New Zealand government seeks to ban social media for under-16s

Tom Peters

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced last week that his government will prepare legislation to ban under-16-year-olds from using social media.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon [Photo: Facebook/Christopher Luxon]

The right-wing National Party-led coalition government will model the ban on a similar law passed last December by the Australian Labor government, amid widespread opposition. It remains unclear how the Australian law—the first such restriction to be enacted in an ostensibly democratic country—will be implemented.

Luxon and other politicians and media pundits have spent the past fortnight professing concern for the mental health and safety of young people. The prime minister told a media conference on May 11 that “restricting access for under-16s would help protect our kids from bullying, harmful content and social media addiction.”

He noted that, as well as Australia, “the United Kingdom, the EU, Canada and states in the US are also exploring the issue.”

These governments are not remotely interested in the wellbeing of children. They are all backing the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of children, while imposing brutal austerity measures against the working class.

The calls to restrict teenagers’ access to social media are driven by fear in ruling circles that young people are becoming politicised and are moving to the left in response to the breakdown of capitalism. Above all, governments are determined to prevent youth from accessing a socialist analysis of the crisis they confront, especially the articles published on the World Socialist Web Site, which is suppressed by the corporate media.

Restricting access to social media is one of several repressive laws being prepared to deal with rising opposition in the working class. In New Zealand, these include new anti-strike laws and a bill that will enable the state to criminalise political opposition or anti-war activism by labelling it “foreign interference.”

Luxon blamed social media for harming children, but he presented no actual evidence for this. The government’s austerity regime, on the other hand, including deep cuts to health and education, has undoubtedly contributed to the severe mental health crisis facing young people.

The New Zealand Herald reported last week that Health NZ has a shortage of 1,500 mental health workers and that “demand for psychiatry services has increased by almost three-quarters over the past decade.”

Children are among those worst affected by the social crisis. Funding for school lunch programs has been slashed, leading to smaller and less nutritious meals for hundreds of thousands of children. About 1 in 5 children lives in poverty and one tenth of the population is regularly relying on food banks.

School leavers face a bleak future, with 12.9 percent of people under 24-years-old not in education, training or work. This is the result of deliberate policies aimed at driving down wages and increasing the exploitation of workers.

Sections of the media are now calling for unemployed youth to be conscripted into the military, as part of the government’s multi-billion dollar boost to military spending to prepare the country to join US-led wars against China, Russia and elsewhere.

There is growing anti-capitalist and anti-war sentiment among young people. A survey last year found that 71 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds in New Zealand agreed that the country’s economy was “rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.”

Large numbers of youth have joined rallies opposing the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza and the support of the New Zealand ruling elite for this historic crime. Demonstrations have been organised through social media, amid a blackout by the corporate media.

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of school students have walked out of class to protest against government inaction on climate change. The school strikes were also organised largely through social media. These are the sorts of actions the government wants to shut down.

To give the appearance of public support for banning under-16s from social media, a high-powered lobby group called B416 has been formed. It submitted a petition to parliament saying that the policy is necessary “to protect children from harmful and misleading online content.”

Luxon thanked B416, referring to it as a group of “concerned parents and parenting experts.”

In fact, B416’s core leadership includes Xero accounting software director Anna Curzon, investment banker Cecilia Robinson, financial consultant Blair Knight and Zuru toy company co-founder Anna Mowbray. The Mowbrays are one of New Zealand’s richest families and prominent donors to the National Party.

These corporate elites are absurdly posturing as opponents of tech giants making profits by getting children addicted to their platforms.

One does not need to support companies like Meta and X—which are promoting far-right conspiracies while actively censoring anti-war and socialist content, including the WSWS—to recognise that a ban on teenagers will be a major attack on free speech.

The proposed social media ban will not only affect under-16s. The NZ and Australian governments have not explained how age-based restrictions will be enforced, but it will almost certainly require the collection of information about existing social media users—a major invasion of privacy and expansion of state surveillance.

There are divisions in the coalition government about the ban, but these are of a tactical, not principled character. The far-right ACT Party said the present proposal would not be workable, but its leader David Seymour told Radio NZ that social media was “messing with kids’ brains” and something must be done. He said there should be an inquiry before any policies are drawn up.

Luxon has made clear that he will seek support from the opposition Labour Party if necessary. Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he was “open” to working with the government to pass the bill.

The last Labour Party-led government exploited the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack, in which the fascist Brenton Tarrant massacred 51 people, to vastly expand the powers of the Office of the Chief Censor, enabling it to more easily remove content on online platforms that the state declared to be violent or extremist.

Then prime minister Jacinda Ardern also launched the Christchurch Call to Action, in collaboration with France, the US and other right-wing governments and tech companies, to promote mechanisms to censor the internet on a global scale.

None of this had anything to do with countering the far-right. What counts as “violent extremist content” is determined by the same governments that have smeared protests against the Israeli genocide as antisemitic and are emboldening extreme right-wing forces. Donald Trump’s fascist administration is imprisoning and deporting pro-Palestine protesters and immigrants based on fraudulent allegations of supporting terrorism.

Philippines: President Marcos continues the “war on drugs”

Dante Pastrana

For nearly a decade, the working class in the Philippines has been subjected to a campaign of terror under the “war on drugs.” Initiated by the previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who came to office in 2016, it has continued throughout the first three years of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term.

Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. speaks at 88th anniversary of the Armed Forces of the Philippines at Camp Aguinaldo military headquarters on Dec. 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Aaron Favila]

The overwhelming victims are impoverished workers and youth, whose conditions have worsened as the crisis of capitalism deepens in the Philippines and internationally. Under the guise of combating drugs, extrajudicial killings have been meted out by both the police and state-backed death squads. Despite the infighting taking place between the Marcos and Duterte factions today, the bourgeoisie is united on the use of state terror to suppress the class struggle.

Poverty is widespread throughout the Philippines, with social anger growing over food prices, particularly for rice, the chief staple, which reached a 15-year high in 2024. Currently, the market price per kilogram is approximately 40 pesos, or double the price Marcos pledged to cut it to when he was elected in 2022.

According to an April survey by Social Weather Stations, a Philippine research institute, 55 percent of Filipinos self-reported they were poor. Another 12 percent considered themselves “borderline.” While the self-reported poverty figure was down slightly from 63 percent in December, hunger has risen. In March, 27.2 percent of Filippino households experienced involuntary hunger, an increase from 25.9 percent in December. In 2023, the annual hunger rate was 10.7 percent.

Workers face long hours and low wages. In Metro Manila, the capital region, the minimum wage is a paltry 645 pesos ($US11.50) per day for non-agricultural workers. It is lower across other regions and industries. Workers in the informal sector earn on piece rates by the hour. Comprising as much as 42 percent or 20.7 million of all employed, this sector included street vendors, family farm hands, porters, and those forced into prostitution.

Many workers are forced to turn to drugs to stay awake through their shifts just to make ends meet. A cheap and easily obtained methamphetamine, known as shabu, proliferates in slums where unemployment and starvation wages prevail, conditions produced by decades of austerity and capitalist plunder by both national and international companies.

Rather than address these social crises, Duterte and then Marcos declared war on the poor, scapegoating them to divert anger away from the ruling class.

By the end of Duterte’s term in 2022, a total of 6,252 so-called drug suspects had been killed according to the official government count. Human rights organizations, however, estimated nearly 30,000 were killed by the police and vigilantes. Subsequently, Marcos, son of the US-backed dictator who ruled the country from 1965 to 1986, was elected to a six-year term through an alliance with the Duterte clan.

Marcos continued, and in some cases, intensified the “war on drugs.” In comparison to Duterte’s first three years in office, from 2022 to 2025, the Marcos administration conducted 122 percent more raids in largely poor urban and rural areas and arrested 114 percent more alleged drug users.

However, the alliance between the Marcos and Duterte camps collapsed in 2023, driven by the former’s orientation to the US and the latter’s preference for closer relations with China. This led to Marcos arranging for Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and extradition to The Hague in March this year to stand trial before the International Criminal Court on charges related to the drug killings during his term.

While Duterte is unquestionably guilty of the crimes of which he is accused, his arrest was a theatrical gesture supposedly meant to deflect attention from the Marcos administration’s ongoing “war on drugs” and clear the political field of a rival ahead of mid-term elections this month.

The Marcos government cynically distanced itself from Duterte’s Tokhang death squads. A day after Duterte’s arrest, Claire Castro, the presidential press officer, stated at a press briefing, “War on drugs, with Tokhang, with murder, without due process… shouldn’t be the government’s policy in the first place.” She continued: “It [extrajudicial killing] is against the law. Killing is against the law. We don’t even have the death penalty.”

In reality, the Marcos government has simply refined this campaign of state terror by removing Duterte’s crudity and open relish for state violence, while retaining its lethal core and the impunity of the police and other state security forces. After three years in office, according to the Dahas Project, Marcos has overseen at least 928 drug-related killings as of March, including an increasing number committed by “unidentified gunmen.”

The Dahas Project tracks killings in the drug war and is run by the Third World Studies Center at the University of the Philippines. According to its figures, 364 people were killed in 2024 compared to 331 the previous year. Of these 76 were murdered by those identified as non-state agents and 142 by unidentified assailants. Police agencies were responsible for killing 112.

The barbarity of the campaign is epitomized by the killing of children. On October 28, 2024, 13-year-old Kenie de Jesus in Cebu City was executed by masked assassins, who shot the boy outside his home days before his 14th birthday. Police, stationed less than a kilometer away, labeled him a “drug pusher.” De Jesus was one of 29 victims killed that month alone.

This repression also coincides with the Marcos regime’s deepening integration into US imperialism’s war preparations against China, including millions of dollars in US military aid, the US military’s expanded access to Philippine bases, and joint drills between the Philippines and Pentagon forces.

The Marcos government, functioning as a puppet for Washington, is putting the Philippines on the frontline of a conflict with China. The Philippine military, trained and armed by the Pentagon, will use workers and youth as cannon fodder. The drug war’s escalation serves to militarize society while suppressing working-class resistance to war.

Marcos and Duterte are not aberrations amid an otherwise unsullied history of bourgeois democracy in the Philippines. Successive governments have long conducted extrajudicial killings by state security forces or state-sponsored death squads against the working class.

Under the US-backed dictatorship of Marcos Sr., an estimated 3,257 people were “salvaged,” a Filipino term referring to forced disappearances and execution. In addition, 2,520 were tortured before being killed.

President Corazon Aquino, installed by the 1986 uprising that ousted Marcos, unleashed the military and anti-communist vigilantes against workers and farmers who surged forward after the downfall of the dictator to demand increased wages and the dismantling of the haciendas (large estates). In his book, Rebellion and Repression in the Philippines, Richard Kessler estimated that during her six-year term, an average of 244 were killed and disappeared annually.

From 2001 to 2006 under President Gloria Arroyo, the non-governmental organization Karapatan documented 819 victims of “extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary execution,” averaging 137 non-judicial state killings each year. From 2010 to 2016, under President Benigno Aquino III, whose own father was murdered in broad daylight by the Marcos dictatorship, at least 300 leftists, human rights activists, and alleged supporters of Maoist rebels were killed.

As in other countries wracked by the crisis of global capitalism, the installation of Duterte as president in 2016 signaled a turn by the ruling elites to a more fascistic form of rule. In conjunction with the “war on drugs,” the government launched the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict to oversee a “red tagging campaign” against leftists and workers that resulted in their incarceration or disappearance and even death. The government passed the Anti-Terror Law and, in a major attack against freedom of speech, shutdown ABS-CBN, a major television network aligned with the bourgeois opposition against Duterte.

Against the backdrop of systemic extrajudicial violence, the March 2025 arrest of Duterte on charges of “crimes against humanity” is a cynical farce. Calls for “accountability” and “reform” only perpetuate illusions in the state, which exists solely to defend the interests of landlords, foreign monopolies, and the military elite. Meanwhile the crimes against the working class and poor continue in a ruthless bid to suppress opposition to declining social conditions and war.

Government of Colombia Master and PhD Scholarships 2025/2026

Application Deadline: 24th June 2025

Offered Annually? Yes

About the Award: Applications are now open for the 2025/2026 Colombia Foreign Scholarship. This program is aimed at foreigners wishing to pursue master’s studies in Colombia. This program is aimed at foreigners who wish to pursue their postgraduate studies in Colombia, as well as for foreigners from non-Spanish-speaking countries who need to strengthen the Spanish language to carry out postgraduate studies in Colombia.

To be taken at (country): Colombia

Type: Doctorate/ PhD, Masters, Research

Eligibility: Eligible candidates must:

• Not have Colombian nationality.
• Not be residing, nor have resided the last 6 months prior to applying for the scholarship in Colombian
  territory or have started studies in Colombia at the time of application to the corresponding call.
• Must not have any marital or de facto relationship in Colombia.
• Not having been a beneficiary of ICETEX through the Beca Colombia program.
• Not be older than 50 years.
• Have a cumulative general average of 4.0 out of 5.0 in undergraduate to apply the call. According to the
  grading scale of each country, the note must be equivalent to a minimum of 4.0 for the Colombian scale.
• Have a professional, undergraduate, or graduate degree in any area of knowledge.
• Have admission to at least between one and three postgraduate programs found in the Academic Offer Catalog 2025-2 attached to this announcement.
• Have good physical and mental health, certified by a doctor.

Selection Criteria: 

• Academic excellence
• Coherence between the academic trajectory, work experience and academic program
• Professional working experience
• Study Project
• Reciprocity on educational cooperation

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: :

• Tuition:
  The Higher Education Institutions will offer 100% of the tuition fee for the duration of the academic program. Health Insurance:
  Medical and hospital assistance in Colombia that includes repatriation in case of disability or death. Monthly stipend:
  ICETEX will support each foreign scholarship recipient with a monthly stipend of three minimum wages Courtesy Visa:
  ICETEX will send letters to Colombian consulates abroad for the issuance of the courtesy Visa type “V” (visitor). Foreigner Identification:
  This is a financial support equivalent to 250,000 COP, which will be paid only once during the entire study program to cover costs related to the issuance of the immigration card. It will be granted during the first disbursement. Duration of Program: 

• Postgraduate scholarships in Colombia will have a maximum of twelve (12) months for specialization and twenty-four (24) months to master and up to thirty-six (36) months for doctorate. The scholarship holder of doctorates that last more than 3 years have to assume by themselves the allowance for the rest of the program.
• The scholarships are awarded on an annual term, for that reason, for more than 12 months academic programs (master and doctorate) the scholar must request an extension for his second year. The extension is subject to the requirements of the ICETEX. It is clear that ICETEX has no financial obligation to cover the economic expenses incurred once the academic program has ended. The scholarship does not cover the period of degree work

How to Apply: 

•  It is important for interested candidates to go through the Application requirements (See in Link below) before applying.
• Required documents, which are detailed in this call, should be at ICETEX on the date indicated in the notice.
• No documents will be received outside the established dates.
• The documents required in this call must be translated into Spanish
• All application documents to this call should be sent to ICETEX through the Embassy from the country of origin of the applicant in Colombia. In case of absence of diplomatic representation in Colombia, the applicant must
  send it directly to ICETEX.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Thirteen gold mine workers massacred in Peru

Cesar Uco

Peruvian National Police troops mobilized outside mine in Pataz [Photo: Andina]

The Peruvian government has ordered a suspension of mining activity and imposed a 12-hour nightly curfew in the province of Pataz in the northern region of La Libertad after the massacre of thirteen gold miners in a mine shaft.

The killings, carried out by a gang at the La Poderosa gold mine, have ignited outrage across Peru. The kidnappers had demanded a ransom of 4 million soles (about US$1.1 million), which the mine owners ignored, effectively sentencing the miners to death.

Their naked, bound bodies were found on May 4, with signs of torture, having been executed with gunshots to the head and neck. Shocking videos have circulated on social media showing the men being shot at point blank range. They were last seen alive on April 25.

La Poderosa described Pataz as “a lawless territory” plagued by rampant violence. While the company claims the kidnapped individuals worked for a security firm, it bears responsibility for leasing its galleries to Libmar S.A.C. The trend of outsourcing labor in the mining sector has weakened miners’ unions and reduced costs for employers.

Relatives reported the disappearance of the 13 miners on April 26. However, their complaints were ignored by authorities, raising suspicions of possible police complicity in the crime.

Patricia Carranza Ramírez, the partner of one of the missing miners, expressed her frustration: “I haven’t heard anything. The company has completely ignored us.”  Amid tears and demands for justice, the families called for urgent intervention in the area and criticized the silence of Libmar S.A.C. and La Poderosa, the companies involved.

The authorities’ inaction and indifference to the families’ suffering, highlights a broader crisis in Peru, where crime has increased, with four to six murders occurring each day.

According to the mining company La Poderosa, the massacre of the 13 brings to 39 the total number of murders of its workers and contractors attributed to criminal groups since 2020. The violence continues despite the province of Pataz being under a state of emergency since February 2024, allowing the Armed Forces, in coordination with the National Police, to exercise control over the area.

Following a previous attack in Pataz, La Poderosa issued a statement asserting, “Illegal miners, after the rainy season, have returned to Pataz to sow terror.” They demanded that the government act immediately to restore order, stating, “We cannot wait for more deaths to address criminal activity.”

La Poderosa is owned by the Arias, whose net worth is estimated at $1.8 billion, making them among the wealthiest families in the country. La Poderosa, their central holding, is valued at approximately $800 million, with Luz Evangelina Arias Vargas de Sologuren as the majority shareholder. The Arias family lives in luxury in Lima, far removed from the poverty and dangers faced by miners in Pataz.

An anonymous source close to the Arias family claimed that the situation resembles a war between mining companies in the La Libertad Andes mountains. To protect themselves, La Poderosa maintains a security force of up to 1,000 men, including contractors. Fearing for their safety, the owners of La Poderosa have refrained from traveling to the Pataz for years, even before the pandemic.

Since 2020, La Poderosa has reported 21 attacks on electrical infrastructure in their operational area, which includes 17 explosions at towers and the deaths of 18 workers. Additionally, at least 25 tunnels have been seized by illegal miners.

The families of the victims believe that the 10-day delay in locating the bodies of the murdered miners, whose remains were severely decomposed, indicating that they had been executed shortly after entering the mine, was a result of police complicity. One family member stated on Exitosa radio, “The police knew this. We told them where the bodies were, and they never listened.”

Authorities have identified Miguel Rodríguez Díaz, also known as “Cuchillo”, as the mastermind behind the massacre. He is linked to other deadly attacks and has accumulated a fortune of 80 million soles (approximately US$ 22 million) through the illegal gold trade. Despite his notoriety, “Cuchillo” currently faces no arrest warrant and has fled to Colombia, finding refuge due to his connections with narco-trafficking organizations.

With his considerable wealth, “Cuchillo” can buy the silence and cooperation of corrupt police officers. The mayor of Pataz has stated that the “state is complicit” in his escape and denounced Boluarte’s state of emergency as “useless.”

Local newspapers have reported suspicions of police involvement in the Pataz massacre. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating claims that two officers from the Peruvian National Police (PNP) are associated with an informal security company R&R, which hired the victims to enter the La Poderosa mine shaft.

The Peruvian government and mining companies categorize three distinct types of mining under the term “illegal mining”: artisanal, informal, and illegal. Together, these three categories account for 97 percent of mining operations in Peru. Ninety percent of the so-called “illegal” mining companies fall under artisanal and informal classifications.

Artisanal mining companies typically consist of self-employed individuals, many of whom are farmers who have left their land in search of better income opportunities. In contrast, informal and illegal mining companies often involve capitalists who employ miners and use expensive gold extraction and refining machinery.

The minority of illegal miners are the ones involved in criminal activities. With the price of gold soaring to $3,500 an ounce, the profit motive driving increased illegal mining has risen accordingly.

The massacre has further exposed the deeply unpopular government of President Dina Boluarte. She announced the deployment of over 1,000 National Police officers and plans to establish a military base in the area. However, Pataz has been under a state of emergency since February 2024 with little effect. During this period, both the Armed Forces and National Police were supposed to maintain internal control, yet criminal gangs have continued to dominate the region.

Meanwhile, the budget for combating illegal mining has been cut by 34 percent since 2019, with only 81 million soles allocated for 2025, a 10 percent decrease from 2024. 

Boluarte announced the elimination of 14 programs related to infrastructure projects across various state sectors. According to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), this measure will save approximately 4 billion soles (US$ 1.1 billion) by 2026. Peru is following the trend of other countries, reallocating funds from social programs to increase military spending for the National Police and Armed Forces.

Just three days after the discovery of the murdered miners, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) proposed to double the president’s salary to 35,000 soles per month (about US$ 9,500). This increase would double her current salary of 16,000 soles and is justified by the MEF as being in line with other South American presidents’ salaries.

This proposal reflects a blatant hostility to Peruvian workers. The president, who has a 94 percent disapproval rating, will have a new salary that is 31 times Peru’s minimum wage.

Two days after the discovery of the bodies of 13 miners, micro and small business owners from the Gamarra shopping center in La Victoria—a working class district in Lima—held a meeting to organize a general strike for May 14. The strike aims to address rising crime in working class neighborhoods in Lima and El Callao and other Peruvian cities.

However, the meeting centered on the mine massacre in Pataz. While leaders insisted on a non-political strike, a participant noted that only lower-income sectors are targeted by criminal gangs. Another attendee blamed the president for the murders of the 13 miners, referencing her “shoot to kill” orders against demonstrators following her taking the presidency in what amounted to a parliamentary coup in December 2022.

Attendees criticized corrupt members of Congress for their complicity with criminal organizations that terrorize districts inhabited by working class families and immigrants from rural areas, while leaving affluent neighborhoods like San Isidro and La Molina untouched. They expressed outrage at the government’s failure to rescue the kidnapped miners. Chants of “Dina, murderer! / Corrupt Congress!” were followed by a minute of silence for the Pataz victims.

The May 14 strike is expected to call for the resignation of Boluarte and corrupt lawmakers.

Massive price increases, layoffs in the video game industry as trade war escalates

Hong Jian

New Nintendo Switch 2 video gaming consoles are on display at a media preview event in New York on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. [AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey]

The video game industry has announced major price increases in the US and globally in response to the current tariff wars initiated by the Trump Administration, with the major consoles announcing price rises as high as $100 in the last month, and Playstation and Xbox also raising the price of individual games to $80.

The price rises accompany a massive purge in the industry, with thousands of layoffs in the last year, coupled with the complete shuttering of studios. This is all transpiring as video game performers are set to enter the tenth month of their ongoing strike against the conglomerates.

The Nintendo Switch 2 console, set to release this summer, delayed pre-orders for the system in order to assess the impact of both the paused tariffs and the ones currently in place against China. They claim that the $449.99 price tag, a sizeable jump from the $299 for the original Switch, will not be raised further, but that accessories for the new console would see adjustments upward. The company has already shipped hundreds of thousands of units to the US in anticipation of the tariffs.

Xbox manufacturer Microsoft announced last week that it would be raising the price of the Xbox by $80, from $299.99 to $379.99, while also raising the Xbox series X to $599.99, up $100. In its announcement, it also announced price increases in the UK, EU and Australia, and stated that further announcements would follow on price rises in the rest of the world. Microsoft also indicated that individual game prices would be hiked before the Christmas shopping season, and added that accessories such as headsets and controllers would also see price increases.

The announcements by Microsoft followed statements from Sony the previous month that it was going to raise the recommended retail price of the Playstation 5 by $100 in the US, as well as making price hikes in the EU, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

While blaming tariffs, the major players in the industry continue to make money hand over fist. According to the latest quarterly earnings report from Microsoft, the company made $70.07 billion in revenue, with a net income of $25.8 billion. This included a 6 percent increase in their personal computing unit which includes laptops and Xbox.

The rise in prices is just one aspect of the changing state of the industry, with studios closing, some only days after releasing new games, while others are not even staying open until finished games are released to the public.

Just since December, a partial list of the gaming studios that have been shut down include: Monolith Productions, Freejam, Counterplay Games, Toadman Interactive and Fizbin, Midnight Society, Mountaintop Studios, Player First, Volition, Ready at Dawn, London Studio and Pixelopus Games.

The closing of studios has been coupled with continuing layoffs at studios that remain open. Microsoft has announced an undisclosed number of workers being laid off, mostly concentrated at its Xbox division, with more reportedly to come later in May. This would make 6 rounds of layoffs at Microsoft in the past year alone.

Electronic Arts announced on May 1st layoffs of between 300 and 400 people, with 100 of them at Respawn, a major studio responsible for the popular Apex Legends, Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi series. The layoffs followed the announcement of the cancellation of the Titanfall series, and are the third round of layoffs at EA in the past year.

Role-playing game studio Bioware Studios announced the layoff of 20 workers with the announcement that it would not “require support from the full studio” on the next game in the series.

A report just released by the Game Developers Conference, which surveyed 3,000 game developers, mostly from the US, stated, “the top reason companies have given their employees for layoffs is restructuring, followed by declining revenue and market shifts.”

The reported added: “That’s for those who even got an explanation: 19% of developers told us there was “no reason given” for any of their company’s layoffs.”

As all this is transpiring, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) continues to strangle the strike of video game performers, which is set to enter its tenth month in 3 more weeks. There have been only a handful of pickets, held for a few hours, only once every month this year.

At the same time, the bureaucracy continues to sign interim agreements behind the backs of workers. These agreements, which workers are not allowed to vote on, take workers off the strike and send them back to work, essentially making workers scab on their brothers and sisters still on strike. To date, the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy has announced the signing of 180 such agreements.

On top of this, SAG-AFTRA has joined with other major unions in backing Trump’s right wing trade war policies, falsely presenting them as defending American jobs. In a statement, it declared the union “supports efforts to increase movie, television and streaming production in the United States. We will continue to advocate for policies that strengthen our competitive position, accelerate economic growth and create good middle-class jobs for American workers.”

The global gaming industry is one of the most profitable. In 2024 the industry generated $184.3 billion in total revenue, an increase of 0.2 percent over the previous year.

This demonstrates the deliberate intention of the giant conglomerates to put the costs of the nationalist trade war squarely on the backs of workers and consumers. The same wealthy executives who financed and pledged allegiance to the would-be Fuhrer are using and will continue to use the tariff war as a means to continually restructure and downsize to maximize profits in an industry that already dwarfs that of all other entertainment industries combined.

India-Pakistan conflict threatens nuclear catastrophe

Keith Jones

In this photo released by Inter Services Public Relations, smoke erupts on mock target after Pakistani army artillery fires shell during military exercises in Tilla Field Firing Range, in the Jhelum district, Pakistan, Thursday, May 1, 2025. [AP Photo/Inter Services Public Relations]

India and Pakistan, South Asia’s rival nuclear powers, are on the brink of all-out war. Such a conflict would be catastrophic, not only for the region’s 2 billion people, but for the entire world. An India-Pakistan war could rapidly escalate into nuclear annihilation and draw in other major powers, particularly the United States and China.

Pakistani Defence Minister Khwaja Asif has repeatedly warned that Pakistan—whose population is one-sixth and economy one-tenth the size of India’s—could be compelled to use its nuclear arsenal. Last Wednesday, following India’s large-scale missile attack involving over 75 warplanes, including advanced Rafale jets, Asif stated that if India “imposes an all-out war on the region … then at any time a nuclear war can break out.”

Only on Saturday—after four days of intense cross-border missile strikes and artillery exchanges centered in but not limited to the disputed Kashmir region—did New Delhi and Islamabad agree to a truce. Whether the ceasefire, first announced by US President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform, will hold is in serious doubt.

Almost immediately, both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire, each claiming to have gotten the better in the fighting. New Delhi and Islamabad have also exchanged provocative, communally charged allegations of deliberately targeting civilians and religious sites.

India remains adamant that all measures adopted after it blamed Pakistan for the April 22 terrorist attack in Indian-held Kashmir will stay in effect. These include suspending participation in the Indus Water Treaty—a move Islamabad has condemned as an “act of war,” warning it threatens Pakistan’s agriculture, food supply and power grid.

What is certain is that the world has come perilously close to the first-ever all-out war between nuclear-armed states.

These developments must be understood as part of a broader breakdown in global inter-state relations. World geopolitics is increasingly dominated by escalating trade conflicts, a global rush—led by the United States and other imperialist powers—to implement massive rearmament programs, the eruption of regional wars, the imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza and the “normalization” of nuclear brinkmanship.

India and Pakistan have faced repeated war crises, notably in 2016 and 2019, when Washington backed New Delhi’s efforts to “change the rules of the game” by launching illegal cross-border strikes against Pakistan. However, last week’s military clashes were the most intense in decades, involving large-scale fighter jet dogfights, strikes on air defense systems and, for the first time, drone and cross-border missile attacks.

India and then Pakistan deliberately crossed each other’s red lines. India’s May 6–7 assault struck multiple targets deep inside Pakistan’s Punjabi heartland. As fighting escalated, both sides targeted military bases, including, according to Islamabad, an Indian attempt to strike the air base near Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Reports suggest one or both sides may have used ballistic missiles capable of carrying tactical nuclear warheads.

Both countries possess tactical and strategic nuclear weapons capable of incinerating the other’s major population centers. Were that not chilling enough, a 2008 study found that even a limited exchange involving just 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs—totaling 1.5 megatons—could trigger a catastrophic global “nuclear winter.”

As Richard Rhodes explained in the 2012 edition of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan

would inevitably be targeted on cities filled with combustible materials, [causing firestorms that] would inject massive volumes of black smoke into the upper atmosphere which would spread around the world, cooling the earth long enough and sufficiently to produce worldwide agricultural collapse.

An estimated 20 million would die immediately from the blasts, fire and radiation, followed by up to a billion deaths from mass starvation.

Workers should treat with contempt the efforts by Trump and his minions to exploit Washington’s belated calls for de-escalation in the Indo-Pakistani conflict to bolster the fascist president’s cynical pretense of being a champion of peace.

This is not just because Trump is enabling Israel’s efforts to complete the genocide in Gaza through renewed military assault and deliberate starvation, threatening Iran with “obliteration,” escalating Washington’s confrontation with China and pushing a $1 trillion defense budget. American imperialism’s role in South Asia—as everywhere—is incendiary.

For more than two decades, Washington has prioritized integrating India into its military-strategic offensive against rising China. To this end, both Democratic and Republican administrations have extended major strategic concessions to New Delhi while dramatically downgrading relations with Pakistan.

The Indo-US “global strategic partnership” has emboldened the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in its confrontational stance toward Pakistan, while pushing Islamabad to deepen its alliance with Beijing. This includes collaboration on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, aimed at providing China with alternatives to US efforts to blockade vital Indian and Pacific Ocean chokepoints.

The Indo-Pakistani confrontation is thus increasingly intertwined with US imperialism’s efforts to thwart China’s rise, magnifying the explosive character of both conflicts. A full-scale war between India and Pakistan would threaten to upend the Eurasian geopolitical order, drawing in the US and China and transforming a regional clash into a global conflagration.

It is a measure of the recklessness of the imperialist ruling classes, confronted with the deepening crisis of world capitalism and a resurgence of global class struggle, that Washington ignored the South Asian war crisis until India and Pakistan were locked in a rapidly escalating cycle of tit-for-tat military strikes that is spiraling toward disaster.

In his recently published memoir, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State during Trump’s first term, recalls that in 2019 India’s then-foreign minister told him that New Delhi believed Pakistan was preparing to deploy nuclear weapons—and was readying its own arsenal in response.

Pompeo wrote:

I do not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019.

Yet as recently as last Thursday, US Vice President JD Vance, who visited New Delhi last month to deepen the Indo-US anti-China military alliance, blithely stated that the Trump administration was not concerned with the escalating war in South Asia, because the conflict was “fundamentally none of our business.”

Under the Biden administration, the contours of a US-initiated global war took shape through the US-NATO-instigated war against Russia, the US-Israeli campaign to impose a “final solution” to the “Palestinian question” and the redrawing of the map of the Middle East, and the intensified US war drive against China.

Now Trump, the embodiment of oligarchy, dictatorship and imperialist violence, has accelerated the collapse of inter-state relations through his global trade war and expanding list of annexation targets—from Canada and Greenland to the Panama Canal and Gaza.

But all the imperialist and lesser capitalist powers are following the same path, locked in a ruthless struggle for control over markets, resources and strategic territories. This drive is propelled by the same essential contradictions that gave rise to the two world wars of the last century.

NZ government blocks “pay equity” claims for hundreds of thousands of workers

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government last week passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act, which is designed to make it much harder—perhaps impossible—for workers in female-dominated professions to claim that they are underpaid because of gender-based inequity.

New Zealand Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden [Photo: Facebook/Brooke Van Velden]

The amendment was announced on May 6 by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden, from the far-right ACT Party. It was rushed through parliament the next day under anti-democratic “urgency” provisions to limit public discussion and scrutiny. 

The legislation is part of the government’s austerity regime, which involves brutal cuts to healthcare, education and welfare, a virtual pay freeze across the public sector, and thousands of layoffs. Its aim is to increase the exploitation of the working class, divert more public money to the super-rich, and to fund a vast increase in military spending to prepare for war.

Van Velden told reporters the government was “not taking money from anybody”—a transparent lie. In the same media conference, she said the new pay equity framework would lead to “very real and significant cost reductions.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon confirmed that money set aside in the budget—to be announced on May 22—to settle pay equity claims can now be reduced. He expected the government to save “billions of dollars.”

The government has cancelled 33 pay equity claims that were being negotiated under the old system, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers, mainly in the public sector. The unions involved will be forced to reapply under the new thresholds. 

The largest outstanding claim covers 94,000 teachers in the primary, secondary and early childhood sectors. It was lodged under the previous Labour Party-led government at the end of 2020 and negotiations have dragged on for years.

The new law changes the definition of work “predominantly performed by female employees.” It states that 70 percent of the workforce must be women (up from 60 percent under the previous law) and that this must have been the case for at least 10 years. In high schools, 63 percent of teachers are women, meaning that they may be barred from re-submitting a pay equity claim.

The government has also removed the ability for previously settled claims—including for nurses, social workers, librarians and aged and disability carers—to be regularly reviewed and adjusted.

For new claims, there are much stricter criteria for assessing whether “sex-based undervaluation” of workers exists in a given profession. Claimants’ work must be compared with “work that is the same or substantially similar” to that performed by men or by a majority-male workforce.

Van Velden criticised pay equity claims which compared librarians with mechanical engineers, and social workers with air traffic controllers. She said this was “muddying the waters” between sex-based discrimination and pay gaps that were caused by other things such as “market forces.”

The law change has triggered widespread anger, with thousands of people joining protests across the country last week outside the offices of government MPs. A petition by the unions calling for the amendment to be reversed gained more than 65,000 signatures by Sunday night.

The opposition Labour Party, the Greens and the union bureaucracy, however, are working to prevent an organised movement by the working class against austerity. They are telling workers to wait for the next election in 18 months.

Labour’s workplace relations spokesperson Jan Tinetti told the BHN podcast that people should “get behind” Labour, the unions and their allies. “Together we can fight this and we can make a difference, and we can be so much stronger in 2026 to win that election and put this right again,” she said.

Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) shared a post on X stating: “When the parents, partners and children of women in the workforce vote in 2026 we will remember this moment.”

Jacinda Ardern’s 2017-2023 Labour Party-led government heavily promoted pay equity deals, mainly as a means to subordinate workers to the union apparatus and suppress a broader movement against low wages and austerity. 

Thirteen pay equity deals were reached, the most significant covering about 30,000 nurses in public hospitals. The nurses received pay rises of between 18 and 20 percent in 2023. While not insignificant, this followed decades of near-frozen wages under successive Labour and National-led governments, enforced by the union apparatus. 

That settlement, touted by Labour and the unions as a “historic” achievement, is already being undermined through a new round of wage cuts. Nurses have been offered a pay rise of just 1.5 percent over a two-year period, which is well below the increase in the cost of living. Nurses held two part-day strikes in December 2024, but since then the New Zealand Nurses Organisation has organised no action and remained silent on the negotiations.

Notwithstanding the pay equity settlements, the Ardern government presided over a worsening social crisis, including increased homelessness and child poverty. The Labour Party lost the 2023 election in a landslide as living costs soared and it campaigned on cutting jobs in the public sector, to make workers pay for the developing economic crisis.

Labour also agrees with the government’s decision to raise spending on the military from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. This will divert an extra $12 billion to the armed forces over the next four years, which will be paid for by further eviscerating public services. By comparison, the cost of the pay equity settlements reached thus far is just $1.78 billion a year.

Fleur Fitzsimons, national secretary of the Public Service Association, wrote in the Post: “The PSA will not be taking this outrageous attack on the rights of women workers lying down. We will be fighting this in the streets and in the courts.”

The PSA, however, has not announced any strike action. It has done nothing to oppose the thousands of job cuts across multiple government agencies over the past year-and-a-half. The union vocally supports the vast military spending increase, which is at the direct expense of workers.

The statements by the union bureaucracy blaming low wages for teachers, healthcare workers, caregivers and others entirely on gender discrimination serves to disorient and divide the working class. 

There is a gender pay gap: Women’s median hourly earnings are 8.2 percent less than men’s. But the fundamental division in society is the gulf between the working class and the financial and business elite, whose wealth is based on the exploitation of workers of every nationality, gender and ethnicity.

Feminist identity politics, which blames low pay on “sexism” and “patriarchy,” obscures the reality that male-dominated sections of the workforce have experienced major attacks on wages and conditions in recent decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in meat processing, agriculture, construction, transport, forestry and other sectors of the economy have become casualised and insecure, with low wages and often dangerous working conditions.

The richest 5 percent of the population owns 45.5 percent of the country’s wealth, while the poorest half of the population owns just 2 percent. According to figures released in 2023, New Zealand’s richest 311 families collectively owned $85 billion in assets. All the capitalist parties, including Labour and its allies, are dedicated to the enrichment of this parasitic layer.

The politics behind the selection of the American-Peruvian Pope

Andrea Lobo

Newly-elected Pope Leo XIV waves to the crowd in St. Peter's Square in his first public appearance. [Photo by Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar / CC BY 4.0]

The selection of Cardinal Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV is a calculated political decision by the Catholic Church, not a theological one. He has been chosen as the figure deemed most capable of giving capitalism a facelift amid an unprecedented global crisis.

As Trump’s second term is defined by threats of neo-colonial conquest and global war abroad, and mass deportations and fascist reaction at home, the Catholic Church is positioning itself as a “moral” counterweight to the naked oligarchic rule now dominating the center of global capitalism.

With 1.4 billion adherents worldwide—nearly half concentrated in the Americas and 20 percent in rapidly growing African nations—the Catholic Church remains a critical bulwark of the capitalist status quo, playing a central role in containing class struggle and suppressing working-class radicalization in much of the world. 

Despite deep divisions within the Church, Prevost reportedly won broad support from cardinals across Latin America, the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. His multilingual fluency—Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and English—along with dual US-Peruvian citizenship and leadership roles in both countries, were seen as ideal qualities to aid the Church’s efforts to intervene in global politics by channeling popular grievances in both advanced and oppressed countries.

Trump’s social media praise for Prevost—a “great honor for our country”—masks underlying tensions. Prevost has publicly criticized Trump’s mass deportations, climate change denial and Vice President JD Vance’s perversion of medieval Catholic doctrine to justify the persecution of immigrants. He previously denounced Trump’s “bad hombres” rhetoric as racist. Prevost’s defense of immigrant rights—which resonates with most workers internationally—risks upstaging Washington’s would-be Führer.

Prevost’s election also reflects the Church’s concern over rising nationalist divisions and conflicts within the US-led imperialist bloc. As theologian Miguel Perez told the Huffington Post, he “has always talked about bridges and dialogue, about overcoming confrontations, in a context in which multilateralism is damaged, especially by leaders like Trump.”

Among the leaders of European powers, who would have been consulted in the process of selecting Prevost, there is no doubt a hope that the pope will be an ally in its conflict with the Trump administration.

Expressing the generally favorable view of the new pope prevailing within sections of the American ruling class, CNN Vatican analyst Elise Ellen described him as a “calm and balanced” centrist, who is “even-handed” and an “exceptional leader.” On the other hand, Trump’s former chief advisor, the fascist Steven Bannon, called his selection “jaw-dropping” due to his previous statements criticizing Trump officials.

Another political consideration behind Prevost’s selection is an effort somehow to contain growing social anger among broad masses of the population throughout the world.

In his inaugural prayer, speaking in Spanish and Italian, Prevost warned of “a third world war in pieces,” citing Ukraine and India-Pakistan tensions, and called for a “ceasefire” in Gaza and “authentic peace.” He directly addressed AI-driven inequality and climate disasters in an appeal to workers and the poor facing job losses from automation and ecological collapse. 

Prevost’s chosen name invokes the legacy of Pope Leo XIII. The latter’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum sought to counter the influence of Marxism during industrialization at the turn of the last century. The document endorsed unions and fair wages while condemning socialism and revolution, declaring: “Capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.”

By framing class conflict as a moral issue resolvable through Church-mediated “dialogue,” the Rerum Novarum sought to divert workers from the class struggle and Marxism, which identifies scientifically the intrinsic contradictions of world capitalism that lead to extreme inequality and other social ills. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx explained in Capital.

Prevost’s papacy is a conscious revival of his namesake’s strategy. He has praised Rerum Novarum’s “commitment to social justice,” while upholding the sanctity of private property, a stance engraved in the explicit rejection of socialism by the Cathechism, or the official doctrine of the Church. 

While posturing as a reformer, Prevost was selected to better maintain and nurture the Church’s alliance with capital and to protect its own major landowning and financial interests. Consequently, so-called “progressive” elements such as Prevost are always reduced to empty platitudes and impotent moral appeals to an insatiable capitalist class, such as his longwinded calls for AI ethics to focus on “human dignity” and for “inclusion” and “listening” to youth and marginalized groups.

The elevation of figures such as Prevost and his late mentor Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) are only the latest examples of the Church’s historic role of “loyal opposition”: criticizing war and social degradation, while upholding the capitalist order from which they inevitably flow. 

For instance, in 19th-century Europe, the Church promoted “Christian labor associations” to rival socialist unions, emphasizing the supposed harmony between workers and bosses. Germany’s Kolping Society and Italy’s ACLI used this model to fragment working-class unity.

While 1960s Latin American liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez advocated class struggle, the Vatican suppressed radical elements. The “Dirty War Pope,” Bergoglio himself denounced the “ideological colonization” of the Church and collaborated with the Argentine dictatorship’s “disappearance” of radical elements within the Church.

Post-Rerum Novarum encyclicals, including Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Centesimus Annus (1991), refined the Church’s “third way” or reformist rhetoric denouncing both socialism and unfettered capitalism while upholding private property.

Despite his extensive curriculum vitae, which includes criticizing the “injustices” under the late Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, Prevost’s image as a “progressive” quickly came under fire after reports emerged that he refused to address clerical sexual abuse cover-ups in Peru and Chicago.

Most recently, in Peru, in 2022, three women reported to Prevost that two priests from his diocese had sexually abused them as minors in 2004. The women claimed Prevost failed to conduct a thorough investigation, did not inform civil authorities adequately and did not impose restrictions on the accused priests.

AI-driven job losses, climate disasters, genocide and imperialist war are inherent to a system prioritizing profit over human need. Prevost’s pacifist appeals and moral denunciations of inequality and fascist reaction are aimed at covering up the deep roots of these social issues in capitalism.

However, even the meager reforms mediated through religious or bourgeois institutions in an earlier epoch to counter revolutionary consciousness are today rejected outright by ruling elites confronting a much more advanced stage of the crisis of global capitalism. 

The Church itself, an institution steeped in medieval obscurantism, can only respond to the wildfire of AI technology reaching the palms of workers in every corner of the globe by clinging desperately to the tailcoats of the capitalist oligarchy and offering all its reactionary services.