Postmaster General, and took reports from postal workers around the world.

5. University job cuts continue under re-elected Australian Labor government

Returned to office with the backing of the campus trade unions, the Albanese government is presiding over the elimination of thousands of jobs in universities, especially in arts and humanities.

6. The 2025 San Francisco International Film Festival— Part 3: Only on Earth (Spain), The Wolves Always Come at  Night (Mongolia), I Dreamed His Name (Colombia), The Brink of Dreams (Egypt) and Beloved Tropic (Panama):  Sincerity and passivity

There are many difficult, urgent social, political and cultural problems at present. And there are numerous filmmakers willing to address them, to one extent or another.

7. Australia: New South Wales Labor government moves to slash workers’ compensation

This is an attack on the fundamental premise of workers’ compensation legislation— that employers are financially responsible for workplace injuries, illness and death.

8. Moody’s cuts US credit rating as debt crisis grows

For the first time in history the US does not have a top rating from any of the top three credit agencies

9. New Zealand Greens posture as “socialist” with alternative budget

While the NZ government has denounced the Greens as “Marxist” and  “socialist,” it is nothing of the sort: The party has a long record of supporting and joining right-wing, pro-war Labour governments.

15. Neo-fascist Chega surges in Portugal as ruling right-wing Democratic Alliance coalition wins election

Responsibility for the rise of Chega lies with what the media promote as the "left" in Portugal, which has betrayed and repressed an increasingly militant wave of class struggles in recent years.

10. Support independent rank-and-file inquiry into the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams— call from National Steel Car workers in Canada

"The basic cause of Ronald Adams Sr.’s death was the same as that of the three deaths at our plant right here in Hamilton: the prioritization of corporate profits over the safety and very lives of the workers who produce them."

11. Peruvian general strike demands resignation of President
Boluarte

This strike was distinguished from previous ones due to the broader participation and scope of its demands.

12. Left Party conference hides support for Germany's Merz government with left-wing rhetoric

While resolutions and speeches were not short on radical rhetoric aimed at appealing to radicalized young people and workers, they remained deliberately vague in order to cover up the party’s right-wing realpolitik.

13. Workers Struggles: The Americas

• Bolivia:

March by supporters of Evo Morales is repressed in La Paz

Ceramic workers strike over the death of a worker in Salta Province

• Canada:

Alberta civil servants vote to strike

 

Canadian Hearing Services workers in Ontario enter 4th week on strike 

• Chile:

Students expel presidential candidates from the University of Valparaiso

• Panama:

National strike continues in the face of government repression

• United States:

Last minute deal announced at General Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, blocking strike

 

Washington state hospital workers strike over wages, benefits and staffing issues 

Southern California beverage strike expands to another six Keurig Dr Pepper facilities

14. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk

 Internationally, major artistic figures such as Roger Waters and Ai Wei Wei as well as historians such as Mario Kessler and Christian Gerlach have supported the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. Many political tendencies have also condemned his imprisonment and called for his release, despite their political differences with the Trotskyist movement. These include Jill Stein from the Greens in the United States, and several groups and websites in Russia and Turkey. Most recently, the website of the Socialist Laborer Party in Turkey, and that of the Partisan Defense Committee, which is affiliated with the Spartacist tendency, have issued statements in support of Bogdan.