The emergence of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 is a devastating exposure of the herd immunity policy implemented by capitalist governments, which oppose lockdowns and other critical public health measures necessary to stop the spread of the disease.
Initial indications are that an unusual constellation of mutations makes the variant far more infectious than the Delta variant and potentially vaccine-resistant.
The Democratic administration of Governor Whitmer has responded to unprecedented case numbers with a thoroughly inadequate public health advisory.
In a sweeping report, Smit reviews US masking policies during the pandemic and makes clear which types of masks can prevent airborne transmission.
Information available to date about the new variant is chilling. South Africa’s surge has seen cases double in just two weeks, with fears the new variant accounts for most of them.
As the number of new cases grows, inequality is also sharply escalating.
The deaths of 51 people at a Russian mine, at which 914 safety violations were registered this year alone, is a social crime.
In his first hundred days as Peru’s president, Castillo has managed to move faster and further to the right than any of his predecessors.
The far-right organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to commit violent acts.
The report fails even to mention the role that Cuomo played in legislation that protected the owners of nursing homes and hospitals from liability in COVID deaths.
As a winter wave of infections and death gathers pace, Trudeau’s government is eliminating pandemic relief for workers and abetting the provinces in scrapping virtually all remaining safety measures.
An online discussion with leading international scientists and workers involved in the fight against COVID-19.
The Morrison government is increasingly paralysed by internal revolts, but Labor’s support remains at near-historic lows.
Having previously disregarded historiography, Silverstein now falsifies it—and admits to privileging “narrative” over “actual fact.”
In the most systematic defense of the Wuhan lab libel to date, Matt Ridley proves only the falsehood of his bad-faith attack on science.
As the conclusion of the second year of the pandemic approaches and as mass death continues seemingly without end, the analogy of the pandemic to World War I is tragically and brutally substantiated.
There is now a shortage of at least 100,000 nurses in German hospitals, and more and more nurses are suffering burn-out—under conditions where infection rates are exploding.
The strikes show the enormous willingness of nurses, educators and other public sector workers to fight, even as the unions prepare a sellout.
Unite is already undermining a joint struggle by deciding on separate action. Bus drivers at the garages in Barnsley and Rotherham will strike from November 27 until December 3, while action in Sheffield will run from November 28 to December 4.
In Glasgow, such was the strength of feeling among low paid bin workers that GMB officials were unable to call off the COP26 strikes without consulting workers, fearing they would lose control of the situation.
The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) passed a resolution Monday condemning the ruling of the Berlin Administrative Court, which on November 18, 2021, upheld the designation of the German security service of the German section of the ICFI as “left wing extremists”.
The court’s ruling against the Socialist Equality Party stands in the tradition of National Socialist ideological jurisprudence and Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws, and opens the door for the surveillance and suppression of all opposition to capitalism and arbitrary state power.
Christoph Vandreier, the deputy chairman of the Socialist Equality Party, defended the right to advocate for the socialist transformation of society in a speech at the Berlin Administrative Court on November 18.
The deputy chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP, Socialist Equality Party), Christoph Vandreier, speaks about the importance of the lawsuit against the surveillance of the party by the German secret service.
Trade union collaboration with employers to impose harsh working conditions and attacks on workers’ democratic rights has emboldened tea estate managers.
What businesses really mean by “labour shortage” is a lack of workers prepared to work for poverty-level wages.
The Australian government has immediately seized on the unrest, dispatching 23 members of the heavily armed and riot-trained “Specialist Response Group” of the Australian Federal Police, as well as 93 members of the military.
Mandatory vaccinations are not an attack on democratic rights, as claimed by CMU leader Sylvester Jayakody, but a necessary tool in a range of scientific measures that must be fought for by the international working class to eliminate COVID-19.
The true horror of the deadly pandemic is visible “on the faces of the patients, their children and life partners. And it is reflected in the eyes of the medical staff.”
“An actor’s personal life is one thing but the film is something different. Why should someone’s personal life be used to censor Minamata?”
The Netflix documentary addresses the evangelical cult, run by the German psychopath and pro-fascist Paul Schäfer, that participated in the torture of political prisoners and used slave labor to produce weapons for Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s .
The latest salvo has been fired in the attempt by race-obsessed elements at the University of Michigan to defend the university administration’s attack on composer and professor Bright Sheng.
Federal advisers are reporting pre-pandemic levels of travelers during the Thanksgiving holidays. With COVID-19 infections rising across the US and all mitigation measures essentially lifted, health experts warn of a massive surge this winter.
Health Minister Véran announced the government’s response to the skyrocketing of COVID-19 cases, with over 33,000 cases reported in 24 hours.
In the most systematic defense of the Wuhan lab libel to date, Matt Ridley proves only the falsehood of his bad-faith attack on science.
Greece is rapidly heading towards a million cases of COVID, with yesterday’s 7,108 cases bringing the total to 901,661.
“I needed to find a party that I am confident and happy to support and that is the SEP.”
Nurses and other health workers are fed up with operating at breaking point as governments, both Labor and Liberal-National Coalition, rush to lift international and state borders for the sake of corporate profit.
“Oppression is an inexorable process under capitalism—there is no escape from it unless socialist governments of the people, by the people and for the people take over.”
“The 200 richest people in Australia increased their wealth by 40 percent, from $341.8 billion in May 2019 to $479.6 billion in May this year.”
Meteorologists and climate scientists have expressed urgent concern that the already waterlogged region, which saw devastating mudslides in addition to the flooding of low-lying agricultural land last week, is ill prepared to handle another downpour.
Four young black men—Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas—were falsely charged with the rape of a young white woman in a case that was all too typical of the Jim Crow era.
According to police, Darrell Brooks was fleeing from a domestic dispute when he accelerated through a crowd of performers in Waukesha, Wisconsin late Sunday afternoon.
Cobb County prosecutor Linda Dunikoski demolished the claims of the three defendants that they killed Arbery in self-defense during a citizen’s arrest.
The photo of an elderly patient lying in the entrance to the Emergency Department of the Royal Bournemouth Hospital received thousands of shares and comments.
“If you own a £1m house in the home counties, over 90% of your assets are protected. If you’ve got a terraced house in Hartlepool (worth £70k) you can lose almost everything.”
Indifferent to 430 lives in immediate danger in the Mediterranean, the deaths of 27 people in the English Channel Wednesday has been the occasion for a tirade of accusations and nationalist outbursts in Britain and France.
Amazon’s Black Friday profits will not be jeopardised by the #MakeAmazonPay coalition, whose top-down protests are aimed at suppressing a worldwide rebellion by workers against social inequality and capitalist exploitation.
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
The assault on Memorial, should it be successful, would have chilling consequences. Anyone doing historical research into the crimes of Stalinism and the history of the socialist movement will have to fear immediate state reprisals.
In the strike-turned-lockout, Deere workers showed enormous determination to defend their jobs and living standards, while the UAW did everything to undermine and sabotage their fight.
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.
The new subpoenas come as recent reporting in Rolling Stone and Pro Publica detail the high level coordination between the Trump White House and previously subpoenaed organizers of the Stop the Steal rallies .
Former president and January 6 coup-plotter Donald Trump reported on Tuesday evening that he met with Kyle Rittenhouse at his Mar-A-Lago resort and referred to the teenage vigilante shooter as a “really nice young man.”
Having boosted the stock market to record highs by pouring trillions of dollars into the financial system, Powell received strong support from Wall Street with gushing praise for his management of the pandemic crisis.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax windfall for the wealthy will cost the federal government $285 billion over the 10-year span covered by the bill, making it the second most costly item in the legislation.
COVID-19 cases are now at an all-time high in Michigan, and schools are the top source of spread. The youth and the working class must unite to end this madness.
According to the city’s Department of Education, there are currently 176 classroom closures for public schools and 17 for charter schools, while at least 6,193 students have been infected since the start of the school year.
Two Seattle parents describe their legal and political nightmare battling to keep their seven-year-old daughter safe from COVID-19 and at home with remote instruction.
The engaged reaction of participants highlighted the deep political gulf between teachers, students and parents, and the murderous official “live with the virus” agenda that has bipartisan and union support.
With headline inflation in the US now running at more than 6 percent, and showing no signs of abating, the key question is when and by how much the Fed may start to move.
While the onset of the pandemic was the trigger for the March 2020 crisis, it was not the underlying cause, with two previous incidents raising considerable concerns in financial regulatory circles.
With the Fed’s assurances that inflation is “transitory” having been blown out of the water, growing signs of instability continue in the $22 trillion US Treasury market that forms the basis of the global financial system.
The surge in inflation is pushing up yields on government bonds, especially at the short end of the markets, and adding pressure on central banks to start tightening their monetary policies.
The action by the German branch of the international writers group PEN was accompanied by a call for the unconditional release of the WikiLeaks founder from prison.
This display of bureaucratic cruelty can only be aimed at deepening Assange’s mental health issues, which are the result of more than a decade of state persecution.
Assange’s defence made clear that the UK government and its judiciary are participants in a slow-motion assassination, under only the thinnest veneer of pseudo-legality.
“This is a political persecution that has used the law, extradition law, as a tool to further its political agenda.”
Deere is projecting that it will set yet another record for profits next year, exploding the claim by company and union executives that there was no more money available to meet workers’ demands.
The conflict between rank-and-file workers and the UAW is being swept under the rug and deliberately concealed by organizations which have long functioned as apologists for the pro-corporate union bureaucracies.
As 10,000 John Deere workers have begun to return to plants and warehouses in recent days following the shutdown of their five-week-long strike, anger has remained high at the United Auto Workers union.
If a UAW official contracted the virus outside of working in a plant, what of the Deere workers who are now returning to the factories, working side by side, as the pandemic continues to rage?
Having previously disregarded historiography, Silverstein now falsifies it—and admits to privileging “narrative” over “actual fact.”
Though Holton conceded the major historical point, he used the debate to attack Wood over the latter’s criticism of the 1619 Project.
The 1619 Project creator will join writer Ta-Nehisi Coates in founding the Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard with $20 million in funding from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and an anonymous donor.
The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted to grant Hannah-Jones’ application for a full tenure professorship after weeks of outrage and accusations of racism over an initial decision to postpone a vote.
The definitive left-wing critique of the 1619 Project. This volume includes interviews with eminent historians and essays from the World Socialist Web Site exposing the New York Times’ racialist falsification of history.
Professors and students continue to speak out against the anti-democratic victimization of University of Michigan professor and composer Bright Sheng.
The judges effectively cleared the way for universities to dismiss staff for criticising management or breaching confidentiality rules.
The letter aims to intimidate all those who oppose the strictures of racial and identity politics and their enforcement by institutionalized thought police by branding them as “racist.”
The open letter from UM faculty takes a principled stand in defense of Sheng, demanding that the university reinstate Sheng to his undergraduate course in composition and make a public apology both for the sanctions taken against him and the outrageous charges of racism.
After workers voted to reject the local contract at both the Dana Fort Wayne, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky plants, the United Steelworkers is keeping them in the dark on the status of a possible renegotiation of the agreement.
On top of taxes, the USW and UAW are “entitled” to a 1.45 and 1.7 percent cut, respectively, of the signing bonuses. This means that the two unions made more than $150,000 in instant cash just for getting the contract passed, on top of monthly union dues.
Now is the time for Dana workers to join Deere workers and all auto workers to overturn the fraudulent contracts signed by the UAW in recent months and years.
The revelation sparked outrage among full-time Dana workers at management and the UAW and USW unions, who had bullied them into accepting a contract with wages far below what Dana has been compelled to pay temps to maintain production.
August 31, 2021 marks 100 years since the birth of Jean Brust, a leading figure in the Trotskyist movement. Comrade Jean, who died November 24, 1997 at the age of 76, joined the Trotskyist-led Young Peoples Socialist League as a teenager in 1937.
“Everything is being prepared to accept death. This is terrible. Why did I study medicine only then to accept death? Why would I do that?”
The two main victors in Sunday’s presidential election in Chile are the fascistic José Antonio Kast of the Christian Social Front and Gabriel Boric of the pseudo-left-Stalinist electoral front Apruebo Dignidad.
The ruling Peronist Frente de Todos coalition suffered a staggering defeat in midterm legislative elections, losing almost 6 million votes, a 35 percent drop compared to 2019.
Municipal workers were demonstrating against pension cuts approved by the City Council, without any reaction from their unions.
The horrific massacre of civilians was immediately exploited by the imperialist powers, led by the United States government itself, to justify far-reaching attacks on the democratic rights of their own populations, and the launching of decades-long wars in the Middle East and Africa.
This letter, by Socialist Equality Party Chairman David North, responds to Twitter posts by DSA leaders in support of the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky by an agent of Stalin’s secret police.
Historian Victoria Bynum issued the following statement demanding the DSA repudiate and apologize for the leadership’s coordinated celebration of the assassination of Trotsky and discipline those responsible.
On Saturday, June 5, Socialist Equality Party National Secretary Joseph Kishore and WSWS writer Eric London appeared on the podcast “Eclectic Radical” hosted by Chris Richards.
The Socialist Equality Party and WSWS call on Wissler and the Left Party to publicly condemn the DSA leaders’ Twitter posts and other media publications celebrating Trotsky’s assassination.
The administration has refused to reveal the contents of the agreement that has ended the protest against unsanitary dorms at the historically black college in Washington D.C.
The letter gives voice to the sentiments of students and young people, especially year 12 students, who are being forced to sit major exams as COVID continues to spread, with students being provided no additional support.
The attempt by administrators to blame student protesters for the layoff of school cafeteria workers is a provocative attack on the rights of workers and students alike and must be actively opposed.
Students expressed frustration with the university’s leaders, who have refused to address their demands, and instead subjected them to hours of “campus renovation” PowerPoint presentations.
The emergence of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 is a devastating exposure of the herd immunity policy implemented by capitalist governments, which oppose lockdowns and other critical public health measures necessary to stop the spread of the disease.
The “traffic light coalition” has declared war on the working population before it even takes power.
As the conclusion of the second year of the pandemic approaches and as mass death continues seemingly without end, the analogy of the pandemic to World War I is tragically and brutally substantiated.
The latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics on child COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the US presents further damning evidence of the impacts of the full reopening of schools this fall.
In the final analysis, ISIS is itself a product of the interventions by Washington and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Washington’s special envoy for Iran warned Monday that if diplomacy fails, the US will “use other tools to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
The outlawing of human rights groups and persecution of humanitarian activists follows Israel’s decades-long suppression of the Palestinians that has included collective punishment, house demolitions, deportations, detention without trial, torture, targeted assassinations and most recently the denial of COVID-19 vaccinations.
Relations between Turkey and several of its major NATO allies, including the United States, Germany and France, are teetering at the breaking point.
With the lawsuit filed by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei against the Federal Republic of Germany set to be heard in court in the coming days, more than 5,300 workers and young people have expressed their support for the SGP’s case and its fight to defend democratic rights.
The working class must organise an offensive against the government’s austerity measures, independent of the trade unions, pseudo lefts and so-called opposition parties, and based on socialist policies.
The SEP’s campaign against the state of emergency is receiving significant support from workers in various sectors, including from the education, health services and plantation action committees established under the party’s guidance.
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.
Cliff Slaughter died on May 3, 2021, in Leeds, England, at the age of 92. His enduring contribution in the 1960s to the defense of Trotskyism stands in tragic contrast with his subsequent political opportunism and repudiation of revolutionary Marxism.
The facile equation of COVID and the flu made by right-wing politicians are lies on both sides of the comparison. The flu is nothing to trifle with, but COVID is infinitely worse, a brutal killer with incalculable consequences even for those who survive its initial ravages.
The world’s major capitalist powers and giant corporations have no solution to the climate emergency they have created.
The past two years have seen a series of escalating climate disasters in all regions of the globe, including massive wildfires from the Australian bush to the American west, devastating flooding in Europe, Asia and the Americas, and deadly heatwaves the world over.
The probe is slated to study eight asteroids in the main asteroid belt and among Jupiter’s trojans as part of a campaign to more closely study the origins of Earth and the other planets in the Solar System.
As a winter wave of infections and death gathers pace, Trudeau’s government is eliminating pandemic relief for workers and abetting the provinces in scrapping virtually all remaining safety measures.
The MoD said it had received so many complaints from Iraqis unlawfully detained and mistreated by British troops that it was unable to say exactly how much it had paid out to settle claims. Figures released thus far suggest a total of around £25 million to avoid criminal prosecution.
Not a shred of evidence was provided that China aims to build a military base in the small Pacific island state. Rather it was simply assumed that Beijing’s aims in New Zealand’s “own backyard” were nefarious.
The report denies that top officials held up the dispatching of troops, claiming the three-hour delay was “reasonable” even though rioters were overrunning the Capitol.
The claim that the civilian-military transitional government established in 2019 would be capable of resolving the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers was a dangerous trap.
Sudanese workers’ opposition to the al-Burhan’s power grab takes place amid growing militancy throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Amid a cloud of pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, NUMSA leader Irvin Jim accepted the “final” employer offer the union had rejected only a week ago.
Danish nurses continue one-hour wildcat strikes over pay and understaffing in defiance of unions and fines; French public transport workers’ strikes among bus drivers, coach drivers and rail workers over pay, conditions and privatisation; South African metal workers national pay strike in third week threatened as union moves towards company offer; Sunday stoppages by ScotRail workers, Scotland begun March continue to demand equal overtime rates with drivers
The new subpoenas come as recent reporting in Rolling Stone and Pro Publica detail the high level coordination between the Trump White House and previously subpoenaed organizers of the Stop the Steal rallies .
Former president and January 6 coup-plotter Donald Trump reported on Tuesday evening that he met with Kyle Rittenhouse at his Mar-A-Lago resort and referred to the teenage vigilante shooter as a “really nice young man.”
The jury verdict of not guilty on all charges in the trial of teenage fascist shooter Kyle Rittenhouse has been hailed by Donald Trump and other extreme right-wing political figures as a vindication of their assault on anti-police violence protesters.
The verdict, which will serve to embolden violent fascistic militias being cultivated around Trump and the Republican Party, is the culmination of a trial that constituted a travesty of justice from beginning to end.
The WSWS has published a feature page incorporating a selection of essential essays from its own archives, and other documents produced contemporaneously by the Fourth International.
We are publishing here the text of the opening report to the 2021 International Online May Day Rally delivered by David North.
The speculative binge on Wall Street is an expression of what Trotsky so rightly characterised as the death agony of the capitalist system—a coterie of oligarchs rakes in billions of dollars as millions die.
The Trades Union Congress and its affiliated unions represent a vast apparatus dedicated to suppressing the class struggle, staffed by a privileged caste that has presided over close to four decades of virtually uninterrupted betrayals and defeats.
The founder of WikiLeaks has been jailed for more than two years in a British maximum security prison, after seven years of effective imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
This lecture was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2021 summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Marcus Day, a writer for the World Socialist Web Site .
This lecture was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2021 summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Jerry White, labor editor of the World Socialist Web Site.
This lecture was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Niles Niemuth, a writer for the World Socialist Web Site.
This report was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2021 summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Tom Mackaman, a writer for the World Socialist Web Site.
North and London discussed the significance of the latest revelations of the the Security and the Fourth International investigation into Trotsky’s assassination.
The discovery sparked anger among some families of the 2010 Pike River mine disaster victims, and supporters, who questioned why the Labour Party-led government had sealed the mine, preventing the recovery of the 29 men who died.
The television documentary sets out to justify the government’s decision to abandon the underground investigation of the 2010 Pike River mine disaster, which killed 29 people, and for which no one has been held accountable.
The media has blacked out the widespread opposition to the New Zealand Labour Party government’s decision to seal Pike River mine that prevents a thorough investigation and accountability for the deaths of 29 men in the 2010 disaster.
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.
The Senate testimony by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen has intensified the bipartisan drive to clamp down on left-wing and socialist political content on social media platforms.
In a provocative act of censorship and imperialist gangsterism, the Biden administration took control of three dozen internet domains and shut down websites affiliated with Iran-based media organizations on unsubstantiated grounds of “disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations.”
We are calling on Reddit members to demand that the moderators of r/coronavirus and r/politics halt the McCarthyite blacklisting of content links from the World Socialist Web Site .
Jones’s suspension from Twitter comes less than 10 days after she was officially designated as a whistleblower by the state of Florida.
In the most systematic defense of the Wuhan lab libel to date, Matt Ridley proves only the falsehood of his bad-faith attack on science.
The commission advocated by the Washington Post will be aimed at shielding the government and corporate officials responsible for the deaths of more than one million Americans, while scapegoating China for the pandemic.
In a letter to the National Institutes of Health made public Thursday, zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance refuted claims that his organization failed to keep the US government appraised of coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Washington Post hopes that scapegoating scientists for the COVID-19 pandemic will turn attention away from the US government’s criminal “herd immunity” policies that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The meeting examined Luxemburg’s role as a Marxist theoretician and political leader, and discussed the significance of her legacy to the contemporary struggle to build a Marxist leadership.
In the most systematic defense of the Wuhan lab libel to date, Matt Ridley proves only the falsehood of his bad-faith attack on science.
American capitalism has systematically disenfranchised the poorest and most exploited sections of the working class.
The recent book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reconstructs Trump’s efforts to overthrow American democracy, leading up to the attack on the Capitol last January 6.
This volume, presenting an informal account of the author’s trip to the small Soviet republic in 1961, is in its own slighter fashion as deeply moving as his monumental war novels.
