As 2025 is ending, life for the working class is becoming more desperate. While Trump tries to distract people with his unhinged rants, workers are struggling with a declining standard of living.
Prices are continuing to rise, falling farther behind wages and Social Security. A trip to the grocery store means carefully calculating what you can afford, or cannot afford, to buy. Buying Christmas presents this year is more difficult. Many people have to choose between paying the electric bill or paying the rent. A recent study said that 70% of families are living paycheck to paycheck.
2025 started with Trump and Elon Musk cutting tens of thousands of government jobs. That was just the beginning. Corporation after corporation followed suit. General Motors, UPS, Amazon, Target, Verizon and many others announced layoffs. More and more, the only jobs available are part-time or temporary, paying wages that you can’t live on. Many people today need two or three jobs just to survive for another week.
The way things are being planned out, workers’ lives would only get worse in 2026. Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill means that Medicaid and SNAP will be taken away from millions of people in the coming year. Health care premiums will be going up.
While working people are struggling, Trump arrogantly says “affordability, what affordability, things are great.” What the hell is he talking about?!
Yes, Trump is a liar and a megalomaniac, but it would be a mistake to say that this is only about Trump. That would hide the real problem and hide the real enemy, because Trump is just acting as the front man for the wealthy ruling class—the capitalist class that is attacking the working class.
Corporations are cutting jobs and raising prices to increase their soaring profits. Cuts in social programs are being carried out today in order to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich one percent. Money is being taken from the working class in order to pay for a Trillion Dollar military budget, as the capitalists prepare to take this country to war against people in another country.
Meanwhile the capitalist class is continuing its war against the working class in this country. Part of that war is to try to divide the working class against itself. That’s where Trump becomes very useful for the capitalists. Trump terrorizes and demonizes immigrant workers, trying to convince the workers born here that workers born in another country are responsible for the problems. Trump tries to divide workers by spewing racist hatred against workers who came here from other countries, especially if they are Muslim or have black or brown skin, like his rants against Haitians and Somalians.
With Trump’s help, the capitalist class is trying to divide the working class against itself because they understand that workers, when fighting together, have the power to confront them. Right now, the capitalists understand the workers’ power better than most workers do. That’s not surprising because it has been many years since the working class here made a real fight. Right now, there is a big gap between the problems faced by the working class and its readiness to fight. But there is no reason that can’t change in 2026.
Right now, politicians like Trump seem like they can say and do whatever they want. Right now, the capitalist class seems like it can take whatever it wants from the working class. But 2026 could be the year that changes. If one group of workers starts a fight in 2026, workers could spread it from one plant to another, from one company to another, from one industry to another. A fight like that could shake the capitalist class and their politicians. A fight like that could shake the whole capitalist system.
In 2026 or another year, when workers become conscious of their power and use their power, they can even bring down the whole system and replace it with one run by the working class and for the benefit of all humanity.
A big part of what’s thrilling about sports is that you don’t know what will happen. Teamwork is electric. Opponents all have talent, discipline, and determination. But the October arrest of National Basketball Association player Terry Rozier and others was a warning that online gambling has corrupted sports.
Federal prosecutors say Rozier faked an injury during a game in 2023 after telling associates he would. They were able to win bets on his bad performance during the game. Prosecutors say these actions violated federal laws and licensed gambling policies.
Gambling and cheating have always existed in sports, but not at today’s crisis levels. Professional leagues like the NBA let online gambling companies run betting on their games after the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that sports gambling is legal. Smart phones let viewers and players place bets practically instantaneously, not just on the outcome of a game, but even on the details of an individual player’s performance during a game. Will they miss a shot? Will they get injured? Click.
Almost half of men under 50 have an online sportsbook account, and so do many women, especially college athletes. Young people whose brains are still developing are especially vulnerable. But so are athletes, competitive by aptitude and often acting on impulse.
The total amount of money bet on sports shot up from under five billion dollars in 2017 to over 121 billion dollars in 2023. Around a tenth of that is profit.
Whatever happens in Rozier’s and other cases, the gambling companies won’t fix anything. The leagues will not do anything, either. They benefit from the attention online gambling brings them. But viewers are distracted from appreciating sports as sports. Athletes are distracted, and worse. This economic system based on profit corrupts everything.
After the Baltimore city fire department responded to three multi-alarm fires in under a week, the firefighters’ union warned that this very busy fire department “once again faced the impossible—trying to protect this city with minimal staffing and critical equipment out of service.”
The department only requires 307 personnel on duty daily, down from 371 in 2019. It only has 35 fire engines and 17 firefighting trucks, down from nearly 60 engines and 30 trucks in the early 1970s. (“Trucks” have ladders and other rescue equipment.)
The city population has gone down over the decades. But there are still tens of thousands of vacant buildings which are fire hazards.
For politicians to under-staff and under-equip emergency response is literally playing with fire—and lives.
On October 2, 2025, a massive explosion and fire destroyed sections of Chevron’s El Segundo refinery, located southwest of Los Angeles. The fire was visible and heard for miles across the South Bay for more than 30 minutes. It took nine hours to bring the fire under control, as it spewed cancer-causing chemicals into the air, polluting the surrounding densely packed communities.
This is not the first major fire at this refinery. Explosions and fires in 1989, 1999, and 2012, along with many incidents before, in between, and after, have afflicted this refinery on multiple occasions.
One expert, Andrew Lipow, president of Houston-based consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates, said that in his experience, “refinery fires can often be traced to equipment failures, especially those that lead to a situation that allows hot oil and gas to reach the atmosphere. It finds an ignition source, and a fire results.”
Chevron’s El Segundo refinery was built more than 100 years ago, in 1911. All major refineries in the U.S. are more than half a century old. The last significant new refinery, Marathon Oil’s facility in Louisiana, was constructed in 1977. And much of the current equipment is old and worn out.
So, although oil companies like Chevron make tens of billions of dollars in profit each year, they still cut corners by choosing not to modernize, upgrade, or maintain their equipment. They continue to use old, corroded equipment to increase their profits further and enrich their owners. This recent fire was an accident waiting to happen.
The El Segundo refinery is crucial to California’s fuel supply, providing approximately 20% of Southern California’s gasoline and over 40% of its jet fuel. This fire destroyed the refinery’s jet fuel unit.
As a result of refinery closures and accidents, gasoline prices in Southern California, already among the highest in the U.S., are expected to increase by 10 to 25 cents per gallon. So, mostly the workers’ already meager income in this expensive state will be hit with these high prices.
Workers pay with high prices, if not with our lives, for such disasters that result from deliberate neglect.
Federal officials recently announced that the standard Medicare Part B premium, which covers services such as physician visits and hospital outpatient care, will be $202.90 a month—a close to 10% yearly increase. It will be around 70% higher than a decade ago. The annual Medicare Part B deductible will also climb to $283. This is also a 10% yearly increase or more than 70% over the past 10 years. So, every year people on Medicare will pay much more than before, with no end in sight.
At the same time, the federal government announced that the Social Security COLA will be 2.8% next year. As such, the Medicare increases will be well above those of Social Security.
Retired workers receive an average of $2,008 per month in Social Security benefits. Given that actual inflation is typically above COLA, Medicare cost increases will dearly eat into our very meager retirement income. These increases will effectively cut our retirement checks by quite a bit.
And the federal government will funnel these cuts into the coffers of companies that were supposed to take care of our health. In 2024, U.S. health insurers collected close to 450 billion dollars in Medicare premiums, more than many countries’ annual gross domestic product (GDP).
Since Medicare is essential to these healthcare companies’ income, we will be asked to pay more in the future. Only our collective fight against such highway robbery can stop such an assault against us.
Most people know a woman or women who have experienced sexual abuse, or even rape. Statistics suggest women are killed every day in so-called domestic violence. Virginia Giuffre, before she committed suicide this past spring, was the courageous woman who came forward to tell the truth of her sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
Other women suffered this abuse and were able to stay strong and united to continue the fight after Giuffre died. They certainly faced verbal and media attacks. As did Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who supports the public exposure of the Epstein files, but faced harassment for it, and also threats against her family.
All women who come forward despite such physical and mental attacks make possible the exposure of Epstein and others like him.
A lot of working homeowners in Chicago saw their property taxes spike again this year. Taxes in some West Side neighborhoods doubled or worse. It is especially hard on retirees and others on a fixed income. Supposedly, this spike came because office properties downtown lost value, so working homeowners have to pick up the slack. Funny, how the capitalists’ problems ALWAYS become OUR problems!
DTE Energy, the largest electric utility in Michigan, is fast-tracking state government approval for a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center on farmland south of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In likely related news, a DTE-backed group donated $550,000 to a fundraising account tied to Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2024 and $750,000 to an account connected to Republican State House Speaker Matt Hall in 2025.
DTE is asking Michigan’s Public Service Commission (MPSC) and the Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to approve electric contracts and a wetlands permit for a SEVEN BILLION DOLLAR AI Data Center in Saline, Michigan—before the end of 2025. If approved, it will be the biggest data center in the U.S.
The electricity for this project will be the amount needed to power one million homes! According to the Governor, this will be “the largest economic project in Michigan history.” In other words, this venture will involve HUGE tax breaks and gifts to the wealthy—but that information is not public yet!
The second-richest man in the world, Larry Ellison, primary shareholder of Oracle, is one of the backers of this project. Open AI, controlled by Microsoft, is a second backer.
Protests have already happened near the proposed AI Center and at the Detroit Headquarters of DTE.
When the MPSC held a public meeting on December 4, hundreds of Michigan residents attempted to speak. Almost all asked that the approval process slow down. Over 5000 people commented online.
According to Bloomberg News, electricity costs typically increase as much as 267% after AI Data Centers go on line. No wonder DTE wants to rush this project!
Hundreds of Washington, D.C. renters stood in line in November to apply for help paying their rent. But the city cut that funding in half this year and will cut even more next year.
At the same time the area sees 164 evictions per month on average, as we head into winter. In nearby Prince George’s County, 5,000 vouchers will be issued, when there are many more than 5,000 households who need Section 8 housing, the program that adjusts the rent according to a person’s income. In nearby Montgomery County, with one of the highest average incomes in the country, homelessness doubled last year.
Here’s the reality of the bosses’ policies toward working people. We can barely put a roof over our heads and food in the kids’ mouths.
The latest attack happens to be on Somalis, called “garbage” by the president. But people from all over the world have been attacked, harmed, even killed by agents working for the U.S. to supposedly get rid of “illegal” immigrants who are criminals. It is just the current lie of the current government, to make the majority hate some minority, to distract us from the reality we face every day by giving us some other enemy. Remember the lie that Haitians in Ohio were eating pet dogs? (That’s exactly what the Wizard of Oz explains in the movie “Wicked”—people must have an enemy to hate if they are to be unified.)
Hating other people is an old, old tactic by politicians, used repeatedly. Of course, the U.S. gained its founding fortunes on the back of indentured and enslaved peoples. Certainly, the attitude of most white people at the time of slavery was that black people and indentured servants were less than human. Then, as capitalism grew in the 19th century, the U.S. bosses wanted a ton of immigrants to enter the country as laborers. But for those already living in the U.S., they were told that Irish men were a bunch of drunkards, Italians were a bunch of criminals, Finnish or Jewish people were dirty, some other group of immigrants was lazy. It was all lies to make an enemy for people to hate, a diversion from hating the bosses and the politicians.
It’s up to us whether we figure out that we are all the same, in a fight for our futures against a tiny minority, or let them divide us so we cannot fight back.
The following is taken from a public presentation given in Chicago on November 16. The talk was given by an immigrant worker.
Whether you’re legal or illegal, it makes you feel like you are under attack. Just being an immigrant in this country, you are accused of being a criminal. That is completely disgusting. Immigrants are just workers who are part of the working class in this country, and always have been.
But we are being blamed for all the problems of society. We’re accused of taking jobs. We’re accused of stealing benefits. We’re accused of bringing drugs.
These kinds of verbal attacks have been going on for a long time. But now we are seeing an increase in physical attacks. Deportations aren’t new—under Obama, more people were deported per day than so far under Trump. But the government today is more openly racist, more violent detentions, more attempts to scare people into leaving the country. They try to scare workers by arresting them in really violent ways. ICE agents openly act like thugs on the streets, in masks, with no badges or warrants, in unmarked cars. If you are brown, look Mexican, that is a big crime for them. They will take you down to the ground to cuff your hands behind your back violently, whether you are a teenager or even an old man or woman. All this before asking anything about your papers or identity.
These are attacks on the whole working class.
Look at who they’ve arrested. The first person it was reported that ICE picked up in “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago was a flower vendor. Since then, they’ve arrested tamaleros [tamale street vendors], construction workers, mothers dropping their kids at school, people going to flea markets, as well as Uber drivers at the airport. A young woman teacher at a day care was dragged out in front of children. The man they killed in Franklin Park was a cook in a restaurant.
I’ve been in the U.S. for more than 40 years. In that time, I’ve worked in restaurants, on factory assembly lines. Assembling radios and various electronic parts. I have been a machine operator most of my lifetime. I’ve worked setting up injection molding machines, making plastic products. I worked as a CNC machine operator in a factory making locomotive engine parts. On my last job I was making power train parts for John Deere. Other people in my family have worked in many different factories working with metal, plastic, rubber and even candy. My family have worked in warehouses, restaurants, health clinics, the airport and CTA. In other words, my immigrant family have worked making this country run.
In those jobs, we’ve worked with all kinds of people. I’ve worked next to black workers, white workers, workers from China, India, Poland, Sudan, workers from the Middle East, even Afghanistan. In all those jobs, all of us workers had the same problems.
We were underpaid. We were overworked. We were equally exploited and squeezed to get all the juice out of us like apples.
We all worried about how to afford to pay our bills, how to raise our kids safely and how to educate them. We were all worried about how to get and afford decent health care. We all have to figure out how to take care of our elders who are too old to work.
And we all have the same enemies: the big corporations who make us work for little money. Our bosses in the companies we worked day after day are expecting more work from us for the same low pay. Then if they are not making enough profits, they turn around and close the plant or department to go somewhere else—as has happened to me four times in my working life time.
Now I’m faced with the problems of many workers my age: bad health, bad feet, bad vision, and no energy to do a ten-to-twelve-hour job. Those are the only jobs available for the type of work I have done. But even though I’m too old to keep working—I’m too young to retire. Those big bills keep coming!
But I’m not alone—most of those black, white, Chinese, Sudanese workers I’ve known have the same problems!
The capitalist class has a big crisis that is falling on workers. The cost of living is so high that all workers are living worse and worse.
So that’s the point of all these attacks on immigrant workers. The capitalists want workers born here to blame immigrants.
But attacking immigrant workers will only make things worse for all workers, even those born here.
First, by there being less workers, there will be even more exploitation on the ones who remain. And making immigrants scared will force them to accept even worse conditions—driving down the standard of living of all workers.
Plus, having all these thugs on the streets, getting us all used to seeing people get kidnapped for anything, is a preparation for more repression aimed at the whole population. Look at what they’ve done in Chicago: they raided a building in the black neighborhood of South Shore in the middle of the night, zip-tying black children and throwing them in a rental truck. They attacked white cemetery workers, journalists, young black youth who shouted at them to leave their friends alone, even the white manager of a comedy club who stood up to them.
So yes, these attacks on immigrants are attacks on all workers!
This is not the first time the capitalists have played this game.
When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, they also attacked immigrants. They used immigrants as scapegoats for the massive unemployment of that time. In the first years of the 1930s, they deported more than a million people to Mexico, including many who had been born in this country. They rounded up whole families and put them on rail cars. They claimed this would create jobs for people born in this country.
But that did nothing to stop the Depression. Unemployment for people in this country kept growing after that, hitting an all-time high only after all those deportations. Companies kept cutting wages and benefits in general. They kept speeding up workers to try to regain their profits.
The only thing that turned around workers’ situation at that time was when workers finally came together and started to fight. In the 1930s, finally, workers led massive strikes that built the unions in the mass production industries, like the UAW that I used to be a member of. Those unions were built when workers confronted their real enemies: the corporations and the government that backs them, not other workers.
What this is teaching us is that only when workers organize and understand who our real enemy is and if we pull together to organize and fight against all these evils of society in the capitalist system there will be a real change. That’s the only way it will happen.
It’s not clear if the attacks on immigrants today will work. Just recently the “Border Czar” Tom Homan announced that they were going to hire another ten thousand agents by the end of the year. Some people, neighborhoods and whole communities have come together. When ICE showed up on the border of Pilsen and Little Village, people were scared, running and yelling. But a crowd of brave people gathered and shouted at the agents to get out of the neighborhood. They were even joined by some young gang bangers. A woman even said, “Those gang bangers are joining us. I never felt so good to have them around.”
In Brighton Park, after agents hit a woman’s car and then shot her, a whole crowd gathered immediately. They were screaming that ICE were shooting at people in their neighborhood, so the crowd started throwing bottles and rocks and whatever they could find at agents’ cars, while the agents were throwing tear gas at people. That was the only way to drive them off.
On the East Side, after ICE crashed into another car intentionally, another big crowd gathered and again drove them off. In Albany Park and most recently Little Village, crowds again drove ICE off, stopping them from grabbing many immigrants.
Many businesses like restaurants and stores, at least in the Mexican neighborhoods, have joined to stop the ICE agents from coming inside their properties by posting “No ICE Allowed” signs in their premises, though sometimes the agents ignore these signs.
Neighborhood groups have also organized rapid response teams of volunteers. They keep an eye when and where ICE shows up in an area. When ICE is in Little Village, the rapid response teams come around the neighborhood to warn people, blowing whistles, shouting in the streets, asking people to stay inside the house because ICE is in the area.
The Democrat politicians like Governor Pritzker or Mayor Johnson say that they are on the side of the immigrants and that they will do anything to help the immigrant workers. A Federal Judge cited the ICE boss in Illinois to tell him that they could not use tear gas or pepper spray on the crowds and they had to wear a body cam during any activity they have. But Greg Bovino and his people do not care; they keep doing it and keep trespassing into private properties, breaking into people’s cars and tossing pepper gas on people. It just happened in Little Village last week. ICE agents sprayed pepper gas at a passing car of a young family hitting a one-year-old baby in the eyes inside the car.
Community groups in Little Village just gathered last Tuesday, November 11th in front of Police District 12 to protest against CPD. They are asking the CPD chief to investigate and stop protecting ICE. When there is a raid, the police get there to “make sure ICE agents are safe,” and they harass the protesters. The community and activists are saying to the police of Chicago that if they are not going to help the people, then leave us alone to defend ourselves.
Chicago is supposed to be an immigrant sanctuary city, and if the city politicians really wanted to help, they could enforce the laws and would have already arrested Bovino for different violations. But that is not going to happen.
Trump’s government and the right-wing media are saying that thanks to the ICE activity, crime is down in Chicago. They are saying that shootings are down 35%, robberies are down 41% and homicides are 16% down. But when reporters asked them where they got their stats, the government had no answer. No doubt, these are just lies, like all the other lies they tell.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to do anything about the problems workers have. They can’t say that workers have the right to a job, a decent retirement, healthcare, or a cost of living we can afford—because to actually get those things we would have to take back the wealth the corporations have stolen from workers’ labor. The only people who can do that are the workers ourselves. Instead, all they can do is try to get workers to blame other workers for our problems.
To defend our people, our neighborhoods and ourselves, we need to be organized as one class—no matter our background or what we look like. That’s why we need our own Working Class Party.
This article is translated from the December 5 issue, #2992 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Israeli soldiers were filmed on November 27 executing two Palestinians at point-blank range as they surrendered. This summary execution took place in the northern neighborhood of Jenin in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Israeli army and border police were conducting a large-scale military operation. The video circulated widely on social media and in media outlets worldwide. It clearly shows that the two Palestinians were unarmed and lying on the ground when they were killed. Israeli authorities had no choice but to announce an investigation. But it is highly unlikely that the three soldiers involved will be prosecuted. They were released very quickly and received the support of far-right Minister of National Security and head of the police Itamar Ben-Gvir. He declared on Twitter/X: “The fighters acted exactly as expected. Terrorists must die!”
Israeli soldiers are well aware that they enjoy near-total impunity when they brutalize or murder Palestinians. Based on statistics from 2018 to 2022, the Israeli Palestinian rights organization Yesh Din (“There Is Law”) calculated that the probability of an Israeli soldier being prosecuted for killing Palestinians was only 0.4%. The situation has worsened since the outbreak of the Gaza war after October 7, 2023.
The Israeli army is also waging a full-blown war in the West Bank. Military operations have followed one after another: “Summer Camps,” launched at the end of August 2024, followed by “Iron Wall,” which began on January 21, a few days after the announcement of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Deploying ground troops, tanks, drones, aircraft, and combat helicopters, these operations have targeted Palestinian refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams in the northern West Bank. As in Gaza, the aim is to destroy houses and force people to flee. The homes of more than 32,000 Palestinians have been destroyed by bulldozers. They have been displaced and forbidden even from returning to retrieve belongings abandoned in the rush.
These three camps were created in the early 1950s by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, to accommodate those who had been forced to flee after the creation of Israel in 1948. Using the same methods as 80 years ago, the Israeli government is now carrying out a veritable ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
The Israeli army supports acts by Jewish settlers who feel emboldened to attack Palestinians. Settlers engage in all kinds of violence and abuse to force Palestinians to abandon their land. A U.N. agency recorded 264 attacks by settlers in October alone, an average of eight per day. This set a record after nearly two decades of data collection. More than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, many of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since October 7, 2023.
Trump has stated his opposition to the annexation of the West Bank. But by supporting Netanyahu and his far-right ministers, he encourages them to continue their policy of expelling Palestinians and expanding settlements. This paves the way for further territorial annexations. For the Palestinians and for all the peoples of the region—including Israelis—this can only mean the continuation of endless and intractable war.
This article is translated from the December 5 issue, #2992 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Florida, where American negotiators tried to impose Trump’s so-called peace plan on his team. Then he rushed to Paris on December 1 to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, who considers himself Zelenskyy’s most ardent defender against Russia.
Zelenskyy must hope that European leaders will push back against Trump’s pressure to force him to sign the Trump plan. Even with tweaks, this plan admits Ukraine’s unfavorable position on the front lines, as well as Zelenskyy’s weakened position as a head of state mired deeply in corruption scandals. Above all, this plan confirms that Washington believes it has achieved its objective by having worked to provoke a conflict that weakens Moscow’s influence in the former Soviet bloc. The logical next step is the exploitation of Ukrainian resources that American corporations have managed to acquire. But maybe also opening up the Russian market!
Some American business circles see the promising possibility of collaboration with Russia’s economic giants. Supposing the White House recognizes Putin’s victory in Ukraine, they envision juicy contracts, especially in oil, gas, and rare earths. And don’t forget nuclear power. Anti-Russia sanctions or no, U.S. nuclear reactors depend on Moscow-headquartered Rosatom to supply them with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of enriched uranium each year!
The Wall Street Journal devoted a long article to all this on November 30, stating that the Trump administration views Russia “not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity.”
Many media outlets churn out self-serving war propaganda. But there is no need to seek Moscow’s hand in the drafting of Trump’s plan. Businessmen in the American delegation wrote the plan. Trump’s special envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, made one of his regular visits to Moscow on December 2. In those discussions, Putin was accompanied by his own special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev—a Harvard-educated investment banker who became CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. His sovereign wealth fund manages at least ten billion dollars.
Of course, the Ukraine that Western governments and media call a courageous little sentinel of democracy on Europe’s eastern flank is no match for these deep corporate appetites and financial resources. Second-tier imperialist powers like France have little influence to assert their interests in the postwar world that is largely evolving without them.
So, while Macron and his associates proclaim their devotion to peace, they push Ukraine to continue the war. In an interview with Bloomberg on November 13, Zelenskyy admitted that his European “friends” demand that he recruit more soldiers. The Ukrainian legislature is complicitly debating a bill to conscript women.
Ukrainian people may have had enough. But Macron and his ilk are eager to wage war on others and want even more cannon fodder. After all, as long as the Ukrainian army has troops, they need weapons, which Kyiv can order from manufacturers … preferably French ones! To justify this to the public, while simultaneously conditioning citizens for the worldwide conflict they are preparing, the Macrons and their general staffs invent the threat of the bearish Russian ogre. The fact that Russian tanks stalled out 250 miles from Kyiv almost four years ago is irrelevant to these professional liars, who insist that Russia will soon enter Paris and Berlin. Not because it’s true, but because their industrialists and generals have a vested interest in making people swallow this preposterous lie!
This article is translated and excerpted from the November 28 issue, #2991 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Brazil hosted the global conference organized by the United Nations, COP 30, in the city of Belém. After running over schedule, the conference produced a load of empty phrases and promises that don’t commit anyone to do anything.
No roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels was proposed. Only a “voluntary initiative” was suggested for countries promising to reduce their carbon pollution. The final text, entitled “Mutirao,” meaning “collective effort,” calls for “efforts to at least triple” the financial aid poor countries need to adapt to climate change by building roads and more storm-resistant buildings, modifying their agriculture, and so on. But these “tripled efforts” were already budgeted. No concrete procedures were defined for implementing them.
The governments of oil, gas, and coal-producing countries tolerate no constraints. Governments of developed countries do not want to pay a dime. As the richest, the U.S. did not even participate in the conference and had slashed its aid long ago—humanitarian and otherwise.
…
As for the indigenous and other peoples of the Amazon, while the conference brought them before the cameras, they gained nothing in terms of recognition of their rights. And neither did peoples living in territories ravaged by typhoons or drought. This neglect is to be expected in a world where the rights of the poor do not exist.
“We are going in the right direction, but at the wrong pace,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said. This statement can hardly fill the void left at the close of this conference.
This article is translated from the November 20 issue, #192 of Das rote Tuch (The Red Flag), the monthly of the Trotskyist group Bund Revolutionaerer Arbeiter (Revolutionary Workers League) active in Germany.
Up to 100 people died on November 15 when a cobalt mine collapsed in Congo.
What triggered the disaster was that the army fired on miners. Many miners ran away as a temporary bridge saturated by heavy rains collapsed and caused a landslide.
Deadly collapses like this are not uncommon in Congo. Many mines are operated entirely without safety measures. Numbering as many as 10,000 in a single mine, miners extract cobalt under extremely dangerous conditions. They are forced to work at gunpoint, overseen by soldiers of the Congolese army and other militias financed for years by Western corporations.
Cobalt benefits electronics and automotive companies in Europe and the USA. These corporations like Apple and Volkswagen are the real culprits in the deaths of these workers and others who die in countless workplace accidents.
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all Spark’s workplace newsletters, during the week of November 30, 2025.
An Afghan national, brought to the U.S. by the CIA, carried out a deadly attack on two National Guards stationed in Washington, D.C.
Does it seem irrational? Maybe. But there is a deadly logic which produced this event: the logic of imperialist wars to control other countries and their resources.
For 20 years, the U.S. carried out a war against Afghanistan. In that same period, it was also involved in an eight-year war against Iraq.
The U.S. invaded both of those countries supposedly in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
And yet neither Iraq nor Afghanistan was involved in 9/11. Nor were any of their citizens. The terrorists who took down the World Trade Center came from Saudi Arabia—as did Osama bin Laden, the supposed mastermind of the attack.
From 1979 to 1989, the Soviet Union was embroiled in a war in Afghanistan, attempting to prop up a government which had been an ally. The U.S. intervened in this war, just as it is intervening today in the war in Ukraine, by providing funds, weapons and intelligence to the insurgents who were tying up the Soviet Union in an unending war. The Middle East has been beset by wars ever since 1908, when the first big reserves of oil were discovered in the region. World War I—which pitted the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Germany against Britain, France and the U.S.—was carried out to decide which powers would control the oil. The Ottoman Empire was replaced by British and U.S. imperialism. Ever since, wars have sprung up over the question: which countries will control the oil?
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, no matter how they started, trace back to this ultimate cause.
Afghanistan didn’t even have any oil. But after 9/11, U.S. imperialism had to show it was still in control of the whole vast oil region. For 20 years, the U.S. bled Afghanistan, Iraq for eight years. The U.S. population also paid wars’ cost.
The war in Afghanistan has cost the U.S. over two trillion dollars. The war in Iraq cost over three trillion.
This is money not spent on education, nor on workplace training, nor on public transit, nor on housing, nor on dams, levees and other flood protection, nor on roads and bridge repair. Does the U.S. pretend it cannot find enough doctors or skilled workers? No, it doesn’t train them. Instead, it funnels money into war. This is the indirect human cost of such wars.
But there is a terrible direct human cost. In Afghanistan and Iraq, over 300,000 civilians were killed by the U.S. or allied forces. Nearly 200,000 local police or military were killed in the two wars. Almost 7,000 U.S. troops were killed, as were 8,000 private military contractors hired by the U.S.
Almost two million U.S. troops were deployed to these two wars, including almost one million who filed for disability as the result of permanent injuries suffered. Over 650,000 troops have suffered some kind of PTSD. Over 80,000 U.S. troops who served in these wars killed themselves after returning home.
The Afghan national who shot the National Guard troops had served in a U.S.-organized paramilitary squad in Afghanistan—what the U.S. called a “Zero Unit,” recruited, trained and overseen by the CIA.
They were “death squads,” attacking Afghans who led different ethnic groups in the civil war that bestrode the country after the U.S. kicked out its functioning government. Night raids, “disappearances,” attacks on medical facilities, midnight executions were all part of the job. After the war, the CIA brought many such squads here.
Did such actions weigh on the assassin? Maybe. But whatever created the attack in D.C., it’s another cost of these wars. The larger issue is the functioning of imperialism, which brings such wars into existence—and will continue to do so until imperialism is torn up and thrown away.
This novel is a history and tale of the Caribbean Islands, from 1310 to the 20th century. It introduces us to the advanced Mayan culture that was there before the Europeans, with their scientific wonders. It tells of the colonization of the native peoples and the rise of the brutal slave trade. It encompasses Haiti’s slave revolt and the rise of the Cuban revolution. Through it all, people search for a better life.
This 12-hour docuseries tells the story of the 8-year American Revolution, 8 years of civil war. Ken Burns tells the story through different renowned actors reading letters of journal entries.
The series examines questions we were not taught in school. For example, how the revolutionary fight hastened and ensured a wider and violent encroachment on Native American lands. It shows the issue of slavery haunting every step of this new country. It shows women asserting themselves in the battle for a better life.
What is liberty? Freedom? What did they fight for? What was won? And what remains to be won today? These are some of the questions posed in the series.
On December 2, Juan Orlando Hernández, President of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, walked out of a U.S. federal prison. Trump pardoned JOH, as he is known, after he had served less than two years of a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking. Trump also endorsed the candidate of JOH’s National Party in the election that took place November 30, threatening to cut off aid if its candidate doesn’t win.
JOH helped bring more than 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S. over 20 years. He accepted a million-dollar bribe from the famous Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo,” and promised to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”
Under the excuse of fighting drug trafficking, the U.S. has built up a massive military force in the Caribbean and killed more than 80 people in recent months. Trump’s pardon of this notorious drug trafficker proves that excuse is a lie.
In fact, both the military buildup and the pardon of JOH are parts of wider U.S. moves to consolidate control of its Latin American “backyard.”
The U.S. has long dominated Honduras. “U.S.S. Honduras,” as the country became known, was the main U.S. base for a series of brutally destructive wars across Central America in the 1980s. Those dirty wars were partially funded by CIA-backed drug running. After the fighting ended, and the U.S. pulled back its huge financial aid to the Honduran military, military leaders turned even more to drug trafficking to make up the difference.
JOH himself came to power in the aftermath of a 2009 coup organized by the Honduran military. The coup was welcomed—if not planned—by President Obama himself, who called JOH an “excellent partner.”
After the coup, Honduras was overrun by drug gangs, and the violence got so bad that Honduras had the highest murder rate in the world. Politically connected cronies stole hundreds of millions of dollars from this impoverished country’s health system and sold it deadly adulterated medicine. Security forces took protestors against JOH’s “reelection” in a rigged vote in 2017 “to military installations, where they were brutally beaten, insulted and sometimes tortured,” according to the United Nations.
The hell ordinary people had to endure didn’t bother U.S. companies or the U.S. government. However corrupt it was, the government under JOH helped push peasants off the land to make room for plantations producing for export. Already low wages fell even further in the country’s garment and auto parts plants. And Honduras supported U.S. policies throughout Latin America.
But conditions in Honduras got so bad that huge numbers of people started fleeing the country. Since the coup, more than 100,000 unaccompanied children from Honduras have arrived at the U.S. southern border, many under ten years old. This from a country with about as many people as Michigan. As this mass migration became an increasing political problem for the Biden administration, U.S. support for JOH and his party began to fizzle.
In 2022, Hondurans voted out JOH’s National Party and put in the same political party that had been removed in the coup. For ordinary people, not much changed. But the new government took a few steps that U.S. investors and the U.S. government did not like, including recognizing the Venezuelan government and cancelling a few privatization projects. As small and symbolic as they were, these moves were evidently too much for the Trump administration.
U.S. policy against the population of Honduras has also hurt workers in this country. Driving down the wages and conditions of Honduran workers hurts workers everywhere, as companies will always take advantage of the most desperate workers they can find.
Workers in the U.S., Honduras, and throughout the Americas have the same interests, and the same enemies: above all, U.S. imperialism, whoever the president directing it.
Trump’s campaign against small boats off of South America has destroyed 22 boats and killed 87 people so far. More recently, the press and Congress have focused on the first boat attack, which took place on September 1st.
The first attack was on a speedboat carrying 11 people in waters near Venezuela and Trinidad. After the first missile strike, part of the boat remained afloat, and two survivors clung to the wreckage. The Navy then launched a second missile, killing the survivors—a so-called “double tap” attack. Democrats and others in Congress have called the second strike a possible war crime, because the survivors were “out of the fight.”
The administration has not proven that any of these boats were carrying drugs. If they were, those drugs were almost certainly bound for West Africa and Europe, not the United States. The DEA says almost all the drugs coming into the U.S. come via Mexico and the Pacific Ocean—as opposed to Venezuela. The claim that small, unarmed speedboats are somehow “in a fight” with the most powerful navy in history is preposterous.
Killing people on boats without notice is murder, plain and simple. It’s also par for the course for U.S. imperialism’s long and bloody history in the world. And Democrats in Congress want to split hairs about which attack is a war crime? All of the attacks are a war crime!