Families paint defiant Covid-19 memorial wall opposite UK Parliament
Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to meet with the Covid-19 Bereaved Families campaign.
•Paul Mitchell
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Sri Lankan government exonerates alleged war criminals and political cronies
President Rajapakse’s moves to further undermine the constitution are another step towards autocratic rule, in the face of the country’s deep social and political crisis.
•Pradeep Ramanayake
US construction companies face high penalties for serious federal workplace safety violations
The US Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued fines of the highest amounts to construction companies and contractors for the first quarter of 2021, including for violations that resulted in three fatal injuries involving aerial lifts.
•Jessica Goldstein
In response to the Bailey–Roth controversy: New York Times columnist condemns biography’s “Man Problem”
The article was provoked by the recent controversy surrounding the decision by publisher W.W. Norton, in response to unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, to remove Blake Bailey’s biography of novelist Philip Roth from print, essentially to “pulp” the book.
•David Walsh
Indian government grants more powers to the military as popular anger over COVID-19 catastrophe mounts
India set a new one-day record for fatalities yesterday, 3,780. But numerous studies suggest the number of Indians dying from COVID-19 is far higher than what is officially reported.
•Wasantha Rupasinghe
The sentencing of former UAW President Dennis Williams and the case for rank-and-file committees
The rise and fall of the former United Auto Workers president makes it clear the problem is not a few “bad apples,” but the entire organization.
•Jerry White
Australian defence minister launches “frank discussion” on war against China
Dutton’s remarks betray concerns in ruling circles about the widespread anti-war sentiment in Australia, which was intensified by the 2003 Iraq invasion.
•Mike Head
Support grows among Volvo, Mack Truck workers for joint fight against UAW-backed concessions
Workers at Volvo NRV should begin organizing immediately, expanding the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee and campaigning across shifts and tiers to build momentum for an overwhelming “no” vote.
•Ed Hightower, Zac Thornton
Lockout of hundreds of oil workers continues in Beaumont, Texas
Workers were escorted off their jobs after the USW union agreed to an “orderly transfer” with management.
•Trévon Austin
Amazonians United: A new trap for workers
Given the RWDSU’s unsuccessful union drive in Bessemer—resulting from its obviously top-down, officially-sponsored character—a subtler approach is now being pitched by sections of the union apparatus and their middle-class allies.
•Marcus Day, George Gallanis, Jerry White
Right-wing parties carry Madrid region as Podemos suffers election debacle
The vote is not an endorsement of the line of the far right, but a devastating exposure of the political implications of Podemos’s “herd immunity” policy.
•Alex Lantier
DNA evidence exonerates Ledell Lee, four years after his execution by lethal injection in Arkansas
Evidence from the scene of the 1993 murder of Debra Reese—that was never tested with modern technology—has exonerated Lee, who was wrongfully executed by lethal injection for the crime in 2017.
•Kevin Reed
May Day 2021 and the struggle for international socialism in Turkey
As the pandemic intensifies the contradictions of global capitalism, we greet May Day 2021 amid growing geopolitical tensions and war dangers in the region surrounding Turkey.
•Ulaş Ateşci
Australian university casuals group tries to divide workers and promote trade unions
A CUPUW “summit” attempted to create a rift between casual and permanent university workers, and seek posts within the National Tertiary Education Union.
•Eric Ludlow
Cliff Slaughter: 1928–2021
Cliff Slaughter, who between 1957 and 1985 played a leading role in the International Committee of the Fourth International and its British section, died Monday at the age of 92.
•David North
Arrest of Wisconsin National Guardsmen marks fourth currently enlisted soldier charged in January 6 attack on Capitol
The outsized role of current and former police and military members in the attempted fascist coup points to the crucial role of the state in facilitating the siege of Congress
•Jacob Crosse
The new works council leader at Volkswagen: What does she stand for?
Daniela Cavallo follows in the footsteps of her predecessor Bernd Osterloh and, like him, will faithfully defend the interests of the company and its shareholders.
•Dietmar Gaisenkersting
The working class and the struggle against “herd immunity” policies in Europe
Events since our last May Day rally have starkly shown that the task of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic requires coordinated international action by the working class.
•Alex Lantier
US birth rate declines to lowest point in more than a century
The year 2020 continued the general decline seen since the 2008 financial crash, while the COVID-19 pandemic drove the birth rate down drastically starting in December.
•Patrick Martin
Half of Canada’s population less than $200 away from insolvency as billionaires’ wealth surges
While working people have confronted widespread impoverishment, illness and death, Canada’s capitalist elite has seen its wealth soar during the pandemic.
•Alexandra Greene
G7 foreign minister discuss anti-Russia and China agenda amid global pandemic
Britain is using its position as host this year to confirm its wholehearted commitment to President Biden’s aggressive foreign policy and push other nations, especially the European powers, to do the same.
•Thomas Scripps
Howard University students and educators protest elimination of classical studies department
The attack on classical studies is part of a broader assault on the humanities, art and culture in American society.
•Dominic Gustavo
UK: Second round of strikes at DVLA over safety at Covid-19 hotspot
The action called by the Public and Commercial Services union is the only strike officially sanctioned by any trade union over Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
•Tony Robson
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issues executive order removing county-level COVID-19 restrictions
The reckless indifference shown by DeSantis to the lives and health of millions throughout the pandemic is intimately connected to the ruling class’s “herd immunity” policy and the repudiation of scientifically guided health measures.
•Alex Johnson, Patrick Smith
Right-wing extremist Hans-Georg Maassen runs for the Christian Democrats in German general election
The selection of the former head of the secret service as a candidate shows the extent to which the ruling class in Germany is once again relying on fascist forces 75 years after the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich.
•Johannes Stern
Pfizer announces windfall profits as low-income countries denied vaccines
The drug maker’s windfall profits are inseparable from the US government’s refusal to share the rights to produce vaccines.
•Bryan Dyne
Defend Julian Assange, jailed for exposing the crimes of American and world imperialism
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.
•Tom Scripps
Australian McCormick Foods dispute part of global restructuring drive
Global spice merchant McCormick and Co. has saved more than $1 billion through 15 years of cost-cutting.
•Martin Scott
Australian reports show deepening social toll as pandemic continues
Far from being exempt, Australia is experiencing a worsening social crisis as the ruling class exploits the pandemic to slash welfare, wages and working conditions.
•Mike Head
Treasury Secretary Yellen warns interest rates may need to rise
There is a degree of nervousness in financial markets that if inflation begins to rise, the Fed may be forced to increase rates which would have an adverse impact on Wall Street where speculation is rampant.
•Nick Beams
Thousands flock to community pantries in the Philippines as COVID-19 rapidly spreads
Images in the media reveal the degree of desperation for basic resources in the population. Crowds of hundreds line the pavement to try to get a few free vegetables and a canned good or two.
•Isagani Sakay
Union sends Oregon Tech faculty back to work with sellout agreement
Oregon Tech American Association of University Professors (OT-AAUP) is celebrating the agreement as a “historic first contract,” but in reality, it is a sellout contract that will be used to enforce job insecurity, inadequate pay and unsafe work conditions over its five-year period.
•Kayla Costa, David Fitzgerald
Papua New Guinea parliament adjourned amid escalating COVID-19 crisis
Prime Minister Marape is cynically using the escalating COVID-19 pandemic, which is devastating the population, to block his own removal from office before the 2022 election.
•John Braddock
Federal prosecutors recommend two-year sentence for former UAW President Dennis Williams for fraud and corruption
The facts laid out in the sentencing memorandum underscore the need for workers to break with this rotten criminal organization and build new organizations of struggle.
•Tom Hall
American carnage: Fired Wisconsin casino restaurant manager kills two co-workers, injures another before being killed by police
The shooter, 62-year-old Bruce Pofahl, was targeting a female manager who had a restraining order granted against him less than two months ago.
•Jacob Crosse
German factories and low-income neighbourhoods left exposed to massive COVID-19 outbreaks
For workplaces in particular, there are almost no protective measures and the few that exist are never reviewed and enforced. The number of workplace safety inspections declined during the first year of the pandemic by 15 percent.
•Elisabeth Zimmermann
Mexico City transit bridge collapse leaves 24 dead, scores injured
The disaster has fueled growing popular anger over criminal government negligence and corruption that has also led to hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths in Mexico.
•Bill Van Auken
Boris Johnson, social murder and the struggle against the Labour and trade union bureaucracy
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.
•Chris Marsden
Quebec’s anti-curfew protests: A political blind alley and entry point for the far right
Young people opposed to the ruling class’ criminal mishandling of the pandemic must fight for the independent political mobilization of the working class to close all schools and nonessential businesses so as to halt the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating third wave.
•Louis Girard, Richard Dufour
Mass protests in Colombia continue into second week amid deadly repression
Colombia’s police and military have turned in a systematic and coordinated fashion to the use of live ammunition against demonstrators, killing at least 27 of them.
•Andrea Lobo
Young Delhi resident describes India’s COVID-19 catastrophe
Vaibhavi spoke to the WSWS about the current conditions in Delhi and across India amid a mounting surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
•Our reporters
May Day in Frankfurt, Germany: WISAG worker warns of tens of thousands of job cuts
Airport services provider WISAG has sacked 260 ground staff at Frankfurt Airport. On the fringes of the official union May Day rally, one of the workers spoke about their struggle.
•Marianne Arens
Thousands of Istanbul electricity workers launch wildcat strike
Bedaş workers went on a wildcat strike on Friday, defying an official ban on strikes in the industry, against poverty wages imposed by a pro-company union.
•Ulaş Ateşçi
Criminal response of UK ruling elite to COVID-19 produces huge waiting list for elective procedures
With cancer sufferers and patients with other critical ailments languishing in queues running up to months and years, suffering and death, especially among the working class and the poor, will swell the already shocking tally of the pandemic.
•Rory Woods
UK Johnson government sends unelected commissioners to take over services in Liverpool City Council
This is an unprecedented, dictatorial intervention by central government into an elected council.
•Margot Miller
Historian Joseph Scalice exposes the role of Stalinism in the rise of Duterte
What was most significant in the panel was the interaction between Scalice and the second speaker, Walden Bello, who has a prominent international reputation as a figure of the left and an opponent of globalization.
•John Malvar
Australian government declares it “illegal” for citizens to return from India
The blatant attack on democratic rights imperils the health and lives of up to 10,000 Australian citizens stranded in India, as coronavirus infections and deaths spiral out of control.
•Oscar Grenfell
Biden steers toward confrontation with North Korea
The Biden administration’s policy is a repackaging of the thuggish “carrot and stick” strategy of his four predecessors—as time has gone on, the sticks have become larger and the carrots far smaller.
•Peter Symonds
Writers, biographers protest W.W. Norton’s decision to “permanently” remove Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth from print
Bailey’s book, likely to be the standard work on Roth’s life for some time to come, has been “pulped” and its author turned overnight into a “non-person.” There is no precedent for this in recent times.
•David Walsh
The meaning of the May Day 2021 Online Rally
The May Day rally both reflected and anticipated enormous changes in the world situation produced by the coronavirus pandemic.
•Joseph Kishore
Indian state elections deliver blow to Modi, amid COVID-19 catastrophe
There is mounting popular anger against Modi and his far-right BJP government due to their ruinous mishandling of the pandemic, relentless attacks on social and democratic rights, and integration of India into the US war drive against China.
•Rohantha De Silva
Volvo Truck workers oppose concessions deal pushed by UAW
Angry workers confronted UAW officials on Monday, denouncing the new five-year deal that will sharply increase medical costs and continue the multitier wage system.
•Jerry White
NYU graduate student strike enters second week as GSOC-UAW makes concessions
The university administration is clearly waiting for the end of the semester next week at NYU in the expectation that the union will deliver further concessions.
•Clara Weiss, John Conrad
More than 550 autoworkers out due to COVID-19 at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant
While the UAW is being provided with regular, detailed updates from management on the spread of coronavirus, it is deliberately concealing this information as much as it can from workers.
•Tom Hall
Global consumer price surge hits workers
Over the last week leading businesses, banks and financial analysts have released estimates predicting that global consumer prices, whether toilet paper, electronics or food, have and will continue to rise substantially in 2021.
•Gabriel Black
Drug overdose deaths hit record high in West Virginia in 2020
Fatal drug overdoses rose by 45 percent over the previous year, driven in part by the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic on West Virginia’s limited public health resources.
•Naomi Spencer
The rejection of fascism and war is deeply rooted in the German working class
Germany is not only the country of Bismarck and the Nazis. It is also the country of the first socialist mass party, based on Marxist internationalism.
•Christoph Vandreier
How Wall Street feeds on death
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.
•Nick Beams
Florida legislatures pass draconian bill restricting voting rights
Republicans in both the Florida House and Senate passed SB 90 last week, which places restrictions on drop boxes and the ability of residents to vote by mail.
•Matthew MacEgan
Four dead, two dozen injured after migrant boat capsizes off California coast
The vessel broke apart Sunday after it hit a reef just off the coast of the San Diego’s Point Loma peninsula.
•Kevin Martinez
New pandemic advice from the New York Times: Practicing good hygiene may be worse than COVID-19
The New York Times opinion piece, written by a freelance writer, Markham Heid, promotes a virulent form of the unscientific construct “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.”
•Benjamin Mateus
Dutch caretaker government scraps partial lockdown as infections mount
Following its European counterparts, the Dutch government has implemented the first stage of its easing of social-distancing restrictions, starting on April 28.
•Parwini Zora
Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Germany, France spend billions on new fighter jets
The massive military build-up now underway across the European Union exposes official claims there is no money for a scientific fight against the virus.
•Kumaran Ira
UK teachers oppose attacks on pay, conditions, pensions and government’s push for Academisation of schools
A spate of disputes in education have broken out, despite every effort by the unions to suppress opposition.
•Margot Miller
UK Labour Party/Unite corporatist campaign against “fire and rehire”
Unite’s campaign seeks to harness working class opposition to fire and rehire behind the union’s nationalist pitch to big business and the state.
•Laura Tiernan
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Major worker strikes and protests are taking place in Latin America including general strikes in Colombia and Chile and continued opposition by Buenos Aires teachers to a return to in-person classroom instruction.
•
Climate change impact on Gulf Stream will have severe consequences for weather in Europe and North America
Modeling of the Gulf Stream’s rate of flow, based on data from a variety of proxy indicators demonstrates a dramatic slowing beginning in the mid-20th century.
•Philip Guelpa
Volvo Truck workers in Virginia livid over UAW strikebreaking
The United Auto Workers union abruptly ended the two-week strike by nearly 3,000 workers and ordered them to return to work without seeing, let alone voting on, a new five-year contract.
•Jerry White
Australian Education Union announces phony “week of action” over Victorian teachers’ workplace agreement
The development of a new industrial agreement ought to be the trigger for a unified political struggle of teachers and school workers for decent wages and conditions, and for a genuinely free, accessible, high quality public education system.
•Patrick Kelly
Australia: Liberals survive Tasmanian election due to near-record low Labor vote
Despite appalling conditions in public health, housing and education, Labor’s vote plunged to about 28 percent.
•Mike Head
Sri Lanka: Alton workers’ action committee defends victimised colleagues
Ongoing management provocations against Alton workers are a warning to all plantation workers and other sections of the working class resisting government and big business attacks.
•W. A. Sunil
May Day Online Rally calls for formation of International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
The International Committee of the Fourth International’s online rally advanced a global program and perspective for the working class.
•Jacob Crosse
ExxonMobil begins lockout of hundreds of Texas oil workers
Workers reported the company began escorting workers outside the facility as early as Friday night.
•Trévon Austin
This week in history: May 3-9
25 years ago: Bosnian war crimes trials open in The Hague On May 7, 1996, the first in a series of war crimes trials stemming from the war in Bosnia opened in the international court at The Hague, Netherlands. Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, stood accused of carrying out atrocities against Bosnian civilians, including murder, rape and torture.
•
German airline Lufthansa announces a further 10,000 job cuts
The initial announcement of 30,000 redundancies was already increased to 50,000 last year. With the job cuts now unveiled, this figure will rise to 60,000, or more than 43 percent of the 138,000 employees at the airline in 2019.
•Dietmar Gaisenkersting
Facebook reverses censorship of WSWS article debunking “Wuhan Lab” conspiracy theory
On Friday, Facebook notified users that it had wrongly censored them for posting a WSWS article exposing the false claim that COVID-19 was released from a Chinese lab.
•Andre Damon
Mounting popular anger in India over Modi government’s criminal mishandling of pandemic
Responsibility for the human catastrophe now unfolding across India lies not just with the Modi government, but with all of India’s capitalist establishment. It has starved the health care system of resources for decades and even now opposes the closing of nonessential businesses.
•Wasantha Rupasinghe
Amazon steps up violations of workers privacy with new surveillance methods
Revelations that Amazon will track which muscle groups are used by workers on any given day is only the latest in a series of invasions of workers’ privacy by the global technology and logistics conglomerate.
•Claude Delphian
May Day 2021 and the global class struggle
We are publishing here the text of the opening report to the 2021 International Online May Day Rally delivered by David North.
•David North
Tyron: Another side of British rapper Slowthai
On his sophomore album, Slowthai’s self-analysis is counterbalanced by regressive bluster.
•Erik Schreiber
Crew death, contract cancellations mark cruise industry restart
Approximately 300 Indian employees who had traveled to their ports of embarkation last week were informed by RCCL that they would be unable to join their assigned ships.
•Tom Casey
France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon appeals to President Macron against the fascistic coup-plotting military generals
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France is encouraging the working class to rely on the action of Macron and the top military brass.
•Alex Lantier
Pressure from Berlin bus drivers halts re-introduction of front boarding
Pressure from workers has led to the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe postponing the re-introduction of front boarding for the fourth time.
•Carola Kleinert, Andy Niklaus
COVID-19 death of 13-year-old Brampton girl underscores criminality of Canada’s open economy/open schools policy
Emily’s tragic, entirely preventable death has triggered an outpouring of anger towards the political elite and solidarity with the stricken family.
•Ken Lagerfeld
Germany’s official COVID-19 contagion policy puts hundreds of thousands of students and educators at risk
The updated Infection Protection Act reinforces the government’s reckless contagion policy in schools and threatens the health of students.
•Tamino Dreisam, Joshua Seubert
German election campaign: Green Party on the war path
When the ruling class in Germany prepares an offensive for war and rearmament it can rely on the Green Party.
•Ulrich Rippert
“Open letter” demands end to UK pandemic restrictions as official figures confirm COVID-19 is a “poor man's disease”
Ten of its signatories are also signatories to the Great Barrington Declaration, launched at the right-wing American Institute for Economic Research in Massachusetts on October 4 last year.
•Julie Hyland
UK: Unite union claims victory is imminent after Go North West buses withdraws fire and rehire threat
An indication of the rotten deal being discussed is the fact that Unite previously offered £1.3 million pounds worth of cuts during arbitration talks with the company in March.
•Tony Robson
Stop the UAW sabotage of our strike! No contract, no work!
To oppose the UAW’s attempts to force through another sellout, workers have initiated the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Safety Committee.
•The Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee
Wall Street margin debt surges to record high
The extent of the speculative mania, which goes way beyond anything seen in the past, is indicated both by broad financial trends and specific events.
•Nick Beams
The French army’s coup plots and the global onslaught on democratic rights
The alternative to the capitalists’ “herd immunity” policies and drive to police-state rule is the international mobilization of the working class.
•Alex Lantier
UAW tries to shut down Volvo Truck strike in Virginia as Columbia University grad students vote down union-backed sellout deal
Volvo Truck workers in New River, Virginia erupted in anger over the attempt by the United Auto Workers to end their powerful strike as the UAW faced a contract rejection vote by Columbia University graduate students in New York.
•Shannon Jones
Columbia graduate workers defy UAW, vote down sellout contract
The vote is a devastating blow to the United Auto Workers and the majority of the GWC Bargaining Committee, who endorsed the contract despite overwhelming opposition from the rank and file.
•Genevieve Leigh
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.
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Clayton County, Georgia sheriff indicted on federal criminal charges for brutalizing detainees
According to federal prosecutors, Sheriff Victor Hill directed his deputies to leave four inmates tightly strapped to a restraining chair for long hours.
•Karim Habib, Kranti Kumara
“The Danton, Robespierre, and Marat of America, all rolled into one”: A new biography of antislavery leader Thaddeus Stevens
Stevens personified the uncompromising abolitionist struggle against slavery in the Civil War era and the early years of Reconstruction.
•Fred Mazelis
Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right
Zelensky is seeking to appoint the notorious neo-Nazi figure Serhiy Sternenko, who was directly involved in the 2014 Odessa massacre, as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in Odessa.
•Jason Melanovski
Airbus collaborates with Spanish trade unions to demobilise fight against plant closure
The trade unions are working with Airbus management to demobilise workers against a widely expected plant closure at Puerto Real, Cádiz.
•Santiago Guillen
Dozens killed in crush at Israeli religious festival
Despite warnings from Israeli health officials that the mass celebrations could become a super spreader event, the authorities allowed the event to go ahead. It was the largest gathering since the start of the pandemic.
•Jean Shaoul
Florida Governor DeSantis signs reactionary bill criminalizing demonstrations against police violence
The draconian legislation is the latest in a series of measures Republican state legislators nationwide have taken to repress social opposition and attack democratic rights.
•Alex Johnson
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