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Global military spending tops $1.8 trillion, highest on record

Global military spending has reached a new post-Cold War high, topping $1.8 trillion in 2018, according to an annual report published this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This marks a 2.6 percent increase over the previous annual record for worldwide military expenditures in 2017.

Most notably, US military spending increased by 4.6 percent in 2018, to $649 billion, the first annual US spending hike recorded by SIPRI since 2011. This trend is set to continue, with President Donald Trump having signed a $686 billion budget for 2019 and requesting $718 billion for the Pentagon in 2020. The Congressional Budget Office projects that if current funding trends continue, the US will spend $7 trillion on its military over the next decade, equivalent to the amount which will be spent on education, infrastructure and public health programs combined.

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US deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide at all-time high - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/08/deat-m08.html

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US deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide at all-time high
By Kate Randall
8 March 2019

More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicide in 2017. This is more than twice as many as in 1999 and the highest number since recordkeeping began in that year. This skyrocketing rate of so-called deaths of despair was confirmed in a new analysis released this week by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and Well Being Trust (WBT).

#états-unis #drogue #alcool #addiction #mortalité #démographie #population #santé

Eighty-two years since the victory of the Flint sit-down strike - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/11/flin-f11.html

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With General Motors threatening to shut down five factories in the United States and Canada over the next few months, it is valuable to study the heroic struggle by GM workers during the 1936-37 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. Monday, February 11, marks the 82 nd anniversary of the victory of the strike, which was a major turning point in the long fight for the industrial organization of workers in the US.

Below we repost the two-part article, which originally appeared on the WSWS in February 2017, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the strike.

February 11 marked the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Flint sit-down strike. The 44-day battle by autoworkers lasted from December 29, 1936, to February 11, 1937. It forced General Motors, then the largest industrial enterprise on the planet, to recognize the recently founded United Auto Workers union.

#états-unis #flint #grève #mouvement_social

Les travailleurs de #Matamoros au #Mexique menacés par des fermetures d’usine en masse [du fait de la #grève desdits travailleurs]- World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2019/02/01/mexc-f01.html

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Menaces qui auraient peu de chances d’être mises à exécution, tellement le #salaire de base à l’origine des #grèves était misérable,
▻https://apnews.com/01e56287cf2b4e3d981544cddf62bad8

Still, most of the Matamoros companies have quietly agreed to the workers’ demands, and they would be hard-pressed to find any place near the U.S. market where they could pay less than $1 an hour.

Other Mexican border cities with assembly plants, like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, “don’t have this point” in their contracts, Quintero noted. “But what is going to happen is that workers are going to demand their raises to 176 pesos,” the new minimum, and probably across the board, he said.

Lopez Obrador has come under pressure from the business sector to rein in wage demands, but he is unlikely to do so.

In deleted tweet, US nuclear command declares itself “ready” to “drop something” - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/03/comm-j03.html

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n deleted tweet, US nuclear command declares itself “ready” to “drop something”
By Andre Damon
3 January 2019

On New Year’s Eve, the US Strategic Command, which oversees the United States’ nuclear arsenal, posted a tweet declaring its readiness to “drop something much, much bigger” than the “big ball” at Times Square in New York.

The implication of the tweet is that the United States military is not only quite ready to kill people with nuclear weapons for a third time, but quite eager.

#brrr... #it_has_begun

Vice: A portrait of an American corporate-military gangster - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/29/vice-d29.html

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Vice: A portrait of an American corporate-military gangster
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier
29 December 2018

Written and directed by Adam McKay

In May 2006, referring to #Dick_Cheney, the WSWS observed that if ever there were “an individual who personifies contempt for democratic rights, it is the American vice president.” Universally recognized as the most powerful holder of that office in US history, Cheney “has been the official most identified with the Bush administration’s policies of military aggression, domestic spying, government secrecy, and torture, and its wholesale assault on the US Constitution.”

The WSWS article went to explain that the Bush-Cheney cabal had systematically erected “the framework for a police state in America over the past five years, while repudiating international law and asserting the right to wage unprovoked wars and kidnap, torture and murder anyone—including US citizens—whom it designates as an ‘enemy combatant’.”

#armement #complexe_militaro_industriel

The achievement of Schindler’s List - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/07/list-d07.html

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#Steven_Spielberg’s #Schindler’s_List opened in movie theaters 25 years ago. It went on to win Best Picture, along with six other honors, at the Academy Awards in March 1994.

The film, in a restored version, is being re-released this week and shown in selected theaters in the US. We are posting below the review that was published in the International Workers Bulletin, a forerunner of the World Socialist Web Site, on January 10, 1994.

In a recent interview with NBC News, Spielberg expressed his deep concern about the current rise not only of anti-Semitism, but of “xenophobia” and “racism.” He suggested that “this may be the most important time to re-release this film, possibly now is even a more important time to re-release Schindler’s List than 1993, 1994, when it was initially released. I think there’s more at stake today than even back then.”

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Schindler’s List at 25: looking back on Spielberg’s defining Holocaust drama | Film | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/06/schindlers-list-25th-anniversary-steven-spielberg-holocaust

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A big-screen rerelease leads to a re-examination of the 1993 Oscar winner which had a profound effect on critics and audiences

Pamela Hutchinson
@pamhutch

Thu 6 Dec 2018 08.00 GMT
Last modified on Thu 6 Dec 2018 16.25 GMT

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‘For Spielberg, telling Schindler’s story was a tool to combat ignorance, but it is work that continues.’
‘For Spielberg, telling Schindler’s story was a tool to combat ignorance, but it is work that continues.’ Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Universal

Twenty-five years ago, Steven Spielberg brought out two of his best movies, in a matter of months. The films were poles apart in style and subject matter, and the process of completing one while shooting the other left the director exhausted and emotionally ragged. In spring 1993, Spielberg was in Poland, recreating the terror of the Kraków ghetto and the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp for Schindler’s List by day, and each night he was calling Industrial Light & Magic in California to oversee the special effects for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Spielberg’s friend Robin Williams would call him up once a week to tell him jokes for 15 minutes at a time and release the tension.

#shoah

The Wife: A Nobel Prize winner exposed - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/03/wife-n03.html

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The Wife: A Nobel Prize winner exposed

By Benjamin Mateus
3 November 2018

Directed by Björn Runge, written by Jane Anderson, based on the novel by Meg Wolitzer.

“All you are going for is what feels human, and it transcends a political moment, it predates a political moment, it’s like what happens between people, in this case between women,” Meg Woltzier, author of The Wife.

The Wife, directed by Swedish filmmaker Björn Runge, has generally been met with accolades. Virtually every film critic has given Glenn Close—playing the part of Joan Castleman, the “Wife” in question—rave reviews and many have predicted she might win an Oscar. The new film is adapted from American writer Meg Wolitzer’s 2003 novel of the same title.

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Season in France: The human cost of the refugee crisis - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/24/seas-o24.html

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Sandrine Bonnaire, Eriq Ebouaney, Aalayna Lys and Ibrahim Burama Darboe in A Season in France

The never-ending neo-colonial wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of Africa, exacerbating the already terrible poverty in those regions, have driven millions upon millions to seek what they perceive to be more stable conditions in Western Europe.

The responsibility for the refugee crisis and the immense suffering involved lies entirely with the great powers led by the United States. Cynically and demagogically, American and European politicians of every stripe, from the extreme right to the so-called left, then demonize immigrants and blame them for mounting social and economic woes.

#migrations #asile #fiction

Machines: An unflinching look at an Indian textile mill - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/15/mach-m15.html

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Machines: An unflinching look at an Indian textile mill
By Wasantha Rupasinghe
15 May 2018

Written and directed by Rahul Jain; cinematography by Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva

In the early 1800s visionary poet William Blake bewailed the “dark satanic mills” of England’s industrial revolution and their destructive physical and soul-destroying impact on thousands of working class men, women and children.

#inde #sweatshop #exploitation #esclavage_moderne #documentaire #film #textile

1945: The horrors of the Holocaust in Hungary - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/11/1945-m11.html

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1945: The horrors of the Holocaust in Hungary
By Joanne Laurier
11 May 2018

Directed by Ferenc Török; screenplay by Török and Gábor T. Szántó

Hungarian director Ferenc Török’s 1945 is a serious effort to come to terms with the ghastliness of the Holocaust in Hungary. Co-written by Török and Gábor T. Szántó, the movie was adapted from the latter’s short story, “Homecoming.”

#holocauste #sgm #seconde_guerre_mondiale #hongrie #shoah

Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia : “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky” - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/03/king-m03.html

J’ai visité cette expo époustouflante il y a un mois : ci dessous quelques images...

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Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia: “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky”

By our reporters
3 May 2018

The Tate Modern in London held an exhibition, Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55, from November 8, 2017 to February 18, 2018. The show marked 100 years since the October Revolution.

The items on display came from the unique, 250,000-piece collection of the extraordinary photographer, designer and archivist David King (1943-2016). During his lifetime King sought to uncover the historical truth about the 1917 Russian Revolution and, above all, the role of Leon Trotsky. King always insisted that Trotsky represented an alternative to Stalinism and dictatorship.

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#soviétisme #réalisme_socialiste #urss #union_soviétique #propagande #affiches

Fifty years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/04/king-a04.html

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Fifty years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
By Fred Mazelis

4 April 2018

April 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support the struggle of African-American sanitation workers for decent wages and human dignity. In the days leading up to this anniversary, the media has been filled with articles on the life and legacy of the slain civil rights leader.

The example of King raises questions that have lost none of their urgency in the past five decades. A serious discussion of this period shines a bright light on present-day American society and exposes the lies and hypocrisy of the defenders of the status quo who falsify King’s legacy.

#droits_civiques #Martin_Luther_King

A fresh look at German cinema in the Weimar Republic era (1919-1933) - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/03/berl-a03.html

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A fresh look at German cinema in the Weimar Republic era (1919-1933)
By Bernd Reinhardt
3 April 2018

This is the seventh in a series of articles on the recent Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, held February 15-25, 2018. The first part was posted March 14, the second on March 16, the third on March 20, the fourth on March 22, the fifth on March 26 and the sixth on March 29.

Only fragments remain of the rich cinematic heritage of Germany’s Weimar Republic era. Approximately 90 percent of the films produced in Germany between 1919 and 1933 are considered lost.

The retrospective at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, “Weimar Cinema Revisited,” presented films that have been forgotten for decades, along with their directors. The approximately 30 films on show, divided thematically into “exotic,” “quotidian” and “history,” have been extensively and lovingly restored in a process involving international cooperation. The films demonstrate the complexity and diversity of cinema during the Weimar Republic—works both modern and full of contradictions, with progress and regression closely bound up with one another.

#cinéma #art #allemagne #république_de_weimar

Central Airport THF: In Berlin, the end of the road for many refugees - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/26/berl-m26.html

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Central Airport THF: In Berlin, the end of the road for many refugees
By Verena Nees
26 March 2018

This is the fif th in a series of articles on the recent Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, held February 15-25, 2018. The first part was posted March 14, the second on March 16, the third on March 20 and the fourth on March 22.

Karim Aïnouz, the Brazilian-Algerian director of Central Airport THF (Zentralflughafen THF) explained that he was motivated to make his film by “the contrast between the massive military architecture of the [Nazi] Third Reich and the shabby tents for incoming refugees.”

#cinéma #réfugiés #asile #berlin #allemagne

Sweet Country : Bitter truths about Aboriginal dispossession in Australia - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/13/wtho-m13.html

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Sweet Country: Bitter truths about Aboriginal dispossession in Australia
By George Morley
13 March 2018

Written by David Tranter and Steven McGregor, filmed and directed by Warwick Thornton

Samson and Delilah (2009), Warwick Thornton’s first dramatic feature, announced the arrival of a talented filmmaker, committed to exposing some of the realities of the lives of Aboriginal Australians. The critically acclaimed work about two indigenous teenagers revealed to global audiences the unemployment, poverty and substance abuse facing thousands of young Aborigines.

Sweet Country, Thornton’s follow-up feature, is an equally important film. This one uncovers ugly truths about the country’s colonial past that the establishment has sought to sweep under the carpet. As Thornton told the Sydney Morning Herald: “A lot of our history was written by colonisers who wanted to … put themselves in a favourable light. A lot of it is a lie. Now we’re starting to write down our history with our version of events.”

#autralie #aborigènes #peuples_premiers #premières_nations #peuples_autochtones

“A world without nations”—On the death of German jazz guitarist Coco Schumann - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/02/germ-m02.html

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The German jazz guitarist #Coco_Schumann (born Heinz Jakob Schumann) died January 29 at the age of 93. He remained active musically until near the end of his life and therefore ranks as a jazz musician with one of the longest musical biographies ever.

Schumann’s musical career began in Berlin in the 1930s. The Nazi dictatorship could not dampen the enthusiasm for jazz which had developed during the Weimar Republic era following World War I. Jazz had taken the place of operetta, musicians dared to jazz up traditional marching songs such as the “Berliner Luft (Berlin Air)” and radio was becoming increasingly popular.

#jazz #musique

What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/28/talk-f28.html

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Arts editor David Walsh speaks on the centenary of the October Revolution
What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture
By David Walsh
28 February 2018

We post here a talk given by WSWS arts editor David Walsh to several college audiences in December and January, to mark the centenary of the October Revolution.

“But the new art, which will lay out new landmarks, and which will expand the channel of creative art, can be created only by those who are at one with their epoch… ”
—Trotsky, Literature and Revolution

#art #révolution_russe #urss #union_soviétique #culture #soviétisme

Sleeping rough in the UK: “I never expected to be on the streets” - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/10/manc-f10.html

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Sleeping rough in the UK: “I never expected to be on the streets”
By Margot Miller and Dennis Moore
10 February 2018

For the seventh consecutive year, rough sleeping in the UK is on the rise, according to recently published government figures. An estimated 4,751 people were sleeping out on the streets of England for the year 2017. This represents an increase of 15 percent on the previous year and 169 percent since 2010.

#royaume_uni #pauvreté #disrimination

The decline and fall of Russian protest art—“Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism” - World Socialist Web Site
►https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/08/russ-j08.html

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Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism,” Saatchi Gallery, London, November 16, 2017-January 7, 2018

“Actionism appeared as a reaction to the mass depersonalisation and total commercialisation of art, as a reaction to the overload of objects manipulated by curators, gallerists, and collectors—and also the laws of the market. The artist protesting against this makes a striking statement, socially significant and visually spellbinding.”

These strong words from Oleg Kulik, father of post-Soviet actionist art, are quoted in the catalogue for the recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition in London, Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism.

On display at the gallery is the protest art of Kulik and other performance artists, including Pussy Riot, Pyotr Pavlensky, Arsen Savadov, Damir Muratov and the Blue Noses Group. The exhibition gives an opportunity to examine how the art of Kulik and his colleagues lives up to his manifesto. How have things proceeded since Kulik first hit the headlines in the 1990s?

#art #russie #art_riot #art_alternatif