/articles

Capitalist restoration in Russia: A balance sheet - World Socialist Web Site

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/01/russ-m01.html

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/02/rus2-m02.html

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/03/rus3-m03.html

▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/04/rus4-m04.html

his is the final article in a four-part series. Here are links to Part 1, 2 and 3.

Coal production in Russia has seen a resurgence in recent years with Russia ranking as the world’s sixth largest producer. The coal industry employs around 151,000 people, with another 500,000 working in related industries. Coal is the fifth most important export product for Russia.

In 2016, Russia produced 385.7 million tons of coal, of which 171.4 million tons were exported. The Kuzbass has produced between 54 and 60 percent of all coal that is mined in Russia, and up to 76 percent of Russia’s coal exports. Coal companies account for well over half of the region’s budget.

#russie #capitalisme #néolibéralisme #poutine #économie #héritage_communiste

November 6-12: Bolsheviks come to power in Petrograd - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/06/twrr-n06.html

http://www.wsws.org/asset/5bd43121-2f1b-46d9-a2cb-bd1a4c376626/image.jpg

Kerensky’s last desperate attempt to destroy the Bolshevik Party only results in the collapse of government authority. The Congress of Soviets opens with the Bolsheviks firmly in control of Petrograd. The new government formed by the Bolsheviks swiftly passes sweeping decrees on peace, land, education, and the eight-hour day.
Petrograd, November 6-7 (October 24-25, O.S.): Bolsheviks launch insurrection in response to government attacks

#1917 #révolution_russe #urss

Capitalism and the Houston flood catastrophe - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/28/pers-a28.html

Nearly twelve years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, Hurricane Harvey is wreaking havoc along the Texas Gulf Coast. Harvey has caused widespread flooding in Houston, the fourth largest city in the country, with 2.3 million people and a metropolitan area population of nearly 6.5 million.

Once again, a major storm has stripped away the pretense and revealed the brutal reality of American society, exposing pervasive poverty, staggering levels of inequality, and rampant official neglect and corruption. Scenes are unfolding of entire families trudging through waist-high water befouled with oil, sewage and chemicals; people young and old scrambling onto roofs in the desperate hope of being rescued from rapidly rising water; entire sections of the city cut off from shelter, food and clean water. The situation will only grow worse as the storm continues to drop record volumes of rain on the city and its environs.

In the richest country in the world, where trillions of dollars were made available to the banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, widespread destruction and loss of life have become a common feature of the tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and other severe weather events that occur with increasing frequency. This is above all due to the decay of infrastructure and an acute social crisis that has left millions without the means to prepare for a natural disaster.

The victims, as always, are overwhelmingly working-class. Once again, scenes of human suffering amid official dysfunction are shattering the claims of the United States to be a land of prosperity and progress.

As in every such crisis, the spontaneous response of ordinary people is one of social solidarity. Victims of the storm are rushing to help their neighbors and thousands of people are pouring into the impacted area to assist in saving lives and providing food, shelter and medical care. This stands in the starkest contrast to the authorities, who did nothing to ward off the impact of a major flood or prepare to deal with its consequences.

An open letter to Google: Stop the censorship of the Internet! Stop the political blacklisting of the World Socialist Web Site! - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/25/pers-a25.html

https://www.wsws.org/img/open-graph-icon.png

Gentlemen:

Google’s mission statement from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Its official code of conduct was proclaimed in Google’s famous motto: “Don’t be evil.” In recent years, you have seriously lost your way. You are now engaged in hiding the world’s information, and, in the process, are doing a great deal of evil.

Google, and by implication, its parent company Alphabet, Inc., are now engaged in political censorship of the Internet. You are doing what you have previously publicly denounced.

Google is manipulating its Internet searches to restrict public awareness of and access to socialist, anti-war and left-wing websites. The World Socialist Web Site (www.wsws.org) has been massively targeted and is the most affected by your censorship protocols. Referrals to the WSWS from Google have fallen by nearly 70 percent since April of this year.

Censorship on this scale is political blacklisting. The obvious intent of Google’s censorship algorithm is to block news that your company does not want reported and to suppress opinions with which you do not agree.

Ben Gomes, Google’s vice president for search engineering, attempted to justify the imposition of political censorship with a blog post on April 25, claiming that the changes to the algorithm were a response to “the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information.”

Google, according to Gomes, has recruited some 10,000 “evaluators” to judge the “quality” of websites. These evaluators are trained to “flag” websites that are deemed to “include misleading information” and “unsupported conspiracy theories.” Gomes explained that the blacklists created by these evaluators will be used, in combination with the latest developments in technology, to develop an algorithm that will impose censorship automatically, in real time, across future search results.

Whatever the technical changes Google has made to the search algorithm, the anti-left bias of the results is undeniable. The most striking outcome of Google’s censorship procedures is that users whose search queries indicate an interest in socialism, Marxism or Trotskyism are no longer directed to the World Socialist Web Site. Google is “disappearing” the WSWS from the results of search requests. For example, Google searches for “Leon Trotsky” yielded 5,893 impressions (appearances of the WSWS in search results) in May of this year. In July, the same search yielded exactly zero impressions for the WSWS, which is the Internet publication of the international movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.

As stated above, since April, other left-wing publications that present themselves as progressive, socialist or anti-war also have suffered significant reductions in their Google search results:

alternet.org fell by 63 percent
globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent

Google justifies the imposition of political censorship by using a loaded term like “fake news.” This term, properly used, signifies the manufacturing of news based on an artificially constructed event that either never occurred or has been grossly exaggerated. The present-day furor over “fake news” is itself an example of an invented event and artificially constructed narrative. It is a “fake” term that is used to discredit factual information and well-grounded analyses that challenge and discredit government policies and corporate interests. Any invocation of the phrase “fake news,” as it pertains to the WSWS, is devoid of any substance or credibility. In fact, our efforts to combat historical falsification have been recognized, including by the scholarly journal American Historical Review.

#Google #Censure #Fake_news #Appétit_géants

New report counts 100,000 homeless students in New York City public schools - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/25/home-a25.html

The total of homeless students, defined by the report as those living in shelters or doubled up with friends and family, but also including some living in motels and even a few in family cars, is approximately 100,000, more than 9 percent of the total in the city’s public schools for the 2015-2016 school year. When the numbers who are not currently homeless but have experienced homelessness in the past six years are included, the total rises to 140,000. The report points out that this is equal to the population of Syracuse, the fourth-largest city in New York State.

New #Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites - World Socialist Web Site

Google rules, donc. Et si en plus Google tue Firefox...

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html

New Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites
By Andre Damon and Niles Niemuth
27 July 2017

In the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing “fake news,” the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly.

On April 25, 2017, Google announced that it had implemented changes to its search service to make it harder for users to access what it called “low-quality” information such as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.”

#réseaux_sociaux

The opioid epidemic in the US: A national health emergency - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/18/pers-j18.html

The Washington Post recently published an extraordinary article on policies to address the spiraling drug epidemic in the United States. The article—“As opioid overdoses exact a higher price, communities ponder who should be saved”—did not feature calls for emergency health care or rehabilitation programs, but rather suggestions by some local officials that the state should just let drug addicts die.

The Post highlighted, among others, the proposal of Middletown, Ohio Council Member Daniel Picard that emergency responders should not use the drug naloxone to save overdose victims more than two times. The newspaper noted that the drug is often “the only thing separating whether an overdose victim goes to the hospital instead of the morgue,” and draws the conclusion that it is perfectly reasonable to adopt policies to ensure that many more go to the latter rather than the former.

That such fascistic measures—what might be called the “Duterte solution” to the drug epidemic in the US—are being treated as a rational and legitimate part of the political debate is an expression of the debased political psychology that dominates in the American ruling class. As far as the corporate and financial elite is concerned, if tens of thousands more people die from drug overdoses, this is not only acceptable, it is a positive good.

Study shows US has poorest health, widest health care gap between rich and poor - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/15/care-j01.html

Avec une invraisemblable première place pour le Royaume-Uni et non moins invraisemblable avant-dernière place pour la France

Grenfell Tower residents warn: “People have had enough” - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/15/inte-j15-1.html

Grenfell Tower residents warn: “People have had enough”
By our reporters
15 June 2017

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to residents about the fire that gutted Grenfell Tower early Wednesday morning.

Two young occupants, Siar and Mansoor, who were waiting outside police cordons, said, with tears in their eyes, that they lived on the 3rd floor and their uncle and his family lived on the 23rd floor.

Siar described the horrific ordeal they had just suffered, saying, “We were not asleep because we were eating after the Ramadan day fast. That is what saved us. Had we been sleeping we would not have been woken by any fire alarms. The building had none, nor fire sprinklers nor emergency lighting in the corridors showing the way out.

–------

London’s Grenfell Tower inferno: A crime against the working class - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/15/fire-j15.html

London’s Grenfell Tower inferno: A crime against the working class
By Laura Tiernan
15 June 2017

The fire that consumed #Grenfell_Tower block in west London early Tuesday morning has fuelled outrage among local residents and community groups, whose warnings of serious fire hazards were repeatedly ignored by council authorities.

The catastrophic fire broke out shortly before 1:00 a.m., on the second floor of the council flats in Kensington. Flames quickly engulfed the 24-storey building that is home to an estimated 500 people.

Twelve are confirmed dead, but the death toll is expected to rise. A

#londres #royaume-uni #désastre #incendie

Trump calls for $1.7 trillion in social cuts - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/23/pers-m23.html

Meurtres à petit feu...

The Trump administration will unveil a fiscal year 2018 budget today that includes $1.7 trillion in cuts to major social programs. The plan marks a new stage in a bipartisan social counterrevolution aimed at eviscerating what remains of programs to fight poverty and hunger and provide health care for millions of workers.

#états-unis #inégalités #pauvres #riches

Macron prepares enabling act to slash contracts, labor rights in France - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/23/macr-m23.html

The Macron administration has no mandate whatsoever to carry out the program it is proposing. The labor law was deeply unpopular even without its most controversial provisions; former PS President François Hollande’s economic policy, which Macron helped formulate, had a 4 percent approval rating. Now Macron is advancing such a program after an election that he won largely by default, because he was facing deeply unpopular neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.

Macron, a former investment banker at the Rothschild bank, aims to impose the arrogant diktat of the banks. Under Hollande’s presidency, as workers’ living standards fell, the wealth of top French multi-billionaires like Liliane Bettencourt and Philippe Arnault nearly doubled. With the world economy still mired in crisis, however, and France’s economic position and its weight in world trade continuing to fall, the ruling class is determined to squeeze even more money out of workers and place it in the hands of the super-rich.

The working class is faced with a political struggle against an absolutely ruthless government that is willing to resort to forms of repression unseen in France since the 1940s in order to ram through the diktat of the banks. The new administration is aware that it faces massive popular opposition and is making detailed plans to crush strikes and protests.

Last week, the media revealed that the PS had made plans for a coup d’état after the presidential elections, to be implemented had Marine Le Pen won. Its purpose would not have been to topple Le Pen, however, but to crush anti-fascist protests and suspend normal parliamentary procedure by imposing a PS government on Le Pen.

French government prepared coup if Le Pen won presidential election
By Alex Lantier

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/19/fran-m19.html

Vous y croyez, vous ?

19 May 2017

According to an extraordinary report published yesterday in L’Obs magazine, top members of France’s Socialist Party (PS) government prepared to launch a coup d’état if Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN) won the May 7 presidential run-off.

The purpose of the coup was not to keep Le Pen from taking office. Rather, it was designed to crush left-wing protests against Le Pen’s victory, impose martial law, and install Le Pen in power in an enforced alliance with a PS-led government.