the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 26, 2025
On Wednesday, May 21, two young staffers of the Israeli embassy, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down by an avowed supporter of Palestinian and Gazan human rights. It was a horrendous act of violence, of one person against two others, a young Israeli and an American who were not a part of the Israeli decision-making apparatus.
Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old Chicago resident, yelled “Free Palestine” shortly after he shot the two. He appeared deeply angry about the ongoing slaughter in Gaza carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, orchestrated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supported by the United States. His stated purpose was to “bring the war home.”
His apparent anger is understandable in light of the continued Israeli slaughter of the Gazan Palestinian population, in the name of attacking Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israeli people on October 7, 2023.
To say the least, the Israeli counterattack has been carried out against the entire Gazan population. Israel is clearly bent on destroying and displacing that entire population, associated with Hamas or not. Especially since the U.S. State, under Donald Trump, seems to support the idea of removing the entire Palestinian population and turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
So of course people are outraged! It is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, carried out by Israel with the complete military and political support of the United States. Israel continues carrying out further bombings, recently killing, among others, nine of a Gazan doctor’s ten children over the weekend. Israel is threatening to starve to death tens of thousands of Gazans, including 14,000 infants, if they do not move away yet again.
But the action by Rodriguez could not possibly challenge Israeli nor U.S. state power, because these states are the representatives of an entire ruling class and an entire economic system that produces these injustices, these wars, this slaughter.
In fact, these shootings allowed the U.S. and Israeli officials, and all the major media, to completely flip the script, shifting blame away from the brutality of U.S. and Israeli state attacks against a helpless Palestinian population.
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, jumped on the new narrative, stating that the “Free Palestine” slogan is the latest version of “Heil Hitler”—equating the fight for one people’s freedom with the genocide of another!
The U.S. and its allies decided long ago that the formation of a Jewish homeland, built on the premise that any Jewish person could automatically be a citizen, could serve imperialism’s purposes relative to maintaining order in the Middle East. This homeland, built on occupied land, would need the protection of U.S. imperialism and its allies against all those made landless and homeless in the transaction. The Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and all of Israel were offered up as the sacrificial lambs to that arrangement, as were the Israeli people.
No demonstration, no act of individual terror, can put an end to the war and destruction laid in place by imperialism. Only the collective action of the working class itself, organized and on its feet and ready for revolutionary action, has the power to challenge the decisions made at the level of the imperialist state.
Even now, as the leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom and the E.U. are taking their distance from the slaughter Netanyahu carries out, they still support Israel with over 150 million dollars worth of new arms shipments. As does the United States, continuing its arms shipments—arms that directly contribute to the slaughter of men, women, and children.
The working class of Palestine, and the working class of Israel, have the same interests as does the working class of the United States. And that interest is in the overthrow of capitalism and its wars here—and across the world.
Individual acts of violence do not advance us toward that goal. Only the organization of a party with that goal in mind can move us forward.
May 26, 2025
At budget hearings, politicians talk of adding “work requirements” to Medicaid.
Medicaid recipients ARE working! Their pay is too low! According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 92% of those under 65 who receive Medicaid ARE working! Folks work full-time, part-time or work for free caring for disabled family and young children.
May 26, 2025
A federal school voucher plan included in the broader megabill would allow the federal government to spend five billion dollars a year for four years “to help families pay for private schools” anywhere in the U.S.
Helping families? Which families? The estimated $5,000 they would receive doesn’t begin to cover the cost of private schooling, which can be upwards of $20,000 or more a year.
Most voters today do not favor vouchers, where public school money is diverted to private schools. When voucher referendums have been on the ballot, they have been defeated time and time again.
May 26, 2025
The holiday is about the troops who died in U.S. wars. It’s been war after war: Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…. The list goes on and on.
A real celebration to honor fallen and wounded troops would be an end to these endless wars which only benefit the super-rich.
May 26, 2025
The average credit card debt in Maryland is now $9,252, up from last year. Total credit card debt nationally is around 1.2 trillion dollars, higher than it’s ever been in 25 years. Wall Street sharks feast on higher interest payments. Wages need to keep up with prices, or our debts will keep increasing.
May 26, 2025
Today, dining at a fast-food restaurant like McDonald’s has become a splurge. More than a year ago, a Big Mac meal deal priced at $18 made the news. Sure, the McDonald’s which sold this extravagant hamburger combo is located off Interstate 95 in Darien, one of the wealthiest towns in upscale Fairfield County, Connecticut. Its well-off customers can well afford this exorbitant price.
But in the large metropolitan area of Los Angeles, a medium Big Mac meal deal starts at $12.50. Therefore, the total can easily reach $30 to $40 for two people. This is hardly affordable for working class families.
McDonald’s claims that the rising costs of food ingredients and wages justify these high prices. This is sheer nonsense.
According to a study conducted by FinanceBuzz, a personal finance service firm, McDonald’s menu prices doubled (100% increase) between 2014 and 2024. This increase outpaced the overall inflation rate during the same period (31%). Thus, McDonald’s raised its prices more than three times the inflation rate, well above the ingredient and labor costs. During the same period, Popeyes raised its prices by 86% and Taco Bell by 81%.
You may think that, OK, you can move to a less lavish menu item. For example, the McChicken sandwich, which is McDonald’s staple offering, looks more affordable. This deal was $1 in 2014, but now costs $3 at some locations. That’s a massive price increase of nearly 200% in a single decade.
McDonald’s is very profitable, consistently reporting some of the highest profit margins in the restaurant industry. The company’s current net profit margin (after taxes) is approximately 32%, indicating that nearly a third of its revenue is retained as profit after covering all expenses, which include food ingredients and labor costs.
McDonald’s reaches these profit levels while some of its burger patty sizes, like its “classic,” 1.6 ounce, are smaller than those of its competitors, Burger King and Wendy’s, two ounces. This profit margin is so sky-high that it exceeds even that of companies like Tesla, Apple, Google, and Netflix. No wonder why McDonald’s is such a darling on Wall Street.
May 26, 2025
In June 2023, Jacy Houseton, a black woman, was filming two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies during an arrest in Lancaster, California. One of the deputies, Trevor Kirk, ran toward Houseton, grabbed her by the neck, and threw her face down on the ground. Kirk then twisted Houseton’s arm and pushed his knee on her neck, in a move similar to what killed George Floyd in 2020. Finally, to top it all off, Kirk pepper sprayed Houseton in the face, twice.
Kirk’s body camera captured this barbaric assault in great detail, and Houseton testified in court that, besides the burns on her face and neck, she had suffered a broken wrist. Last February, a federal jury found Kirk guilty of “deprivation of rights under the color of law,” the only charge the authorities had filed against Kirk.
But once again, cops’ unions and right-wing politicians rushed to defend a brutal cop caught on camera. A spokesman of the L.A. sheriff’s deputies’ union wrote Trump, asking him to intervene—and the Trump administration is now pressuring the judge to overturn the verdict. Bill Essayli, an interim U.S. attorney appointed just last month by Trump, hastily pushed through a “plea agreement” with Kirk—AFTER Kirk was already convicted, that is. The news media reported that the four prosecutors on the case have all resigned in protest.
Kirk’s felony conviction carries a possible prison sentence of 10 years, but the new prosecutor on the case, Rob Keenan, wants the judge to call Kirk’s assault a misdemeanor, sentence him only to a year’s probation, and allow him to keep his job. Never mind that Kirk actually has a history of violence. In early 2024, he was arrested by his own sheriff’s department for domestic violence against his wife. Kirk escaped being indicted only because his wife ended up not filing charges against him.
So, when the judge asked Keenan why Kirk should go free, Keenan said that the trial gave Kirk “an opportunity to hear from 12 good people from the community that they thought his conduct was excessive, and now he’s admitted that.”
In this so-called “justice system,” even the most brutal and murderous cops can count on the protection of their higher-ups and legal authorities.
May 26, 2025
In August of 2024, before the election, Trump said: “Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again.”
No matter who they voted for, 75% of voters said they have experienced hardship or severe hardship due to inflation. This is according to a CNN exit poll in November 2024.
Prices have continued to go up ever since Trump took office, and are about to get worse. Tariffs will add to the cost of imports, meaning price increases are on the way.
Walmart recently warned Wall Street investors that it might have to increase some prices because of tariffs. Federal law requires corporations to be truthful with their investors. The Walmart’s CEO said, “Given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality…. In some cases, we’ll absorb costs … and not simply pass on a tariff cost.”
Basically, Walmart told Wall Street they will try to keep some prices down to undercut other retailers, but that prices WILL go up. This was a bridge too far for Trump, who went on a social media tirade. What Trump posted is an admission that he KNOWS prices will go up. He said: “WALMART … SHOULD EAT [the cost of] THE TARIFFS.”
After that, one of Trump’s wingmen, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, chatted with the Walmart CEO. Bessent put a positive spin on what he learned from Walmart by saying that while prices WILL go up, “what really mattered for Walmart customers … is that the price of gas is down from last year and is ‘only’ averaging $3.18 a gallon.” SO out of touch!
Clearly, Trump is not mad prices are going up. Trump is mad it is being pointed out. The President doesn’t want to take any blame for what his administration’s actions are causing.
May 26, 2025
Five years after the explosion of protests against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, governments and businesses across the country are going back on the promises of reform they made at the time.
Police across this country have killed around three civilians a day for many years. But on May 25, 2020, white Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin brutally killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Floyd cried out “I can’t breathe” 27 times before dying. Chauvin casually recorded the death as a “medical incident.” Fortunately, 17-year-old bystander Darnella Frazier posted a video of the murder, which went viral. Hundreds of angry neighbors flooded the 3rd District police station, to the point where the mayor ordered the staff to evacuate by helicopter from the roof. In the following weeks and months, millions of people around the country and the world protested—black, white, native-born, immigrant, young, old, in small towns, in suburbs, and in cities.
Protestors demanded legal reforms of policing and the reallocation of money from police to counseling. That year and in 2021, states passed more than 140 law enforcement oversight bills, with the federal government and local governments also changing laws. Big corporations like Walmart, McDonald’s, Google, and Minneapolis-based Target pledged to spend 50 billion dollars to welcome black customers.
But the foundations of the society stayed the same. It’s a capitalist society based on exploitation, founded on slavery. After slavery, institutionalized racism condemned the black population to the bottom ranks of “free labor,” with worse unemployment, more poverty, worse medical care and schools. In the South, police developed out of patrols that caught and brutalized enslaved people who ran away. In the North, large-scale police forces were organized to attack striking workers.
The role of the police in this capitalist society has always been to enforce vast inequality by controlling the population, which means by using violence.
Cops still kill black Americans at three times the rate they kill white Americans, and they get away with it. The number of prosecutions for these killings has not gone up. Fewer than two percent of police shootings lead to indictments. In May, a Tennessee jury acquitted three former Memphis cops of murder in the 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols. A Michigan jury deadlocked on second-degree murder for the cop who shot Patrick Lyoya to death in Grand Rapids in 2022. Also in May, the Trump administration ended federal oversight of cops in Minneapolis and in Louisville, Kentucky, where cops killed Breonna Taylor in 2020. And Trump nags big corporations to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, so they are self-interestedly slashing that spending.
Protestors in 2020 thought the system could be fixed. But the system is not broken. It is doing what it was designed to do: enforce capitalist exploitation with violence. Protests will have to take on the capitalist system itself, and its state. This means workers using their power as the class which makes society run and produces the wealth.
May 26, 2025
Included in the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill” tax and budget plan is a new 3.5% tax on money transfers out of the country. This tax is to be imposed on non-citizens—that is to say, immigrant workers.
Workers in the U.S. wire 65 billion dollars a year back to Mexico, 12 billion to Guatemala, and billions more to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, to the Middle East, to India and the rest of Asia. The tax could reduce the national income of Mexico by almost one percent. That money tends to go to rural states there—poor places that workers left, so they could try to make more money. These transfers represent a big part of the economy in many poor countries: 20% in Guatemala and Haiti, for example.
Immigrant workers pay taxes in the U.S. already, when they work, when they shop, when they pay tolls. Moreover, many are shut out from social services available to those born here. Trump proposes to fund tax cuts for the billionaires, and his military budget, by squeezing the part of the working class made up of immigrants. It’s one more blow in the long chain that his administration has rained down on immigrants in this country.
Trump spreads a poison: that attacking the immigrant part of the working population will somehow benefit others. No—brandishing scorn for immigrants is one of his ways of trying to divide the working class, while he shovels money to the capitalists.
May 26, 2025
Trump’s budget, which he humbly calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed the U.S. House and awaits passage by the Senate. Ultimately, what’s in it will be much more beautiful for the very wealthy and the big corporations than for the working class and the poor.
Much of the bill makes permanent the tax cuts that were part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during Trump’s first term in 2017. That bill, over time, increased the estate tax and gift tax exemption from 11 million dollars to 28 million dollars, and the new bill increases that even more to 30 million dollars next year. That will mean the wealthiest estates will each receive a tax cut of 6.3 million dollars next year, and fewer than 1 in 1,000 estates will be taxed at all.
The new bill also looks beautiful for big corporations as it makes permanent the cut in the corporate tax rate in the 2017 bill from 35% to 21%. Trump claimed in 2017 that the corporate tax cut would lead to more jobs and higher wages. Instead, the corporations passed the huge tax breaks on to their stockholders through stock buybacks, expected to reach one trillion dollars this year, according to Goldman Sachs. The top 11 consumer-goods corporations alone paid out 463 billion dollars in stock buybacks since 2017, and the new bill promises more of the same.
Wealthy taxpayers will also benefit from an increase in deductions to federal income taxes, for state income taxes they pay, from the current $10,000 to $40,000.
The tax cuts for the working class will be much smaller, with an increase of $1,000 in the standard deduction on federal income taxes, and this increase will be temporary. There will also be an increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500, but only until 2028 when it will go back to $2,000.
Some workers will benefit from tax breaks on tips and overtime, but these deductions will also end in 2028.
Trump’s so-called “beautiful bill” takes from the poor to pay for the tax cuts mostly benefiting the rich. It expands work requirements for those receiving Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP) food aid by raising the mandatory working age from 54 to 64. While those caring for children under 18 are currently exempt from SNAP work requirements, the new bill cuts that exemption to only those with children under 7. The bill also will make it more difficult for people to receive SNAP benefits by putting five percent of the benefit costs on the states, which currently pay none, and 75% of the administrative costs, for which the states currently contribute only 50%.
The bill also imposes work requirements for Medicaid recipients of at least 80 hours of “community engagement” per month and requires that they verify their eligibility twice a year, compared to once a year currently.
Despite cutting programs that benefit the poor to pay for tax cuts to the rich, the new budget still manages to find an extra 150 billion dollars for the military, nearly 47 billion dollars more for border wall construction, and over 6 billion more for the Border Patrol and Customs Enforcement.
While Trump, like others before him, claimed in the elections that he would cut the U.S. budget deficit, this bill will simply add to it. The tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations are expected to cost over 4.6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
Trump’s is certainly not the only administration to shift the tax burden from the rich to the working class and the poor. Since 1980, the tax rate on the highest income brackets dropped from 70% to 37%.
Trump is simply continuing the redistribution of wealth from the working class and the poor to those at the top, and claiming it is something “big” and “beautiful.”
May 26, 2025
In early May, the governor of Texas signed the largest-ever U.S. school voucher program into law. It will take one billion dollars out of the state’s general fund for public education in its first year and divert it to private school tuition, including religious schools, virtual learning and home schooling.
One hundred thousand students in Texas can receive “vouchers” for private school tuition in the form of scholarships worth about $10,000. Texas has more than five million students, so “the program can’t serve everyone, but the legislature can appropriate more money for the program in the future.”
And, supposedly, any student can apply, although the program “prioritizes students with disabilities and from lower income families.”
Conservative politicians like Texas governor Abbott have fought for years to institute a school voucher system, together with Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and other billionaires. Their hard sell for “Universal School Choice” programs has focused on catch phrases like “parental rights” and on attacks against public schools, referring to them as “government schools.” They pretend that in doing programs like school vouchers, the control of children’s education would be in the hands of parents.
To get this legislation passed, Abbott played hardball. He endorsed Republican politicians who agreed and bumped off Republican representatives who opposed diverting public funds to private schools. Abbott’s campaign was bankrolled by millions of dollars, including from outside the state, where one billionaire donor alone, from Pennsylvania, gave him 10 million in campaign cash last year.
This campaign isn’t just in Texas. It’s the 16th state to make students eligible to receive public funds for private education. But the benefit isn’t primarily for students with disabilities or from low-income families. The reality is that voucher payments rarely cover the full cost of private schools, meaning that wealthier families, many who already send their children to private schools, reap the benefits.
Families in neighborhoods that are public school deserts or have public schools that are crumbling, due to the historic underfunding for public schools in the past 40 years, are targeted for support for these plans which don’t deliver. According to an educator who has researched school vouchers and their negative impact on public education, “These things are education’s equivalent of predatory lending. That’s what you would see here in Michigan. A lot of at-risk families lured into this stuff.”
This school voucher drive is an attempt to turn back the clock to a time before public schooling. But real “choice” would mean that all families would have the right to have their children educated in highly funded, quality public school systems.
May 26, 2025
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa came to the White House to talk to Donald Trump about the economic sanctions that the U.S. government had placed on South Africa. But Trump used this televised meeting to berate Ramaphosa about the “genocide” of white people in South Africa.
Trump even had a specially-prepared video showing a thousand crosses that Trump claimed marked the graves of a thousand white South African farmers. In fact, there was no one at all buried under those crosses.
A couple weeks earlier, Trump used money and other financial incentives to entice about 50 white South Africans to come to the U.S. as refugees. Trump claimed that they were in danger from black South Africans and that their land was being taken from them by the South African government. In fact, none of these so-called refugees had their land taken away.
But the history of South Africa shows who took the land in reality. Starting in the 17th century, white settlers from Holland, Britain and other parts of northern Europe invaded the southern part of Africa. They took land by force from the native population, attacking and killing them. South Africa was a British colony for many years, with the native-born population suffering the most from colonial exploitation. When South Africa became independent from Britain in 1910, white South Africans took governing power and set up a brutal system of racial separation called apartheid. In 1913, the apartheid regime passed a law that black people, the big majority of the population, could have only seven percent of the land. The other 93% of the land was reserved for white people. Most of it went to wealthy white landowners.
The apartheid system, which was supported by the U.S. government, benefitted the capitalists who stole the land and mines of South Africa and then exploited the labor of the native population. The black population fought against apartheid and, after many years, they threw out the apartheid regime in 1994. But still today, capitalist exploitation continues in South Africa and the vestiges of apartheid continue. Today white South Africans make up less than 10% of the population, but own about 75% of the land.
Trump and his right-wing accomplices in the government and in the media are not stupid. They are perfectly willing to use the most odious methods of insult, including racial slurs, to effect their purpose.
Undoubtedly, Trump’s Oval Office performance was intended to pressure the Ramaphosa government for monetary and political concessions and to threaten and bully other African heads of state.
And of course, Trump found it convenient to use the pretense of racism against white men to demonstrate to his right-wing base his allegiance to racist ideology—and racist practice.
May 26, 2025
The U.S. military’s Africa Command brought together 10,000 troops from over 40 countries from April 14 to May 23 to carry out war games in African host countries Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, and Senegal. Outrageously, Israel sent a dozen troops from the same Golani Brigade which massacred 15 medics in Gaza in March.
The U.S. has led the African Lion military exercises for 21 years to demonstrate U.S. military supremacy over the continent of Africa. U.S. officers lead other imperialist forces in countries they formerly colonized. NATO members France, England, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Hungary sent troops. And African leaders sent soldiers to practice brother fighting brother on African soil under U.S. domination: Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Libya, and Nigeria. Plus armies from around 20 other countries.
This time soldiers participating in the drills got injured by mistake. But these militaries practice to get ready for the real thing: world war.
May 26, 2025
This article is translated from the May 23 issue, #2964 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 18 decreed the resumption of basic humanitarian aid. This is for “diplomatic reasons,” he declared, alluding to pressure from Trump, who aims to strengthen his ties with Arab states in the region.
His measure was approved at a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet. Ministers did not take a vote, because many of them stated that aid should not resume. This opposition came mainly from the far right, which includes several ministers in the government. Their support is essential for the current administration coalition to remain in power. One of them, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, even declared last month that he would quit his post if any humanitarian aid enters Gaza and “reaches Hamas.” For now he has chosen to remain in office. But the far right is mobilizing. The Tzav 9 group created in January 2024 has blocked aid trucks headed to Gaza and now calls on its activists to block aid trucks again.
However, the aid in question is only “a drop in the ocean,” as a United Nations official said. Only nine trucks were allowed to enter Gaza on May 19. According to a spokesperson for a U.N. agency, Israel will allow 100 aid trucks per day, far below the 600 per day during the ceasefire from January 19 and March 18. This was already outrageously insufficient. The situation of the population has gotten much worse after 11 weeks of blockade completely depriving them of food, medicine, electricity, and fuel. Since March 18, in addition to these deprivations, Gazans have suffered increasingly deadly bombings targeting hospitals, tent camps, and so on. More than 3,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war restarted, and more than 9,300 injured, many of them children. No fewer than nearly 62,000 Palestinians have died since October 2023.
Netanyahu and the far right say their goal is to restart the war in order to completely occupy Gaza and “annihilate Hamas.” But the conquest and occupation of Gaza cannot guarantee the security of the Israeli population. Quite the contrary!
Fortunately, active-duty troops have expressed opposition to Netanyahu’s policy of all-out war for months. Demonstrations take place every week in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, often bringing together thousands of people. Many say Netanyahu doesn’t mind sacrificing the hostages. But among these demonstrators, a growing minority also express outrage at the fate of the Palestinians. For several weeks, hundreds of people have gathered silently in front of the entrance to army headquarters in Tel Aviv, holding candles and photos of Palestinian children killed since March 18.
Through his cynicism, brutality, and open disregard for the lives of Palestinians and Israelis themselves, Netanyahu is beginning to spark protests among his own country’s people. The current impasse can only be broken by challenging the policies that led to it, and the officials who imposed these policies. Wars and divisions between peoples are the work of local ruling classes and imperialist powers, who use them to assert their domination over the people.
May 26, 2025
This article is translated from the May 23 issue, #2964 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The Israeli government shifted to a new phase of war after reducing the Gaza Strip to a field of rubble, while famine prematurely aged thousands of children into geriatrics lacking the strength to walk or even cry.
The military resumed intense bombings in recent days, indiscriminately targeting homes, schools, marketplaces, and refugee camps. More than 460 Gazans died. Then on May 18, the Israeli army deployed tanks and bulldozers to conquer Palestinian territory by land.
Even while using blockade and famine as weapons of mass destruction, the regime declared negotiations were underway. But the negotiators in Dubai and Qatar showed no urgency. They were not being bombed. As for the Gazans themselves, they have no say in the talks. They cannot negotiate with bombs or starvation.
Now if Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas sign another truce and commit to some process to end the war, this will not stop the trauma for Palestinians.
By launching the ground invasion, Netanyahu intends to reoccupy and regain full control of the Gaza Strip, and by no means to let Palestinians live there in peace.
Netanyahu and other far right politicians in his administration aim to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, even though they don’t know how to achieve this goal or get it blessed by their allies, particularly the U.S.
From its birth, the construction of the state of Israel has been a mission of colonization, the brutal expulsion of Palestinians, and the denial of any possibility of fraternal and egalitarian coexistence between Jewish migrants and Palestinians. The oppression and dispossession of Palestinians from their land has continued seamlessly for 77 years, triggering ever deadlier confrontations.
This spiral has dug a trench of horror, death, and bloodshed between the two peoples, favoring the most extremist groups on both sides. Israel’s current leaders have taken this logic to its most extreme and barbaric end.
Israel’s far right has been more powerful than ever, following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. In the aftermath of this massacre, Jewish supremacists have vied with each other to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza. Some proposed using an atom bomb. Others proposed a deadly virus. And their allies are in office!
The current situation contains many unknowns. But Israeli governments have done their utmost for years to destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state, in Gaza or the West Bank. These supremacist officials have never been closer to success than now.
Imperialist leaders—particularly in the U.S.—have always supported the policies of Zionist leaders, because they allow U.S. imperialism to dominate the Middle East by force. American officials being the heirs of those who colonized and wiped out many other peoples in the past, the massacre of Palestinians doesn’t shake them. Trump only interferes in this war to force Netanyahu to act more subtly.
But Israelis can play a decisive role in changing the situation. More and more of them denounce Netanyahu’s war as madness for both Palestinians and Israelis. It is madness—because even while weakening Hamas today, this war also ensures Hamas’ future by daily creating new recruits whose only goal is revenge.
You cannot build paradise by throwing other people into hell. Peace cannot be built on a mountain of corpses or the deportation of millions of people. It can only be built by ending oppression and apartheid, stopping annexations and settlements, and recognizing equal rights between peoples.
Fraternal coexistence between the Israeli people and their neighboring Arab peoples can only be achieved within a revolutionary federation of the peoples of the Middle East. This will require overthrowing all the villains who currently speak in the name of the peoples—over there and right here!
May 26, 2025
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of May 19, 2025.
“Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
That was Donald Trump, pretending that the problem with his tariffs boils down to unreasonable children, who want too many toys.
No, the problem is not greedy children. The problem is the greedy class of multibillionaires like Trump. Their mania to amass more wealth has brought their financial system to the very edge of another collapse, like 2008–09, but worse.
These parasites feed on an enormously distorted economy, resting more on financial dealing than on productive investment in the goods and services the population needs. It’s an economy that no longer builds houses for ordinary families because there’s not enough profit in it. It no longer builds vehicles in this country that working people could afford to buy. It outsourced even the making of dolls because there wasn’t enough profit in it. There was more money to be made in buying and selling stock, more money to be made in cryptocurrency speculation.
But the multibillionaires like Trump have driven their economy into a swamp, and they can’t get it back out. They want a government bailout.
That’s what tariffs are—a bailout for the capitalist class that has misdirected, disorganized, and super-expropriated the productive economy. Tariffs are a bailout, just like the government budget is a bailout, ratcheting money away from services the population needs, directing it to the capitalist class.
But let’s talk about tariffs. In simple words, a tariff is just a tax, like a sales tax. But it’s a special tax, tacked onto merchandise brought into another country for sale. The cost of this tax falls mostly on working people, because it’s been imposed on the things we buy. Given the current rate of tariffs set by the U.S. government, ordinary households will pay $2,800 extra this year.
On the scale of the world, the economy has been in a mess for decades. And the capitalists of different countries have been competing with each other to grab a bigger part of the world’s wealth for themselves. It’s a vicious economic war.
Workers all over the world pay the price for it. We pay the tariffs on what we buy. That’s why, in Trump’s world, children can’t have dolls. It’s also why children in many countries starve to death. It’s why families try to migrate.
All of this is part of the economic war. And working people pay the price for all of it. We pay the price when the capitalists push to get greater productivity out of us, no matter in which country we work. We all pay the price as each set of capitalists pushes to reduce the wages it pays. We all pay the price as money is drained away from public services and social services into things like tax cuts for the billionaire class.
No matter where we work, we are all caught today in the capitalists’ economic war.
We shouldn’t let ourselves be suckered into supporting one group of capitalists against the capitalists of other countries. They are all our enemies.
Twice before, the capitalist class pushed the world into an economic war like the one heating up today. And when that wasn’t enough for them, they took the peoples of the world into a shooting war. They are ready to do it again.
For workers, the worst thing would be to support our own set of capitalists who want us to line up behind them, condemning other countries, hating other people. All of this is a patriotic preparation, getting us ready to enlist in their shooting war tomorrow.
In this world, the only division that matters is the one that opposes the workers, who produce everything and keep everything running, to their exploiters, the capitalists who benefit from our labor.
The people of the world will have neither peace nor prosperity so long as the capitalists hold power. The workers have the capacity to throw the capitalists out. They are the only ones who can.
May 26, 2025
This movie is unlike others. It is an ode to blues and its importance to Black Mississippi Delta culture and at the same time shows the timelessness and power of expression. It shows the diversity and strength of the Delta Southern culture in the face of evil both real and surreal. It shows the power of love and family. Nothing in the film is there to fill space. The cinematography and acting are uniquely placed and convey layers of meaning. It really cannot be described, go and see it today. And afterwards, watch the documentary The Howlin’ Wolf Story streaming on YouTube or Amazon.
May 26, 2025
A wave of protests by unpaid Chinese workers is sweeping across China, fueled by factory closures resulting from steep U.S. tariffs and a significant economic slowdown. Workers are taking to the streets in multiple regions, demanding back wages and challenging what they claim are unfair dismissals.
The unrest is not limited to factory workers. Protests by Chinese construction workers, health-care workers, teachers and sanitation workers demanding unpaid wages have erupted across China in recent weeks. In one instance of desperation, construction workers in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, gathered on the rooftops of the Jincan Royal Garden Community, threatening to jump if their back wages were not paid.
Tens of millions of Chinese workers are already bearing the brunt of the U.S.’s latest chapter in its trade war against China. Steep U.S. tariffs have pummeled Chinese export orders and production at the country’s factories. New export orders fell in April to their lowest level since Covid-19 was ravaging the country in 2022, while overall manufacturing activity in China was the weakest in more than a year, according to surveys published Wednesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
China is usually portrayed in the U.S. news media as a rising economic superpower, the biggest exporter in the world and the second biggest economy, after the U.S. But much of this development was fueled by foreign investment and trade by big U.S. and other Western companies, in which the lion’s share of the profits and wealth were drained out of China.
Certainly, the Chinese capitalist class, protected by the big and powerful Chinese state, was also greatly enriched. But this was done on the back of the vast Chinese working class and peasantry. According to the World Bank, 19% of China’s population still lives below the poverty line, with 273 million people earning less than $6.85 a day. The most modern and affluent urban areas, around Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and the provincial capitals, still rub shoulders with the backward countryside. Hundreds of millions of migrant workers, like second-class citizens, come from the hinterland to earn the equivalent of a few hundred dollars under the harshest conditions, only to be sent back when the interests of Chinese and foreign capitalists turn around.
The Chinese economy has also been shaken by one crisis after another over the last two decades. In 2008, Chinese exports plunged following the global financial and economic crisis. In 2017, Chinese exports were hit again, after Trump imposed the first of many trade barriers and tariffs. Then, in 2022, an enormous real estate bubble in China popped, worsening the underlying economic crisis. At the same time, public and private debt hit record levels.
These multiple crises have led to worsening unemployment and underemployment, that has thus reduced consumer demand, especially for the working class and poor. This has led to a classic crisis of overproduction for Chinese industry. So, the Chinese and foreign-owned manufacturers in China have increasingly relied on exports, which have now been hit hard by Trump’s latest rounds of tariffs, especially since the U.S. still remains the largest market for Chinese exports.
Obviously, this worsening trade war cannot just be blamed on Trump. Even though China has been able to offer big U.S. companies new sources of profit, by placing at their disposal its large and educated proletariat, the growth of the Chinese economy has also strengthened the Chinese government and state, a state that brings together close to a billion and a half people on one-sixth of the globe. This gives the Chinese state a certain independence from the U.S.—an independence that it had already gained with the Chinese revolution of 1949.
To U.S. imperialism, this independence is a threat. That is why the U.S. is trying to bring China to heel through trade wars, as well as increasing military pressure.
No, the U.S. trade war is not being carried out to bring jobs back to the U.S., as Trump and the news media claim. On the contrary, U.S. workers will pay for this trade war, with much higher prices, as well as shortages of consumer goods, not just because of the tariffs, but because big companies will take advantage of the tariffs in order to impose generalized price increases.
Moreover, in the future, U.S. workers will be ordered to make much greater sacrifices in a real shooting war against the Chinese, a war that could usher in another World War, that is, a huge catastrophe for all of humanity.
The Chinese workers, who today are striking and fighting for their pay and jobs, are not the ones taking U.S. workers’ jobs, as Trump, the Democrats, and the U.S. media claim. The Chinese workers’ fight against their bosses and capitalists is our fight. We all face the same capitalist monster, just in different countries.