Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump and Netanyahu to plot war and genocide in White House meeting
Ignoring the entire history of the ongoing genocide, the US media is presenting this week’s White House meeting as aimed at securing a “ceasefire,” which Trump is allegedly “pushing” for.
On Thursday, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 announced a tentative agreement with King Soopers grocery chain in Colorado, then on Saturday announced a deal to end a three-week strike at rival chain Safeway.
This is the latest in a sabotage campaign by the UFCW aimed at preventing a national strike movement by grocery workers. Around 100,000 grocery workers, all of them UFCW members, have contracts that have expired or are expiring this summer.
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The Safeway strike was a powerful display of working class resistance to exploitation. It was the third grocery workers strike in Colorado in the past three years and the first strike at Safeway since 1998. Yet the UFCW bureaucracy did its best to hold workers back and sabotage their struggle.
3. Death toll passes 80 in Texas flash flood catastrophe
Those who died in Kerr County included 40 adults and 28 children, many of them from the Mystic Camp, a sleepaway Christian girls camp on the edge of the river which was inundated in the early morning hours of Friday, July 4. Eleven girls and one adult are still missing from the camp, which housed 750 people, including children as young as eight.
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The Texas “Hill Country” is a vast arc of rough and broken ground, crisscrossed by gullies, extending from the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area west and south around Austin and San Antonio. The rivers that drain the relatively dry region can collect massive amounts of water runoff in a heavy storm, particularly one that lingers for several days, as was the case last week.
There is a long history of flooding on the Guadalupe River, but this is by far the worst of the dozen or so such disasters in the past century. The worst previous flood took the lives of ten girls at another sleepover camp along the river in 1987.
Despite this, Kerr County officials have rebuffed calls to set up an early warning system against flash floods, similar to that used in tornado-prone regions of the US, claiming it would be too costly. While largely rural, the county is not without resources, with a middle-income population of more than 50,000 on the outskirts of the San Antonio metropolitan area.
The area is dominated politically by extreme right Republicans who oppose nearly all forms of public spending. Trump carried Kerr County with 77 percent of the vote last November. The local congressman is Republican Chip Roy, one of the most right-wing members of the fascist House Freedom Caucus.
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In Texas and around the world, floods have become worse and more frequent as a result of ongoing global warming. So too have other varieties of severe weather events. The Trump administration, as part of its rampage against science, has effectively forbidden any discussion of climate change by disaster management agencies, while also inflicting severe cuts on the National Weather Service (NWS) and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
During the budget-cutting spree initiated by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), some 2,300 jobs were eliminated at NOAA, as well as 600 at the NWS. Both of the NWS offices near the flood zone, in San Antonio and San Angelo, were understaffed. The meteorologist at the San Antonio office in charge of liaison with local disaster management agencies took early retirement in April as a result of the DOGE purge.
4. Australian government, Netanyahu incite hysteria over murky “antisemitic” incident
The Australian Labor government has responded to a murky arson incident at a Melbourne synagogue with a hysteria that is out of all proportion to what occurred. Prior to any serious investigation, senior Labor ministers have presented the small fire as an “attack on Australia,” requiring a massive police and intelligence response on a national scale.
Significantly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with that country’s president, very rapidly denounced the incident in similar terms.
Without a shred of evidence, Labor, the corporate media and the Israeli leaders have immediately linked the arson to peaceful protest actions opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza. This is a continuation of the fraudulent effort to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and to brand all defenders of the Palestinians as antisemites.
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The arson occurred at the East Melbourne Synagogue on Friday night. The location obviously indicates that antisemitism may have been a motive. And disturbingly, the attack was carried out when more than 20 worshippers were inside the building.
While information remains limited, already there are oddities surrounding the arson. Images show very limited damage to the front door of the synagogue, indicating, thankfully, that the attack was never going to jeopardise the building or those inside.
On Saturday evening, police arrested Angelo Loras over the arson. He reportedly has no criminal history, and is from Sydney, not Melbourne. Loras’ social media accounts do not indicate any interest in Gaza or the Palestinians. They suggest that Loras may be a troubled individual. Aside from comments bizarrely complimenting selfies of himself, Loras’ interactions appear primarily to be with spam bots.
How and why Loras was in Melbourne has not been revealed. Nor why he took no serious efforts to conceal his identity, with his face recorded on CCTV, in what was a crude and unsuccessful arson attempt.
5. Australia: Victorian bus drivers strike over pay and conditions
More than 600 bus drivers in Melbourne and regional Victoria, employed by ComfortDelGro Victoria (CDC), have held three one-day strikes in recent weeks, in opposition to further real wage cuts and attacks on working conditions.
CDC Victoria is an Australian subsidiary of global transport company ComfortDelGro, which last year recorded revenue of SG$4.48 billion (US$3.5 billion) and operating profits of SG$210.5 million (US$165 million). At 18 percent, Australia is the company’s third largest source of revenue, after Singapore and Britain.
An online meeting of National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members at Western Sydney University (WSU) last Thursday voted by 99 percent for strikes against management, which is threatening to axe up to 400 academic and professional jobs.
The proceedings at the meeting, however, underscored the NTEU leadership’s intent to keep the anger and opposition of university workers trapped within the straitjacket of seeking enterprise bargaining deals at individual universities over the next year or so.
7. Sri Lankan government’s assault pushes health services to the brink
Sri Lanka’s public health service has plunged into a severe crisis as a result of drastic funding cuts, which are now continuing under the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led government. It is plagued by aging and malfunctioning equipment, collapsing infrastructure, a lack of essential medicines and laboratory supplies, and a dire shortage of medical personnel.
Hundreds of thousands of patients who cannot afford the luxury of private hospitals and rely on the “free” public health system are suffering immensely. Some live as if on death row.
When presenting the 2025 budget earlier this year, President Anura Dissanayake—who is also the finance minister—said there would be a “significant increase” in health expenditure to 604 billion rupees (US$2 billion). He claimed that 185 billion rupees would be allocated for the supply of medicines.
Contrary to Dissanayake’s promise, the reality is that the government has slashed public health spending, allocating just 383 billion rupees this year, down from 410 billion rupees in 2024, as part of the austerity program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
8. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”: A declaration of war on healthcare
When President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” act on July 4, 2025, he set into motion legislation that will have severe consequences for Americans, particularly the working class. Not only does this act effect the largest redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest by making permanent $3.8 trillion in tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting the rich, it also begins the wholesale destruction of the healthcare infrastructure through the slashing of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and by extension Medicare.
Monday marks three months since the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Plant in southern Michigan. The 63-year-old skilled tradesman was crushed on April 7 by an overhead gantry that suddenly activated and pinned him against a conveyor inside an enclosed factory cell.
In the three months since the fatal accident, Adams’ family and co-workers have received no meaningful information about the circumstances of his death from Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) or the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA). Last week, a MIOSHA spokesperson told the WSWS that the case “remains open.”
Nevertheless, Stellantis, with the full backing of the UAW bureaucracy, is resuming full production at the plant with up to three shifts of workers. Workers are outraged that they have received no information about Adams’ death and report that the company continues to cut corners on safety.
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The call for an independent inquiry led by rank-and-file workers is gaining broad support among autoworkers and others. At a neighborhood event in the Bagley Community of northwest Detroit, where Adams lived his entire life, IWA-RFC supporters spoke to many autoworkers who expressed support for the investigation.
10. New Zealand government attacks workplace health and safety law
New Zealand already has one of the worst occupational health and safety records, per head of population, among OECD nations. Fatalities average about 70 per year. Workers are killed at the staggering rate of nearly 1.5 every week. Figures for the past six years are extraordinarily high: 110 deaths in 2019, 69 in 2020, 64 in 2021, 59 in 2022, 67 in 2023 and 70 last year.
Workers also die from long-term exposure to harmful substances 10 times more often than from “accidents.” According to WorkSafe [the government’s work and safety regulator], work-related health deaths are estimated at 750–900 a year.
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The deadliest industries are agriculture including forestry, transport and warehousing, manufacturing and construction—which alone had 226,600 injury claims in 2023. Common causes of fatalities involve vehicles, falling objects and being trapped in moving machinery—all of which are preventable.
Forestry had the highest fatality rate in 2024, with 16.58 deaths per 100,000 workers. Forestry workers are 70 times more likely to be killed on the job than the average NZ worker. The industry’s death rate is 34 times higher than Britain’s and seven times that in Australia.
11. AFSCME moves to end Philadelphia strike as soon as possible by dropping workers’ demands
Philadelphia city workers--including librarians, water department and sanitation--have been on strike since July 1. They are demanding an increased wage as well as defense of overtime benefits and healthcare.
The city, run by Democratic mayor Cherelle Parker, is demanding workers take “fiscally responsible” poverty-level pay, consisting of about an 8 percent wage increase over three years. Blue collar city workers on average receive about $46,000 a year, about $15,000 lower than the city’s median income. According to SmartAssetabout, it is half of what a comfortable living wage for the city is.
In addition, the city is demanding the workers give up the right to overtime pay on the weekend and other benefits.
There is powerful support for the strike both across the city and the country. Conditions are rapidly emerging to make the strike the center of a broader working class offensive in defense of living conditions and public programs.
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The movement in the working class against inequality must link up with the growing political opposition to Trump and his enablers in the Democratic Party. The outcome of this and other struggles will be determined not just by militancy on the picket lines, but to the degree that the working class emerges as the basic political force against oligarchy, dictatorship and war.
Workers must make a special appeal for public sector workers across Philadelphia to immediately join the strike. This includes 3,000 white collar employees whose contract expired on July 1, but, in a deliberate attempt to isolate them from their blue-collar co-workers, AFSCME extended the contract to July 14.
12. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was tortured in El Salvador’s CECOT prison
CECOT, short for “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” (Center for the Confinement of Terrorism), is a maximum-security prison more accurately described as a concentration camp. It is operated by El Salvador’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele, a close ally of Trump. Of the more than 250 men deported there by the US government this past March, the vast majority have never been convicted of any crime and were forcibly removed after Trump fraudulently invoked the Alien Enemies Act.
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If the allegations [of the torturing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia] are true—which multiple human rights organizations suggest is likely the case—these abuses would constitute blatant violations of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” In fact, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU have documented that torture and inhumane treatment at CECOT appear to be part of a routine system, not isolated incidents, reinforcing credible concerns that Abrego Garcia’s allegations reflect institutionalized barbarism.
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Recently released US college graduate and Texas homeowner Ward Sakeik described her five-month imprisonment in three separate ICE detention centers, exposing the inhuman conditions of the US immigration system. She described the facilities as “extremely unhygienic, dust everywhere,” with women “getting sick left and right because it is extremely dusty.” Some facilities were kept freezing cold, while others were infested with insects. Sakeik recounted being transported “like cattle” and thrown into small cages packed with women, with only a single toilet, stripped of dignity and basic human rights.
The latest tax and spending bill, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law by Trump on July 4, allocates $45 billion for the expansion of a nationwide network of ICE concentration camps within the US. At the opening ceremony for the Florida facility, which has since flooded, Trump made clear that the target is not only immigrants but also citizens. “But we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time,” he declared. “They are not new to our country, they are old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too.”
13. Thyssenkrupp Steel in Germany demands €200 million in wage cuts
The early works council election at Thyssenkrupp Steel’s largest plant has only just ended, and already the IG Metall union is preparing to implement the attacks being demanded by the company’s top management.
For several weeks now, IG Metall officials and works council representatives have been sitting down with the executive board to coordinate the “restructuring” of Thyssenkrupp’s steel division. The plan is to cut 11,000 of the 27,000 jobs and reduce wages by 10 percent.
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IG Metall has always displayed great “creativity” when it comes to enforcing the interests of shareholders.
In the past, the union has always defused workforce opposition by staging loud protests and media-friendly demonstrations. It will try the same again this time. In the past, government representatives from the federal and North Rhine-Westphalia state governments have often been invited along so they could placate workers with promises—of subsidies for the switch to “green steel,” for example.
IG Metall will also play up the importance of the domestic steel industry for wartime needs. After all, it supports the pro-war policies of both the old and the new federal government, and has made it clear in this context that it supports shifting the enormous costs of rearmament and war onto the working class.
This preventable catastrophe is not an isolated “accident” or aberration, as public officials have sought to claim. The Esparto explosion reveals, once again, the catastrophic consequences of deregulation, cronyism and the hollowing out of safety standards across the United States and internationally.
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Arguments advanced that the absence of union representation contributed to the fatal outcome at Devastating Pyrotechnics are refuted by a mountain of evidence, including the recent death of Detroit area Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr., who perished in an industrial incident at a unionized facility.
The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly exposed the extent to which the trade union apparatus in the United States—whether it be the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, or the United Food and Commercial Workers—has become integrated into corporate management. Far from defending workers’ interests, the union apparatus functions to suppress opposition, enforce sellout contracts, and isolate struggles. The absence of a union at Devastating Pyrotechnics is not the problem. The real issue is the absence of worker control over the conditions of their labor and safety.
15. IYSSE wins 3 seats in Berlin’s Humboldt University Student Parliament
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) has won three seats in the elections to the Student Parliament at Berlin’s Humboldt University, meaning all its candidates will take up mandates. The IYSSE was the only list to stand on a socialist program, opposing the genocide in Gaza, the escalation of war and the militarization of universities. With this platform, it secured 74 votes—just under 5 percent.
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In its election statement, the IYSSE warned of the danger of a nuclear catastrophe. The struggle against war was at the heart of the campaign, which is why the IYSSE candidates came under fire from the university administration. The university initially tried to ban three IYSSE election events, claiming they were not purely “university political”—in other words, while a genocide was taking place and the federal government was rearming on a scale reminiscent of the Nazis, students were forbidden to even discuss these questions.
16. Instant Holograms on Metal Film and the return of alternative pop band Stereolab
Though critics sometimes label Stereolab as “Marxist,” this is a misunderstanding, confusing postmodernism and various forms of academic pseudo-leftism with genuine Marxism. In fact, the band never mentions capitalism on this album or concrete social phenomena in general.
17. United Kingdom: Reject CWU/EP Group agreement enforcing restructuring at Royal Mail!
The “complex negotiations” weren’t to secure the “right agreement” for workers, but to package a new benchmark in corporate restructuring, cooked up with Křetínský and the Starmer government.
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The fight at Royal Mail is not a national issue, but part of an international struggle by postal and logistics workers against the weaponization of AI and automation to slash jobs and increase exploitation, and to privatize services—as in Canada and the US.
25 years ago:
Hundreds perish in a Philippines garbage landslide
50 years ago:
A People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) offensive in the Angolan capital ousts US-backed forces
75 years ago:
North Korean military victory at Chochiwonn
100 years ago:
Archaeologists discover world’s oldest ceramic figurine
19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
