Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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Who left LA to burn?
California’s real-life water theft makes the classic Jack Nicholson film Chinatown look tame as a billionaire couple diverts resources and the climate crisis worsens the city’s peril, reports MARK GRUENBERG
LIVES RUINED BY CORPORATE GREED: Trees sway in high winds as the Eaton fire burns houses in the Altadena region of Los Angeles, California, January 8 2025
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
REMEMBER the movie Chinatown? That 1974 epic starring Jack Nicholson told how politics and greed, mixed with more than a little violence, led to a fortunate few early in the last century seizing control of the Los Angeles water supply at the time when the city was starting the sudden and phenomenal growth that has made it the nation’s second largest.
“People are gonna be mad when they find out they’re paying for water they’re not gonna get,” an undercover source tells the Nicholson character in one of the movie’s key scenes.
Which pretty much sums up the situation Angelenos — and, indirectly, the rest of us — now face: despite spending millions of taxpayer dollars over decades to construct one of the world’s most extensive infrastructure projects to transfer water from naturally rainy Northern California to naturally parched Southern California, there’s not enough available water to fight the monster fires ravaging Los Angeles.
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