Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
The surge in the Mamdani campaign over the past several months reflects broad hostility to the Trump administration and the enormous social anger that is building up in New York and throughout the country. Mamdani has proposed a series of social reforms, such as a freeze on rent raises for almost two million apartments, free bus service and universal daycare, which have won increasing support in a city that has become unaffordable for most of the population.
In the last week, Cuomo, who resigned from the governor’s office in 2021 over a sex scandal, has received support from the Democratic establishment, including former President Bill Clinton. Cuomo was housing secretary in Clinton’s second term, and Clinton alluded to the housing crisis in the city, but, in line with Cuomo’s law-and-order campaign, noted in his endorsement that “public safety must be restored.”
This is the real concern within the ruling class over the prospect of a Mamdani victory, not because of the candidate himself, but because of the popular expectations that might accompany his victory. Not only are economic conditions deteriorating for the working class, but for 20 months the city has been roiled by protests against the Gaza genocide, particularly on college campuses.
*****
On the other hand, relatively late in the election, Mamdani was endorsed by fellow DSA member and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Through the Mamdani campaign, this faction of the Democratic Party is seeking to channel mass social anger back behind the political establishment.
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, along with Brandon Johnson in Chicago—despite their rhetoric against the oligarchy—have served as critical instruments for the Democratic Party. Sanders and AOC were both among the chief promoters of “Genocide Joe” Biden, and both supported Biden’s partner in genocide, Kamala Harris.
Mamdani has also been endorsed by the United Auto Workers and its president, Shawn Fain. Fain, a prominent backer of Biden during the 2024 presidential elections, has turned to promoting Trump’s economic nationalism. The UAW apparatus is confronting growing anger from rank-and-file workers, after a series of sellout contracts and the revelations of corruption and thuggishness in the recent report from a court-appointed Monitor.
One of their major concerns is the discrediting of the Democratic Party among broad sections of workers and youth. In New York, this has been augmented by the role of current Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, which used the New York Police Department to beat and arrest students.
*****
Cuomo and Mamdani, in the end, belong to the same ruling class party. They both function to support the authority of the party and the capitalist system that it defends, but by a different emphasis and with different tactics: Cuomo is the unabashed candidate of war and repression, while the DSA seeks to channel social opposition with talk about moderate reforms and a kinder, gentler American imperialism.
2. US Supreme Court order threatens “thousands” of immigrants with risk of torture and death
While the decision was technically a procedural one—allowing the government to continue carrying out no-notice third-country deportations while the issue is litigated in the federal courts—that process could take years. In the interim, this would mean “exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death,” as the three moderate-liberal justices warned in a 20-page dissent.
3. Modi government accelerates violent expulsion of impoverished Muslim refugees
This mass deportation campaign is an integral part of the bellicose and communalist rampage that the BJP government has gone on in the aftermath of the April terrorist attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-held Kashmir. It includes India’s illegal “Operation Sindhoor” attack on Pakistan, which brought South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states to the brink of war, and an ongoing barrage of provocative actions and threats, such as New Delhi’s vow—made by Home Minister Amit Shah in an interview last Saturday—that it will never return to the Indus Water Treaty.
Those targeted for expulsion include Rohingya refugees and recent impoverished migrants from Bangladesh, as well as many poverty-stricken Muslims who have been living in India for generations, but are classified as “foreigners” because they cannot produce the “birth” and “nationality” documents demanded by the authorities.
In its anti-Muslim, anti-refugee witch hunt, the BJP government, led by the would-be Hindu strongman Narendra Modi, is using gangster methods akin to those that the Trump administration is employing against immigrants to the US.
4. Israel continues to bombard Iran after Trump announces ceasefire
Even as Trump has announced a ceasefire, sections of the US political establishment have called for the US to take advantage of the limited response from Iran and expand the US war aims.
5. Alfred Brendel, world-famous classical pianist, is dead at 94
Brendel himself claimed he had no school. As one obituary quoted him, “I do not believe in schools of piano playing, and I have no technical regimen. Only the particular piece you happen to be playing can tell you about its technical problems.” He objected to a frequent description, including from some critics of his style, that he was too “cerebral.” He saw the intellectual and emotional interpretations as inseparable sides of his playing. “It bothers me when people call me an intellectual as a musician,” he said. “For me, music begins and ends with feeling, but the mind has an important function as a filter.”
*****
A late bloomer as a musician, Brendel was largely self-taught. He was not a child prodigy. “I had loving parents,” he once explained, “but I had to find things out for myself.” Some master classes he attended at the age of 16 were essentially his last lessons, but he studied continuously for his entire career, listening to his own recordings as well as the recordings of other pianists to deepen his understanding and find new meaning in the classics of the past.
*****
His early experiences are probably reflected in the broad and international outlook for which Brendel was known. In the words of Daniel Barenboim, he had a towering intellect and was a “wonderful humanist.” Brendel loved the rich musical life of London. While he was especially enthusiastic about the BBC Proms, the eight-week season of classical concerts held at the city’s Royal Albert Hall, he also remarked that he did not attend the “Last Night at the Proms,” pointing to what he called its chauvinistic tone.
6. Philadelphia educators vote overwhelmingly to authorize first strike in 25 years
The Philadelphia school district is underfunded by $1.25 billion and is in need of nearly $10 billion in repairs. The district was only able to avoid massive cutbacks because of $1.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief school funding it received over the last few years. However, the Biden administration allowed the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to expire before leaving office, pushing Philadelphia like so many other districts across the country over a “fiscal cliff.”
7. Conditions for a financial crisis building up
All the conditions are present for the eruption of a new crisis in the US and global financial system. How rapidly it will emerge cannot be predicted. But the characteristic feature of the present period is the speed of events.
In just a matter of months, the post-war trading order has been upended, democratic rights in the US are being shattered, the most powerful bombs, short of nuclear weapons, have been used against Iran, the dollar has declined, and the price of gold has hit new record highs—a 30 percent increase so far this year. In this situation a financial crisis is likely to make its appearance very much sooner than later.
8. US protests erupt against imperialist war on Iran: “I’m 100 percent for a general strike”
While smaller than the massive “No Kings” demonstrations held the previous week against the Trump regime’s assault on democratic rights and looting of society’s resources for the oligarchy, thousands still protested in cities across the United States, including New York City; Dearborn, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; and Seattle, Washington.
The Socialist Equality Party denounces the Starmer Labour government’s announced proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act (2000). Labour’s preparations to ban PA as a “terrorist organization” are a frame-up and a fundamental attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class.
The government is moving with extraordinary speed. Speaking in parliament Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper declared: “A draft proscription order will be laid in Parliament on Monday 30 June. If passed, it will make it illegal to be a member of, or invite support for, Palestine Action.”
*****
The proscription of Palestine Action is a Trojan Horse for a frontal assault on the right to protest and free speech. It transforms the duty to oppose genocide and other crimes under international law—including the launch of an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran—into an act of terrorism.
And if non-violent sabotage by individual protesters is designated terrorist, then what of strikes by seafarers and waterside workers, or factory and logistics workers who boycott the supply of weapons and other equipment to the Israeli war machine, as has been done by French, Greek and Italian dockers?
Britain has a long history of civil disobedience campaigns, where the right to protest, including at military installations, has been upheld by the courts. In 1996 four British women, the Ploughshare Four, vandalized a BAE Hawk plane to stop it being sent to Indonesia for use against the East Timorese people. Facing a possible ten-year sentence for criminal damage, they were exonerated by a jury who deemed their action reasonable to prevent a genocide.
10. Protest in London against Palestine Action ban amid police provocation
London’s Metropolitan Police moved quickly against protesters in the wake of Labour’s plans to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organization.
11. Australian Labor government explicitly backs US assault on Iran
Yesterday, after a 24-hour delay, the Albanese government publicly endorsed the Trump administration’s criminal attack on Iran, underscoring Labor’s commitment to the US military alliance.
12. New Zealand withdraws millions in aid from Cook Islands
New Zealand has abruptly halted nearly $NZ 20 million ($US 11 million) in funding to the Cook Islands in retaliation for a partnership agreement the tiny Pacific Island nation concluded with China in February without consulting Wellington.
NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters informed the Cook Islands government of the decision early this month, but it only became public on June 19 after a Cook Islands news outlet saw its brief mention in a government budget document.
13. Washington pressures Peru to line up with US war policy against China
At a meeting held at the Pentagon at the beginning of last month between US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Peruvian Minister of Defense Walter Astudillo and Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmer Schialer, Hegseth warned Peru that China poses a “significant threat to peace and security in Latin America.'
*****
As for the obsequious tributes by the visiting Peruvian ministers to a supposed “historic” partnership and shared “values”, they failed to elaborate on that record for good reason. Washington’s ties to Peru, along with the rest of the region, are based upon ruthless exploitation of labor and natural resources, along with the fomenting of coups and support for regimes based on mass murder, “disappearances” and torture.
14. ICE detains immigrant in operation inside Riverside Community Hospital in Southern California
15. European powers serve as accomplices to US-Israeli war against Iran
While the US and Israel have bombed Iran and set the entire Middle East ablaze, the European powers have served as accomplices. Under the guise of calling for “de-escalation” and a “diplomatic solution,” they demand that Tehran capitulate unconditionally to imperialist aggression.
The events are reminiscent of a mafia movie. Israel launched an unprovoked attack against Iran, bombing industrial facilities and cities and deliberately assassinating high-ranking politicians, scientists and officials. The US sent a fleet of strategic bombers across the Atlantic and has destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have threatened the country with total annihilation in gangster language if it does not surrender voluntarily. And the Europeans are playing the lawyer and calling on the regime in Tehran to commit suicide voluntarily in order not to be murdered.
*****
The primary goals of the Europeans are to continue to commit the US to supporting the war in Ukraine and to prevent Trump from concluding an agreement with Russia over their heads. In return, they are expected to provide even stronger support for the US offensive in the Middle East and the encirclement of China.
As was the case before the First and Second World Wars, when one fateful decision followed another and all the imperialist powers were drawn deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of war, they are once again racing toward a catastrophe that threatens the survival of humanity.
What drives them is the insoluble crisis of the outdated capitalist system—the incompatibility of global production, which unites billions of workers in a single international production process, with the nation-state system and private property on which capitalism is based. As in 1914 and 1939, the capitalists are trying to resolve this crisis through the violent redivision of the world.
16. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Canada:
DHL Express delivery workers in third week of lockout
Panama:
Worker is killed during protests against government moves for the privatization of social security
Peru:
Truck drivers strike nationwide
United States:
Workers in three states in contract struggle with French-owned company Airgas
Healthcare workers at Stillwater, Minnesota clinic vote 99 percent to strike
Essentia Health workers in northern Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin to hold strike vote
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
