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The fascist spectacle of the Republican National Convention

One need not idealize the American party conventions of decades past to acknowledge that this year’s Republican National Convention was an unprecedented spectacle of reaction and backwardness.

More than 33,000 machinists working at Boeing’s facilities in Washington and Oregon packed a Major League baseball stadium on Wednesday to vote by 99.9 percent to strike when their contract expires September 12.

Bryan Dyne

A new study in The Lancet demonstrates that face coverings dramatically reduce the load of SARS-CoV-2 in exhaled breath from infected persons. The reductions reached as high as 98 percent, with variations according to the type of face covering worn.

Bill Shaw

Alabama executes Keith Gavin despite serious constitutional questions in his case

Gavin had argued that his attorneys were ineffective during his trial and that the prosecution lacked forensic or DNA evidence against him. Defense counsel failed to present mitigating evidence that might have led jurors to vote for a life sentence without the possibility of parole instead of a death sentence.

Kate Randall

Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

South Korea: Strike at Samsung Electronics enters second week; Indian railway workers demonstrate against new national pension scheme; Australia: Ramsay Health Care nurses in New South Wales protest over workloads and pay

Regional transport workers’ strikes in Portugal and Italy; general strike in West Bank cities after weekend slaughter of Palestinians by IDF in Gaza; aviation workers at South African airports on indefinite strike over pay structure

Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa

general strike in most cities in West Bank after weekend slaughter of Gazan Palestinians in so-called designated safe area of al-Mawasi and in a refugee camp west of Khan Younis by IDF; aviation workers at South African airports on indefinite strike over pay structure affecting baggage handling and ground services

Israeli airstrikes massacre hundreds across Gaza over the weekend

On Saturday, Israel launched a massive airstrike on a humanitarian zone in the coastal town of al-Mawasi where Palestinians had sought refuge from the relentless bombing of Gaza. The Health Ministry said it was one of the deadliest attacks in the nine-month siege, with 92 killed and 300 wounded.

Kevin Reed

50,000 foreclosures expected to be enforced in Greece this year

The most high-profile eviction case was that of Ioanna Kolovou, a retired journalist. She was evicted from her home along with her 28-year-old disabled son at the end of January this year. According to reports a large crowd gathered outside her home which was attacked with tear gas by the riot police who then arrested Kolovou and her son.

John Vassilopoulos
The Gaza genocide and the death of Aaron Bushnell: What are the political lessons?

This lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, March 12.

This week in history: July 15-21

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.

After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War

The capitulation of Serbia to the US-NATO onslaught brings to an end the last major strategic experience of the twentieth century. Its bloody conclusion endows the century with a certain tragic symmetry. It began with the suppression of the anti-colonial uprising of the Chinese Boxers. The century closes with a war that completes the reduction of the Balkans to the status of a neo-colonial protectorate of the major imperialist powers.

David North

Educators in Turkey protest draft anti-labor law

While the Turkish political establishment and the trade union apparatus have been working to suppress the growing discontent of the working class against the ongoing cost of living crisis, the police attacked a protest by educators in Ankara against the new anti-labor law.

Barış Demir

West Nile fever epidemic in Israel

There has as yet been no mention of the implications of the WNV outbreak for the population of Gaza, suffering an Israeli genocide that has included the decimation of health infrastructure.

Benjamin Mateus
On the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup

Fifty years after Chile’s horrific September 11 coup, its political relevance is becoming ever more urgent as the specter of dictatorship once again haunts the political life of Latin America.

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Julian Assange arrives in Australia free

In a press conference, Stella Assange hailed a global support movement for creating the conditions for Assange's freedom, while warning of an ongoing assault on press freedom that had to be fought.

Oscar Grenfell

Julian Assange is free, but the struggle to defend democratic rights continues

On Monday, Julian Assange walked out of the UK’s Belmarsh Prison a free man, following five years of imprisonment and nearly 15 years of persecution by a cabal of imperialist governments led by the United States which hounded him for exposing their crimes.

Statement of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board
NOW AVAILABLE
COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic

Mehring Books, the publishing arm of the Socialist Equality Party (US), is proud to announce the publication of Volume 1 of COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic, a compilation of the World Socialist Web Site's coverage of this global crisis.

Read the introduction
One Hundred Years Since the Death of Lenin

January 21 marked 100 years since the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. This page includes a collection of essays reviewing the life and ideas of the great Marxist theoretician, founder of the Bolshevik Party, and co-leader of the Russian Revolution.

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Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

The essays in this book, though written over the span of more than 40 years, are connected by a central argument: Leon Trotsky was the most significant figure in the history of socialism during the first four decades of the twentieth century, and his legacy remains the critical and indispensable theoretical and political foundation of the ongoing contemporary struggle for the victory of world socialism.

Order your print or epub version of the book from Mehring Books today.

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Statement of the Editorial Board
For a Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Inquest is necessary to break through the cover-up, lies and misinformation that have been used to justify policies responsible for the avoidable deaths of millions.

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25 years since the death of Vadim Rogovin

Vadim Z. Rogovin (10 May 1937 – 18 September 1998) was a Soviet Marxist sociologist and historian. Working in close collaboration with the International Committee of the Fourth International, Rogovin helped lay the foundations for the Trotskyist movement’s fight against the post-Soviet school of historical falsification, including in his six-volume Was There an Alternative? This page collects major essays and commemorations on Rogovin as well as links to his own writings.

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The Wuhan lab lie: “Weapons of mass destruction” redux

In an uncanny instance of history repeating itself, the lies used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on false claims about “weapons of mass destruction” are being used to promote the United States’ unprecedented military buildup around China.

Andre Damon

A discredited conspiracy theory about the origins of COVID-19

The Wuhan Lab Leak slander being resurrected to bolster US war drive against China

The Wall Street Journal disclosed that the Department of Energy has shifted its opinion on the origin of the coronavirus to it being most likely a result of a lab leak. However, unnamed sources who have read the report indicate the evidence is of low confidence.

Benjamin Mateus

Marcus Garvey and the reactionary logic of racialist politics

More than one hundred years after the formation of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Marcus Garvey's legacy remains highly relevant in the struggle to overcome efforts to divide the working class along racial lines.

Lawrence Porter
Wije Dias: A fighter for Trotskyism (1941-2022)

Comrade Wije Dias, the longtime general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), died in Colombo on July 27, 2022. This exhibit includes two tributes to Wije by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North as well as a selection of Wije’s most significant articles and speeches.

Forty-five years since the assassination of Tom Henehan (1951-1977): A Revolutionary Life

October 16 marked the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Tom Henehan, a member of the Political Committee of the Workers League—the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the US. We are republishing here a tribute delivered by David North at a meeting in 1997.

Timeline of thirty years of war: The historical background to the US-NATO conflict with Russia

This interactive timeline presents some of the most important events that have brought humanity to the brink of World War III. It includes links to critical articles and statements produced by the International Committee of the Fourth International over the past 30 years.

View the Timeline
The fight for Trotskyism and the political foundations of the World Socialist Web Site

The WSWS is publishing the report delivered by David North 25 years ago, on February 1, 1997, motivating the proposal to end publication of the SEP’s printed newspaper and replace it with an international website; as well as North’s reply to the National Committee ‘s discussion of the proposal.

The normalization of American-style fascism

The corporate media treats the Republican National Convention, an unprecedented display of anti-immigrant bigotry, religious mania, and nationalistic frenzy, as though it were an ordinary political event.

Patrick Martin
WSWS Review
Thirty years since the dissolution of the USSR

Review the most critical essays, lectures and letters produced by the ICFI in the course of its intervention in response to the crisis of Stalinism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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New Zealand: Court action continues over Pike River mine disaster

Families of some of the 29 workers killed in the 2010 coal mine disaster are continuing their fight for answers about why authorities dropped charges against Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall over the extremely dangerous conditions in the mine.

Tom Peters