The Boeing strikers voted, by a 64% majority, on October 23 to reject the company’s latest contract proposal. This is a significant development in the most important workers’ struggle in the country today.

The Boeing strikers voted, by a 64% majority, on October 23 to reject the company’s latest contract proposal. This is a significant development in the most important workers’ struggle in the country today.
Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian assistance and repeated attacks on aid convoys have sparked catastrophe in the Palestinian enclave.
Even though serious bourgeois newspapers have gone into hysterical overdrive about Sinwar’s killing, it’s not going to fundamentally change the situation. Of course, the killing of a central leader is a serious blow to Hamas. But Hamas is a mass organization; other leaders will be selected.
The strike is now in its fourth week and appears to be holding the line. Picket lines are lively and well attended. Food, wood, and other picket line supplies are being provided. There is $250 a week strike pay. Members of other unions have been joining the line to express solidarity. The highly technical nature of the work will make finding sufficiently trained scabs hard.
Capitalism has transformed the vast wealth of petroleum and minerals in the Middle East into a curse for its people. The existence of Israel is akin to a cancer on the body of the region, grafted to ensure the continuation of imperialist yoke and dominance. The entire Arab ruling elite is complicit in this imperialist project. The Palestinians have no friends, no sympathizers except for the oppressed and exploited people of the world.
Recent days have made it clear that Hezbollah’s perception of “mutual deterrence” between it and the Zionist state did not sufficiently take into account the unequal nature of this deterrence (a miscalculation similar to Hamas’s, albeit much less serious), and that its perception of the commitment of its sponsor in Tehran to defending it was also illusory, as Iran responded to the repeated attacks that Israel has been launching directly against it only once, last April, and in a manner that was almost more symbolic than harmful.
If we look at the migrant crisis from outside the realm of grubby electoral politics, we see that the current crisis is the product of decades of U.S. imperialism and domestic political dysfunction. Decades of neoliberal economic “reform” have helped to destroy whole sectors of the Central American economies.
If Israel is to be successful in its historic aim of removing all Palestinians “from the river to the sea”, it needs a new shot in the arm. The dynamism that followed October 7 has run its course. A reboot is needed. This is the number one reason for the recent attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon.