• Sweeping attacks on migrant workers in Russia amid COVID-19 pandemic - World Socialist Web Site
    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#Russie#xenophobie

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/03/rumi-j03.html

    A tidal wave of anti-immigrant measures is under preparation in Russia, as the Kremlin and its nominal political opponents in other parties attempt to divert mass discontent over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and skyrocketing poverty by promoting xenophobia and Russian chauvinism.

  • Washington lance un ultimatum au Venezuela sous couvert du stratagème de « l’aide humanitaire » - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2019/02/08/vnzl-f08.html

    Il est absurde de prétendre que les camions de vivres et de médicaments amenés à la frontière entre la Colombie et le Venezuela résorberont la profonde crise économique et sociale qui sévit au Venezuela. L’aide, quand et si elle arrivera, est un #cheval_de_Troie classique, destiné non pas à alléger les souffrances du peuple vénézuélien, mais à provoquer soit un coup d’État militaire, soit une confrontation armée.

    La #Croix-Rouge et #Caritas, le groupe d’aide affilié à l’Église catholique, ont refusé de participer à toute opération impliquant le « corridor humanitaire » américain, invoquant leurs principes de neutralité et d’indépendance.

  • Le gouvernement allemand place le Parti de l’égalité socialiste sur une liste de surveillance de groupes subversifs - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2018/08/18/seqi-a18.html

    Le mois dernier, l’Office fédéral de protection de la Constitution (BfV), l’agence de renseignement allemande, a ajouté le Parti de l’égalité socialiste à sa liste des « partis extrémistes de gauche » soumise au contrôle de l’État dans son « rapport annuel de protection constitutionnelle ». C’est une attaque politique calculée contre le Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Parti de l’égalité socialiste – SGP).

    Les années précédentes, le rapport annuel ne mentionnait pas le SGP. Maintenant, il apparaît deux fois comme l’un des trois « partis extrémistes de gauche » et comme « objet d’observation » devant être surveillé par les services secrets.

    La surveillance par les services secrets implique des restrictions massives sur les droits démocratiques fondamentaux et est un précurseur à une éventuelle interdiction. Le SGP et ses membres doivent assumer qu’ils sont surveillés, que leurs communications sont interceptées et qu’ils sont espionnés par des moyens secrets. Ils sont considérés comme des « ennemis de la Constitution » et peuvent s’attendre à être harcelés en ce qui concerne les élections, les apparitions publiques, la location de salles ou la recherche d’un emploi.

    Par exemple, le RCDS, l’organisation étudiante des partis démocrates chrétiens (Union chrétienne-démocrate et Union chrétienne sociale), exige que les organisations et leurs membres soumis à la surveillance des services secrets soient exclus des universités.

    Les services secrets n’ont pas accusé le SGP de violer une loi ou de se livrer à des activités violentes. Elle confirme même explicitement que le SGP poursuit ses objectifs par des moyens légaux, à savoir qu’il « cherche à attirer l’attention du public sur ses idées politiques en participant à des élections et par des conférences ».

  • 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

    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

  • DreamHost ordered to hand over data on anti-Trump website: The criminalization of political dissent - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/26/pers-a26.html

    In a chilling attack on free speech, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge Thursday ordered the web hosting company DreamHost to make available to the Trump administration vast amounts of data related to a website, disruptj20.org, which organized protests against Trump’s inauguration in January.

  • 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.

  • CGT union tries to block general strike against French labor law - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/30/cgtl-m30.html

    While Martinez refused to inform the population about his secret, back-channel talks with Valls, his comments show that he is preparing a rapid climb-down. He abandoned previous calls by union officials for a “withdrawal” of the law, calling instead for the law to be “rediscussed.”

    Martinez repeatedly insisted that the CGT would not enter into political conflict with the PS. He declared that he was not “going one on one against Valls.” He stressed that the CGT is “playing its role … We are in our proper role as a trade union.”

    This was an all but explicit statement of support for the PS. Asked whether he regretted the CGT’s call for a vote for Hollande in the 2012 presidential elections, Martinez refused to say either yes or no, saying only that the CGT had not “paid enough attention” at the time. He recalled that in 2012, then-CGT General Secretary Bernard Thibault had called for a vote to remove Hollande’s right-wing opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, and then obliquely declared that in “another era,” the CGT issued open endorsements of presidential candidates.

  • National Guard deployed in Baltimore after anger erupts over police killing - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/28/balt-a28.html

    #Police brutality was the immediate catalyst, but popular anger was fueled by wider causes, above all, deeply entrenched poverty and social inequality.

    After decades of deindustrialization, including the demolition of steel mills and auto plants, conditions for the majority of young people are on par with, or even worse than those in Third World countries. A study of adolescents in low-income neighborhoods conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that youth in Baltimore fare worse, in terms of mental health problems, drug abuse, sexual violence and teen pregnancy, than their counterparts in Nigeria.

    #misère #paupérisation #brutalité #inégalités

  • DiCaprio proposes resort on private island to “change the world” - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/06/dica-a06.html
    Complètement déconnecté du monde, le pauvre gars!

    It all begins on DiCaprio’s 104-acre island, Blacakdore Caye, a 15-minute private boat ride from the town of San Pedro, on the country’s eastern coast. It is on this island, which DiCaprio procured for the bargain price of $1.75 million in 2005, that the star of Django Unchained plans to build a luxury resort that he claims will change the world.

    The resort will include 68 luxury villas built on stilts, fanned out across the clear blue shallows of a quaint Caribbean cove. If the cabins are anything like those built by DiCaprio’s business partner Jeff Gram at another nearby resort, they’ll cost between $1,695 and $2,295 per night.

    But “for those vacationers who prefer their own houses,” the Times writes, “48 will be built on the island, with price tags ranging from $5 million to $15 million.”

    Those millionaires and billionaires who find the natural path of the sun a hindrance to their leisurely enjoyment of the world’s beauty need not worry. As the Times informs us, “some of the houses will boast both a sunrise and a sunset beach!”

    What’s more, “the 68 guest villas will have access to nearly a mile of secluded beach, grassland and jungle,” and “each building will have several functions, with the platform, for example, not only sheltering guests on top and coral and fish underneath, but also harnessing the breeze that comes off the water to keep the villas cool.”

    In Dicaprio’s own words: “[T]he main focus is to do something that will change the world.” The actor explained that his private island retreat will become an eco-tourist hotspot.

  • Les enfants aux États-Unis n’ont jamais été aussi pauvres depuis ces 50 dernières années
    Child poverty at devastating levels in US cities and states - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/26/cpov-f26.html

    Reports issued over the past week suggest that child poverty in America is more widespread than at any time in the last 50 years. For all the claims of economic “recovery” in the United States, the reality for the new generation of the working class is one of ever-deeper social deprivation.

    The Annie E. Casey Foundation publishes the annual Kids Count report on child poverty, which was the source of state-by-state reports issued last week. These reports use the new Supplemental Poverty Measure, developed by the Census Bureau, which includes the impact of government benefit programs like food stamps and unemployment compensation, as well as state social programs, and accounts for variations in the cost of living as well.

    The result is a picture of the United States with a markedly different regional distribution of child poverty than usually presented. The state with the highest child poverty rate is California, the most populous, at a staggering 27 percent, followed by neighboring Arizona and Nevada, each at 22 percent.

    The child poverty rate of California is much higher than figures previously reported, because the cost of living in the state is higher. Moreover, many of the poorest immigrant families are not enrolled in federal social programs because they are undocumented or face language barriers. The same conditions apply in Arizona and Nevada.

    The other major centers of child poverty in the United States are the long-impoverished states of the rural Deep South, and the more recently devastated states of the industrial Midwest, where conditions of life for the working class have deteriorated the most rapidly over the past ten years.

  • Millions in Britain cannot afford to eat properly - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/12/food-j12.html


    Le nombre de calories ingérées n’est pas un indicateur suffisant de #malnutrition, mais le fait qu’autant de gens en satisfassent pas ce premier indicateur est très inquiétant en soi. Et voilà pour la croissance britannique qu’on veut nous présenter en modèle. Comme tous les autres modèles, il repose sur l’abandon pur et simple d’une part de plus en plus importante de la population.

    Official figures published by the UK governments’ Family Food report show that millions of the poorest people are struggling to eat enough food to maintain their body weight and are facing malnourishment.

    The Family Food report, published by the government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), found that 6.4 million people consumed just 1,997 calories a day in the year 2013. It is advised that people should aim to eat at least 2,080 calories to maintain a healthy diet.

    The report was based on an annual survey of 6,000 UK households. It found that the average number of calories consumed by the population as a whole was five percent higher than required. However, this was not the case for the poorest 10 percent of the population (6.4 million people), a damning statistic the report did not highlight.

    Chris Goodall, an expert on energy who initially discovered the figures while investigating human use of food resources, commented, “The data shocked me. What it shows is for the first time since the Second World War, if you are poor you cannot afford to eat sufficient calories.”

    #alimentation #pauvreté

  • Millions march in France after Charlie Hebdo shooting - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/12/fran-j12.html

    Behind the atmosphere of hysteria stoked up by the French political establishment and media is an attempt to impose a definite and reactionary political agenda. In a country that has seen two world wars and numerous revolutionary struggles, the killing of 12 people is being elevated to the level of an unprecedented national tragedy in a bid to revive the flagging fortunes of Hollande, France’s most unpopular president since World War II.

    By appealing for national unity behind the police and security forces, Hollande is seeking to bolster the credibility of a government despised for its austerity policies, legitimize French participation in the reactionary, Washington-led “war on terror” in Africa and the Middle East, and facilitate right-wing political combinations in a desperate attempt to stabilize the state.

    As Hollande’s invitation of National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée Presidential Palace on Friday made clear, what is being considered is the further integration of the neo-fascist FN into mainstream French bourgeois politics. This underscores the authoritarian and anti-democratic evolution of European politics and the necessity for the unification of the European working class across ethnic and religious lines in a revolutionary struggle for socialism.

    As masses of people do begin to reflect on the political issues bound up with the Charlie Hebdo shootings, it will occur to them that the French government itself bears political responsibility. The two Islamist gunmen who carried out the terrorist attack, Said and Cherif Kouachi, are themselves a particularly toxic product of the failure of capitalism to offer any hope to broad layers of the working masses.

    Muslim youth suffer from extreme levels of unemployment, as high as 40 percent in some of France’s suburbs, where the Kouachi brothers found low-paid odd jobs on the margins of economic life. They face a stream of Islamophobic measures, such as bans on the burqa and Muslim headscarves. These tensions are intensified by French imperialism’s abandonment of its previous opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, aligning itself instead with US-led wars from Afghanistan to Libya and Syria and, once again, Iraq.

  • Twelve dead in terrorist shooting at Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/08/fran-j08.html

    The attack in Paris unfolded in the context of growing right-wing, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agitation across the continent, from the mass rallies organized in Germany under the banner of “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West” to the growth of right-wing nationalist parties like UKIP in Britain. As the media reaction makes clear, the carnage in Paris will be exploited to strengthen these reactionary tendencies.

    Marine Le Pen, the leader of the neo-fascist National Front, exploited the attack as a means of legitimizing her party’s poisonous chauvinist politics. “It’s my responsibility to say that fear must be overcome and we must say that this attack should on the contrary free us in how we talk about Islamic fundamentalism,” she declared. In other words, the gloves were off in terms of whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hysteria.

    Whoever carried out this massacre, such terrorist actions can only play into the hands of the most reactionary forces in the state, and the growing constituency in the ruling elite for stepped-up military intervention abroad and police-state measures at home. As the aftermath of 9/11 conclusively demonstrated, these actions horrify and disorient the public, and provide an opportunity for the state to implement policies for which—except for the terrorist actions—there is no broad-based popular support.