Ukrainian and Russian officials meet in Istanbul

Jason Melanovski

From left, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, Head of the Russian General Staff Main Directorate Igor Kostyukov and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin give an statement to journalists at the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Ton Friday, May 16, 2025. [AP Photo/Ramil Sitdikov]

Ukrainian and Russian officials met in Istanbul, Turkey on Friday for the first direct talks between the two warring sides in the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war in over three years.

US and Turkish representatives were also present. The Trump administration is still attempting to reach an agreement with the oligarchic Putin regime to negotiate a settlement of the war that will ensure the maximum profit for American imperialism in whatever remains of Ukraine and the former Soviet Union more broadly.

During the talks, representatives of the Kremlin reiterated demands that Ukraine accept neutrality, renounce NATO membership, withdraw its troops from five Russian-occupied territories and guarantee language rights to Ukraine’s Russian-speakers; meanwhile, Ukraine demanded a 30-day ceasefire and direct talks between Putin and Zelensky. No concrete plan to end the war appears imminent, with the Ukrainian side labeling the Russian demands as “non-starters.” The only results of the talks so far were an agreement to exchange POWs and statements by both sides that they were prepared to continue to talk.

The right-wing dictatorial regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly forced into the talks by US and European officials, after suggesting he would not authorize any Ukrainian delegation to meet with the Russian representatives. As a result, the talks, which were originally scheduled for Thursday last week, were postponed until Friday instead.

According to the Washington Post, “The U.S. and European officials stressed it was critical to at least send a delegation of senior aides including his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, but faced repeated resistance from Ukraine’s leader.”

In the lead-up to the meetings, US President Donald Trump also publicly intervened, telling Zelensky directly on social media that Ukraine must participate in the Istanbul talks as he seeks a deal with Moscow amid his global trade war and push towards actual war with China.

Following Trump’s statement, Zelensky ultimately came out in support of the talks. He appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to lead the negotiations, along with 12 other delegates. Among them was Oleksandr Poklad, the Deputy Head of Ukraine’s notorious Security Service (SBU), which has spent the last three years imprisoning thousands of Ukrainians on trumped-up charges of “treason,” including the Ukrainian socialist opponent of the war, Bogdan Syrotiuk.

The Russian delegation was represented by Vladimir Medinsky, who led previous talks in Istanbul in April 2022, and nearly came to an agreement ending the war in exchange for Ukraine terminating its drive to officially join NATO and accept neutrality, among other conditions. Ukraine ultimately withdrew from the talks after then-United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev and urged Ukraine to “just continue fighting” in exchange for indefinite support from Western imperialism against Russia.

Zelensky later passed a law, with the approval of Ukraine’s parliament, forbidding any direct peace talks with Moscow during his presidency, as continuing the war had become an essential part of his regime’s ongoing existence.

Over three years later, hundreds of thousands of working-class Ukrainians and Russians have been killed, and billions of dollars have been spent by Western imperialism to fuel a proxy war that has seen Ukraine continue to incrementally lose territory to Russian forces and has brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point since the Cold War.

While the working class has suffered immensely, the Ukrainian ruling class has further enriched itself throughout the war, taking advantage of billions of dollars in Western aid that have flowed into Europe’s poorest country.

According to recent comments made by the head of Ukraine’s Tax Service Ruslan Kravchenko to Ukraine’s Channel 24, the number of millionaires in Ukraine has increased by 61 percent in 2024 alone.

Seeking to preemptively sabotage any possibility of a negotiated settlement, the Ukrainian side had already publicly criticized the talks. They have focused on the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who first proposed the talks last Sunday after Ukraine’s European imperialist backers threatened Russia with additional sanctions and a massive military buildup for war.

On Thursday, Zelensky flew to Ankara to meet with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan and released a statement on social media calling the Russian delegation “decorative” while claiming that the Ukrainian side “is of the highest level.” Following his meeting with Erdoğan, he once again publicly rejected giving up claims to Crimea as part of a peace deal reportedly proposed by the US, stating, “Crimea is Ukraine. Crimea is a Ukrainian peninsula.”

Further underscoring his rejection of the talks, Zelensky later flew to Albania to attend a summit of the European Political Community.

Fearful that the end of the proxy war in a negotiated settlement and the loss of a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory could spell both the end of his political as well as his actual life, as former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has warned, Zelensky is clearly appealing to the European imperialist powers, namely France, Germany and the UK, and against a Trump-managed peace treaty.

The Ukrainian ruling class and corporate media have likewise denounced the Istanbul negotiations as a sideshow.

“This is a negotiating farce,” Hanna Hopko, co-founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, told the Kyiv Independent. “It’s already clear that Putin is just mocking (US President Donald) Trump.”

The negotiations were also ridiculed by the country’s far-right leaders, who fear that a US-backed negotiated settlement with Moscow could result in a reduction of their substantial power within the Ukrainian state.

As Bohdan Krotevych, former chief of staff of the infamous neo-Nazi Azov brigade wrote on X, “So in fact, if Putin doesn’t meet with Zelensky in person, it means he’s simply afraid of him. You can try to come up with excuses or fairy tales, but the fact remains. I can’t recall a single Russian leader who was this pathetic and cowardly.”

While the US has supported the talks, at least initially, on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that, in reality, the Trump regime did not expect much from the Istanbul discussions to begin with.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until President Trump and President Putin interact directly on this topic,” he said, following a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Turkey.

Earlier in the day, Trump reiterated that ultimately he was seeking to negotiate a deal directly with Putin. On TruthSocial, he announced plans to speak with both the Russian president and Zelensky on Monday.

“Look, nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told the BBC while on board Air Force One.

Despite the public comments on ending the war coming from the Trump administration, there also clearly exists an opposing faction within the European and American ruling class that is counting on not only continuing the proxy war in Ukraine but expanding it.

Thus, Janis Sarts, director of the Riga-based NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (StratCom), told the Ukrainian news site Gordonua.com, “I remain convinced the fate of peace in Ukraine will be decided primarily on the battlefield, not at the negotiating table.”

Whatever the outcome of the Istanbul talks, following the failure of its adventurist invasion of the Russian Kursk region, the Zelensky government is facing a deteriorating military situation as it continues to lose territory in an attritional war that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.

On Friday, Oleksandr Shyrshyn, battalion commander of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which received training from NATO and had recently taken part in operations in Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod provinces, resigned from his position, sharply criticizing Ukraine’s military leadership in the process.

“I have never received more stupid objectives than in the current direction,” Shyrshyn wrote in a Facebook post announcing his resignation. “Someday I will tell you the details, but the stupid loss of people, trembling in front of a stupid general, leads to nothing but failures.”

“I hope your children will also serve in the infantry and carry out your orders,” Shyrshyn wrote.

Power and Extraction: The Geopolitics of Rare Earth Elements

Joseph Grosso

On April 4, China’s Ministry of Commerce put export restrictions on seven rare earth elements (REEs). It is easy to scratch one’s head when restrictions are put on things called samarium, scandium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and lutetium but such elements are important components, particularly the magnets made with them that perform well at high temperatures (these magnets have 15 times the force of conventional iron magnets), of everything from phones, to hard drives, to electric vehicles, to flat screen TVs, to jet engines, to radar and sonar systems (i.e. military uses, no doubt on the minds of some policy makers. A single F-35 fighter jet uses 900 pounds of rare earth metals). There are 17 rare earths in all.

This is hardly the first time the Chinese government (CPP) has done this kind of thing. In July 2023, China announced it would restrict the export of gallon and germanium, materials used mostly on making solar panels and semi-conductors. Back in September 2010, China imposed an embargo on rare earth exports to Japan in the aftermath of a Chinese fishing boat colliding with two Japanese coastguard vessels (the captain of the fishing boat was arrested). The embargo lasted seven weeks. This new restriction is not an outright ban. Rather firms are now required to apply for an export license (16 U.S. entities were put on an export control list for dual-use materials). More of a slowdown than a ban. This, of course, is in response to Trump’s tariff mania. It appears most companies in the U.S. have some kind of stockpile available for the moment or at least the option to purchase the materials from companies that do.

Despite the name ‘rare earths’, rare earths are not especially scarce. The thing is they are usually scattered in low concentrations with other minerals and can be difficult and polluting to separate out into their pure forms. Whereas 30 years ago China was importing rare earths from the U.S., mining and, especially, processing are now dominated by companies in China. China currently produces 69 percent of global rare earth ores, performs about 90 percent of rare earth processing, including 99 percent of the world’s ‘heavy’ rare earth metals (heavy rare earths are generally less abundant than light rare earths due to their magnetic properties). A single refinery in Vietnam accounts for the other one percent of heavy rare earth processing but it has been out of operation the past year due to a tax dispute. China also produces 90 percent of the world’s rare earth magnets. Meanwhile the U.S. is down to just one rare earth mine, the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine located in California’s Mojave Desert. Yet over 80 percent of its output in recent years has been shipped to China for processing due to a lack of domestic capacity and expertise.

Mining has become a hard sell in the U.S. in part due to local resistance and environmental concerns. In China, the industry is helped by nearly 40 universities that specialize in extractive metallurgy and another 40 in mineral processing. In the U.S. that number is zero. At the moment fewer than 700 students are enrolled in mining-related fields. Though in the case of rare earths there are signs even China has grown weary of the pollution (including reports of poisoned crops and cancer villages). Starting around 2016 China began consolidating its large rare earth manufactures, closing the dirtiest mines, and outsourcing the mining to Myanmar (another dictatorship with few scruples). In 2014 Myanmar exported just over $1,5 million worth of rare earths to China. According to a report by Global Witness, the figure reached $780 million by 2021and continues to climb – supplying China with nearly half its rare earths with processing for reexport is still done in China (see Vince Beiser’s Power Metals: The Race for Resources that Will Shape the Future).

This dependence on China would seem the obvious reason for the Trump administration’s wacky talk about conquering Greenland. Trump is not the only one with eyes on Greenland, the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have invested in companies prospecting there. However, there is the fact that Greenland has an artic climate that makes mining hard and costly, the place has only about 100 miles of roads, and there appears no shortage of environmentalists among its 56,000 residents. Greenland’s current government swept into power four years ago on an environmentalist agenda and soon passed a law banning uranium mining as well as freezing development of a rare earths mine.

Problems also abound in this silly mineral deal in Ukraine. Leaving aside he fact that many of Ukraine’s minerals are in territory currently occupied by Putin’s army, the last significant mapping of Ukraine’s resources took place in the Soviet era. Billions will have to be invested long before anything is dug out of the earth. The U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent Mineral Commodity Summary does not record Ukraine as having significant deposits of rare earths. Even if everything goes swimmingly, a rarity in mining, mines can take 10+ years to set up. By then both Trump and Zelensky figure to be long gone. Who knows if future parties will be motivated to enforce the deal or even recall it.

An important point about rare earths, and likely the other major reason the U.S. gave up on them, is that while they’re used in a great variety of things, those things usually only contain small amounts of rare earths, and usually they play supportive roles. For all the ink spilled about them, according to the U.S. Geological Survey the U.S. imported around $170 million worth of rare earths last year. Meanwhile between September 2023 and August 2024 the U.S. imported over $327 million of fresh potatoes and $300 million worth of potato chips. Because of the limited quantities needed by companies, the market for them can be quite volatile- in other words profits can be shaky. Low prices tend to turn off new investors and China’s dominance enables it keep prices low to discourage competition.

It is also worth noting that the CCP’s attempts at mineral restriction have had only mixed results. In the midst of the 2010 flareup, the Japanese government quickly passed a reform $1.2 billion package that featured five main pillars including developing stockpiles, developing technologies to use alternative materials and reducing the use of rare earths, and investment in mines in Australia. As a result, Japan’s dependency on China’s rare earths dropped from 90 percent at the time to 60 percent today.

Brazil and Vietnam have significant reserves of rare earths and figure to get more involved in the race. Mining will be with us for quite a while and more public investment in making the industry less destructive is necessary. Mines can also be unionized. In the U.S. the Defense Department is funding much of the work on rare earths (again, that military angle) but it needed always be so. This week the New York Times’ Science section featured an article on efforts to exact rare earth from mining wastewater- a faster and cleaner method than opening new mines. In the long run, companies may find technological solutions to deal with potential shortages of rare earths. For instance, in 2023 Tesla announced it had reduced the use of rare earths in its EV motors by 20 percent with plans to eliminate them entirely in the future.

There is no telling how this tariff battle will play out between Trump Administration and the CCP. As of this writing, Trump has announced a 90-day lowering of tariffs from 145 percent to 30 percent. It is possible some kind of deal will be reached shortly that completely restores the rare earths’ flow. However, one legacy left from the COVID pandemic is the importance of diverse supply chains. Another legacy is the critical importance of the environment, as well as workers’ rights. As the green transition unfolds there is an endless fight to keep the latter lesson at the forefront.

German auto industry crisis deepens as layoffs mount

Ludwig Weller

In March 2024, 10,000 employees demonstrated in front of the Bosch headquarters in Gerlingen near Stuttgart against layoffs

Massive job losses in the German automotive industry are announced almost daily. The supplier industry is being decimated by insolvencies. Large and medium-sized companies are closing plants or disappearing completely. Thousands are losing their jobs, and entire regions of the country are being affected.

Volkswagen and Mercedes report a drop in profits of up to 40 percent in the first quarter. Other German manufacturers have also reported significant drops in profits: Audi 14.4 percent, BMW almost 26 percent and Porsche 40 percent.

While the major car manufacturers are still in the black—Mercedes posted a quarterly profit of €2.3 billion—they are moving further and further away from the targeted double-digit profit rates. That is why they are planning a jobs massacre. Autoworkers are being made to bleed so that profits can be restored. Where this has little chance of success, the survival of traditional brands such as Opel (Stellantis) and Ford is at stake.

The auto companies point to the increased competitive pressure from Chinese manufacturers, whose electric models are technically more up-to-date, cheaper and significantly more popular, especially in China. Previous market leaders VW, Toyota and Tesla have had to cede their top positions in China to domestic car manufacturers.

However, the real reasons for the frontal assault on jobs and conditions lie in the rapidly changing world political and economic situation. The German automotive industry in particular is heavily export-oriented, dependent on globalised supply chains and therefore particularly affected by the drastic tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. “The US tariffs that came into force at the beginning of April have virtually choked off the first positive business developments, especially in the European market,” says Ifo economic research institute expert Anita Wölfl.

The consequences of the high tariffs have so far only had a minor impact on the slump in profits in the first quarter. But they will be huge.

According to an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) headlined “Germany’s car companies are reeling from global politics,” the problems, “which are coming in from all sides are intensifying into what managers like to call a ‘perfect storm’ for Germany’s former flagship industry.”

The management boards of VW, Mercedes and BMW, as well as the FAZ, are not concerned with the fate of the autoworkers, but about their ambitious profit targets. The FAZ is therefore calling for more radical cuts. It was now “becoming increasingly clear that the reorganisation of the industry is still in its infancy. The outlook is uncertain, and the toughest cuts are still to come for the companies.”

These tough cuts are already on the horizon. According to a report in business weekly Wirtschaftswoche in the first week of May, Mercedes initially sent redundancy offers by email to 40,000 employees in the ancillary area, i.e., outside of production, as part of the “Next Level Performance” savings programme in order to force as many of them out of the company as possible.

Based on internal documents, Wirtschaftswoche reveals how workers are being put under pressure. The following is a quote from an email to employees: “Your job is disappearing; it will no longer exist.” If someone still wanted to stay, they were told that no suitable internal position was available. Even more direct is this quote: “Such an offer [of a redundancy settlement] will never come again. Think carefully about whether you want to accept it—after all, we no longer have any use for you.”

Mercedes intends to save €5 billion by 2027. The plans of Mercedes-Benz boss Ola Källenius (annual salary approximately €12.5 million) are very similar to those of VW, which agreed with the IG Metall union at the end of last year to cut up to 35,000 jobs and reduce wage levels by 20 percent.

Works Council Chairman Ergun Lümali, who is privy to all the plans, has essentially signaled his approval. He is IG Metall’s powerful man at Mercedes, holding many influential and well-paid posts: chairman of the Group Works Council, the General Works Council and the Works Council of the Sindelfingen plant; deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Mercedes-Benz Group and a member of its Mediation Committee, Executive Committee, Audit Committee and Legal Affairs Committee.

The cuts programmes at Daimler Truck are also being drastically intensified. The scale of the job cuts is enormous, with 28,000 posts now to be axed. This means that more than one in four of the 103,000 employees worldwide would lose their jobs.

This time, the savings programme is called “Cost Down Europe” and covers almost all areas of the company—from production, administration and development to sales. Even the largest truck assembly plant in Wörth is affected, as are the sites in Gaggenau, Kassel, Mannheim and Stuttgart. In total, at least €1 billion are to be saved in order to achieve the extremely high profit margins.

The new CEO Karin Rådström (annual salary estimated at €10 million) and Supervisory Board Chairman Joe Kaeser had already promised a profit target of over 12 percent for 2025 and over 15 percent thereafter at the end of 2024. According to Kaeser, former CEO of Siemens (whose annual salary at times totaled €14 million), this was linked to the goal of becoming the largest truck supplier in the world “in the medium to long term.”

Just as the VW Management Board relies on the team around Works Council Chairwoman Daniela Cavallo, Mercedes boss Källenius can rely completely on Lümali, the IG Metall union and its apparatus of officials are nourished by Mercedes. Källenius assures us at every opportunity that he will push through the cutbacks “responsibly and together with the works council,” they duly preach.

At Volkswagen, the FAZ calls for intensified class warfare from above, with the 35,000 job cuts agreed last year being nothing more than a declaration of intent: “They must now be realised.” If management failed, it would be the final proof “that Germany’s most important industry is not in a position to prepare itself for global competition.”

According to various reports, including in the Braunschweiger Zeitung, the brand’s management board is planning to cease production at the Osnabrück plant altogether and close it down. Production of the T-Roc Cabriolet is only to continue until October 2027. It remains to be seen what will become of the plant and the 2,300 employees still working there. However, there have been several media reports that defence group Rheinmetall has expressed a strong interest in the plant.

The “transformation” of the automotive industry, which is taking place worldwide, is proving to be one giant jobs massacre. The trade unions—here IG Metall and in the US the United Auto Workers (UAW)—are completely on the side of the corporations.

In America, UAW President Shawn Fain is in favour of Trump’s tariff and trade war frenzy. On both sides of the Atlantic, the trade unions are defending the national profit interests of their respective corporations and governments and agitating against China. However, it is not the Chinese electric cars—or even the Chinese workers, who earn significantly less—that are the evil, but the capitalist profit system.

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.