/articles

  • US corporate profits up 13.9 percent on cost-cutting and low wages - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/09/econ-m09.html

    US corporate profits up 13.9 percent on cost-cutting and low wages
    By Barry Grey
    9 May 2017

    Former Obama administration officials joined the Trump administration and the media in hailing the April employment figures released Friday as proof that the US economy has reached “full employment” and essentially completed its “recovery” from the Great Recession.

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 211,000 private-sector non-farm jobs in April and the official jobless rate dropped to 4.4 percent, the lowest level in more than a decade.

    #états-unis #richesse #pauvreté #spéculation #pouvoir #argent

  • Hunger affecting millions of children in UK - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/09/maln-m09.html

    Hunger affecting millions of children in UK
    By Joe Mount
    9 May 2017

    Hunger affects an increasing number of children in Britain. Up to three million children in Britain are threatened with malnutrition outside term time, when they are not provided with school meals, according to new research.

    A third of these children qualify for free meals provided by schools during term time and often go hungry during school holidays. Two million are from working households that earn poverty wages, but do not qualify for free school meals.

    #royaume-uni #pauvreté #alimentation #faim

  • 8,000 Flint residents face foreclosure for failing to pay for poisoned water - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/05/flin-m05.html

    8,000 Flint residents face foreclosure for failing to pay for poisoned water
    By Jerry White
    5 May 2017

    More than 8,000 residents in Flint have received letters from the city threatening them with home foreclosures if they do not pay outstanding bills for water, which is still tainted with lead and other toxins. Seeking to squeeze $5.8 million out of city residents, the letters said outstanding bills would have to be paid by May 19 or property tax liens would be issued that could result in residents losing their homes by March 2018.

    The action is the latest offense against the largely working-class population in the former manufacturing center for General Motors, 60 miles north of Detroit. Residents in the city of 100,000 have fought a three-year battle against the lead poisoning of their water and the official cover-up of this criminal act by local, state and federal authorities.

    #eau #pollution #flint

  • The human cost of the US-Mexico border: More than 6,000 bodies found since 2000 - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/05/pers-m05.html

    The human cost of the US-Mexico border: More than 6,000 bodies found since 2000
    5 May 2017

    Between 2000 and 2016, the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has discovered the remains of 6,023 undocumented people who died crossing from Mexico into the United States.

    This shocking figure, cited in a May 4 article in the New York Times, underreports the total death toll. According to one Texas sheriff, “I would say for every one [body] we find, we’re probably missing five.” That is, the number of undiscovered bodies could be in the tens of thousands.

    Bodies turn up along the US-Mexico border “with stunning regularity,” the Times report notes. In one border area, Brooks County, Texas, 550 bodies have been discovered since January 2009, the month of Barack Obama’s inauguration. At a single ranch in Texas, 31 bodies have been discovered since 2014. CBP unceremoniously throws some of the bodies together in “cluster graves,” often without removing them from biohazard bags.

    #frontières #murs #mexique #états-unis #mourir_aux_frontières

  • French warship joins US-UK-Japanese fleet threatening North Korea - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/04/frko-m04.html

    Vous étiez au courant ?

    Amid the US military escalation and growing nuclear war tensions in the Korean peninsula, the French Socialist Party (PS) government has sent a Mistral-class warship to join exercises led by the US military alongside the Japanese Navy. The Mistrals are amphibious assault helicopter carriers that participated in the Libyan War in 2011.

    On Saturday, the ship reached the Sasebo naval base in Japan’s western island of Kyushu to join with US armada threatening North Korea and China. It will participate in joint military exercise from the second to the third week of this month, alongside the US, Japanese and British navies near islands including Guam and Tinian in the western Pacific, around 2.400 km from Japan.

  • Why Emmanuel Macron is no lesser evil compared to Marine Le Pen - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/04/fran-m04.html

    C’est possible mais dans ce cas, il ne nous reste plus qu’à se flinguer, non ?

    Why Emmanuel Macron is no lesser evil compared to Marine Le Pen
    By Johannes Stern
    4 May 2017

    These remarks were delivered by Johannes Stern, a leading member of the Sozial istische Gleichheitspartei , the German section of the ICFI, at the first public meeting of the Parti de l ’ égalité socialiste on May Day in Paris.

    As today’s international speaker I first of all want to extend the warmest international greetings to you from the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and from the entire IC. I am proud to participate and speak at this first public meeting of the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) in Paris, at such a critical political juncture.

    The PES is clearly the only party intervening in the elections with a revolutionary perspective for the working class. As comrade Alex Lantier has explained, our call for an active boycott is made, not from the standpoint of parliamentary calculations, but from the dynamic of the class struggle.

  • The double-execution horror in Arkansas - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/25/pers-a25.html

    The double-execution horror in Arkansas
    25 April 2017

    The world looked on in horror last night as two inmates were put to death in Arkansas in the first double-execution in the US since 2000. The second execution was halted temporarily after the first prisoner’s attorneys claimed their client’s execution appeared to be “torturous and inhumane.”

    The execution process for Jack Jones Jr., 52, began at 7:06 p.m. local time at the state’s Cummins Unit in southeast Arkansas. The prisoner, who had spent more than two decades on death row, was pushed into the death chamber in a wheelchair, having had one leg amputated as a result of diabetes. Jones was pronounced dead by the coroner at 7:20 p.m., 14 minutes after the procedure began.

    #peine_de_mort #droits_humains

  • Macron and neo-fascist Le Pen advance to run-off in French presidential #elections - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/24/macr-a24.html

    Whether it is Macron or Le Pen who wins the second round, the election will resolve nothing and only set the stage for explosive social conflict. The electorate faces the choice between a neo-fascist and Macron, a former Rothschild banker who formulated Hollande’s bitterly unpopular economic policy and has called for a return to the draft in order to prepare an “era” of major wars. Macron offers no alternative to Le Pen for working people, having endorsed the PS’s state of emergency, which suspends basic democratic rights, as well as deep austerity and war planning.

  • Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1985) depicts a city of sadness and alienation - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/taip-a18.html

    Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1985) depicts a city of sadness and alienation

    By Fred Mazelis
    18 April 2017

    Taipei Story (1985), one of the early films of Edward Yang (1947-2007), a major Taiwanese director, was recently screened in the US for the first time, and the brief commercial run will be followed by its release on DVD.

    Yang was one of a number of Taiwanese filmmakers who emerged in the 1980s, insisting on a more realistic and serious approach to life, as opposed to the largely escapist films of the 1970s. The new Taiwanese Cinema has been compared in some respects to Italian neorealism in the post-World War II period, and also to some of the early films of the French New Wave.

    #taiwan #cinéma

  • Papua New Guinea soldiers attack refugees in Australian-run prison camp - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/refu-a18.html

    Papua New Guinea soldiers attack refugees in Australian-run prison camp
    By Max Newman
    18 April 2017

    Escalating tensions at the Australian refugee detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Manus Island erupted last Friday when armed soldiers fired shots into the camp and assaulted detainees. Videos posted on-line showed terrified asylum seekers seeking shelter as gunfire peppered the centre.

    Eye-witness accounts indicate that a vehicle rammed the entrance gates, and rocks were thrown at refugees. Anxious to whitewash the assault, the Australian government continues to claim that only a single shot was fired, into the air, despite photos and videos showing multiple bullet holes.

    #réfugiés #asile #migrations #australie #papouasie_mouvelle_guinée #océanie

  • Trump administration announces new military operation in Somalia - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/soma-a18.html

    On pensait Clinton comme une guerrière, c’est finalement Trump qui est sur tous les fronts...

    Trump administration announces new military operation in Somalia
    By Eddie Haywood
    18 April 2017

    The Pentagon announced the deployment of dozens of US troops to Somalia last week, the first deployment of regular infantry since 1994, to assist the Somali military in the fight against Al Shabaab militants. Coincident with the announcement of the US deployment, a combat contingent from Uganda arrived in Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu on the weekend.

    The Ugandan military contingent, which is one part of a multi-country cooperative offensive, replaces a group of Ugandan forces after that group’s one-year tour of duty ended. The Ugandan troops are to augment the US-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) against the Islamist militants.

  • Washington pushes world to brink of nuclear war - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/pers-a18.html

    Washington pushes world to brink of nuclear war
    18 April 2017

    The repeated statements by US Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials Monday that the “era of strategic patience” with North Korea is over and “all options are on the table” have laid bare the mounting threat that Washington will provoke a war on the Korean peninsula involving the use of nuclear weapons and the deaths of millions.

    “Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan,” Pence declared during a provocative visit to South Korea that brought him to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the North Korean border. “North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” Pence said.

    #trump #it_has_begun #guerre_thermo_nucléaire (new tag...)

  • Children in California show elevated lead levels at rates higher than Flint, Michigan - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/03/lead-a03.html

    Children in California show elevated lead levels at rates higher than Flint, Michigan
    By Glenn Mulwray
    3 April 2017

    Recent data released by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and reports from the Reuters news agency have revealed that children in 29 California neighborhoods have tested for elevated lead levels at least as high as children in Flint, Michigan poisoned by that city’s 2014 decision to tap into the contaminated Flint River as the primary source of drinking water.

    California’s hardest hit areas showed nearly 14 percent of children age 6 or younger with elevated lead levels, compared to 5 percent across the city of Flint at the height of the ongoing water contamination crisis.

    #eau #flint #californie #Pollution #pollution_au_plomb #plomb #états-unis

  • $87 million Flint water line settlement announced - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/31/flin-m31.html

    $87 million Flint water line settlement announced
    By James Brewer
    31 March 2017

    In what the media is hailing as a “victory for Flint residents,” a federal judge approved a settlement Tuesday in which the state of Michigan will pay $87 million for replacing service lines in the city over the next three years. An additional $10 million is to be held in reserve for “unexpected costs.”

    The lawsuit that led to the settlement was brought against the State of Michigan by several groups, including Concerned Pastors for Social Action, Natural Resources Defense Council, American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and Flint resident Melissa Mays, who heads the local activist group Water You Fighting For.

    US District Judge David Lawson, who presided over the settlement, gave the following characterization. “In my view the settlement agreement is fair, adequate, reasonable and consistent with the public interest and it furthers the objectives of the safe water drinking act [sic].” The federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) establishes the standards for public drinking water supplies throughout the US. Lawson made a point of praising Michigan Governor Rick Snyder—who is responsible for the disaster in Flint—saying that without his cooperation the settlement would not have been possible.

    #eau #flint #Pollution #environnement #états-unis

  • Tensions erupt between the Philippines and China over disputed island - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/30/phil-m30.html

    Tensions erupt between the Philippines and China over disputed island
    By Joseph Santolan
    30 March 2017

    Over the past several weeks, sharp tensions emerged between Beijing and Manila over the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, exposing the advanced character of the crisis gripping the Philippines, a result of Washington’s preparations for war with China.

    The Scarborough Shoal is a triangular chain of rocks and atolls located 140 miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon. In the wake of the Obama administration’s launching its “pivot to Asia” in 2010, this collection of rocks in the South China Sea became the subject of fierce contention. Manila and Beijing came to the brink of a shooting war over the shoal in a military stand-off that lasted for months in the first half of 2012.

    #mer_de_chine_méridionale

  • G20 conflict over protectionism : From post-war to pre-war capitalism - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/24/trad-m24.html

    G20 conflict over protectionism: From post-war to pre-war capitalism
    By Nick Beams
    24 March 2017

    While the dispute was over the words to be included in a communiqué, the decision by the G20 finance ministers meeting last weekend, at the insistence of the United States, to drop a previous commitment to “resist all forms of protectionism” has more than symbolic significance.

    Following the meeting, the general consensus among the other powers was to downplay the significance of the split, at least publicly, in the hope that the situation could change by the time of the G20 leaders’ summit in July, by which time the Trump administration would have had sufficient time to “learn.” But given the US president’s strident assertions of “America First” and his denunciations of the present trading system as unfair to the US, that hope seems like whistling in the dark.

    #capitalisme #néolibéralisme #mondialisation #globalisation

  • The foul attempt to censor and suppress Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/24/till-m24.html

    The foul attempt to censor and suppress Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till
    By David Walsh
    24 March 2017

    The campaign to censor and suppress Open Casket, white artist #Dana_Schutz painting of murdered black youth #Emmett_Till, on racialist grounds is thoroughly reactionary. Artists must speak out against this anti-democratic effort, which has the most sinister implications. The arguments being used are worthy of the Nazi officials who banned Jewish artists from playing or conducting classical music on the grounds of their “un-German” spirit.

    #art #racisme #censure

  • Trump, Republicans postpone vote on Obamacare replacement bill - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/24/ahca-m24.html

    Trump, Republicans postpone vote on Obamacare replacement bill
    By Barry Grey
    24 March 2017

    The Trump administration and the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives abruptly canceled a scheduled vote on their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare on Thursday after failing to obtain the required votes from the Republican caucus to secure passage.

    #obamacare #santé #états_unis

  • Lessons of the Great Year: 9 January 1905 – 9 January 1917 - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/24/less-m24.html

    Writings of Trotsky from 1917
    Lessons of the Great Year: 9 January 1905 – 9 January 1917
    By Leon #Trotsky
    24 March 2017

    This article was published in the Russian-language New York newspaper Novy mir (New World) on January 20, 1917. It was published in Russian in Trotsky’s 1923 Voina i Revoliutsiia (War and Revolution), Vol 2, pp. 424-428. It appeared in English in Our Revolution (1918). Below is an original translation.

    The article is translated by Fred Williams, who will be delivering an online lecture, “The Legacy of 1905 and the Strategy of the Russian Revolution” on Saturday, March 25, at 5:00 Eastern Daylight Time. For more information, wsws.org/1917.

    #révolution_russe

  • Rising death rate for middle-aged US workers driven by “deaths of despair” - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/03/24/stud-m24.html

    Rising death rate for middle-aged US workers driven by “deaths of despair”
    By Niles Niemuth
    24 March 2017

    The latest research on rising mortality rates by Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, presented this week at the Brookings Institution, shines new light on the depth of the social crisis which has devastated the American working class since the year 2000.

    #états-unis #Mortalité #crise_économique #décadence #régression