The sharp rise in gasoline prices in recent months has imposed enormous burdens on working people in the United States and internationally. With prices at the pumps averaging over $4 a gallon in the US and well on their way to $5 or even higher this summer, working families—already burdened by rising food, housing, medical and other costs—are experiencing a drastic cut in their living standards.
The Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site calls on all transport workers employed by the Berlin Transport Company (BVG) to examine carefully the deal signed by their union, Verdi, and vote no on the contract at the forthcoming ballot.
The Chinese regime’s repression in Tibet has been thrust into the international limelight by a series of protests in cities around the world, criticisms of Beijing’s actions by Western powers and the threat of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
This statement is also available in pdf format.
November 7 marks one year since the US elections in which a mass turnout of antiwar voters defeated dozens of incumbent Republican congressmen and senators and put the Democratic Party in control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.
Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke off talks Wednesday, six hours before the expiry of their three-year contract. The two sides, despite the presence of a federal mediator, remain far apart on the key issues of DVD residuals and pay for films and television shows transmitted over the Internet. Writers receive a pittance on DVD sales, according to a formula agreed to 22 years ago.
The French presidential election, which goes into its second and final round this Sunday, is dominated by a deliberate campaign to block any expression of the independent political interests and struggle of the working class.
The following press statement has been sent by the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party) to the editorial offices of all of Germany’s national and regional newspapers, and radio and television stations.
On the fourth anniversary of Washington’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq, President Bush delivered a five-minute midday televised speech pleading with the American people to give his latest escalation of the war more time to suppress Iraq resistance to the US occupation.
This statement is available for download as a PDF 4-page brochure in both US Letter format and A4 format
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The Bush administration’s decision to press ahead with the escalation of the war in Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition and increasing criticism in Congress, demonstrates the extent to which the executive branch of the US government now functions as an unaccountable force, disregarding the checks and balances of the traditional constitutional structure and ignoring public opinion.
President Bush’s television address Wednesday night, announcing his dispatch of over 20,000 more American troops to Iraq, signaled that the bloodletting in that country will increase dramatically in the course of 2007, and that the Bush administration is likely to expand the war into Syria, Iran and other targets in the Middle East.
With his nationally televised speech tonight, President Bush is preparing a massive intensification of the criminal war in Iraq.
The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein serves not justice, but the political purposes of the Bush administration and its Iraqi stooges. The manner in which the execution was carried out—hurriedly, secretively, in the dark of night, in a mockery of any semblance of legal process—only underscores the lawless and reactionary character of the entire American enterprise in Iraq.
The unanimous vote by the US Senate on Friday to approve the Bush administration’s request for an additional $70 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates a basic truth of American politics: the Democratic Party, no less than the Republicans, is a party of imperialist militarism and war.
The diplomatic row that has erupted this week between the Solomon Islands and Australia demonstrates once again the neo-colonial character of Australia’s intervention into the small Pacific Island state since 2003.
In a coordinated series of speeches this week, the top officials of the Bush administration have begun a public campaign to smear and intimidate opponents of the war in Iraq while laying the political groundwork for dragging the American people into a new and even more terrible war—this time against Iran.
The wretched state of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina one year ago today is a testament to the indifference, incompetence and brutality of the American ruling elite.
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