Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu was hailed in the US and international media as an effort to cultivate “peace” through the agreement of a “ceasefire” in Gaza, which Trump was “pushing” for. Never mind the fact that both men had openly stated that their vision of “peace” includes the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and killing anyone who resists. Trump’s “relocation” plan went unmentioned in the media previews of the trip. And of course, the words “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are forbidden in media coverage of US-Israeli policies in Gaza.
Trump and Netanyahu take as their motto the Orwellian slogan “war is peace.” They believe they are the greatest peacemakers because they have killed the most people. By this demented logic, the genocide these men have authored is their greatest contribution to world peace.Of course, in the eyes of world public opinion, Trump and Netanyahu are tyrants and criminals. But they act not as individuals, but as the foremost representatives of the ideals of the capitalist system.
The highest stage of capitalism, Vladimir Lenin wrote in 1917, is imperialism: dictatorship at home, vast criminality and plunder abroad, all a product of the monstrous growth of the wealth and power of the capitalist class. Ultimately, the Gaza genocide, as the most predatory expression of global imperialist war, is a symptom of the homicidal violence being unleashed upon humanity by capitalism.
Trump and Netanyahu proceed so provocatively and shamelessly because they know full well they express the homicidal dictates of the capitalist class, and that they will not face opposition from the Democratic Party or any part of the political establishment. That opposition will come from the building of a mass movement against imperialism spearheaded by the working class.
Codenamed Operation Excalibur, the assault was a coordinated and rehearsed domestic military deployment. Internal Army documents, leaked and published by journalist Ken Klippenstein, expose the federal government’s growing use of militarized force to intimidate and suppress immigrant and working class communities under the pretense of “security” and “law enforcement.” The leaked documents included an assessment of collateral damage, given the high population density of the area.Video taken by witnesses and outraged community members showed heavily armed federal agents, with police assistance, blocking off streets around the park as masked, militarized immigration squads marched through, sending children and caregivers fleeing in panic. Soldiers with the California National Guard’s 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry Regiment were seen on foot, horseback and in military vehicles.
Developments in Los Angeles represent a critical front in a nationwide operation. The systematic conspiracy to establish a presidential dictatorship in the United States is rapidly advancing, with Trump using federal security forces to reshape the political landscape.What is unfolding is a calculated and ongoing coup d’état, an attempt to replace the existing constitutional order with an authoritarian framework of class rule, enforced through repression, fear, and the normalization of military intervention in civilian life.
*****
Though Operation Excalibur was ultimately cut short—“We were on the objective for 24 minutes,” one Guardsman admitted—the fact remains that it unfolded as a fully choreographed military drill on domestic soil, despite some of the “phase lines” not being executed due to communication failures.
But the planning itself reflects a shift in the posture of the American state: from police raids to coordinated military operations within major cities. The architecture of military counterinsurgency used in Kabul, Baghdad or Gaza is now being prepared in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago.
Significantly, local authorities were given only two hours’ notice before the troops arrived. Even more revealing were the responses from the National Guard soldiers themselves. Many described the operation as “idiotic,” “shameful,” and “politically motivated.” They questioned orders, groaned at the suggestion of wearing ICE-style face masks, and pushed back against the idea of establishing a permanent “forward operating base” in the park—a proposal floated by military leadership in earlier briefings.
These comments should not be underestimated. They represent the first cracks in the state’s repressive machinery. As with the Russian Revolution of 1917, when soldiers began to break ranks with the tsarist regime and sided with the workers and peasants, today’s disaffection among American troops points to the potential for deeper ruptures. It reveals a system in decay, forced to use the military against its own population, and increasingly unable to count on the unquestioning obedience of the rank and file.
On July 1, the United States Postal Service (USPS) implemented the second phase of its revised delivery standards under the so-called “Delivering for America” plan, which is, in reality, a massive cost-cutting campaign to prepare USPS for privatization. The changes, described by management as necessary for “efficiency,” will extend delivery times for millions of residents, particularly in rural areas, as USPS seeks to eliminate trucking routes and consolidate processing operations to slash labor and transportation costs.
Amazon is also positioning itself to capitalize on a privatized USPS. As Truthout reported, CEO Andy Jassy’s 2024 shareholder letter highlighted Amazon’s expansion into rural delivery networks, traditionally dependent on USPS for the costly “last mile.” Up until now, rural offices were so dominated by deliveries for the e-commerce giant that they functioned effectively as Amazon contractors, violating federal law by prioritizing Amazon packages over other items.
With privatization, Amazon could absorb these routes directly for massive profit, while slashing service to unprofitable regions. The company delivered over 6 billion packages in 2024 through its own network of franchised “Delivery Service Providers,” becoming the country’s biggest delivery business virtually overnight.
Truthout noted that both UPS and FedEx stand ready to absorb USPS’s package delivery business. FedEx has a last-mile station network similar in size to Amazon’s, but more evenly distributed nationwide, alongside a more efficient air network. UPS surpasses both with a larger last-mile footprint and nearly double Amazon’s air capacity, positioning these corporations to seize routes and profits if USPS’s universal service obligation is dismantled.
Far from mobilizing opposition, the unions have quietly cleared the path for privatization by accepting Delivering for America’s agenda. This year, all major USPS unions finalized new contracts that failed to include any protections against the ongoing preparations for dismantling the Postal Service.
Recently-retired diplomat and whistle blower Richard Colvin has provided detailed evidence showing that in the first year (2006-2007) of its counter-insurgency mission in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Canada’s military secretly detained and transferred over 1,000 people to be tortured by the US-backed regime of Hamid Karzai.
Colvin, who for 6 years held senior diplomatic posts in Kandahar and the Canadian embassies in Kabul and Washington, threw the Conservative Harper government into crisis in 2009 when he testified before a parliamentary committee that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) regularly transferred detainees to the notoriously brutal prisons of the neocolonial regime installed in the aftermath of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.
His new allegations, which are documented in an unpublished 1,000-page reported submitted to his superiors at the Ministry of Global Affairs thirteen months ago and subsequently shared with reporters from the Globe and Mail, are even more damning than his initial testimony. Colvin’s evidence, gathered from “hundreds of public and private sources, including reports from public inquiries, official military statements and memoirs by former soldiers” shows that the CAF committed systematic war crimes in Kandahar, which the military command and the Harper government desperately tried to conceal.
The further exposure of these imperialist war crime comes as Canadian imperialism and its US allies are directly complicit in criminal acts on an even greater scale. Since October 2023, Ottawa and Washington have fully endorsed the Zionist regime’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and worked to ruthlessly silence all opposition to it. The genocide is part of American imperialism’s drive to consolidate its hegemony over the entire oil-rich Middle East, which intensified last month with the waging of an illegal war on Iran. Canada backed the Israeli and American bombardment to the hilt.
*****
The war crimes of the Canadian military in Afghanistan, and the complicity of the government officials and politicians who enabled and whitewashed these crimes, were a direct consequence of the imperialist and neocolonial nature of the war. The war in Afghanistan was the first in an endless series of wars unleashed by US imperialism in the Greater Middle East under the pretext of the “War on Terror” that devastated entire societies, killed millions, and drove tens of millions more from their homes as refugees. Through this eruption of imperialist violence, the US sought to establish through force its dominance of the resource-rich and geo-strategically critical region at the expense of its rivals in Iran, Russia, and China. Canada, alongside its NATO allies, integrated itself deeply into US-led wars and played a key role supporting US military operations.
*****
While Canada’s ruling elite used the military mission in Afghanistan to deepen its alliance with US imperialism – the principal means through which it could pursue its own imperialist interests – it used the war domestically to transform the image of the CAF, from “peacekeepers” to an aggressive interventionist force and to whip up a bellicose, explicitly militarist Canadian nationalism. While Canadian nationalists had long portrayed the military as a benevolent force, the ruling elite recognized that, in the words of Liberal Foreign Minister John Manley in 2001, “If you want to play a role in the world, there’s a cost to doing that.” General Rick Hillier was blunter still. “We’re not the public service of Canada,” he declared. “We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.”
Imposing a return to work without membership approval is a blatant violation of workers’ democratic rights and the will of the rank and file. Workers must immediately organize meetings and discussions today together to override this sellout!
Determination remains strong on the eighth day of the strike by 9,000 Philadelphia city workers. The workers, members of AFSCME District Council 33, are demanding livable wages and fighting massive cuts to local services which are being mirrored in every major city in America, spearheaded by the Democratic Party.Among workers, there is an understanding that their fight is ultimately against the entire capitalist political establishment. Words like “aristocracy” and “oligarchy” were on workers’ lips when they spoke yesterday with WSWS reporters. “We cannot live under this government,” one sanitation worker said. “I can’t pay my bills, my mortgage. I have no savings. We do sanitation but the government keeps us down. It is all political.”
One librarian assistant warned: “As a librarian, I need to know how to help people find the information they’re looking for… But the truth begins to corrode under dictatorships.”
In a further step toward war with China, the Trump administration announced Tuesday it would ban purchases of US farmland by Chinese nationals and other “adversaries.” The announcement was made by US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins at a press conference held on the steps of the USDA building in Washington, D.C.
Rollins was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and trade advisor Peter Navarro. Also present were members of Congress and several governors.
Rollins said the administration would work with state governments and use executive actions to halt the purchases and claw back land already owned by Chinese entities. This is part of a seven-point “National Agriculture Security Action Plan” that includes purging Chinese nationals and those from other “countries of concern,” such as Russia and Iran, from contracts with the USDA.
The ban on Chinese land purchases and other measures to combat “agroterrorism” and China’s allegedly nefarious intrigues were presented as critical to US national security, i.e., the interests of US imperialism around the world.
In language designed to instill fear in the population of “communist” China, Rollins and Hegseth sought to present US agriculture in a military context, part of the effort to place all aspects of American society on a war footing.
*****
These developments bring into sharp relief the cases of three Chinese researchers at the University of Michigan who have been witch-hunted and charged by federal authorities for allegedly attempting to smuggle proscribed agricultural materials into the US. Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu are charged with smuggling Fusarium graminearum, a common agricultural fungus. Jian has been imprisoned in Michigan for more than a month pending her trial and her boyfriend Liu has been banned from reentering the US. More recently, Chengxuan Han was arrested and jailed on charges of smuggling common non-hazardous biological materials (C. elegans roundworms and plasmids) and making false statements.
In an effort to maintain operations, McLaren Macomb brought in temporary replacement staff—paying them, according to striking nurses, as much as US$108 per hour. These figures stand in stark contrast to the pay received by long-term staff, who are struggling to get by.
The conditions at the hospital are part of a broader public health crisis driven by decades of cost-cutting and profit-maximizing at the expense of patients and workers alike. This has resulted in chronic understaffing—a problem that has plagued McLaren Macomb for over four years.
Stellantis workers in Italy have expressed strong support for the rank-and-file investigation into the death of US Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. The 63-year-old machine repairman was killed at the Dundee Engine Plant on April 7 when an overhead gantry suddenly engaged, pinning him to a conveyor.
Adams was the second Stellantis worker in the United States to be killed in a span of less than seven months. On August 22, 2024, Antonio Gaston, a 53-year-old father of four, was crushed to death at the Toledo Jeep Complex in Ohio.
Like their counterparts in North America, Italian Stellantis workers face a relentless attack on their jobs, living standards and working conditions. The company has cut at least 15,000 jobs in Italy since early 2021, when the Italian-French-US conglomerate was formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA. Another 1,600 workers are being forced to accept “voluntary redundancy” packages this year, including at Mirafiori plant in Turin and the Termoli plant in central Italy.
In February 2024, Dominico Fatigati, a 52-year-old machine maintenance worker, was crushed to death at the Pratola Serra factory near Naples in a tragedy that was strikingly similar to one that took Adams’ life. Like Dundee, the Pratola Serra factory was being prepared for a production relaunch after Stellantis announced it would manufacture a new range of engines, in this case, for commercial vehicles.
As the countries most affected by the tariffs, Japan, South Korea, the nations of southeast Asia as well as a number of poorer and smaller economies, scramble to try to secure a last-minute agreement to try to lessen their impact, Trump made clear the content of his so-called negotiations.
With letters to be sent out to other countries, following the 14 delivered on Monday, he said: “I just want you to know a letter means a deal.”
The two major economies with no “deal” struck are the European Union and India.
*****
The shock of the tariffs has been most significant in Japan. It had expected that it would be able to secure concessions relatively easily, as had taken place under the first Trump administration.
That has not eventuated, however, despite seven rounds of negotiations. The main sticking point has been Japan’s insistence that auto tariffs be eliminated and its refusal to permit increased US exports of rice. Dependent on electoral support from small rice farmers, the somewhat unstable Liberal Democratic Party government of prime minister Shigeru Ishiba has said they will not be sacrificed for concessions on cars and vehicles.
Numerous bands have announced their refusal to participate in Manchester’s Radar Festival after the event removed punk rap duo Bob Vylan from its lineup.Among the bands are Hero in Error, The Scratch and ĠENN.
Bob Vylan, whose two members call themselves Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan to protect their identities from what they see as Britain’s surveillance state, came to international prominence June 28 by courageously denouncing the mass murder in Gaza at the Glastonbury Festival.
Frontman Bobby Vylan led thousands of young people in Glastonbury in chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces].” The performance came a day after it was revealed in the media that Zionist troops, on top of every other crime, were deliberately murdering unarmed, starving Palestinians seeking food and aid in Gaza. The pro-Palestinian Irish punk band Kneecap played at the same event, also to tumultuous support.
The duo’s words and actions, cheered by the vast crowd, has triggered an outpouring of hypocritical and lying hysteria from the British and other governments. The Trump administration revoked the group’s visas, asserting that
Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.
This pronouncement coincided with the news that murderer-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu was set to be welcomed in Washington by Donald Trump. As the World Socialist Web Site noted,
In the America of 2025, chanting against a genocidal army gets you banished. Carrying out genocide on behalf of the US government gets you a red carpet.
The deal involves the acquisition of a 51 percent controlling stake in Colombo Dockyard, previously owned by Japan’s Onomichi Dockyard, for $US52.9 million. Onomichi announced in November last year that it had decided to sell its stake amid its own financial crisis. Completion of the deal with MDL will take another four to six months, pending regulatory clearance.
Established in 1974 and located in Colombo Harbour, the dockyard is Sri Lanka’s largest shipbuilding and repair facility. It specialises in commercial and naval shipbuilding and maintenance activities. Japan’s Onomichi Dockyard had been its principal stakeholder since 1993.
Announcing its new venture, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), a shipbuilding company managed by India’s Defense Ministry, stated that the acquisition gives the company “a strategic foothold in the Indian Ocean Region—a key maritime corridor.”
The deal, however, is not purely commercial. The Sri Lankan Dissanayake government’s decision to invite Indian investment in the dockyard aligns with its broader foreign policy objectives of strengthening ties with New Delhi and the US.
The United States has reached a troubling new milestone, recording the highest number of measles cases in more than three decades. As of July 7, 2025, according to the Johns Hopkins Measles tracker, a total of 1,281 confirmed measles cases have been reported in the United States, surpassing the 1,274 cases reported in all of 2019.
The figure, by all accounts, represents an underestimation of the actual incidence of measles infection. This surge represents a 29-fold increase compared to the 244 cases reported in the same period of 2024. Measles was officially declared eliminated in the US in 2000, and prior to this year the country typically saw an average of about 180 cases annually since elimination.
The concerning resurgence of measles is directly linked to a decline in childhood vaccination rates across the US. A recent study published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) analyzed county-level vaccination data and found that childhood MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination rates have been declining in much of the US since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Measles is one of the most highly transmissible infectious diseases, making even a small drop in immunity a significant risk factor for large outbreaks. Its basic reproduction number is estimated at 12, meaning one infected person can transmit it to up to 12 others in a fully susceptible population. Without a high percentage of vaccinated individuals, the virus can spread rapidly, leading to the return of diseases once eliminated. Experts warn that if current vaccination trends persist, measles may become endemic in the US within approximately two decades, giving up all the gains made in the public health effort to eliminate measles.
*****
The troubling resurgence of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases in the Americas is being further inflamed by deliberate political actions taken by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his chosen appointees. These maneuvers are widely perceived by scientific and medical communities as fostering deep mistrust in vaccines and posing a direct threat to the bedrock of childhood vaccination programs.
On April 9, Leony Salcedo-Chevalier, 34, was fatally struck by a delivery box truck backing up in a loading dock at the JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York.
Amazon, founded by billionaire oligarch Jeff Bezos, is a poster child for workplace injuries in America. Low-paid workers at the company’s warehouses are pushed to the limit using the latest technologies, and injured workers are often denied workers compensation and thrown out the door, as shown in previous investigations by the World Socialist Web Site.
The World Socialist Web Site is urging workers to take matters into their own hands and organize a rank-and-file committee to investigate this and other needless incidents at JFK8 and fight for workers’ control over safety.
With the political witch-hunt of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government against municipalities controlled by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) continuing to escalate, CHP leader Özgür Özel has responded by calling for early elections in November.
On Saturday, the mayors of three CHP-run municipalities, Adıyaman Municipality), Antalya Metropolitan Municipality and Adana Metropolitan Municipality, were detained on “corruption” charges. The operation follows the arrest earlier this month of 60 people, including Tunç Soyer, the former mayor of CHP-run Izmir, the country’s third largest city, on “corruption” charges.
Donald Trump’s re-election as US president and his attempts to establish a political dictatorship in line with the socio-economic dominance of the financial oligarchy have emboldened and accelerated authoritarian and fascistic tendencies worldwide. Basic democratic rights, such as the right to vote and stand for election, the right to a fair trial, and freedoms of expression, assembly, and the press, are under serious threat everywhere.
The strike has remained isolated by the Unite leadership under Sharon Graham, refusing to mobilise united action among its one million-strong membership, including striking refuse workers in Birmingham. Instead, Unite diverted Lumley Street workers into the dead end of its “leverage” campaign, lobbying Veolia’s headquarters, shareholders, and business partners after management withdrew from a recognition agreement in December.
No genuine step forward for workers’ rights to representation has ever been won by seeking a sympathetic ear in the corporate boardroom, only in a fight against harassment and intimidation by employers.
In a split decision, by a vote of six to three, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) yesterday decided to keep its interest cash rate unchanged at the high level of 3.85 percent, thus denting the claims of the Albanese Labor government to have turned the corner in reducing inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.
The decision by the RBA’s Monetary Policy Board dashed the expectations of millions of working-class households—hopes promoted by the government and financial commentators—of early relief from crushing home mortgage repayments. Payments of thousands of dollars a month are producing high levels of financial stress, particularly in the outer suburbs of major cities.
*****
Months of frantic attempts by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government at negotiation with the Trump administration have made no difference to Australia’s inclusion in Washington’s baseline 10 percent tariff rate, or the 50 percent applied to all US steel and aluminum imports. This will add to the damage, in terms of jobs and social and economic conditions, from the fallout from Washington’s measures against China.
On July 2, Channel 4 showed the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack at 10pm. Some 300,000 tuned in to view the late showing.
The documentary is a difficult but necessary watch: a thorough, objective, evidence-based exposure of crimes against the Palestinian population—and the conscious targeting of medics and healthcare workers in Gaza. Some 1,500 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli forces and hundreds more detained, imprisoned and disappeared since October 2023.
The documentary met its mission statement. Footage is shown of one atrocity after another committed against innocent civilians, women and children who have no where to run or hide, their bodies strewn across crowded streets, often within a stone’s throw of hospitals which are being bombed and destroyed.
The central part of the film is the collection of stories of individual doctors. There is Dr Khaled Hamouda, discussing the direct attack on his home that killed 10 members of his family and the drone strike that moments later hit the house the survivors escaped to. His wife and young daughter dead, he then took refuge in the grounds of his hospital, which was bombarded and raided. He was detained along with 70 other doctors and beaten.
And then there is Dr Adnan al-Bursh, who was detained, stripped, interrogated, disappeared and tortured and died in prison. There is a discussion of what has happened to the detained doctors, verified by an anonymous Israeli whistleblower, who confirms there are beatings and torture. There are vivid descriptions of this treatment of Palestinian medics and prisoners by Israeli doctors, who would perform procedures without anesthetic and inform the prisoners that, “You are a criminal and you have to die.”
*****
The documentary is perhaps the most powerful yet to be released on the 21-month long genocidal attack by Israel against the Palestinian population. However, it would not have been seen without the last-minute intervention by Channel 4.
The film was first commissioned by the BBC. Initially scheduled to be shown on February 25, it was repeatedly postponed and then on June 20 dropped completely in a blatant act of censorship.
The BBC’s systematic bias in favor of Israel reflects the growing chasm between Britain’s ruling elite that enables and supports Israel’s war of annihilation on Gaza, and the broader public that have turned out in their millions in Britain and throughout the world to oppose the war. The government is fully aware that its support for Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, like its support for the criminal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is based upon a pack of lies and contradictions. It knows that truthful reporting could ignite a mass anti-war, anti-capitalist and socialist movement.
