Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump’s threats against Iran and the criminalization of US foreign policy
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump reiterated his threats to launch an illegal and unprovoked US war against Iran. “I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump told reporters at the White House, reiterating his calls for “unconditional surrender” by the Iranian government. He added, “I like to make a final decision one second before.”
These are the words of a mafia don elevated to the highest office in the country. Trump, who pledged to rule as a “dictator on day one,” acknowledges neither international law nor the American Constitution and asserts his right to kill anyone, anywhere, whenever he feels like it—with the world confronted with the catastrophic consequences of decisions made “one second before.”
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There is no reason to believe that the war being prepared by US imperialism against Iran will go any differently than the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan or the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which met with initial military successes but quickly turned into quagmires for the US occupying forces unable to subdue popular opposition. Despite Bush’s infamous declaration of “mission accomplished” aboard an aircraft carrier in 2004, the wars launched under the “war on terror” will be forever remembered as bloody disasters.
What makes Trump believe that a war against Iran will be any different? In fact, if American troops are deployed, thousands will die.
The threatened American assault on Iran is not an act of strength but of desperation. American capitalism, confronting mounting popular opposition, a spiraling debt crisis and declining competitiveness on the world stage, sees global war as the only solution to its ever-mounting and all-pervasive crisis. The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, Israel’s onslaught throughout the Middle East, and the military buildup in the Pacific targeting China are not isolated conflicts but an integrated and accelerating global war.
2. The return of German militarism drives first national Veterans Day
Just as in the United States, where Donald Trump is deploying the military and National Guard against protests, Germany’s ruling class is also working at full speed to build an authoritarian state. The Bundeswehr plays a central role in this process. Veterans Day is intended to undermine the deeply rooted opposition to the military that stems from the crimes of German imperialism in two world wars and replace it with a culture of soldier-worship.
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The parallels with the past are unmistakable. Veterans Day evokes memories of the cult of hero worship in the German Empire and under the Nazis, where cult-like, fallen “war heroes” were celebrated to rally society for new wars of conquest. Today’s politics may be rhetorically more cautious, but they pursue the same goal: the total mobilization of the population for imperialist plunder.
3. German Chancellor Merz: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us”
Merz is saying more than he intended. His statement that Israel is doing “the dirty work for all of us” exposes the official propaganda of the government and the media justifying the genocide in Gaza and the attack on Iran as shameless lies. This is not about protecting Jewish life or Israel’s “right to exist,” but about subjugating the entire Middle East to imperialist control.
4. Netherlands: 150,000 join anti-war protests against Gaza genocide and the war against Iran
Despite the militancy and the growing mass attendance, the protest was politically undermined by the bankrupt moral appeals issued by its organizers, comprising Oxfam Novib, Amnesty International, PAX and Save the Children, at the very imperialist powers and their government representatives responsible for enabling and being directly complicit in Israeli atrocities.
The organizers limited their pleas to calls for sanctions, arms embargoes and a review of EU-Israel agreements, serving the illusion that genocide and war can be stopped through the very same institutions—the EU and its national governments, a significant few of them seasoned former colonial powers—that have abetted themselves with a continuous record of imperialist war aims.
By refusing to name the capitalist system as the driving force behind endless wars abroad and the aggressive militarization at home, the organizers of the protest uphold the legitimacy of the political establishments in The Hague to justify their role as lobbies for liberal reformism.
5. After mass anti-Trump protests, UAW President Fain doubles down on support for trade war
Fain’s depiction of the world economy is taken directly from the playbook of Trump and the far right. The central premise is that the problem lies not with capitalism but with the “disloyal” behavior of corporate executives and foreign governments undermining American industry. This is the classic appeal of economic nationalism: the false identification of the interests of workers with the interests of the capitalist nation-state, and the presentation of reactionary, pro-business policies—like tariffs—as if they were in the interests of the working class.
6. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the fight against workplace death and injury
The Jungle takes on renewed importance today with rising levels of workplace death and injury—and amidst workers’ fightback for independent control of workplace safety through the Ronald Adams campaign and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
7. Reject the SEIU-LA County sellout agreement! Form rank-and-file committees to expand the struggle!
In the face of rising living costs, relentless inflation, chronic understaffing, privatization and deteriorating working conditions, 55,000 Los Angeles County workers have every reason to reject the rotten tentative agreement announced by SEIU Local 721 and Los Angeles County.
This common language agreement is not a step forward. It amounts to a calculated maneuver by the capitalist state, in collusion with the pro-corporate union bureaucracy, to suppress the growing militancy of the working class and impose austerity in the name of “budget stability.”
The two-day strike at the end of April emerged from dire and worsening conditions. After years of stagnating wages and massive inflation, LA County workers—nurses, social workers, sanitation employees, library staff and others—have seen their real incomes shrink while their workloads ballooned.
Chronic understaffing has pushed services to the brink, forcing workers to do the jobs of two or three people. Many labor under unsafe conditions, especially those who continued working during the pandemic, often without adequate protection. Some died. Their sacrifices have been met with budget cuts, outsourcing and contempt.
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LA County’s own press release admits the true purpose of the agreement: to “avoid a structural deficit” and “maintain budget predictability.” What this means in practice is that the ruling class is planning to balance the budget on the backs of workers, while shielding contractors, investors and corporations from any disruption.
Attorneys for Ms. El Gamal—Chris Godshall-Bennett, Eric Lee and Niels Frenzen—have vehemently condemned the administration’s actions as a form of “collective punishment” or “Sippenhaft” (family punishment), a practice associated with police states including the regime of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
As Lee stated earlier, “Punishing individuals for the purported actions of their relatives is a feature of medieval justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies.” He further articulated that the detention and attempted removal of the family are “an assault on core democratic principles.”
The detention of Hayam El Gamal and her children is a stark warning. If the Trump administration is permitted to strip families of basic rights solely on alleged crimes committed by a relative, there is nothing preventing the state from asserting similar powers against all political opponents.
9. Sydney’s Macquarie University axes jobs and courses in line with Labor’s pro-business agenda
Sydney’s Macquarie University unveiled cuts to jobs and selected courses on June 3, becoming the latest Australian public university to do so as a result of the Labor government’s reactionary caps on international student enrollments.
10. Fed keeps rates on hold prompting further Trump attacks
Apart from the concerns over US debt, the ongoing Trump outbursts are an expression of the deepening problems confronting the US economy, which threaten to blow apart his election pledge fiction that his winning of the presidency would bring a new “golden age” of economic expansion.
These Department of Justice actions follow US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's May 28 threat to “aggressively revoke visas” for Chinese international students. Approximately 270,000 Chinese students nationwide and 4,000 at U-M are under threat of deportation.
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The state and its media accomplices are deliberately linking [researcher] Han’s case with a series of disparate and unrelated incidents at the University of Michigan to manufacture the perception of a coordinated Chinese plot. This is part of the ideological preparation for war against China.
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These persecutions are a continuation of the policies initiated under the first Trump administration’s “China Initiative.” Launched in 2018 to supposedly combat economic espionage, the program quickly devolved into a racist witch-hunt that overwhelmingly targeted academics of Chinese descent for administrative errors on grant applications, not spying.
The initiative was a legal disaster for the government, producing a series of humiliating acquittals and dropped cases:
● Anming Hu of the University of Tennessee was acquitted of fraud after a trial revealed that an FBI agent had knowingly used false information to build the case and had attempted to coerce Hu into spying for the US.
● Gang Chen of MIT had all charges dropped after it was proven that the grant disclosures he had allegedly failed to make were not, in fact, required by the Department of Energy.
● Xiaoxing Xi of Temple University, arrested at gunpoint in front of his family, was exonerated after it was proven that the scientific information he shared was not restricted and was part of normal academic collaboration.
That the Trump administration can snatch journalists, immigrants and US citizens is entirely the fault of the Democratic Party, which has provided Trump with the votes and political cover to carry out his fascistic immigration crackdown. In a report published Wednesday by NBC News, several Democrats who voted to confirm Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem refused to say whether they now regret supporting her nomination.
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and portrait of Leon Trotsky (April, 2023)
