30,000 Sri Lankan health workers protest inadequate COVID-19 protection
Health workers cannot win their demands by pressuring capitalist regimes, which is why they need to take the struggle for their rights into their own hands.
•Our reporters
Latest articles
Biden, Macron pledge to meet amid mounting US-EU conflicts over China
EU officials criticized Washington’s signing of the anti-Chinese AUKUS alliance and the canceling of a Franco-Australian submarine contract.
•Alex Lantier
America’s deadliest pandemic: COVID-19 eclipses the Spanish flu
This month, COVID-19 officially became the deadliest outbreak of infectious disease in American history, eclipsing the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans over two years.
•Benjamin Mateus
Scientists find new evidence of the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19
The discovery by an international team of scientists further discredits the claims, promoted by the corporate media and the Trump and Biden administrations, that the pandemic originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
•Andre Damon
Wall Street welcomes latest Fed decisions
While he indicated the Fed could announce a “tapering” of its asset prices in November, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the Fed’s monetary policy would remain “accommodative” and any lift in interest rates was “well away.”
•Nick Beams
Australia: Why are the socialists leading the fight to defend basic democratic rights?
The Socialist Equality Party is conducting an intensive campaign against the new anti-democratic electoral laws pushed through the Australian parliament.
•Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
South Australian hospitals in crisis but health union takes no action
The South Australian hospital system is falling apart, due to understaffing and lack of facilities, despite low numbers of COVID-19 infections in the state.
•Margaret Rees
Pennsylvania COVID-19 cases and deaths up tenfold after full reopening of schools
The surge in infections and deaths has been driven by the lifting of all restrictions and the reopening of schools in August, promoted by Democratic Governor Tom Wolf along with local politicians.
•Samuel Davidson
Dana worker with head injury suffered seizure on the job
That this incident took place at all was made possible by the contract extension brokered by the USW and UAW, in defiance of overwhelming demands by Dana workers for a national strike.
•George Kirby
Former French health minister charged for “endangering the lives of others” over COVID-19 policies
Buzyn’s indictment underscores the widely felt sense in the population that the ruling class pursued a policy of social murder in response to the pandemic.
•Anthony Torres
Washington state carpenters speak on struggle, denounce union sabotage of strike
The walkout of more than 2,000 carpenters in Seattle and across Washington state escalated Wednesday as rank-and-file workers defied the Northwest Carpenters Union (NWCU) and expanded the strike to other construction sites.
•Our reporters
New Zealand government eases COVID-19 lockdown in Auckland
The decision to ease restrictions in Auckland, with many businesses and schools allowed to reopen, poses significant risks under conditions where dozens of COVID-19 cases are being detected every week.
•Tom Peters
Judge issues strikebreaking injunction against Kentucky distillery workers
A judge issued an injunction Tuesday limiting the actions of picketing workers at the Heaven Hill distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, and distillery owners have robbed employees of health insurance to break the strike.
•Warren Duzak
Cuban musician, composer and band leader Adalberto Álvarez (1948-2021)
A reader has contributed this obituary of the remarkable Cuban musician, composer and band leader Adalberto Álvarez.
•Rufus Boulting-Hodge
College football season continues in front of full crowds, risking massive COVID-19 super-spreaders
The motivating factor for the schools to allow these deadly events is profit. Last year, limitations on in-person attendance and game cancellations caused schools to lose out on hundreds of millions in anticipated revenue.
•Andy Thompson
What can be expected from a red-green federal government in Germany?
Like the Left Party, the SPD and the Greens have ensured that an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the bottom upwards has taken place during the coronavirus pandemic.
•Christoph Vandreier
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei final election rally: A socialist perspective against welfare cuts, militarism and herd immunity
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) held its closing rally for the federal election on September 19.
•Our reporters
Pandemic and surge in food prices deepens global hunger
What most analysts will not mention is the role of market manipulation, profiteering and speculation in pushing up prices. Speculation has been fuelled by the supply of ready cash provided by capitalist governments, particularly in the US and Europe in response to the financial market meltdown of March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
•Jean Shaoul
Biden gives Johnson short shrift even as UK ruling class lines up behind AUKUS
So dependent is the UK government on proving itself a loyal ally to the US that Johnson followed up his failed appeals to Biden with a provocative jibe at France.
•Thomas Scripps
Mobilize the working class to support the striking Washington state carpenters!
The nearly week-long strike by thousands of carpenters centered in the metro Seattle area has reached a critical juncture.
•Kayla Costa, Jerry White
Australian anti-vaccine, extreme right demonstrators target construction industry
The construction union is responsible for creating the political climate within which the extreme right is attempting to gain traction among a layer of building workers.
•Patrick O’Connor
China’s Evergrande set to default on debt payment
Financial markets have priced in the prospect of payment as unlikely with one of its bonds trading at less than 30 percent of its face value.
•Nick Beams
Stanley Nelson’s Attica: A striking treatment of the 1971 prison revolt and massacre
This year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), like every other global public event at present, took place in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. A documentary about the 1971 Attica prison revolt was one of the more powerful films.
•David Walsh
Faculty at University of Delaware describes unsafe conditions on campus
A faculty member at the University of Delaware describes the conditions students and faculty face as the fall semester begins and the inadequate measures taken by the University.
•Dmitri Church
New Zealand PM “pleased to see” AUKUS military pact
New Zealand is not part of the recently announced military pact between the US, Britain and Australia targeting China, but Prime Minister Ardern welcomed their aggressive engagement in the Pacific region.
•Tom Peters
Workers oppose Australia’s anti-democratic electoral laws: “People don’t hold the views of the three main parties, which all defend the capitalist framework”
A new Socialist Equality Party electoral member said: “Wherever you go it is almost the same. All over the world if the people don’t demand their rights the governments don't give them. You have to fight for your rights.”
•Our reporters
IG Metall union agrees to cut 2,600 jobs at Siemens Energy in Germany
Although the Siemens workforce demonstrated their willingness to fight through numerous demonstrations, IG Metall and the works councils never intended to wage a fight to defend jobs.
•Peter Schwarz
Chicago police refuse to give answers about killing of 28-year-old Turell Brown
The Chicago Police Department has kept obstinately quiet since officers killed Brown on Chicago’s South Side on Sunday, stating “that’s for COPA to investigate.”
•Jessica Goldstein
Volvo worker describes conditions at Volvo New River Valley Plant after UAW betrayed five-week strike
Workers at the plant still have not received copies of the contract, and are discovering loopholes that are cheating them out of holiday pay.
•Ed Hightower
Three children dying of COVID-19 every day in the US
At least 225,978 children were infected with COVID-19 last week and 20 deaths were recorded in the same time frame.
•Genevieve Leigh
California wildfires threaten millennia-old giant sequoias
The most immediate danger is from the KNP Complex, a recent merging of the recently sparked Paradise Fire and Colony fire, which has grown to 25,142 acres and is 0 percent contained.
•Adria French
Stop the deportation of Haitian refugees!
Scenes of border agents on horseback charging and whipping defenseless Haitian immigrants on the US southern border have provoked shock and revulsion across America and around the world.
•Bill Van Auken
Wealth-X report: Billionaire wealth surged during pandemic
A new report from research firm Wealth-X found that the global COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the growth of social inequality and witnessed an unprecedented accumulation of wealth among the most privileged layers in society.
•Trévon Austin
Biden proclaims “new era” of human rights imperialism at UN
As the White House presides over a massive nuclear buildup targeting China, Biden told the UN that America would rededicate itself to the preservation of “human rights” and “global cooperation.”
•Andre Damon
Rising gas prices threaten a “winter of discontent” in Britain
According to trade association Oil & Gas UK, the price of wholesale gas has more than quadrupled since this time last year. It has jumped by 250 percent since January and 70 percent since August.
•Robert Stevens
UK Weetabix engineers begin strike against fire and rehire
The engineers are determined to resist pay cuts and restructuring of their contracts that would roster them to work more days, with the loss of shift allowance, enforced by the threat of dismissal.
•Tony Robson
Trudeau and his Liberals scrape back into office with another minority in Canada’s federal election
The results of Canada’s pandemic election constitute a rebuke of the entire political establishment. All of the major parties, including the trade union-backed NDP, emerge diminished.
•Roger Jordan, Keith Jones
Sabadell bank and Spanish trade unions prepare to sack 1,900 workers
Sabadell Bank, one of Spain’s largest financial institutions, is preparing to dismiss 12.5 percent of its workforce in negotiations with the trade unions.
•Santiago Guillen
Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government calls for “normalization” of COVID-19
Calls to “normalize” the virus amount to demanding that workers accept mass death from a preventable disease as an inevitable part of life.
•Alice Summers
“Dimensions of a Crime”: How the Wehrmacht murdered millions of Soviet prisoners of war
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst is showing an exhibition on the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in World War II. Due to the great interest, the exhibition is now being extended beyond the original date of October 3 to January 16, 2022.
•Verena Nees
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Nurses across Canada participated in a Day of Action against provincial governments’ mishandling of the pandemic and miserable working pay and working conditions while workers in Uruguay protested government policies.
•
Enthusiastic response to fight against Australia’s anti-democratic election laws at SEP public meeting
“We are defending much more than the right to mark the SEP on an election ballot. We are defending the democratic and social rights of the entire working class,” Eric London tells online meeting.
•Our reporter
Sri Lankan workers and youth speak out against new emergency law
“When the unlimited powers that are centered in the president’s hands through the state of emergency are understood, it is clear that the aim of these laws is to crush working-class struggles, including protests.”
•Our reporters
New York Times revels in remote-control assassination of Iranian scientist
Last November’s US-Israeli state murder of Iran’s top nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was recognized at the time as a potential trigger for a catastrophic war in the Middle East.
•Bill Van Auken
Treasury Secretary Yellen issues another warning on debt ceiling
In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal Yellen warned of an economic “catastrophe,” if the ceiling is not lifted by Congress, and disruption, if it is left to the last minute.
•Nick Beams
Australia: Enngonia indigenous community faces desperate situation as COVID-19 spreads to western New South Wales
State and federal governments have essentially left regional indigenous communities, who lack proper supplies and medicines to fend for themselves, while police enforce lockdowns.
•our reporters
Thousands more Australian truck drivers to strike as COVID-19 pandemic accelerates health and safety crisis
Following the 24-hour Toll strike last month, workers at the other major transport companies are beginning to enter into struggle against declining conditions as freight demand intensifies.
•Patrick Davies
Dana workers in powerful position to shut down auto industry and win their demands
The “just-in-time” parts delivery system, first introduced to undermine the position of workers, has made the auto industry vulnerable to strategic strikes.
•WSWS Autoworker Newsletter
The UN General Assembly and the threat of imperialist aggression against China
The UN General Assembly opened in New York City under the shadow of the sudden announcement last week of the Australia-UK-US alliance aimed at China.
•Alex Lantier
Deere workers support joint struggle with Dana auto parts workers
Despite the efforts of the UAW to isolate ongoing struggles among workers at Deere and Dana from each other, workers continue to speak out over the common nature of the problems they face.
•Marcus Day
1232 KMS: Seven Indian migrant workers head home during the COVID-19 pandemic
The film documents the odyssey of a group of workers who, having been stripped of all income by the Modi government’s pandemic lockdown, bicycle to their village in Bihar hundreds of miles away.
•Yuvan Darwin, Daniel Woreck
Russian elections overshadowed by COVID-19 surge
Parliamentary elections held this weekend were marked by an almost complete blackout of the social issues affecting the working class, above all, the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Clara Weiss
New York City mayor reduces quarantine protocols in schools
The curtailment of quarantining will undoubtedly accelerate the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus, which is already surging through the city, among children and in their communities.
•Sandy English
US Border Patrol agents whip and corral Haitian migrants
Photos showing border agents herding migrants like cattle produced political shock waves in the United States and around the world.
•Patrick Martin
Socialist Equality Party (Canada) holds meeting to discuss pandemic election and struggle for socialism
Saturday’s meeting, which was addressed by leading members of the SEPs of Canada, the United States, and Germany, advanced a fighting program for the working class.
•our reporters
Mass infections threatened as students return to UK campuses
Even before most students have arrived on campus, outbreaks are being reported at multiple universities. Students and university staff are in this position thanks to the treachery of the education unions.
•Henry Lee
The Freedom to Vote Act: Another capitulation to the Republican assault on democratic rights
The new bill kneels to the demands of right-wing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin while failing to reverse the most serious Republican attacks on voting rights.
•Alex Findijs
“Socialism is more popular today than ever”: SGP candidate Christoph Vandreier appears on German public television and in an online interview
“We are not trying to alleviate the symptoms of a sick system, but instead advocate the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a socialist society,” explains Vandreier at the beginning of the segment.
•Marianne Arens
Educators and parents must unite in Washington state to close the schools, end the pandemic, and save lives!
We have established this committee to oppose the dangerous and unsafe school reopenings in Washington. We aim to be a rallying point for educators, parents and all workers throughout the Pacific Northwest region.
•Washington Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee
Hospitals throughout US South remain inundated with COVID-19 patients as Delta variant surge continues
The latest wave of virus infections is taking a dangerous toll on hospitals in multiple states, as the influx of sick patients continues to place immense strains on hospital staffing and health care workers.
•Alex Johnson
“Biden gets it!”: Britain’s trade unions make their corporatist pitch to government and business
What Biden “gets” is that the trade unions are allies of the corporations and banks—their industrial police force.
•Chris Marsden
London bus workers demand reinstatement of David O’Sullivan, sacked over COVID-19 safety
At least 95 bus, tube and rail workers in London have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to new figures from Transport for London. The death toll includes 69 bus workers, 54 of whom were drivers, and 20 staff across the London Underground and rail network.
•Laura Tiernan and Miles Driver
Another wave of COVID-19 infections looms in Nepal
A recent International Commission of Jurists report on Nepal stated that Kathmandu “failed to prepare” for the 2021 resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic.
•Rohantha De Silva
BCTGM union rushes through sellout deal, ending nationwide strike by Nabisco workers
The BCTGM, which did not release details of the vote, forced workers to cast a ballot less than an hour after being given copies of the agreement in at least some cases.
•James Martin, Kayla Costa
Video: SEP meeting to oppose anti-democratic electoral laws—preview
The Socialist Equality Party held an online meeting yesterday which discussed Australia’s new electoral laws.
•Our reporters
Pacific governments plan border reopenings amid Delta surge
In line with capitalist governments elsewhere, the strategy is to reach an arbitrary level of vaccination coverage and remove restrictions to international travel.
•John Braddock
Australian election laws an “attack on the entire working class,” say SEP electoral members
“Liberal and Labor are capitalist parties—two sides of the same coin—and they’ve put these laws in place to block votes being taken away from them. They want it to be a two-party system and nothing else.”
•Our reporters
As fall begins in Northern Hemisphere, school reopenings fuel global spread of COVID-19
The global state of the pandemic and the role that schools play as centers of viral transmission make clear that all schools must be closed in order to eradicate COVID-19.
•Evan Blake
Australia: Victorian Labor government announces homicidal plan to lift lockdown
The Victorian government’s own modelling says there is a 63 percent chance the lifting of restrictions will overwhelm the state’s hospital system.
•Oscar Grenfell
Beijing condemns military pact between the US, Britain and Australia
The Chinese regime fears that Biden is accelerating the confrontation with China and preparations for war that began with President Obama and was expanded under Trump.
•Peter Symonds
Washington state carpenters enter third day of strike, defying union in fight for higher wages
Carpenters in Seattle and other cities rejected four contract proposals backed by the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters and are seeking to spread their strike to overturn decades of eroding living standards.
•Kayla Costa, David Fitzgerald
French officials warn AUKUS alliance undermines US-Europe relations
Paris denounced Washington’s sudden announcement of an Australia-UK-US alliance targeting China, and the related cancellation of a French-Australian submarine sale.
•Alex Lantier
Biden administration begins mass deportation flights from Texas to Haiti
Hundreds of Haitian refugees were flown back to Port-au-Prince Sunday in the first step of what officials said would be the removal of all 12,000 refugees sheltering under an underpass in Del Rio, Texas, on the US-Mexico border.
•Patrick Martin
Ford to shut down manufacturing operations in India, slash over 4,000 jobs
Ford’s decision to pull out of India is a part of the restructuring of the global auto industry and the escalation of the assault on jobs and living standards.
•Wasantha Rupasinghe
FDA advisory panel deals a blow to Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine booster plans
The FDA’s scientific advisory panel opposed Pfizer’s supplementary application for COVID-19 vaccine boosters by a wide margin.
•Benjamin Mateus
Baltimore Amazon workers forced to remain on the job amid bomb threats on 9/11 anniversary
Amazon has subjected its workers to threatening conditions throughout the pandemic, subordinating safety and well-being to the overarching drive for profit.
•Nick Barrickman
Pentagon admits Kabul drone strike targeted innocent civilians
General Frank McKenzie admitted in a US Department of Defense press conference on Friday that the deadly drone strike in Kabul on August 29 had killed “10 civilians including up to seven children.”
•Kevin Reed
German Network of Action Committees for Safe Education: “The situation in primary schools is alarming”
Students, teachers and parents discuss building action committees to oppose the spread of infection in schools.
•our reporters
Fifty years since the founding of the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter as the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International
The founding of the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter as the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International on September 18 and 19, 1971 was an event of the immense historical significance.
•Ulrich Rippert
Tens of thousands face eviction, social misery in Missouri with lifting of moratorium
According to the US Census Bureau, millions of people in the US face the possibility of imminent eviction.
•Cole Michaels
Hero journeys: Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman
The Night Watchman tells the story of the Turtle Mountain tribe of Chippewa in North Dakota as they fight to survive the US government’s attempt in 1953 and 1954 to “terminate” them.
•James McDonald
This week in history: September 20-26
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.
•
Allentown, Pennsylvania teachers defy union and reject mediator’s contract proposal
Teachers in the Allentown School District rejected the school district’s offer after having been forced to continue working in unsafe schools throughout the pandemic.
•Douglas Lyons
GKN auto workers to strike against closure of Birmingham UK factory
During the pandemic Unite and the trade unions have allowed sweeping redundancies with an estimated 10,000 jobs losses during 2020 across the car industry in the UK.
•Tony Robson
COVID-19 vaccine inequality: 75 percent of doses administered in just 10 countries
Vaccination rates are by far the lowest in Africa, where around 39 million or 3 percent of the continent’s 1.3 billion population have been fully vaccinated.
•Jean Shaoul
Michigan’s largest colleges end COVID-19 tracker notifications
Barely two weeks into the semester, two major university systems in the state said they were ending notifications to students of potential exposure to COVID-19, even as case numbers surge in Michigan.
•Sam Wayne, Matthew Brennan
US, UK, Australia military pact threatens war against China
The advanced US preparations for war are being driven not only by fears that China is overtaking the US economically, but the extraordinary economic, political and social crisis of US imperialism intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Peter Symonds
US military basing to expand in Australia, directed against China
The Washington communiqué commits Australia to hosting US troops, bombers, fighter aircraft and warships and acting as a logistics base for a military conflagration between nuclear-armed powers.
•Mike Head
Oppose the police witch hunt of striking teachers in Sri Lanka!
The Criminal Investigation Department has demanded government divisional secretaries provide the names and addresses of teachers who have organised demonstrations in an attempt to break their ongoing strike action.
•Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committee
Five children orphaned after parents die of COVID-19 in California’s Inland Empire
This tragedy is the outcome of the unsafe policies adopted by states and governments across the country that have reopened full-fledged to prioritize profits and the economy, despite the immediate danger it presents to workers and their families.
•Linda Rios
Mandatory seven-day week until Christmas at Stellantis Sterling Heights Assembly plant
Side deals negotiated by the UAW give the company the right to override limits on forced overtime and other basic work standards.
•Shannon Jones, Tom Hall
New Zealand government installing final seal at Pike River mine
The Labour Party-led government is close to permanently sealing Pike River mine, ending the underground investigation into the 2010 disaster that killed 29 men, for which no one has been held accountable.
•Tom Peters
US hospitals running out of beds amid COVID-19 surge
Hospitals across the country are reaching overcapacity as the Delta variant continues to spread.
•Benjamin Mateus
Israel reports that 11.2 percent of all children infected with SARS-CoV-2 suffer from long COVID
Despite the lie that vaccination of adults “protects” children, countries with high vaccination rates experience a surge in COVID-19 cases among children, along with horrifying reports of long COVID symptoms.
•Emily Ochiai
As COVID-19 infections and deaths mount in Texas schools, districts scramble to fill staff shortages
One of the states most ruthlessly pursuing the “herd immunity” strategy is Texas, where a growing number of educators and students have died from COVID-19 amid a wave of mass infections throughout the state.
•D. Lencho
Biden administration detains more than 200,000 immigrants along US-Mexico border last month
The Biden administration has started deporting families on “expulsion flights” to southern Mexico, where they are usually loaded onto buses by police and taken back to Central America.
•Kevin Martinez
Entertainment industry workers continue to work without a contract
Tens of thousands of entertainment industry workers, technicians, artisans and craftspersons are pushing for a strike after working without a contract for months as COVID-19 continues to spread.
•Hong Jian
COVID-19 continues to spread in Dana auto parts plants and surrounding communities
Tennessee and Kentucky, where Dana has eight plants, have been suffering horrific surges of COVID-19 fueled by the Delta variant in recent weeks.
•our reporters
Big Three autoworkers support Dana parts workers
Autoworkers at plants for the Big Three automakers, General Motors, Stellantis and Ford, are speaking out in support of the Dana Inc. workers as they take on the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) in their contract battle.
•Kathleen Martin
Australian postal workers support SEP campaign to defeat anti-democratic electoral laws
A meeting of postal workers yesterday passed a resolution condemning the anti-democratic laws and called on workers to join the SEP as electoral members.
•Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee
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