Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information, Target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mojtaba Khamenei… successor to his father Ali Khamenei, is reported to own the high-end Kensington properties through associates. The apartments, located on the sixth and seventh floors of a building close to Kensington Palace, are believed to be worth more than £50 million. 

[The Standard]

‘I can’t really afford to take full baths anymore. It’s hard work, keeping yourself clean with a bit of water and a flannel’, the 78-year-old, from London, told Big Issue. 

[Big Issue]

According to UNICEF’s 2024 global estimates, more than 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone female genital mutilation. This alarming number reflects not progress but regression. Despite decades of advocacy by the United Nations and other organizations, achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate FGM is out of reach. These statistics boorishly underscore not only the persistence of the FGM practices but also the depth of the systemic, cultural, and political forces that continue to perpetuate FGM. 

[Independent]

‘If the city is saying they’re building the wall to protect people of the N2, why can’t they take the people out of the area to a place where there’s no crime?’ asked Nomqondiso Ntsethe, a 65-year-old pensioner, who shares a shack in Taiwan with 13 children and grandchildren.  ‘It’s a political game’, she said. ‘They’re separating the poor from the rich. It’s segregation’… Mayor Hill-Lewis, who last year put the city’s housing backlog at about 600,000, has remained defiant amid the latest criticism… ‘This barrier was built 20 years ago when the ANC was in charge of Cape Town – the same party now hysterically and hypocritically shouting about our plan to fix the security barrier to keep the people of Cape Town safer’, he said.

 [Al Jazeera]

Atlas has averaged $2m (£1.49m) a month in bunker sales this year, but Hubbard predicts this could rise to $50m (£37m) next month. ‘Bunker building is like being a farmer. When it’s time for harvest, you have to reap all you can.’ The Texan insists he is ‘not the type who hopes for war’, but admits ‘from my point of view, I don’t have to advertise very much [at the moment]’.  ‘Now that they’ve been bombed, they’re all going to want shelters. It’s just a fact of life’, he says. 

[The Telegraph]

The working class does not have to choose sides! The proletarians of the whole world must not succumb to the siren calls of nationalism or take sides with either camp, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. All nations, all bourgeoisies, whether democratic or authoritarian, left or right, populist or ‘progressive’, are warmongers. Despite the pompous rhetoric of hypocritical morality, pitting ‘civilisation’ against ‘barbarism’, ‘good’ against ‘evil’, ‘aggressors’ against ‘victims’, wars are nothing more than clashes between rival bourgeoisies. In these ever-increasing conflicts, it is always the exploited who are taken hostage and sacrificed for the interests of those who oppress and kill them. To end wars, capitalism must be overthrown! 

[ICC]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ukraine is being devastated… The threat of escalation to nuclear war intensifies. Perhaps worst of all, in terms of long-term consequences, the meager efforts to address global heating have been largely reversed. Some are doing fine. The US military and fossil fuel industries are drowning in profit, with great prospects for their missions of destruction many years ahead… Meanwhile, scarce resources that are desperately needed to salvage a livable world, and to create a much better one, are being wasted in destruction and slaughter, and planning for even greater catastrophes’.

[CounterPunch]

‘We really don’t have time for the Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Spartacists, Revolutionary Communists or whatever sect in Your Party to get their shit together in order to take on the challenges we face – they might never overcome their miniscule differences or the battle of the £1 newspapers,’ Mish Rahman, a former Labour politician-turned-Your-Party-insider who defected to the Greens last month, told Novara Media. Rahman said he doubts the differences between the two camps are as substantive as they’re made out: ‘[Sultana and Corbyn] are not far off each other [politically], it’s just a proxy war for control’. 

[NovaraMedia]

‘”They say they don’t have enough homes, but look at how many empty ones there are – [the council] just doesn’t want to fix and repair them,” says mother-of-one Vanessa. She lives on Central Hill estate in Lambeth but only in temporary accommodation and says she’s been left “in limbo”. Dozens of properties on the south London estate are unoccupied, one for eight years, and yet the borough has the third-highest housing waiting lists in the capital – something that Vanessa, who has been waiting for a social home for three years, describes as “outrageous”’. 

[BBC]

Los Angeles spent about $418 million on homelessness programs in 2025, yet only a small share went toward helping people leave the streets for good, according to the New York Post. A recent City Hall report suggests most of the money supports short-term services that manage homelessness rather than resolve it. 

[ZeroHedge]

In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. ‘The number of cases is rising rapidly’ Dr. Michaels wrote to me, ‘That’s the important point’. Here’s the more tearful description from Dr. Michaels..: The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer. The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. 

[Common Dreams]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A youth panel at the conference examined how Germany’s political establishment is pressuring young people into the armed forces not only through direct reforms, but also through policies that attack livelihoods. The situation imposed onto young workers and students today amounts to ‘economic blackmail’ for those without wealthy families to support them, argued Max Radtke of the trade union ver.di…The reintroduction of conscription should be understood as a question of class interests, added David Christner of Junge Linke (Young Left). He emphasized the need for a sharper analysis of ‘who is being sent to kill and die, and for whose interests’, saying that the political imperative at this point is to develop a ‘practical alternative to repression and militarization’. 

[peoples dispatch]

How Does Yoga Alleviate Child Poverty in India? Yoga classes can offer several benefits, particularly for children living in poverty. They: 1. Provide mindfulness and resilience. These sessions provide a break from daily life, where minds are taken off of hardship outside. Students gradually develop inner strength and willpower that they can take home with them. 2. Build a community. Children feel safe making friends and coming out of their shells. They will feel less alone and it makes the day-to-day that little bit easier. 3. Improve physical health. By building physical strength, students are less likely to contract illnesses and injuries, thereby increasing attendance at school and reducing stress on health care systems. 

[The Borgen Project]

Wide-scale desertions and 2 million draft-dodgers are among a raft of challenges facing Ukraine’s military. 

[AP]

People are now openly confronting the authorities, with a few lucky ones escaping conscription. Sadly, other videos show men being forced into vehicles by recruiters or beaten to death. This past summer, József Sebestyén, a Hungarian from Transcarpathia, died during his forced conscription. The Ukrainian authorities tried by all means to cover up his case. In the video, recorded in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, a crowd of civilians surrounds a police car in which a man has been placed. In the recording, people can be heard protesting, standing in front of the car, and preventing the vehicle from leaving the scene. Ukrainians are fed up with war and even more fed up with having to see their loved ones die for it. They are now openly speaking out against family members, friends, and neighbors being dragged away.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . one of Beckert’s more arresting contentions is that for most human beings, through most of history, the idea of working full-time, not for their own provisions but for cash, was utterly alien: the proletariat almost always had to be forced into being. Sometimes this involved slavery or indentured labour, but just as often it was accomplished by undermining the traditional basis for subsistence production. By enclosing, for example, common lands in Georgian England, or indeed through more recent restrictions on access to the plains of Ethiopia or the forests of Indonesia. 

[Prospect]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In almost all regions of the world, the top 1% of the population is richer than the combined 90%. Wealth inequality increases further with each passing day, mostly due to the lack of political will to stop it.

[Popular Resistance]

In China, inequality remains high… The top 10% of earners capture about 43% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 14%. Wealth disparities are particularly large, with the richest 10% holding nearly 68% of total wealth and the top 1% about 30%. 

[World Inequality Report]

Nearly half of Kenyans live in extreme poverty, i.e., on less than KES 130 [£0.75] per day. Yet a few have amassed enormous wealth. The richest 125 Kenyans have more wealth than more than three-quarters of Kenyans, about 43 million people. 

[Oxfam]

We celebrate the ‘recovery’ of fish populations that are stabilized at 5% or 10% of their historical population, mistaking the management of ruins for conservation. To understand the magnitude of what has been stolen, we must look back before the industrial age. In the 17th century, the ocean was a different planet. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the late 15th century, he described the seas near Cuba as being ‘thick with turtles’, so numerous that it seemed his ships would run aground on them… in numbers estimated between 33 and 39 million adults in the Caribbean alone. They were a biological dominance that defined the seascape. Today, those populations are a shadow of the ‘mother sea’ that once existed. This report is an autopsy of the decline. It is an investigation into the specific species that the fishing industry has sacrificed on the altar of commerce. 

[Sea Piracy]

As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026”. 

[Common Dreams]

Greenpeace is a strong example, having emerged from ecological protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s, but having eased into largely cooperating with capitalist corporations and governments over time and giving legitimacy to their propaganda about individual lifestyle choices being the way to solve climate change.

[Counterfire]

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which has previously slammed vaccine skeptic Kennedy as a ‘paranoid kook’ whose ‘tinfoil hat is blocking out all sense’, tore into the Trump Cabinet member for his war on what it called ‘one of the biggest public health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines’. 

[HuffPost]

Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’. 

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you make $60,000 a year after taxes, in order to make $700 billion, you’d need to work for nearly 12 million years. ‘The richest 1% own half the stock market (49.9%), while the bottom half of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the stock market’. ‘The richest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, an era of U.S. history defined by extreme inequality’. 

[Consortium News]

The toilet, by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall — went up for auction Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s in New York. The starting bid for the 223-pound, 18-karat-gold work was about $10 million. Cattelan has said the piece, titled ‘America’ satirizes superwealth. ‘Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise’, he once said. 

[Yahoo]

Mother Teresa is still praised around the world for her charity work, but her legacy is deeply controversial. Reports from former volunteers and medical professionals claimed that many of her care homes were unsanitary and neglectful, with patients denied pain relief because she believed suffering brought people closer to God. Despite receiving millions in donations, her organization frequently failed to provide proper medical treatment or transparency regarding the use of the funds. She also accepted money and praise from dictators and was firmly against abortion, contraception, and divorce, even in extreme cases.

[Yahoo]

There are still people who say that Marx is outdated because Russian socialism collapsed … In Russia, capitalism was interpreted as being about private property and private ownership of the means of production, and the Soviets’ proposal was, ‘What if we nationalize everything?’ Then they found that state control ended up being absolute. If you look at the situation of the workers, it didn’t change that much from one system to another. In capitalism, it’s the employers who exploit the workers. During Soviet socialism, the workers were exploited by the Communist Party or by the bureaucrats. 

[ara]

The Russian communist party has awarded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the “Lenin Prize” for his outstanding contributions to ‘socialist construction’, praising him for standing up against ‘imperialist aggression’ by supporting the invasion of Ukraine. 

[NK News]

The cobbled streets of Newport in Middlesbrough survive from the Victorian era. The staggering levels of child poverty here also feel like they belong in a different time. Six out of every seven children in Newport are classified as living in poverty. 

[Sky News]

It’s time to stop settling. ‘The working class is going to have to look at itself as a whole and say, “Our divisions in race, politics, religion, sectors of the workforce — all that will have to be laid aside,” he says. “It’s a ‘workers of the world, unite’ situation. We’re all in it together against the billionaire class, and it’s going to take that in the fight to win”’. 

[In These Times]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Brazil, Russia, and South Africa top the list for wealth inequality, each posting Gini coefficients around the low 0.8s. These scores imply a highly concentrated distribution of assets relative to the rest of the population. Several energy-rich economies—such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia—also rank high, reflecting significant concentrations of financial and real assets among upper tiers of wealth holders. Country Gini Coefficient 2024: Brazil 0.82, Russia 0.82, South Africa 0.81, United Arab Emirates 0.81, Saudi Arabia 0.78, Sweden 0.75.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . Latin America remains the only region in the world that has not shown a clear decline in child marriage over the last three decades. Nicaragua has the highest rates within the region and ranks 14th globally with 10% of girls marrying or entering a union before age 15. Among boys, 19% marry or enter a union before the age of 18. Here are the main reasons for child marriage in Nicaragua… Poverty continues to affect a large portion of Nicaragua’s population. The United Nations reports that 48% of people live below the poverty line. Continual climate disruptions devastate the environment and worsen economic conditions. High levels of organized crime and human trafficking also contribute to insecurity. Many families marry off their children to ease financial hardship and improve their economic situation, resulting in increased levels of child marriage in Nicaragua. Furthermore, Nicaraguan society continues to enforce cultural and gender norms that pressure girls to marry young and bear children.

[The Borgen Project]

At the centre of the criminality in Gaza today are armed gangs, whose members are often drawn from the territory’s powerful clans. These clans are extended families that have historically played leading roles in their communities – but have also, at times, operated like local mafia. During the recent conflict, clans have settled old scores with violence. Gangs associated with the clans have expanded into racketeering, drug dealing, kidnapping, robbery and extortion. 

[The Conversation]

The rally was a good time with a positive vibe, and I’m glad to see Americans coming together in opposition to one tyrant. But until and unless we start coming together in opposition to tyranny itself — the state per se — and in support of liberty for all, the only question is how much more kingly and despotic our next ruler will get than the previous one got. 

[CounterPunch]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected.

[Inter Press Service News Agency]

In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” 

[MSN]

The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities. 

[Yahoo]

From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force. 

[The Slow Burning Fuse]

North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic]. 

[Morning Star]

Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing. 

[Equal Times]

There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments. 

[The Conversation]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of momentous historical changes, the fundamental patterns of inequality reemerge across the centuries with remarkable consistency, the patterns of extreme wealth concentration, class immobility, surplus value extraction, special privilege, and ideological systems capable of masking the contradictions. This suite of social traits seems almost constant. 

(CounterPunch)

Write, but do not offend. Speak and comment, but do not divide. Observe cruelties, barbarities and murder, yet refrain from having an opinion. This is the constipating, stifling regime being put in place via suggested codes of conduct for organisers of writer events in Australia. The object of this intellectual veiling: discussing the exterminating war in Gaza. Across the country, the straitjacket of forced social harmony is being applied. 

(Dissident Voice)

Vietnam raises over $13 million for Cuba in historic charity drive. 

(Vietnam Net)

Asked whether Gazans would be allowed to leave, Al-Hayek was unequivocal. “The Palestinian people do not want to leave Gaza,” he told The Media Line. “We repeat each time: We will remain in Gaza until Judgment Day. Here we were born, and here we shall die.” 

(The Media Line)

Hotel accommodation benefits large contractors like Clearsprings, Serco and Mears, while Britannia Hotels made over £150 million in profit since it started to accommodate asylum seekers in 2014. Such contracts even brought the founder of Clearsprings to the Sunday Times Rich List. This company provides housing services to the Home Office that were associated with the highest mortality rate among resident asylum seekers between 2020 and 2023. 

(Counterfire)

Ah, those pro-lifers. Walking, talking, shooting oxymorons. You can tell the pro-life extremists. They’re the ones who want their enemies – the women and men who support a woman’s sovereignty over her own body – dead by any means at their command. Hard to get more pro-life than that. Mike Lee, the brilliant Republican US Senator from Utah, went on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, and posted about the fatal shooting of Democratic politicians in Minnesota, that, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way”. 

(CounterPunch)

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday that the United States has seized nearly US$700 million in assets connected to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Confiscated property includes multiple luxury homes in Florida, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, two private jets, a horse farm, nine vehicles, luxury yachts, jewelry, watches, and cash. 

(Dominican Today)

This is the humanist vision of Alien: Earth, which recognizes our distinctiveness is not in the power of our minds or the machines that we produce. Rather, it is found in humanity’s ability to transform itself, to create and recreate its own internal nature for new conditions, including those yet to come. In doing so, the show goes beyond mere anti-corporate sentiment and instead asks if we can create a new purpose for ourselves, unburdened by the demons of our past and the demons that our future might hold.

(Jacobin)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest Oxfam report which was released at 4th UN Financing for Development meet in Seville, Spain, shows that since 2015 the top 1% people in the world have amassed US$ 33.9 trillion in new wealth which is enough to end annual poverty 22 times over. 

(Scoop Independent News)

In some cases, health professionals perform FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] secretly in exchange for payment, turning the practice into a commercial enterprise, 

(People Daily)

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world. People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes — a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately $50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72 percent of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimized. 

(Consortium News)

The entire political and intellectual machinery of the French ruling class is now moving in this direction. That includes the miserable little left, led by the Socialist Party, who bark at us from morning to night. They don’t realize that they’re participating in a broader establishment strategy: acting as the left-wing auxiliary of the right. They live in a dreamworld, wanting France to be like Germany, with a grand coalition of the centre: Social Democrats who are indistinguishable from liberals, Greens who are always clamouring for war. These people are doing the work of dividing us every day while pretending to be for unity.

(Portside)

One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. That figure alone tells us that we have a major economic crisis on our hands. The cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have been, and most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month. Anyone that attempts to deny this is simply not living in reality. 

(Zero Hedge)

Donald Trump styled himself as a populist, ‘anti-establishment’ president. But look at what he has actually done in office, and you see he’s a status-quo politician with nothing to offer working Americans.

(Jacobin)

Will voters finally stop both blaming politicians for their troubles and depending on them to end them? Will voters—and non-voters—transform themselves into people who act for themselves, in their own interests, instead of allowing others to act for them? That would be what social change looks like. The survival of the human race may well depend upon it. 

(The Brooklyn Rail)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming is not the inevitable result of “‘human nature,”’ argues economist Parrique in this blistering debut study. Instead, “‘the primary cause of ecological derailment is… capitalism,”’ more specifically “‘the frantic pursuit of growth,”’ or increased production. 

[Publishers Weekly]

When challenges combatting the majority in India, from unemployment, lack of basic amenities, threat of their houses being demolished or being actually razed to the ground and more are taken note of, each is a pointer to the hard reality –- that of bleak future for those already facing hard circumstances. In essence, these certainly are not suggestive of their being raised above their present economic status. They certainly cannot be counted among those who seem to have been raised above the index of extreme poverty. 

[Counter Punch]

The regime has systematically abandoned United Nations agencies that have questioned its rule. First came the Food and Agriculture Organization in February, after it ranked Nicaragua among the countries with the highest levels of hunger in the world… The logic is simple: the regime rejects any body that questions it, seeking to consolidate absolute control by eliminating all external oversight.

[Civicus Lens]

In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the government has missed most of its key targets to tackle AMR [antimicrobial resistance]. It’s also dropped the ball on its surveillance programme, on improving environmental protection and on engaging with other countries on the subject. Instead of taking responsibility, the PAC said, the government is dialling down what it actually wants to achieve. “‘There is arguably no more haunting silhouette on the horizon for the entire world than AMR,”’ the committee’s chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said. “‘If left unchecked, it could rewind medical progress by a century.”’ 

[TBJ Uncovered]

Trump deported, via removals and returns, approximately 1.8 million people during his first term. By comparison, Biden oversaw approximately 2 million deportations, excluding Title 42 order expulsions. Obama, once labeled as “‘deporter in chief,”’, removed about 5.2 million over his eight years. In his current term, Trump has struggled to meet internal ICE targets…. The more Trump lashes out, the more it becomes clear he cannot control the system he claims to command.

[The Hill]

Trump’s approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, “‘The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.”’ Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about “‘blood poisoning”’ to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren’t worthy of moral consideration… And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community.

[Common Dreams]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The watch is a limited edition of only 150 pieces that’s already being delivered to customers. The retail price is $330,000…prices on the secondary market will get a bit bonkers. 

[HODINKEE]

Pakistan’s claims to all of Kashmir are driven by the region’s hydrological importance, its majority-Muslim population, and the military’s interest in rallying the nation behind it on these grounds. 

[Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter]

‘That’s where I sleep, under that bridge’ he says, pointing to a nearby cluster of tents beneath a highway overpass. ‘And the dogs are up there with their own private pool. They probably eat more in a day than we do in a month’. 

[NPR]

Underage workers, in some cases, have been hired to kill poultry flocks, handle dead carcasses and clean industrial poultry farms. Workers sometimes lack personal protective equipment or receive damaged gear, despite the risk of the virus jumping from animals to people. Dealing with a federal backlog, some farms have used killing methods considered inhumane, because it can be quicker and cheaper. ‘The biggest factor in agricultural safety is the urgency’ said Bethany Alcauter, director of research and public health for the National Center for Farmworker Health, a Texas-based nonprofit that advocates for worker safety and health. ‘Everything has to get done in a short amount of time, and that really can be problematic because there’s not the same amount of time to adequately train workers’.

[truthdig]

‘Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to ‘scientific‘ principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity’. 

[MEDIAITE]

On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans turned out to vote in large numbers despite more than a decade of systematic repression and human rights violations under President Nicolás Maduro. Hours after polls closed, the Electoral Council declared that Maduro had been re-elected, with over 51 percent of the vote. The United Nations Electoral Technical Team and the Carter Center, which observed the elections, said the process lacked transparency and integrity, and questioned the declared result. The Carter Center said that the precinct-level tally sheets published by the opposition, which seemed to indicate that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won, were reliable and ‘authentic’. The Electoral Council failed to release the official tally sheets and did not conduct the required audits or citizen verification processes mandated by law. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in demonstrations, most of them peaceful, demanding a transparent and fair counting of the votes. They were met with brutal repression.

[HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been unmasked as the mystery buyer of one of Washington, D.C.‘s most expensive properties: a $23 million mansion that he quietly paid for in an all-cash deal that was so secretive, the home vanished from view on Google Maps soon after it closed.

                                                                                                                               [Yahoo]

Lenin brought his Bolshevik Party to power on the cresting wave of the democratic workers’ councils, or soviets, in 1917. Then, with a few changes, he essentially restored tsarist autocracy. Freedom of speech, the press, and assembly were again suppressed, and the absolute power of a non-elected monarch, a dictator, reappeared along with a centralized bureaucracy. Under Lenin, the chinovnik-bureaucrat apparatus once more became the master of the land and of thousands of industrial enterprises. It included many tsarist bureaucrats, who, together with a few Bolsheviks, were the bosses in the ministries. Lenin’s bureaucracy blended with the tsarist bureaucracy and quickly adopted the same rules. Everything that upset or challenged the interests of centralized economic and socio-political life was eliminated.

[Canadian Dimension]

A city divided by a 12-year gap in life expectancy… Sally Cartwright, the county’s director of public health at Cambridgeshire County Council, agrees that a lack of access to cheap, nutritious food, expensive gym memberships and insufficient exercise and community facilities in the area have all contributed to the gap in life expectancy…. Differences in wealth affect people’s health, she adds, as well as other triggers such as smoking, heavy drinking and poor diet. 

[BBC]

A veteran financial consultant and insurance executive is warning his fellow capitalists that their commitment to profits and market supremacy is endangering the economic system to which they adhere and that if corrective actions are not taken capitalism itself will soon be consumed by the financial and social costs of a planet being cooked by the burning of fossil fuels. 

[Common Dreams]

Some argue that ecological change has historically posed great challenges to existing systems, and therefore, climate change must do the same to capitalism. This view overlooks a key fact: unlike previous modes of production, capitalism is fundamentally based on change. Then there is the assumption that climate change will create such severe problems — food shortages, infrastructure collapse, mass death — that capitalism simply can’t cope. But capitalism has always been adept at placing death in some corners of the world, so that life – and profits – can continue elsewhere. Mass death has never been a fundamental problem for capitalism; the system itself was built on colonialism, wars, and genocides. 

[Rebel]

A legal team representing Hamas pro bono — since it would be illegal to receive money from the group — claims in its own filing that while Hamas’s actions fit the definition of ‘terrorism’ in British law, so do those of the IDF, the Ukrainian army and even the British military. 

[The Times of Israel]

[These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view].

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The top 1 percent in the U.S … had a combined net worth of $49.2 trillion by the end of 2024. The combined value of almost 100 million U.S. homes during the same time was $49.7 trillion. 

(Newsweek)

‘Woke’ is not a precise, scientific term. But it typically refers to the attempt to combat forms of oppression – like racism and sexism – on the basis of identity politics, through means like quotas, changes to language, and raising awareness … ‘woke’ policies seek to ‘fight’ oppression on an individualistic basis, whilst completely jettisoning any idea of class struggle, or seeing oppression as being rooted in capitalist society. 

(The Communist)

Trucks carrying commercial goods, which are later sold in Gaza, are charged at least $20,000…while aid trucks are also subject to extortion before crossing to the enclave. Organi is a Sinai businessman, politician and tribal leader allied with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Organi’s name has become synonymous with unofficial profits made out of the suffocating Gaza blockade, particularly from desperate Palestinians attempting to flee the fighting. MEE last year revealed that Organi made at least $2m daily from Palestinians who left the Gaza Strip via the border crossing point with Egypt . . . 

(MEE)

While his crackdowns provoked outrage around the globe, Duterte and his brand of politics remained popular at home even after he left office. His daughter… riding on her family name, was elected Vice President in 2022 in a landslide victory alongside President Marcos Jr, himself the son of a former dictator who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. 

(Time)

A ceasefire in Ukraine is not about peace. It’s about money, just as the earlier war was. As all wars are, ultimately. An acceptable ceasefire for Trump, as well as for Putin, will involve a carve-up of Ukraine’s goodies. Rare earth minerals, land, agricultural production will be the real currency driving the agreement.

(MEE)

Tren de Aragua’s growth surged as a result of mass incarceration policies that began under Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chávez and expanded under current President Nicolás Maduro. Incarceration rates began to increase in 2009 and were exacerbated by police raids deployed in 2010 in marginalized neighborhoods across the country. Venezuela’s prisons became filled with young, poor men. 

(The Conversation)

The preconditions for a communist or socialist society are (1) the development of a productive potential sufficient to support the reasonable needs of the population and (2) a clear majority who want such a society and understand what it entails. The SPGB’s position is that precondition (1) has been met a long time ago, but we are a long way off from meeting precondition (2). If and when we do have a class-consciousness socialist majority, there is nothing to prevent us from immediately implementing the new society. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to linger on with one or another form of capitalism a moment longer.

(Letter in Weekly Worker)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view).

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) is a deeply entrenched cultural practice that affects around 200 million women and girls. It’s practised in at least 25 African countries, as well as parts of the Middle East and Asia and among immigrant populations globally. It is a harmful traditional practice that involves removing or damaging female genital tissue. Often it’s “justified” by cultural beliefs about controlling female sexuality and marriageability. 

(The Conversation)

. . .  “the ELN claims to follow Karl Marx, but it seems to me they believe more in Pablo Escobar.” Indeed, drug trafficking helps explain why, after more than 60 years of armed conflict, peace continues to elude Colombia. The violence briefly diminished after the country’s largest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, disarmed in 2016, but the government failed to take control of coca fields and drug trafficking routes that were abandoned by the FARC. And now ELN rebels and a new generation of criminal groups are fighting over this territory. 

(KAXE)

Representatives for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant declined to comment on how the pause could impact the plant and jobs. …The plant ‘is not the largest employer by any stretch,’ said Bob Durkin, president of the non-partisan Scranton Chamber of Commerce. ‘But it’s a very important employer. The jobs are really high-quality jobs. They are well paying, family sustaining jobs’. 

(BBC)

In a staggering display of police callousness, the South African government has caused one of the worst mining disasters in the country’s history…. The Stilfontein massacre, which left almost ninety dead, has split the South African opposition and exposed a ruling bloc corrupted by mineral wealth. At its heart, it is a story of the contradictions of politics in an extremely unequal extractive economy. 

(Jacobin)

James Schneider, Jeremy Corbyn’s former Director of Comms, argues for a new party…. Zack Polanski, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, says we don’t need anything new. There is, after all, a socialist party in the UK already: it’s the Greens. 

(Novara Media)

. . . William Morris . . . believed that the creation and enjoyment of pre-industrial arts and crafts could undo the assumptions about natural inequality that were baked into capitalism. Influenced by both Karl Marx and John Ruskin, he demanded that works of art should actually embody the equality and freedom that had disappeared in an age witnessing the rise of mass production and excessive consumption on the one hand and widespread poverty and drudgery on the other. In News from Nowhere — his novel-length description of an egalitarian, anti-consumerist society — he aimed at nothing less than rewiring his readers’ minds and hearts. 

(Los Angeles Review of Books)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kylie Jenner, the 27-year-old billionaire and car enthusiast, was recently spotted with her sister Kendall Jenner driving her $3 million Bugatti Chiron in Beverly Hills. Known for her impressive car collection, Kylie gave fans a rare glimpse of herself behind the wheel rather than posing next to her fleet. 

(Yahoo)

‘Everything outside the Christian framework — including secular music, television, and books — was discouraged. Just as I signed multiple purity pledges throughout my preteen and teen years, promising to avoid not just sex, but even impure thoughts, we were taught to practice absolute abstinence from dangerous ideas’. 

(AlterNet)

While official data is still somewhat sketchy, it’s estimated that 12,000 illegal transplants are performed annually, about 10% of the total number of transplants conducted each year. The organ trade is immensely profitable, generating between $840 million to $1.7 billion in revenue for a relatively small number of traffickers, according to estimates compiled in 2017. Organ trafficking survives, in part, because the demand from affluent consumers in the advanced capitalist West is so high and the legal supply of organs – primarily (about 80%) kidneys, but also lungs, livers and cornea – barely keeps pace. Many people wait at least two years to qualify to receive an organ transplant legally and thousands die every year – about 25 daily, according to the World Health Organization – because no organ becomes available in time to save them. Where do the illegally harvested organs come from? Primarily from North Africa and South Asia. Organ traffickers prey on poor and vulnerable rural dwellers, offering cash in exchange for an organ, usually a kidney. 

(Counterpunch)

This is about the Arctic. You have Russia that is trying to become king of the Arctic with 60-plus icebreakers, some of them nuclear-powered. Do you know how many we have, Jesse? We have two, and one just caught on fire. This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources. This is about, as the polar ice caps pull back, the Chinese are now cranking out icebreakers and pushing up there as well. So, it’s oil and gas. It’s our national security. It’s critical minerals. 

(Common Dreams)

The response provided by South Africa’s elected officials has so far been both lacking and sinister. It targets migrants with few political allies in the country’s fractured political scene, increasingly characterized by populism, highlighting problems without solutions. 

(Geopolitical Intelligence Services AG)

As long as the capitalist system continues, we will never be able to escape from the shackles of economic crisis, war and massacre, ecological destruction, and workers’ sacrifice. The only solution is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement with communism, a society in which the means of production are no longer in the hands of capitalists or the state, but are socialised, in which production and distribution are in harmony with humanity and nature. 

(Controversies)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the Pentagon’s repeated failures to pass audits and various alarming policies, 81 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted with 200 Republicans…to advance a $883.7 billion annual defense package. 

(Common Dreams)

In Iran, the mandatory hijab law has been a contentious point of resistance ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1978. But it has become much more widespread in the past two years after the killing of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the morality police for not wearing a hijab correctly, and died in custody. Women have been at the forefront of this resistance, engaging in protests as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. It has called for the abolition of compulsory hijab laws and an end to gender-based oppression. But rather than acknowledging these acts as legitimate political protests, the Iranian state has increasingly sought to frame them as symptoms of individual mental illness. 

(The Conversation)

Yet another gruesome gang horror has played out in Haiti, as at least 184 people — most of them elderly — were variously slashed, hacked or shot to death on the orders of a warlord who’d been advised that aging slum residents had used sorcery to give his son a severe illness. Interim Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé called it ‘a barbaric act of unbearable cruelty’. The brutality was reportedly ordered by Monel ‘Mikano’ Felix, who leads the Wharf Jeremie gang. The carnage took place on Friday and Saturday in the densely populated seaside slum of Cité Soleil, a neighborhood in the capital city of Port-au-Prince which The Guardian has called Haiti’s ‘most notorious slum… Much of the slum is an open sewer…infant children bathe in water contaminated with sewage. The stench is unbearable’. 

(Zero Hedge)

As temperatures rise because of global warming Arctic areas that were previously frozen may become navigable, and natural resources more easily exploited, setting off competing claims. Blair said: ‘This growing access is already enticing nations to the region, heightening security challenges and geopolitical competition’. China and Russia are working together to gain control over the region, say analysts. 

(Financial Times)

The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village.

(Penguin Random House)

Malaria killed almost 600,000 people in 2023, as cases rose for the fifth consecutive year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Biological threats…climate and humanitarian disasters continue to hamper control efforts…Officials said a $4.3 billion annual funding shortfall was among further challenges. 

(Mother Jones)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

We may be much more entertained by charity now. But on account of the Band Aid format, we are now arguably less knowledgeable about why some people suffer terribly around the world – and in no better a position to put an end to it. 

(The Conversation)

Today, political scientists and pollsters use ‘the working class’ to describe members of the work force who do not have a college degree. By that definition, the number of working-class Americans has been declining as the country has grown wealthier and more educated. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 38 percent of Americans had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2022, up from just 17 percent in 1980. There’s a major exception to that common definition, however. Marxist scholars use “working class” quite differently—typically encompassing anyone who depends on wages to survive, regardless of their educational experience. 

(Reason)

In fact, the Democratic Party, the party of the slavocracy, of Jim Crow and of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Vietnam War, has never been a party of the working class. It has, and will always be, a capitalist party. Sanders’ political role…is to use his nominally ‘independent’ designation to provide the Democratic Party with a veneer of credibility in order to contain opposition to the whole capitalist system. 

(WSWS)

What happened during the pandemic especially, was a good tutorial about how to do things. First of all, what pandemic showed us was the Hollywood utopian, you know, imagination of the future of humanity is absolutely bullshit, because when crises happen, people tend to help each other and be in solidarity, and they become even more, even loving, you know, towards each other. So we have to imagine politics as a, you know, natural disaster or like a disaster, like a pandemic, and we have to act like that.

(New Internationalist)

Bregman believes we should be more positive about human potential. ‘We’re at a point in our history where we have such amazing opportunities to make the world a wildly better place’, he says. ‘Our best days are in the future’. 

(Prospect)

A ‘very rare’ 77-year-old slice of the cake served at Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s wedding sold for £2,200 ($2,800) this week, according to auction house Reeman Dansie. The cake, which no longer looks edible, survived for almost eight decades since the wedding day on November 20, 1947.

(CNN)

Yunus’ claims to be overseeing a transition to ‘true democracy’, aimed at realising ‘social justice’ after the increasingly authoritarian rule of Hasina, are belied by the brutal attacks on garment workers

(WSWS)

‘The Turkish police catch 100 to 150 migrants every night. They have no mercy on them. They break their arms and legs. 

(BBC)

I’m all for supporting a new and viable political group but let’s look at what we already have before trying to reinvent the wheel.

(Guardian)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

… a tiny minority of about 0.6 percent of the population, own 45 percent of the country’s total wealth. For workers… the situation in Germany, is becoming increasingly precarious. 

(WSWS)

… support for Hezbollah — as well as opposition to it — still fall primarily along sectarian lines. Polling by The Washington Institute late last year found that 34% of Sunni Muslims and 29% of Christians expressed a positive view of Hezbollah, while 93% of Shias said they approved of the group. 

(NBC)

As he watches the world go by each day from the shade of his porch in southern Havana, Ramone Monteagudo, 72, a retired history teacher, has a front-row seat for the wreckage… Now flies swarm over a sea of rubbish in the sticky heat. He watches some of his poorer neighbors — who until a few years ago had enough to eat — pick leftover food out of the rot. ‘When it comes to food and medicine, we’re living through an extraordinarily difficult situation’. 

(Truthdig)

It was done for the Viet Cong in numerous countries during the US involvement in Vietnam. It was done for the African National Congress (ANC). It was done for the Irish Revolutionary (sic) Army (IRA). Across the United States, Europe and Australasia, all three organisations, demonised as terrorist outfits, received tacit, symbolic support from protestors. In some cases, support was genuine and pecuniary. Now, the Lebanese Shia militant and political group Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organisation in a number of Western states, has inspired flag holders to appear at protests against the expanding conflict in Gaza and Lebanon.

(Dissident Voice)

Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council. 

(Middle East Eye)

‘. . . The ratepayers’ association and the ANC led municipality are working together to evict poor black people, to destroy our homes and communities. They say that our presence reduces the value of the land, as if value is just a question of the price of the land and has nothing to do with the value of land for the human beings who live on it. They say that we must be removed because we are a health hazard as we must use the bush to relieve ourselves whereas the obvious solution to the lack of sanitation is to provide sanitation. They say that we are ‘chasing tourists away’. The strong element of racism driving all this is often openly displayed on the social media used by the white residents of the gated communities. The black elites who live in the gated communities are silent about this racism”.

(Dissident Voice)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘I cried deep inside of my heart’, said Nisa, now 32, recounting her first contract wedding. ‘Who wants to sleep with an old man? I did this purely for the money, so my parents can eat and my siblings can go to school.’ With her encouragement, her sister also became a contract bride, bringing in a dowry of $3,000 for her first marriage because she was a virgin. Nisa estimated that she herself has been in 20 contract marriages (‘Sex tourism in Indonesia sells itself as Islamic temporary marriage’.) 

(Los Angeles Times).

‘Interestingly, some of these people were supporters of the communist regime only a few years ago. There are of course others who are still convinced by CCP propaganda, who believe that China is the safest place in the world and that everywhere else is in chaos’, Cui adds. He attributes China’s economic development to “the hard work of the people” who are exploited by Party leaders. As an example of the lack of political rights, he cites the fact that the regime has taken away the freedom and wealth of nouveau riche figures like Xu Jiayin and Jack Ma. He cites the words of late Premier Li Keqiang, who made public in 2020 that some 600 million Chinese live on less than US$140 a month. 

(Equal Times)

As for national liberation, all one can say is that with friends like Hamas, Palestinians do not need enemies. Rather than freedom, the so-called ‘Islamic Resistance’ has nothing to offer them but poverty and bloodshed. Hamas’s position is crystal clear. ‘These are necessary sacrifices’, military commander Yahya Sinwar said of the mass. destruction in Gaza in a communication with fellow Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. 

(Daniel Lazere)

‘While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front – a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power. “Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade’. 

(Libcom)

Ahn Chang-ho, who opposes anti-discrimination laws, also rejects the theory of evolution and wants creationism lessons in schools. A former judge nominated to lead South Korea’s human rights body has sparked outrage with his comments against the LGBTQ community and the theory of evolution, with observers citing him as proof of the country’s flawed system for official appointments. Ahn Chang-ho, 67, is under scrutiny for his statements in parliament suggesting that homosexuality is a tool used by communists to incite revolution. 

(MSN)

In a healthy ecosystem, the various sets of animal … get along with each other without the need of any system of authority or dominance—indeed, without overriding structure or organization of any kind soever. 

(Counterpunch)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)