While the resumption of aid was touted as a lifeline, its scope remains grossly insufficient. According to the UN, Gaza needs 600-800 trucks of aid daily to meet basic needs. But yesterday, the first day of the new system, only 73 trucks entered the Strip along with three airdrops whose total payload was equivalent to only two additional trucks.
Overall, at least 59,029 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 142,000 others have been wounded, and at least 14,000 more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
There are too many differences between the mechanics of an electoral campaign and a social movement needed to win reforms. Marxists have long contended that elections are the “lowest form” of politics that don’t require the type of political commitment or mobilization that a true social movement entails.
One of the ironies of the irrational belief in Trump’s peaceful intentions is that delusional commentators still portray him as having imposed “peace” with Iran on Netanyahu, despite his decision to participate in the aggression against that country, thus complementing the war waged by the Zionist state.
Donald Trump ruined everyone’s Fourth of July holiday by signing what he so fatuously called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It may be the single most damaging piece of legislation signed into law since… Who knows?
Much of it hidden behind opaque appropriations and congressional loopholes!
In a very short time—and due largely to the grassroots “Tesla takedown” protests that started in February—Musk became a major political liability to Trump. Musk’s “chainsawing” of the federal workforce and essential services, along with his embrace of far-right politics, transformed him into one of the most hated figures in global politics. Even Trump knew it was time to cut him loose.
A fundamentalist, grafted, illegitimate, and imperialist thug-state like Israel can never be a liberator of the Iranian people, nor does it have any right to intervene in or launch “pre-emptive strikes” on any country in the region.
Millions of people joined in the protests on June 14th in defiance of Trump’s latest authoritarian power grab, with the largest drawing up to 100,000 demonstrators. A sea of people—most carrying handmade signs—swarmed downtowns in major cities. Many described their opposition to mass deportations as a key motivation to take part.
From a Marxist perspective CECOT is a behemoth of state power used by the ruling class to protect ruling class interests. Migrants, often fleeing persecution or poverty caused or exasperated by global capitalism, are considered surplus labor. Rather than being integrated into the U.S. economy or granted basic rights, they are criminalized and cast as a threat to national security and economic stability.
At the end of the day, the bill represents the entirety of the Trump/Republican domestic policy agenda. And even though the senate may tinker around on the edges of it, it will pass the Congress largely intact. In the senate, where the GOP holds a 53-47 majority, three Republicans can vote against it and it will still pass with Vice President JD Vance casting the deciding vote.
Antonis Davanellos, a leading member of the Workers’ Left (DEA) in Greece, analyzes Tsipras’s betrayal and the consequences for the far left.
International law was never just about justice. It’s always been about managing global power. Its rules, exceptions and institutions are built around the interests of dominant states. There’s no law separate from politics, only laws that serve certain political agendas.
Any genuine resistance to the Trump agenda is to be welcomed and built on. But we also must “tell no lies” and “claim no easy victories,” as the Bissau Guinean revolutionary Amilcar Cabral put it in the 1960s. The state of the opposition to Trump is weak now.
Trump, and Biden before him, have used charges of “antisemitism” against all pro-Palestinian protesters to justify violently cracking down and expelling students who had taken part in opposing Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Trump has ratcheted up punishment to detention and deportation, using the Cold War era “Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952″—which allows the State Department to deport non-citizens who it deems pose a threat to “U.S. foreign policy.” This was a key tool used in the persecution and deportation of communists during the McCarthy era, which for good reason has been likened to the witch hunt against pro-Palestine activists today.
