Just after Covid, women had made a come-back into the workforce, with the ability to work from home and more flexible work schedules. But recently with the pressure to return to the office and less flexible work schedules, women are torn between caregiving responsibilities and work.

This trend shows that the role of women in this society hasn’t changed much. Women are still expected to take care of the children and the aging parents. And they are forced out of a way to earn money.

Childcare and eldercare are huge socially necessary jobs, but they are also unpaid jobs. Looks like the oppression of women in the United States is alive and well.

For clarification purposes, climate is different from the weather. Weather is what is happening right now. Climate is the average of these weather patterns over a long period of time—typically 30 years or more. For example, a desert climate or a tropical climate. An analogy might be, weather is to climate as mood is to personality.

This year’s report includes a new way to measure climate change—the rate at which energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet. That is energy coming in and energy going out.

The significance of record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases, heat-trapping gases, in the atmosphere, and their effects are visible everywhere. For example, an 11-year series of hottest-ever years; and the way heat is accumulating deep in the oceans.

In a stable climate, incoming energy and outgoing energy are about the same. But activities such as burning fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal), growing food and making steel, cement and plastic have upset that balance by pushing levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to the highest level in at least 800,000 years. That’s trapping more of the sun’s energy in the Earth’s climate system than ever previously recorded.

The new metric shows a more complete picture of how the climate system is responding to human emissions, integrating all the heat accumulating in the oceans and atmosphere, on land and melting ice, explained oceanographer Karina von Schuckmann, a senior science advisor with Mercator Ocean International. Earth’s energy imbalance also helps show how different parts of the climate system are connected and identifies the central role of the oceans in absorbing most of the trapped heat. It gives a more accurate picture of climate change and how it works than just showing temperature change relative to 1850. Greenhouse gases change how much energy escapes and how the system responds. This is what drives climate change.

The air temperature people experience, for example, is only about one to two percent of all the energy trapped in the Earth’s systems by greenhouse gases. Whereas about 90% heats the oceans, about five percent melts ice and heats land.

The U.N. Secretary General added that the consequences of our heating planet “are written into the daily lives of families struggling as droughts and storms drive up food prices, in workers pushed to the brink by extreme heat, in farmers watching crops wither, and in communities and homes swept away by floods.”

Capitalism has led humanity down a path that is destroying the environment that living organisms require to survive, and it has no solutions. Only an organized working class can take charge and solve this crisis.

The plant is owned by JBS, headquartered in Brazil. JBS is the world’s largest meatpacking corporation, with a market value around 17 billion dollars.

The company is sitting pretty right now. Tyson, its competitor, closed a Nebraska plant, taking supply off the market. Consumers have to pay around six dollars a pound for hamburger; double that for whoever can afford steak.

JBS profits in 2025 were around 2 billion dollars, a 14% increase over 2024. The company paid dividends of one dollar per share. The Batista brothers’ group of Brazil holds 536 million of those shares. The Brazil Development Bank holds 200 million shares. BlackRock holds 28 million shares. The workers aren’t paid enough to live on, but shareholders take hundreds of millions!

Workers have to eat too. The Greeley strikers have to cope with a high Colorado cost of living. Add on the company’s healthcare co-pay demands, plus brutal working conditions, plus charging workers for necessary safety equipment like cut-proof gloves. All this pushed the workers into action.

When JBS refused to bargain as required by law, the union called an unfair labor practice strike. Workers approved the strike by 98%, even while ICE vans circled the meeting!

Roughly 90% of the 3,800 union workers are immigrants. The night shift is largely Haitian.

Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, said: “There’s 50 languages spoken at this plant. And where JBS thinks that they can hire a vulnerable workforce, they do that by design, hoping that workers can’t talk to each other about wages and benefits or working conditions. They’re hoping that we have a division in the plant. But they underestimated their workers. The workers are smart. They’re strong. They’re hard workers. And they deserve dignity, and they deserve respect.”

On March 27, the strike entered its third week.

At the time of the crash, one of the two controllers in the tower was also doing the duties of a third controller at the same time. That might be fine most nights, because there is little late night air traffic at LaGuardia. But that night there were lots of delayed flights, so they were landing one after another.

Even that might have worked out if there were no other problems, but problems do happen! A United Airlines flight had to abort two takeoff attempts because of an odor that was sickening crew members. The fire truck hit by the plane was responding to that emergency when it crossed the runway where the Air Canada plane was landing.

Even that might not have caused a crash if the fire truck had a transponder, allowing controllers to track its movements—but it didn’t.

Nine seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller told the fire truck to stop, but the truck kept going. It’s not clear if the drivers of the truck heard the order—or if there was another equipment problem that prevented them from hearing it.

After the crash, one of the controllers said “I messed up.” Yes, but mostly, the whole system messed up!

For years, the FAA has had a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. They regularly put in overtime and work six-day weeks. As a result of staffing shortages, they are routinely tasked to do two jobs at once. Not a great idea for a job where everyone better be paying attention at all times or people can die!

And while the government can spring for giant projects that provide handsome profits to contractors, like the remaking of LaGuardia’s terminals a few years ago, it has been underfunding basic maintenance that pays for things like fire truck transponders and the upgrading of air traffic control systems for decades.

The population relies on many safety measures that can only be organized at the scale of the whole society, like air traffic control. But the capitalist class devours every dollar of the public money needed for these measures.

Hegseth blocked the promotion of the four despite the fact that non-white troops make up about 50% of soldiers in the lower ranks, but only 17 to 44% of those from one-star generals on up. While the disparity is less for women, more women have joined the Army in recent years.

Hegseth’s racist and sexist actions are part of an ongoing pattern, according to the New York Times, based on interviews it did with 11 current and former military and administration officials. Some of those officials pointed to a heated argument last summer between Secretary Driscoll and one of Hegseth’s underlings, Ricky Buria. Buria reportedly took Driscoll to task for selecting Major General Antoinette Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. That position would require her to appear next to Donald Trump in ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. According to those officials, Buria told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events!

Hegseth has gone on the attack against past leaders of the military for efforts to promote more minority and women candidates to higher ranks, calling them “whores to wokesters.” He fired dozens of top military officials, so that now 16 out of 17 of his top military officials are white men.

One of the people Hegseth chose to help him review the list of those chosen for promotion to one-star general was Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier general who once referred to President Obama as a “terrorist leader” and has a history of Islamophobic comments.

Though other Trump administration officials try to paper over suggestions of Trump and Hegseth’s racism and sexism, their behavior proves otherwise. As writer Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

This article is translated from the March 27 issue, #3008 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

The working class in most countries around the Persian Gulf is mainly composed of immigrant workers. When the war began, they were trapped without resources in unexpectedly dangerous places.

In the six Gulf monarchies of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, more than half of the 60 million inhabitants are foreign workers. In Qatar, they make up nearly 90% of the population. Around 25 million workers are from Asia, especially India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Several hundred thousand are from Africa.

Oil and gas workers, construction workers, hotel employees, domestic workers, and drivers, they are indispensable in all essential sectors. They are subjected to brutal exploitation. Several Gulf countries practice the “kafala” system which requires workers to have a sponsor such as their employer who controls their right to keep a job, change jobs, or leave the country. Sponsors often confiscate their passports, which puts them in a position of almost total dependence.

The war drastically worsened this situation. Tourism collapsed. A number of energy and petrochemical sites have been damaged by bombs. Others were closed in fear of bombs. Affluent Western families and foreign executives fled in haste, sometimes abandoning their employees. Domestic workers, chauffeurs, and guards found themselves without pay or housing in the blink of an eye.

All this causes drastic consequences in their countries of origin. In India’s southern state of Kerala, remittances sent by workers in the Middle East make up a fifth of local incomes. Workers from Bangladesh alone sent more than 23 billion dollars home last year. These transfers support entire families, who are now bearing the brunt of the war’s consequences.

The governments of their countries of origin have little to offer. The government of the Philippines says it is willing to bring back the 2.4 million Filipino workers in the Middle East if the situation worsens. But leaders did not say how they would do this. A video filmed in Bahrain showing Filipino workers being roughly turned away by an embassy staffer has caused outrage. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi bizarrely boasts of having called several leaders of Persian Gulf countries to thank them for taking care of Indians there.

During peacetime, the Persian Gulf monarchies’ skyscrapers and energy and tourism industries relied on the exploitation of these tens of millions of workers. In wartime, these same workers and their families thousands of miles away suffer immediate consequences.

Of course, Trump had excuses for starting the war against Iran. Warmongers always do.

He reproached Iran’s regime for killing its own people, imprisoning thousands of them.

Both true, but if this reasoning were followed, the U.S. should have been attacking Israel given the slaughter that Israel carried out in Gaza. Other countries should have been attacking the U.S., given the numbers the U.S. imprisons.

No. The U.S./Israeli bombardment of Iran was an unprovoked war. The U.S. hadn’t been invaded. Iran posed no real threat. It had no missiles that could hit the U.S., no nuclear weapons in hand, unlike the U.S., which is the only country ever to have used such a weapon.

To launch the war against Iran was a choice, a conscious choice, a deliberate choice.

That’s only a way to say that this war is a product of U.S. policy, not just Trump’s policy, but the policy of the U.S. capitalist class. If the rulers of this capitalist society were opposed to Trump’s war, he would have been sliding out of the White House on his rear, his golden baubles with him.

Today, the whole world is being battered by a long-term financial crisis. The economy of this country is not immune.

The major part of the American capitalist class is doing well, individual capitalists make money speculating on AI ventures, crypto and real estate. Corporations are paying out more money to stockholders than they make in profit—and they are putting their companies in hock to do it. But the productive economy is running only tepidly. Debts are piling up: corporate debt, government debt. And the population is choking on debt.

The economies of the U.S. and China are closely tied to each other, dependent on each other. And yet, China and the U.S. are in an increasingly poisonous competition with each other.

Economists wonder how long this contradictory situation can go on. In other words, when will it break out in war?

Such a war may still be off in the future. But U.S. capitalism, with Trump acting for it, is clearing up some loose ends today. It is trying to impose discipline on countries which diverged even a bit from where U.S. capitalism is heading.

Iran is one of those countries, as was Venezuela, as is Cuba, as is Russia, not to mention much of the Middle East, which sits at the hub of world trade. Its oil and natural gas is not only needed for transport, but is key for the production of fertilizer and of helium for semi-conductors.

And what about Greenland and Canada? Are Trump’s threats to them just Trump being Trump? Another Art of the Deal? Maybe. But Trump being Trump is the front man U.S. capitalism needed on its road to World War III.

Trump has spent the last year trying to discipline the U.S. population, preparing us to accept wars people don’t want. Opponents are tied up in lawsuits and criminal cases, which eventually are thrown out of court—but not until the people attacked have wasted a lot of time and money. Opponents of the wars or of Trump’s other policies are accused—unofficially—of treason. But laws from World War I targeting “sedition” are being dusted off to use again—officially.

The attack on immigrants is key to the disciplining of the whole population. Today, one part of the working class is cut out, isolated from the rest of our class. ICE, a military force, is thrown into the cities; concentration camps are set up in warehouses and tents; legal rights are denied.

Capitalism is showing its hand. A world at war will mean a devastating war at home.

We should not let ourselves be taken by surprise.