Biden claims Gaza ceasefire in sight as Palestinians starve
On the ground the reality is that the Palestinians are being starved to death, and Israel is expanding its war.
•Thomas Scripps
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Stormont’s return in Northern Ireland: not a “new dawn” at all
The deal arrived at between the British government and the Democratic Unionist Party has allowed the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive.
•Steve James
Opposing genocide in Gaza, US Air Force soldier live-streams self-immolation in front of Israeli embassy
As 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell succumbed to the flames, he repeatedly shouted, “Free Palestine!”
•Jacob Crosse
Paris war summit prepares for direct deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine
Facing the imminent collapse of NATO’s Ukrainian proxy forces amid massive losses, the Paris summit was called to lay the groundwork for the introduction of troops from NATO and EU member countries to fight Russia in Ukraine.
•Alex Lantier
MIT suspends pro-Palestinian group following “emergency action for Rafah” protest
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has suspended the pro-Palestinian Coalition Against Apartheid after the group conducted an “emergency action for Rafah” on February 12 outside the student center at the prestigious scientific institution.
•Kate Randall
Hundreds protest, hold vigils across US for non-binary Oklahoma high school student who died after being beaten
Nex Benedict’s family has said they will perform their own independent investigation into the 16-year-old's death.
•Chase Lawrence
Stellantis Kokomo workers meet to organize opposition to mass firing of supplementals
In response to the cuts a group supplemental and full-time Stellantis workers have formed the Rank-and-File Committee to Fight Job Cuts.
•George Kirby
Sri Lankan trade unions end protest with more futile appeals to government
The trade union leaderships are desperately attempting to block a unified national movement of the working class to fight the Wickremesinghe government and its IMF austerity measures.
•Our reporters
Flint, Michigan teachers, living in poverty, outraged over school board’s revoking of labor contract
The United Teachers of Flint has not called a strike vote, instead calling for closing schools and selling buildings.
•Mitch Marcus
US Labor Department reports 5,486 workplace fatalities in 2022 as on the job toll continues rise
According to the most recent US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) update there were 5,486 on the job deaths in 2022, a 5.7 percent rise over 2021.
•Steve Filips
Berlin Film Festival: Artists courageously speak out against Israel’s genocide despite right-wing media agitation
In a significant blow to the German political establishment and media the documentary film No Other Land won the Panorama Audience Award at this year’s film festival. A number of film makers made powerful statements against Israel’s genocide.
•Stefan Steinberg
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Dockworkers across Argentina were set to strike February 26 as anti-austerity protests, limited in scope and duration by the trade union bureaucracies, continue.
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The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide
Mehring Books is pleased to announce the publication of a new volume featuring three lectures given by David North in response to the eruption of war in Gaza.
•Mehring Books
Australian government’s universities report outlines pro-business and war restructuring
The Labor government’s Universities Accord final report, reveals a further restructuring of universities to satisfy the employment and research demands of the corporate elite and preparations for war.
•Mike Head
J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow: An optimistic view of humanity
Bayona’s film argues very firmly that camaraderie and self-sacrifice, and not “every man for himself” individualism, are what prevail in the bleakest conditions.
•Norisa Diaz
Washington D.C. Democrats and pseudo-left support draconian, punitive crime bill
As is the case in Democratic Party-run governments at the local and national levels, rather than deal with the root social causes of crime, bourgeois politicians advocate a massive crackdown on the poorest layers of the population and criminalizing poverty.
•Pete Salmon, Nick Barrickman
Climate change disruption of Atlantic currents reaching dangerous tipping point
The further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major system of currents throughout the Atlantic Ocean, is likely to have drastic climatic consequences in northern Europe and globally.
•Mark Wilson
Richmond, Virginia history teacher removed for lesson on Gaza genocide
Behind the actions against Catharine Massalha are powerful right wing forces. After a student recorded her in December, the student’s father sent the 12-minute audio recording to the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI), and the recording and a transcript were subsequently published by the Washington Examiner in late January.
•Clement Daly
Australian educators demand freedom of Julian Assange
A group of teachers from the northern and western working-class suburbs of Melbourne overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional freedom of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange.
•Committee for Public Education
Police attack anti-Netanyahu protesters as disillusionment with Gaza offensive grows
There is as yet only a small group protesting against the war itself, supporting a ceasefire and opposing Israel’s occupation, although there are signs this is growing.
•Jean Shaoul
Massive increase in anti-Muslim violence in Germany
Against the backdrop of the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza with the help of its NATO allies, violence against Muslims and Palestinians in Germany has increased dramatically in recent weeks and months.
•Joshua Seubert, Clemens Huber
UK Zionist Community Security Trust group equates opposition to Israel’s genocide with antisemitism
The CST’s “Antisemitic Incidents Report 2023” reinforces the campaign by the Conservative government, backed by the Labour opposition, to criminalise opposition to the genocidal actions of the Israeli state.
•Robert Stevens
New York Times report demolishes the narrative of the “unprovoked war” in Ukraine
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a lengthy article revealing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was instigated by a systematic and widespread campaign of military-intelligence aggression on the part of the United States.
•Patrick Martin
Israel pledges to assault 1.4 million Gaza refugees in Rafah city
A US-backed Israeli assault on the defenseless refugee camps in Rafah would cause catastrophic new Palestinian casualties, and risk war with Egypt and other regional powers.
•Alex Lantier
Addressing far-right and neo-Nazi supporters at CPAC, Trump and his allies outline police state agenda
Republican politicians, party operatives and former Trump officials called for bombing Mexico and deporting millions of people.
•Jacob Crosse
As anger boils over Stellantis mass firings, UAWD faction covers for Fain bureaucracy
Unite All Workers for Democracy, a faction of the UAW apparatus aligned with Shawn Fain, has initiated a toothless and diversionary petition campaign to the same union officials overseeing the mass firing of temp workers by Stellantis management.
•Shannon Jones
IYSSE holds first meeting at Otago University in New Zealand
The meeting in Dunedin last Thursday was held to establish the International Youth and Students for Social Equality as a student club at Otago, and to discuss the socialist strategy to fight against war and the genocide in Gaza.
•Our reporters
Macron pays false tribute to French-Armenian resistance fighter Missak Manouchian
Macron’s tribute is grotesquely insincere and politically sinister, as it aims to consolidate an alliance with political descendants of the fascist forces that murdered Manouchian.
•Alex Lantier
Bob Marley: One Love—Airbrushing the complicated life of the great reggae singer
Marley was more complex than painted here. Marcus Green offers only perfunctory indications of this complexity, confined within a framework of saintly justness.
•Paul Bond
Germany’s call for the bomb
Donald Trump’s announcement that he would no longer support European NATO states if he becomes president again, unless they rearm massively enough, is being used by the ruling class in Germany for an aggressive campaign in favour of its own nuclear weapons.
•Johannes Stern
Australian by-election campaign underscores crisis of political establishment
A loss for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in this weekend’s Dunkley by-election would reduce Labor’s slim parliamentary majority from two seats to just one, raising the spectre of an unstable minority government.
•Patrick O’Connor
3,000 academic workers at Toronto’s York University set to begin strike action Monday
Teaching assistants, graduate assistants, researchers and contract faculty are set to walk off the job Monday at Toronto’s York University. They are demanding wage increases to keep pace with inflation and make up for years of concessions, and job security to put an end to precarious employment.
•Sterling Oliver
This week in history: February 26-March 3
This column profiles important historical events which took place during this week, 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago and 100 years ago.
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Intense discussions at UK public meetings on “How can the genocide in Gaza be stopped?”
The meetings provoked an important dialogue on Gaza and the broader question of building a socialist leadership in the working class.
•Our reporters
How can the genocide in Gaza be stopped? The fight for an independent anti-war movement in the working class
This report was delivered by Socialist Equality Party National Secretary Chris Marsden at a public meeting in Sheffield on February 21, 2024.
•Chris Marsden
Netanyahu outlines plans for de facto Israeli annexation of Gaza
The plan envisages Israeli military buffer zones inside Gaza on all its borders, transforming the enclave into a giant prison camp overseen by a Palestinian puppet regime composed of representatives acceptable to Israel.
•Peter Symonds
Nvidia and AI fuel market frenzy
Nvidia, which two years ago made most of its money from selling graphics cards for computer games, has now become the world’s third largest company by market value.
•Nick Beams
Two years of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine
The imperialist governments have not a shred of concern for “democracy” in Ukraine. In reality, they intend to bring Ukraine into their sphere of influence as part of their drive to carve up the Russian Federation, seize its natural resources, and thereby prepare for military conflict with China.
•Jordan Shilton
Western media anoint Navalny’s widow leader of Russian “democratic” opposition
The adulation of Navalnaya has nothing to do with her significance as a political individual, much less her democratic credentials, of which, like her deceased spouse, she has none.
•Andrea Peters
Federal prosecutors charge journalist with 14 felonies for sharing unaired segments of antisemitic Tucker Carlson/Kanye West interview
Independent Florida journalist Timothy Burke is facing serious charges for accessing and sharing publicly available, but unbroadcast, video clips featuring former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and anti-Semite Kanye West/Ye.
•Jacob Crosse
Impact of Alabama Supreme Court ruling against in vitro fertilization spreads across the US
The devastating impact of the reactionary Alabama Supreme Court ruling that declared a frozen embryo to be an “unborn child,” with all the rights of a living child, is already being widely felt.
•Kevin Reed
Italian autoworker: “Build a strong class movement of workers internationally”
In the context of a slew of deaths on the job, including an accident last Thursday that killed a 52-year-old worker at the Stellantis Pratola Serra engine factory, workers’ anger is escalating.
•Marc Wells
San Francisco artists protest Israeli massacres in Gaza by “vandalizing” their own works
The artists unfurled a banner that read “Stop Funding Genocide.” Several of them went to work on their own art pieces, using fake blood as well as paint.
•David Walsh
Stop the smear campaign against opponents of war at German universities! No to the tightening of the Higher Education Act!
For weeks, the German media and establishment politicians have been running a campaign against anti-war students and activists at universities. This reached a new level on February 19 when the Berlin state executive announced it would tighten the Higher Education Act to prevent students from graduating in “certain cases.”
•Gregor Link
Amazon argues in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional
The retailer has joined a growing corporate campaign to abolish government regulation and restore the open dictatorship of management.
•Erik Schreiber, Jerry White
After unions betray Quebec public sector workers’ struggle: Workers must draw the political lessons
Despite the militancy of the rank and file and immense public support, the nationalist pro-capitalist unions succeeded in running our struggle into the ground. If we are to prevail, the rank-and-file must build new organizations of struggle that fight to mobilize the social power of the working class, industrially and politically.
•Quebec Public Sector Workers Rank-and-File Coordinating Committee
New study finds hundreds of rural hospitals at risk of closure in the US
Half the hospitals operating in rural America are operating at a loss, and more than 20 percent are considered “vulnerable to closure.”
•Benjamin Mateus
New Zealand working class faces deepening social crisis
The full-frontal assault on living standards is the product of deliberate class policies, carried out for six years under Labour and now intensified by the far-right National-Party led coalition.
•John Braddock
Mass layoffs sweep Canada as interest rate hikes push economy toward recession
Bell Canada Enterprises announced on February 8 that it was slashing 9 percent of its workforce, accounting for 4,800 jobs, adding to a rising wave of layoffs sweeping the country.
•Niles Niemuth
Australian housing crisis: Full-time workers forced into homelessness
Four in ten people who sought assistance from a major homelessness charity in the past three years were employed but unable to meet the soaring cost of rent and other basic essentials.
•Vicki Mylonas
Kentucky legislature seeks to limit access to SNAP food stamp benefits
Republican Representative Wade Williams, the bill’s sponsor, states that the driving force behind the bill is to “get workers off the sideline and back into the workforce.”
•Milo Stevens
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
India: Apple phone manufacturing workers strike in Tamil Nadu for higher pay; Sri Lankan government sector educators protest for wage adjustments; DP world electricians locked out at Port Brisbane during wage negotiations
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UK Gaza genocide protesters threatened following Labour’s sabotage of ceasefire motion
The right-wing media was already primed for further restrictions on mass opposition to the genocide in Gaza, which is what Starmer made clear is meant by “terrorism”.
•Robert Stevens
RMT’s sellout pay deal on London Underground rammed through without a vote
Jared Wood, a member of the pseudo-left Socialist Party who is the RMT’s London Transport regional organiser played a direct role in the sellout. Socialist Worker has provided its usual apologetics
•Tony Robson
Israel ramps up provocations against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
With attention focused on Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza, its fascist government, settlers and security forces have intensified attacks on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
•Jean Shaoul
While layoffs accelerate at UPS, Teamsters bureaucracy makes huge donation to the Republican Party
The jobs massacre is accelerating at UPS, with new layoffs in New York, Ohio, Virginia, Rhode Island and North Carolina.
•Tom Hall
Australian pseudo-left promotes pro-genocide Labor Party in Gaza protest movement
The pseudo-left Solidarity group is aggressively advocating for Labor, including with a demand that its MPs be given a platform at pro-Palestinian protests, as it continues to support the genocide.
•Oscar Grenfell
Northern Virginia transit workers launch largest transit strike in half a decade in the Washington, D.C. region
The walkout is the largest strike the Washington, D.C. transit system has seen since 2019, when the Fairfax Connector struck briefly over unfair labor practices.
•Nick Barrickman, Linda Rios
The Assange case and the working class
The forces arrayed against Assange are powerful. But there is another, even more formidable force which has yet to have its say—the British, American and international working class.
•Thomas Scripps
Australian teachers and Melbourne health worker denounce Zionist doxxing of doctors
“This oppression has grown at an exponential rate, with our words and sympathy twisted, and labelled as hate speech”—Medical health records worker
•Our reporters
Biden White House prepares Trump-style anti-immigrant executive order barring asylum claims
Multiple media outlets have reported that President Joe Biden is considering using the same law employed by the Trump administration, 212(f) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, to block virtually all asylum claims to the US.
•Jacob Crosse
Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo allows children with measles to attend school
A measles outbreak in Broward County, Florida, has raised alarms about the declining measles vaccination rates among young children. However, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s reactionary surgeon general, has dismissed the threat posed by the epidemic.
•Benjamin Mateus
Congress prepares renewal of Section 702 warrantless surveillance by US intelligence
The House of Representatives delayed discussion on renewal of the Section 702 provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permit the US government to collect electronic communications without a warrant and are set to expire on April 19.
•Kevin Reed
Quebec government reinvokes “notwithstanding clause” to shield its chauvinist “secularism” law from court challenge
In 2021, a Quebec court found that Bill 21 violates basic rights and is having a “cruel” and “dehumanizing” impact on minorities, especially Muslim women. However, it nevertheless upheld the discriminatory ban on religious signs as the CAQ government’s invocation of the “notwithstanding clause” was "lawful."
•Hugo Maltais
Nonbinary student dead following beating by group in Oklahoma high school bathroom
16-year-old Nex Benedict was cornered by three older female students and suffered severe head injuries, passing away the following day. The attack takes place amid a far-right campaign against LGBTQ students led by the Republican Party.
•Chase Lawrence
Germany: The commemoration of the racist shooting spree in Hanau and the SPD’s crocodile tears
On February 19, 2020, 43-year-old racist Tobias Rathjen randomly shot nine young people from his neighbourhood before killing his mother and himself.
•Marianne Arens
Johnny & Me: An animated film about left-wing German artist John Heartfield
Heartfield’s artistic efforts of the 1920s and 1930s were directed against the same militarists, nationalists and fascists once again crawling out of the woodwork of today’s crisis-ridden capitalist society.
•Sybille Fuchs
Preeminent COVID-19 scientists urge action to confront Long COVID
In a joint article in Science magazine, Ziyad Al-Aly and Eric Topol call for funding of a systematic effort of research and treatment into a disorder that affects tens of millions in the US.
•Bill Shaw
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Farmers’ protests across Europe and worldwide signify food security threatened by austerity measures to fund wars and super-profits of rich; Iraqi teachers in some Kurdistan-controlled provinces continue stoppage over pay and conditions begun September; indefinite pay strike by public sector workers in Niger State, Nigeria as inflation hits 28 percent
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300 million people need humanitarian assistance, with one in five children living in or fleeing conflict zones
Acute food insecurity is the reality for 258 million people in 58 countries because of armed conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes, poverty and inequality.
•Jean Shaoul
Labour Party’s sordid manoeuvre against Gaza ceasefire motion plunges UK parliament into chaos
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer feared that much bigger divisions in his party would trigger a crisis for the entire ruling class.
•Chris Marsden
Alabama court ruling on embryos: A sweeping attack on democratic rights and science
The decision will effectively end in vitro fertilization, while declaring Christian fundamentalist principles the basis of state law.
•Patrick Martin
Successive governments have used Sri Lanka’s Essential Public Services Act multiple times to ban strikes
While Sri Lankan workers have defied government bans, the trade unions have not demanded or campaigned for the repeal of these repressive laws.
•W.A. Sunil
Australia: Wild storms result in largest-ever blackout in the state of Victoria
High winds led to widespread damage to the state’s power grid, including high-voltage transmission lines, and cut off supply to more than 530,000 homes and businesses.
•John Wilson, Peter Symonds
Ongoing Australian protests against Gaza genocide: “The capitalist ideology is really elitist and not empathetic at all”
“To be truly anti-colonial, to be truly pro-Palestine, to be truly for freedom for everyone, you have to be against the current world system of capitalism and exploitation.”
•Our reporters
Ukrainian forces withdraw from Avdeevka
The military setback is set to further deepen the political crisis of the NATO-backed Zelensky government.
•Jason Melanovski
The Munich War Conference
This year’s Munich Security Conference went further than any previous one. It served directly and immediately to intensify ongoing wars. The order of the day was not “peace through dialogue,” but military escalation.
•Peter Schwarz
Gaza becomes “death zone” as UN suspends humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands in north
The hundreds of thousands still languishing in Gaza City and the surrounding areas have barely received any aid for months due to Israel’s blockade. Reports have surfaced of families surviving on animal feed.
•Jordan Shilton
University of Michigan student government to investigate administration’s shutdown of referendum on Gaza genocide
On February 6, the U-M Central Student Government voted to investigate the university's halting of a student referendum on a resolution condemning Israeli genocide in Gaza.
•Luke Galvin, Barry Grey
“Vote Uncommitted”: A Democratic, pseudo-left ruse to swindle opponents of genocide into voting for Biden in November
In an attempt to bolster Biden’s floundering re-election campaign, especially among Arab Americans and youth in Michigan who are outraged over his support for the genocide in Gaza, pseudo-left elements are calling for an “Uncommitted” vote in the upcoming Michigan primary, while supporting Biden in the general election.
•Jacob Crosse
Australia: Paramedics threaten industrial action over Victorian Labor government wage cuts
As well as opposing what amounts to a massive wage cut in relation to the soaring cost of living, paramedics are seeking improvements to the dire conditions they confront as a result of the broader crisis across public health.
•Margaret Rees, Martin Scott
Australia: Flood victims plan convoy to parliament to protest government betrayal
People in the Northern Rivers region are opposing the flouting of the flood relief vows made by federal and state government leaders after thousands of homes were destroyed or badly damaged in the floods of two years ago.
•Mike Head
East Palestine, Ohio residents speak out one year after catastrophic train crash and chemical spill
While Norfolk Southern, the EPA and the Biden administration want to close the book on East Palestine, residents of this small eastern Ohio community want everyone to know that they are still suffering the health effects of the deliberate polluting of their town.
•Samuel Davidson
No Other Land–A courageous statement against Israel’s crimes and their defenders
The documentary is a courageous and unsparing indictment of the German, American and other Western governments.
•Verena Nees
Assange supporters march to Downing Steet as two-day hearing ends in London
Stella Assange told a rally, “They are liars, they are criminals, and they are persecuting a journalist who exposed them.”
•Our reporters
Assange lawyers rebuff anti-democratic US government extradition arguments
Mark Summers KC told the High Court, “What happened in this case is state retaliation ordered from the very top.”
•Thomas Scripps
Five year old asylum seeker died of sepsis from strep, COVID and other infections linked to overcrowding in Chicago shelter
In the days immediately after the young boy’s death, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office issued a statement that included the claim, “The child does not appear to have died from an infectious disease.”
•Kristina Betinis
Winter COVID wave of mass infection continues across the US
After the holiday peaks, wastewater data from Biobot indicated an unexpected rise in COVID infections across the country for the month of February.
•Benjamin Mateus
80 hour workweeks, heat strokes, coronavirus outbreaks: Striking Molson-Coors workers describe overwork, unsafe working conditions at Ft Worth brewery
“The companies everywhere are making billions. They’re reinvesting in automation, not people,” one worker said. “We’re here to fight for our kids, for our future.”
•Chase Lawrence
Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson: The Russian oligarchy pleads for “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism
The working class must draw important lessons from this interview. It exposes the political and historical bankruptcy of the oligarchic regime stemming from the Stalinist betrayal of the October Revolution and the subsequent restoration of capitalism.
•Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists
Top UN court hearings expose longstanding Israeli plans to occupy and annex Palestinian land
At the same time that the US exercised its veto power on the Security Council to clear the way for Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation against the civilian population of Gaza, legal proceedings were underway in the International Court of Justice exposing the extent to which Israel has been flouting international law for decades in its drive to illegally occupy and annex Palestinian territory.
•Tom Carter
Spain’s PSOE-Sumar government holds fraudulent “pro-Gaza” protest in Madrid
The PSOE, Sumar and Podemos attended the event, but all are deeply implicated in the military and financial support of Spain and all the NATO powers for Israel’s war on Gaza.
•Alejandro López
UAW reaches deal with Ford, calls off bogus strike threat at Ford Kentucky Truck Plant
As anger simmers among plant workers over the 2023 contract betrayal the UAW local at KTP is attempting a militant pose by talk of a strike Thursday.
•Shannon Jones
Paris police ban protests on Algeria as it presents UN resolution vs. Gaza genocide
The French government’s attack on the constitutional right to protest aims to strangle working class opposition against the Gaza genocide and imperialist wars against Russia and Africa.
•Alex Lantier
Australian Labor government announces major naval build-up directed against China
The government has declared that the navy will be the largest since World War II, in an expansion that centres on the development of substantial missile strike capabilities.
•Oscar Grenfell
Sri Lanka: Jaffna University Student Union’s silence on Gaza war
The silence on the Gaza massacre in an indictment not only of the student union but of the associated Tamil nationalist parties that beg for the US—the Zionist regime’s chief backer—to support their calls for greater powers in Sri Lanka.
•Naveen Dewage
IYSSE in New Zealand campaigns at Otago University against genocide in Gaza
The IYSSE has been speaking with students ahead of its first meeting at Otago University this Thursday, titled “Stop the genocide in Gaza! Build a socialist anti-war movement”
•our reporters
Interview with Dwayne Booth, Penn lecturer attacked over anti-genocide cartoons
Booth spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the attack on freedom of expression on campuses and the meaning of his artwork
•Landon Gourov
California Faculty Association ratifies sellout contract for 29,000 Cal State educators through sham vote
The vote was designed to exclude the possibility of expressing opposition to the deal. The union worded the ballot so that a “no” vote meant accepting the administration’s terms.
•Marc Wells
Recessionary trends in the world economy strengthening
The German central bank warned that the country’s economy was likely to further contract in the first quarter of this year.
•Nick Beams
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