Zarah Sultana’s recent brave criticisms of Labour from 2015 to 2020, including Brexit triangulation, IHRA capitulation and insufficient fighting spirit, have ruffled feathers but started an essential discussion, writes ANDREW MURRAY
Who left LA to burn?
California’s real-life water theft makes the classic Jack Nicholson film Chinatown look tame as a billionaire couple diverts resources and the climate crisis worsens the city’s peril, reports MARK GRUENBERG
LIVES RUINED BY CORPORATE GREED: Trees sway in high winds as the Eaton fire burns houses in the Altadena region of Los Angeles, California, January 8 2025
US baseless accusations of drug trafficking and the outrageous putting of a bounty on a president of a sovereign country do not bode well, reports PABLO MERIGUET
Green Party MPs stand alone in Parliament in defending Palestine Action against Labour’s proscription of the group as a terrorist organisation — an outrageous move that the Tories supported and the cowardly Lib Dems abstained on, writes ELLIOT TONG
Mass mobilisations are forcing governments to seriously consider imposing sanctions and severing ties — even in places like Australia and the Netherlands — despite continued arms shipments to Israel’s war machine, writes RAMZY BAROUD
What we are learning today is that fascism can come to power even when the working class of almost every capitalist nation is very far from achieving revolution, argues DAVID LETHBRIDGE
TONY BURKE explains how an internationally significant breakthrough for workers’ organisation and recognition against two notoriously anti-union global mega corporations has been finally achieved in Canada
REMEMBER the movie Chinatown? That 1974 epic starring Jack Nicholson told how politics and greed, mixed with more than a little violence, led to a fortunate few early in the last century seizing control of the Los Angeles water supply at the time when the city was starting the sudden and phenomenal growth that has made it the nation’s second largest.
“People are gonna be mad when they find out they’re paying for water they’re not gonna get,” an undercover source tells the Nicholson character in one of the movie’s key scenes.
Which pretty much sums up the situation Angelenos — and, indirectly, the rest of us — now face: despite spending millions of taxpayer dollars over decades to construct one of the world’s most extensive infrastructure projects to transfer water from naturally rainy Northern California to naturally parched Southern California, there’s not enough available water to fight the monster fires ravaging Los Angeles.
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The US could imminently return to the Wild West days of widespread and sometimes violent corporate repression of workers, says MARK GRUENBERG
The US president has cancelled all federal union contracts as ‘un-American,’ saying ‘It’s our dream to have everyone work in the private sector,’ writes MARK GRUENBERG
The ILA’s fight against wage stagnation and job-killing automation is gaining momentum and union solidarity as the Biden administration wisely resists pressure from the bosses to force strikers back to work, writes MARK GRUENBERG
Employees at Texas shelter Pets Alive joined forces with the Machinists union, seeking better conditions for both themselves and the animals they passionately care for, reports MARK GRUENBERG
