Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Nearly a million Israelis demonstrate, calling for hostage deal and end to Gaza war
Nearly 500,000 people crowded into Hostages Square in Tel Aviv Sunday to demand the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu end the war in Gaza and secure a deal to bring home the hostages. Protests in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and other cities brought the total to more than one million.
The rallies were among the largest since the war began nearly two years ago, testifying to the depth of opposition to the war and the government.
Some of the former hostages spoke at the rally along with family members of those still held in Gaza. Yehuda Cohen, father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, said, “We’re living under a terror organization that refuses to give us back our children for political reasons,” referring to Netanyahu’s government.
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Sunday’s protests show the depth of feeling against the war in Gaza, confirming the opinion polls that show the majority of Israelis want the war to end. But opposition primarily centered on concerns for the hostages, which complains of a “just war becoming an unnecessary war” and which is often indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians, remains trapped within a Zionist perspective.
No progressive struggle can be taken up against the Israeli government without opposing the genocide which has so far claimed at least 61,000 Palestinian lives and threatens the remaining 2.1 million with starvation. It means rejecting the ethno-religious exclusion that forms the basis of the Israeli state.
The issues raised by the mass protest movement against Netanyahu’s judicial coup that swept the country for months in 2023 are raised again, but at a much higher level. Then as now the protesters wrapped themselves in the Israeli flag in support of the Zionist project and refused to take up the question on the democratic rights of the oppressed Palestinian people.
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While today there are groups raising the question of the Palestinians, their numbers are as yet small. They must take up the difficult but vital task of breaking with Zionism and unifying the Israeli working class with the Palestinians and workers throughout the region in a united struggle. The aim must be: not a mini-Palestinian state alongside Israel, but the overthrow and replacement of the Zionist state and the various Arab bourgeois regimes that support it with the establishment of the United Socialist States of the Middle East.
This is the perspective of permanent revolution fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International. Sections of the ICFI must be built in Israel and across the Middle East to provide the leadership necessary to conduct this struggle.
2. Texas Democrats end stunt as Gov. Newsom advances his own gerrymandering gambit
Texas Democratic legislators returned to the state Monday, ending their political protest against the gerrymandering of congressional districts in that state ordered by President Donald Trump and carried through by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled state legislature.
The Democrats claimed their protest stunt had been successful, as they fled the state to deny a quorum for the state legislature during an emergency session called by Abbott. But the governor called a second emergency session, opening Monday, which dutifully pushed through the redistricting that could cost the Democratic Party as many as five congressional seats.
The Democrats cited the national attention given to the gerrymander, being carried out mid-decade rather than after the next federal census, and the response in Democratic-controlled states like California, where Governor Gavin Newsom has advanced a plan to gerrymander five Republicans out of their seats in retaliation for the Texas action.
Newsom announced his cynical plan to temporarily bypass California’s independent redistricting commission in order to redraw congressional maps that would counter Republican gerrymandering efforts. Other states, both Democratic-controlled and Republican-controlled, are preparing similar efforts, in a campaign that demonstrates that the capitalist two-party system is fundamentally anti-democratic. Both capitalist parties work to suppress the democratic rights of working people and insure their own political dominance.
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Newsom and the Democratic leadership posture as defenders of democracy, presenting their battle against Republican gerrymandering as a high-stakes fight to preserve the republic. In reality, their maneuvers over district lines are nothing more than intra-ruling class disputes over the apportionment of power within an electoral system that is fundamentally undemocratic and subordinated to capitalist rule.
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The struggle between Democrats and Republicans over redistricting has nothing to do with safeguarding the democratic rights or living standards of working people. It is a fight between rival factions of the corporate and financial elite over the conditions under which they exploit the working class.
The Democrats’ claim that they defend democracy against Trump collapses upon even the most superficial comparison of policies. Far from constituting an alternative to the right-wing program of Trump, Governor Gavin Newsom has moved consistently to the right. His 2025–26 California budget mirrors Trump’s class policies in many essential respects.
While Trump boasted of his “big beautiful bill,” which combined massive tax cuts for the rich with deep cuts to social spending, Newsom’s budget for the most populous state in the country does the same: billions are slashed from higher education, housing assistance and public health programs; food and income assistance is cut, targeted especially against immigrant workers, adapting to the right-wing position that “undocumented” residents are not entitled to state benefits; and funding is increased for police and surveillance under the guise of “public safety,” even as essential services are gutted.
3. Armed National Guard troops to begin patrols in Washington, D.C.
The military occupation of Washington has taken on an unheard-of partisan character, with troops under Republican control entering the city, with no Democratic-run states contributing soldiers. Mississippi joins South Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio in sending hundreds of troops apiece, bringing the total deployment to 900 out-of-state soldiers, together with 800 in the D.C. National Guard, which is under Trump’s direct control as president.
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The political symbolism of Mississippi and South Carolina sending troops to Washington, D.C. is hard to miss. These two states were among the initiators of the slaveholders’ revolt that led to secession and the establishment of the Confederate States of America in 1861. South Carolina was the first state to secede, while Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was named president of the Confederacy, holding that post throughout the Civil War.
Given the restoration of Confederate names to US military bases across the South since Trump re-entered the White House in January, one could justify asking what flag the South Carolina and Mississippi troops were flying as they entered the capital of the United States.
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There have been frequent protests by local residents over police attacks, particularly those carried out by masked federal agents in immigrant neighborhoods. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 40 percent of the arrests made since Trump ordered the crackdown August 11 have been of undocumented immigrants. This underscores the “big lie” character of Trump’s claim that he is ridding the District of crime, since the main target is immigrant workers.
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It is worth recalling that two years ago, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury comprised of Washington residents for conspiring to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election with the assault by an armed mob of his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That remains the largest outbreak of violence in Washington, D.C. in more than 50 years. At the time, Trump vilified the city as “FILTHY, DIRTY, FALLING APART, & VERY UNSAFE,” and he clearly bears a continuing grudge against the city’s residents for that indictment.
The intensification of the police-military mobilization continued as the leaders of many European governments arrived in Washington Monday for a series of meetings with Trump at the White House. Trump, Miller & Co. clearly relish welcoming their guests to a capital city where troops and armored vehicles are on display, visible through the windows of the White House.
The Democratic Party has done little or nothing to oppose the show of force in Washington. Mayor Muriel Bowser has instructed the city’s police department to cooperate with its new masters, even meeting with Attorney General Bondi to work out the details. Democratic state governors have not sent troops, but congressional Democrats have confined themselves to brief statements that convey impotence and resignation rather than genuine opposition.
There have been no calls from either leading Democrats or the trade unions for popular protests, and certainly not for strike action that could quickly disable federal operations in Washington and challenge the Trump administration’s increasingly open erection of a police state.
4. Crisis summit at White House over Ukraine war riven by divisions
The leaders of the most powerful imperialist states in the world, including France, Germany, Italy and the UK, along with the heads of the EU and NATO, flew to Washington Monday on less than 24 hours’ notice for crisis talks over the war in Ukraine.
The unprecedented summit was prompted by the meeting Friday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska, where the American president invited the Russian leader onto American soil for the first time in a decade, in a sharp reversal of prior US efforts to isolate Moscow.
The immediate context of the crisis talks is a series of major military setbacks for Ukraine, which is armed and funded by the NATO alliance in a proxy war against Russia. Ukraine, facing a major manpower shortage and growing domestic opposition, is on the brink of military collapse.
While going out of their way to display an image of unity, the plans outlined by the European and American leaders remained sharply at odds. The meeting abruptly ended before 7:00 p.m., and a scheduled dinner was unexpectedly cancelled.
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The summit took place in a Washington under effective military occupation, with National Guard troops patrolling the streets. Trump’s approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his term, and all of the NATO leaders are unpopular in their own countries.
The greater the divisions, the more the European leaders sought to paper them over by flattering the reality TV star-turned-American president as the great peacemaker of the age. The European leaders attempted to conceal the atmosphere of panic and crisis—and the vast differences that have arisen between the United States and its imperialist allies over the war against Russia in Ukraine—with obsequious flattery.
One after another, they effusively thanked and praised the American president, all but bowing and scraping to kiss Trump’s ring. The atmosphere was reminiscent of a scene from The Godfather or The Sopranos.
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The crisis summit in Washington concluded with no concrete agreements or policies, only vague statements that negotiations will continue in the form of a trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky.
Significant factions within the Trump administration, facing a military debacle in Ukraine, are seeking to scale back US involvement in the war against Russia in order to redirect resources toward a military buildup in the Pacific targeting China. This shift has intensified divisions not only with Washington’s European allies but also within the American state itself. These internal and external fractures are producing increasingly unpredictable consequences.
5. UK Starmer government deports more asylum seekers and migrant workers
The UK Labour government has carried out a huge nationwide operation in recent weeks to arrest and deport “illegal” asylum seekers and migrant workers.
The Home Office announced last week that 1,780 people were stopped and interrogated over suspected “illegal working activity” between July 20 and 27. Described as a “nationwide intensification week,” it targeted workplaces in the hugely exploitative gig economy, with a focus on food delivery drivers.
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In another direct dog whistle to the far-right constituency being mobilized by Reform UK and the fascist gangs who have mobilized throughout the summer outside hotels accommodating asylum seekers, the government announced it will share information about asylum hotel locations with food delivery firms in a purported effort to disrupt illegal work “hotspots”.
Heading up the campaign to vilify asylum seekers is Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who issued an X posting last week further conflating seeking asylum and immigration with crime:
“If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”
Starmer claimed that foreign “criminals” had been exploiting Britain’s immigration system for far too long, that they have stayed in the UK for months or even years while their appeals continue to be processed. The fact is that the length of time for processing is the sole responsibility of this and previous governments.
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In its first five months in office, the Starmer Labour government set a new record on deportations. But the noxious anti-immigration atmosphere—with the government playing a major role—means that whatever repression is meted out is never enough to satiate the most vicious anti-immigration forces.
Last week, figures showed that the number of migrants arriving in the UK this year after crossing the English Channel topped 25,000—the earliest point in a calendar year at which the 25,000 mark has been passed since data on Channel crossings was first compiled in 2018 under the Conservatives. On August 12, the Home Office published official statistics showing that more than 50,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats since Starmer became prime minister. Every right-wing newspaper and media outlet pounced on the figures to denounce the government for its inaction. The nominally liberal and pro-Labour Guardian pointed out that “Rishi Sunak, the last Conservative prime minister, took 603 days in office to pass the 50,000 milestone, while it took Boris Johnson 1,066 days during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Predictably the figures prompted responses as to which party was genuinely the most anti-immigrant.
6. 52-year-old Guatemalan father killed on Los Angeles freeway fleeing ICE raid at Home Depot
Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old father from Guatemala, was fatally struck by an SUV on the 210 Freeway Thursday morning while fleeing an ICE raid at the Home Depot in Monrovia, California, where agents detained eight immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
As armed agents swarmed the Home Depot on Mountain Avenue, Montoya and others attempted to flee the area. After running across Evergreen Avenue onto the 210 Freeway, he was struck near Myrtle Avenue, according to the California Highway Patrol. Agents left the scene without calling for medical aid, and after widespread public backlash, ICE claimed they were not aware of Montoya’s death until hours after the raid concluded.
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In a notice to the press, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Montoya was not being pursued by federal officials. The statement was a flagrant attempt to blame Montoya for his own death.
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The National Day Laborer Organizing Network held a rally and vigil for Montoya Valdez Friday evening at the Monrovia Home Depot. Nearly a thousand community members and activists from the area and surrounding cities marched with signs demanding “ICE out of Monrovia” and declaring “ICE is not welcome.”
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The brutality toward immigrants is the direct result of decades of collaboration between the two parties of the ruling class, which Trump’s latest assaults have only intensified. According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, since Trump took office in January some 352,000 migrants have been arrested, including 4,481 in Los Angeles. DHS also reported that more than 324,000 individuals have been deported.
7. Sinners: A racialist horror show
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners combines cartoonish monster-movie antics with a racialist interpretation of history. It swims in the same, or very similar, ideological waters as the New York Times’ reactionary 1619 Project. Taken at face value, the film is an argument for the virtues of maintaining “cultural purity” through racial separatism, a perspective not far from what is being promoted by the fascist right.
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The racialist conception of “cultural appropriation,” in which art and culture are viewed as the exclusive intellectual property of one or another race of people, is not only reactionary. It is based on fundamentally false and ahistorical notions of cultural development. The blues was not developed in racial isolation. It came into being through a complex historical process integrating not only influences from traditional African music, but the direct and indirect influences of country, folk music, church hymnals, the corridos of the Western frontier, and more. It evolved in constant conversation—and conflict, and friction, and rivalry—with the popular music heard in dance halls and churchyards, and the songs sung by workers in farm fields, railroad yards, textile mills…
8. Wildfires fueled by climate change devastate Spain
Massive wildfires have burned in Spanish forests throughout August, devastating multiple regions. In the past two weeks, they erupted in Galicia, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Madrid, Asturias, Cantabria, Andalusia, and Valencia. More than 350,000 hectares have already burned across Spain, an area equivalent to 34 times the size of the city of Barcelona or to the entire island of Mallorca, making this the worst year since records began.
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Outside Europe, the US and Canada have also experienced massive wildfires. Canada is enduring its second worst wildfire season in history, with an area burned nearly the size of Panama.
This is a consequence of climate change and capitalism’s inability to combat it. Lorenzo Labrador, a scientist at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), explains that climate change “plays an indirect but key role by increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves and prolonging droughts. These conditions raise the risk and likelihood of fire spread.” Extreme heat and drought dry out vegetation, turning it into the perfect fuel for wildfires.
The data leave no room for doubt: July 2025 was recorded as the third hottest month in history since reliable climate records exist, only surpassed by July 2023 and 2024. The global average surface temperature, both land and ocean, for 2025 so far (January to July) is 1.18 °C above the 20th-century average. This makes 2025 the warmest year on record to date, surpassing even the record set in 2023.
This gives rise to so-called sixth-generation fires. These fires can generate their own weather, producing winds, lightning, or storms—known as pyrocumulus—due to the extreme heat they emit. This also makes them spread rapidly, making them nearly impossible to extinguish.
9. 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants defy Liberal back-to-work order for second day
Air Canada flight attendants maintained their picket lines on Monday, defying a Liberal government strikebreaking order for the second day.
The work stoppage, which began shortly after midnight Friday, is a militant struggle that has brought operations at the country’s largest airline to a halt and has now thrown the big business Liberal government into crisis.
10. Air Canada workers defy back-to-work order: A turning point in the global class struggle
Less than 12 hours after the strike began, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu invoked Section 107—an obscure Canada Labour Code provision the government recently “reinterpreted” to arrogate to it the power to unilaterally illegalize strikes, bypassing parliament. As per the government’s cooked-up reinterpretation, Hajdu ordered the unelected Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to declare the strike illegal and impose binding arbitration.
First under Justin Trudeau and now Carney, the Liberal government has repeatedly used Section 107 over the past twelve months to illegalize worker job actions. Those previously targeted include rail workers, port workers and 55,000 Canada Post workers. On all previous occasions, the bureaucratic union apparatuses, CUPE included, have connived with the government to enforce the strike bans.
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The flight attendants’ defiance has shattered the myth of “national unity” promoted by the Canadian ruling class, its political representatives and the trade union bureaucracy in response to US President Donald Trump’s trade war and threats to annex Canada.
Throughout 2025, official political life has been dominated by a foul nationalist, flag-waving campaign, in which the union apparatus, the social-democratic New Democratic Party and the pseudo-left have all rallied behind the ruling class’ “Team Canada,” urging “all Canadians” to unite to “save” the country.
11. Governments of Colombia and Peru exploit border dispute to promote national chauvinism
The border conflict in Santa Rosa de Loreto, a remote Amazonian Island straddling the boundary between Colombia and Peru, has recently reignited tensions between the two South American neighbors.
The dispute, marked by mutual accusations and nationalist posturing, reveals the political fragility of the governments in both countries.
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Peru has maintained that Santa Rosa de Loreto is part of the larger island of Chinería, which, according to a 1929 treaty, is under its jurisdiction. The far-right Peruvian government of President Dina Boluarte, with backing from Congress, has moved to solidify control and dismiss Colombia’s claims as baseless. The situation has been further inflamed on the ground by the mass display of flags and high-level visits to the island by Peruvian officials.
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Imperialist powers have long advanced a strategy of “divide and conquer” to maintain their dominance over South America. During the 19th-century Pacific War between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, British imperialism notoriously offered covert and overt support to rival sides to promote division and tighten its control of saltpeter and guano—critical to the production of gunpowder—in the three countries.
Most fundamentally, such border disputes have long been exploited by imperialism and local elites to stir up national chauvinism and stave off internal class tensions by diverting them against a foreign enemy. As infamously declared by Laureano Gómez, a Colombian Senate chair during the Leticia War, “Peace, peace, peace in inner Colombia; war, war, war on the border against our despicable enemy.”
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In their everyday life, border communities tell a different story. Colombians and Peruvians living near Santa Rosa engage cooperatively in commerce, healthcare, and social life across borders with cordiality and mutual aid. The Ticuna indigenous people represent the largest ethnic group on the island and the along the margins of the Amazon River and its tributaries in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which they consider part of their ancestral land.
This reality contradicts the nationalist hostilities stoked by politicians and ruling elites, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of borders imposed by imperial powers and local ruling elites.
In a globalized capitalist world, the working class is already objectively interconnected and its struggles and interest transcends the confines of the nation-state. The division of humanity into rival nation-states under capitalism inevitably leads to destructive wars, economic chaos, and social crises where workers pay the heaviest price.
In recent weeks, the rank-and-file Action Committee, Nurseries
Education, has been founded in Berlin to take up the fight against the ongoing deterioration of conditions for nursery and day-care center workers, children and parents:
"The overriding principle of our action committee is that the interests of staff, children and parents take absolute priority over the so-called imperatives of austerity and profit, which are only put forward to shovel society’s wealth further and further from the bottom to the top.
Together we fight for the following demands:
- More staff and uniform adjustment of the staff-to-child ratio!
- Higher professional standards in child care!
- Uniform high standards for educational qualifications instead of confusion and competition between state and private vocational schools in training!
- No statistical tricks with part-time work, but minimum staffing according to number of children for every single day!
- Clear definitions of duties and responsibilities for assistants, interns and volunteers. They must not serve as stopgaps for missing trained staff!
- Increased and standardized salaries regardless of provider or federal state, so that they are sufficient even in expensive major cities!
- More money for materials, toys, equipment, facilities and decent meals for every child!
- At least one dedicated housekeeping staff member in every nursery/day-care centre!
- Less bureaucracy in applying for support and funding. Good education is a basic right!
- Not a cent cut from education—billions for nurseries/day-care centres and schools instead of higher military spending!
- No militarization of education! We educate children for cooperation, not confrontation.
- Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) out of schools! Immediate stop to Bundeswehr recruitment of minors!
For years, if not decades, the problems have been growing. Working at the limit has become the sad new normal for many. The growing demand for childcare places and the growing expectations for children’s education are not matched by the necessary increase in resources."
13. Trump’s EPA grants email exemptions to California polluters, accelerating environmental destruction
The announcement that three industrial facilities in California have been granted exemptions from federal limits on carcinogenic emissions marks another front in the Trump administration’s war against science, public health and the working class.
These exemptions—handed out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through an “electronic mailbox” that invites industrial corporations to bypass decades-old air pollution controls by simply sending an email—expose the gangsterism of capitalist rule in its most naked form.
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The systematic dismantling of every barrier to corporate plunder is underway. What once required years of documentation, justification and review can now be obtained by submitting a request through a digital mailbox. Corporations are under no obligation to inform the public, hold hearings or even disclose the scope of their emissions. Communities already choking under polluted air are thus consigned to further exposure, with no recourse.
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Trump’s fascistic contempt for science and human life is extreme, but it is not unique. The bipartisan character of environmental destruction must be underscored. The Obama and Biden administrations presided over record oil and gas production, expanding drilling on public lands despite promises to halt it.
Biden approved hundreds of new projects, including the Willow Project in Alaska, projected to emit 287 million tons of carbon. Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol but refused to submit it to the Senate, dooming global efforts to failure.
Every administration, Democrat or Republican, has acted as the faithful instrument of corporate interests. Regulations are gutted when profits demand it, then repackaged as “climate action” when a different set of industries stand to gain. The result has been decades of rising emissions, poisoned communities and the steady approach of climate catastrophe.
The poisoning of communities in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Houston and Philadelphia is not an aberration but the normal functioning of capitalism. The same system that produces mass layoffs, poverty wages, imperialist wars, and the rise of fascism also destroys the environment. The working class cannot rely on lawsuits, regulatory agencies or the Democratic Party to protect its health and future.
14. Sri Lankan government fails to condemn Israel’s planned seizure of Gaza
Sri Lanka’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has issued a hypocritical and cowardly statement expressing mere “deep concern” over Israel’s planned seizure of Gaza—following nearly two years of genocidal war against Palestinians.
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On August 9, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment, and Tourism released a brief three-sentence statement expressing “deep concern over the decision by Israel to seize the control of Gaza.” It called for an “immediate ceasefire” and diplomatic dialogue to establish “sustainable peace.”
Notably absent from the statement is any mention of genocide or the ethnic cleansing accompanying the planned takeover of the territory. Its empty calls for a “ceasefire,” “dialogue” and “sustainable peace in the region,” amounts to asking a serial killer to show mercy, effectively aligning itself with Netanyahu’s far-right regime.
Far from seeking peace, Israel and its US backers pursue a “Greater Israel” agenda, targeting all Palestinian territories and even parts of neighboring states. Israel has attacked Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Since October 2023, more than 62,000 Palestinians—mostly children, women, and the elderly—have been killed. With over 90 percent of the population displaced and Gaza in ruins, famine and even graver war crimes now loom.
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In line with its pro-Israel orientation, the JVP/NPP government has permitted visits by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel. While the number of IDF members currently in Sri Lanka remains undisclosed, one high-profile case involved Gal Ferenbook, an IDF soldier accused of war crimes in Gaza. After the Hind Rajab Foundation revealed his presence in Colombo last December, Ferenbook fled the country. The foundation had appealed to Sri Lankan authorities, the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Interpol for his arrest.
The JVP/NPP government’s orientation continues the policy of the previous Wickremesinghe government, which deployed Sri Lankan Navy ships to the Red Sea to support US-led operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen. In July, the current cabinet approved ongoing maritime security missions to protect commercial shipping, maintaining the alignment with US interests in the region.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka continues to send workers to Israel, replacing Palestinian laborers blocked by the ongoing Gaza genocide. A Memorandum of Understanding signed earlier this year enables Sri Lankans to work in Israel’s construction sector. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Sri Lankans are currently employed there. In March, Sri Lanka opened a new consulate to expand commercial ties in areas such as diamonds, jewellery, cinnamon and agriculture.
15. United States: Profits for shareholders, pink slips for workers: John Deere cuts 238 jobs
John Deere, the international agricultural equipment manufacturer headquartered in Moline, Illinois, recently announced the elimination of hundreds of jobs across its Midwest factories—238 in Iowa and Illinois. Deere justified the layoffs as a response to “decreased demand and lower order volumes.”
The cuts include 115 workers at Harvester Works in East Moline, IL, on August 29; 71 at the Waterloo, IA, Foundry on September 19; and 52 at the Seeding and Cylinder facility in Moline, IL, on September 26.
For these working-class families and other communities already devastated by decades of deindustrialization, the announcement is a crushing blow. Deere’s layoffs are not isolated, but part of a broader wave of job destruction sweeping American manufacturing and agriculture as part of the ruling class’s relentless drive to profit.
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The decline in profits at Deere cannot be separated from the deepening crisis in American agriculture. Farmers are squeezed by falling commodity prices, soaring input costs for seed, fertilizer, and fuel, and by crushing levels of debt. Many are unable to afford new equipment, leading to stagnation in demand.
Meanwhile, the tariffs initiated under the Trump administration, ranging from 10 percent up to 40 or even 50 percent, are having a devastating impact on workers across the United States, with their full effects only beginning to be felt. Deere has already warned of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses tied to tariffs.
These measures, sold under the fraudulent banner of “protecting American workers,” have in fact created a devastating scenario for workers while doing nothing to safeguard jobs. As the World Socialist Web Site recently warned, Trump’s tariffs “will be paid for by the working class as the effect of the tariff hikes flows through the entire economy, bringing rising prices and increased job destruction—that is the inexorable logic of the capitalist profit system.”
16. United States: Striking Boeing workers in St. Louis speak out against poverty pay, IAM bureaucrats
The strike is not just a fight for better pay but a challenge to decades of union-backed concessions, such as the elimination of company-paid pensions and the implementation of a two-tier wage system. The rejected deal would have required new employees to work for at least 12 years to reach top pay. Workers also noted that the company’s proposed 20 percent raise over four years would not offset what they have lost due to inflation and would only apply to a small number of workers.
The strike is also a challenge to the military-industrial complex and the two pro-imperialist parties. It poses the need for a movement in the working class to put an end to the criminal US-backed wars.
The International Association of Machinists is doing everything it can to isolate the strike, just as it had done to the strike by Boeing’s civilian aircraft makers last year. Local 837 officials had unsuccessfully attempted to ram through the contract, triggering outrage from the rank and file. Last week, it made an appeal to ultra-right Senator Josh Hawley, a close Trump ally and January 6 co-conspirator, to help end the strike.
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To win, Boeing workers must take the leadership of the strike into their own hands. A rank-and-file strike committee must be organized to throw out the IAM bureaucracy and replace them with a democratically elected leadership, who can take control of the strike fund, quadruple strike pay to at least $800 per week to sustain a real fight.
Additionally, the strike should be expanded with flying pickets sent to nearby factories like the GM Wentzville assembly plant. There is major support for the Boeing workers in every section of the working class. The path to victory lies in taking the offensive and expanding the strike, not passively waiting for the company and the IAM to plot against the rank and file.
17. Despite Trump’s “deals,” confusion reigns over tariffs
Despite the announcement of a series of deals, most notably with the European Union, Japan and South Korea, together with a truce between the US and China until November, the chaos caused by President Trump’s tariff remains and is even increasing.
One of the reasons is that the measures are being imposed under two different pieces of legislation.
18. A socialist perspective for mass student meetings in Australia against the Gaza genocide
A “National Student Referendum on Palestine” will be held at universities across Australia between August 20 and 28. The events have been called by the National Union of Students (NUS) and Students for Palestine, which have presented them as an opportunity for students to register their opposition to the genocide in Gaza and the complicity of the Australian Labor government.
There is no question that such mass opposition exists. As the genocide approaches a horrific conclusion, with Israel’s mass starvation of the Palestinians and plans for their complete displacement from Gaza, protracted hostility has erupted.
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The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the youth wing of the Socialist Equality Party, supports the convening of the university meetings. To proceed as official Special General Meetings, recognized by the university authorities, hundreds of signatures have had to be collected at the various campuses.
But that, together with the mass protests, shows that the issue is not gauging or registering opposition. The issue is how to take that opposition forward, in a political movement and political actions that will halt the genocide.
19. Australian Labor government maintains military exports for Israeli war machine
An article published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last Thursday has further exposed the federal Labor government’s lie that it is not facilitating the export of arms or military goods to Israel as it continues its horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Only days before, Defence Minister Richard Marles repeatedly dodged questions in an interview on the ABC’s “Insiders” program about Australia’s ongoing military exports to Israel. Pressed on the export of F-35 stealth fighter components and armoured steel to Israel, Marles simply stonewalled, repeated the government’s line that “no weapons” were being sold to Israel.
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When it was pointed out that the F-35 components were necessary for the sophisticated war plane, Marles again obfuscated, declaring that Australia was an “F-35 country,” part of international supply chains and would continue to export the parts. Asked about the sale of armoured steel to the major Israeli military manufacturer, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Marles dismissed the question declaring a ban would have no impact.
He claimed that there had been “a lot of misinformation” about the issue but did not elaborate further.
The ability of the Labor government to lie about continuing military exports to Israel, even as it postures as an opponent of Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, depends on the secrecy surrounding government export permits. Last week’s ABC article lifts the lid to provide a glimpse of the extent of the sales of military items to Israel.
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The federal Labor government has politically backed Israel’s genocidal war, continued military exports to Israel, and waged a reactionary campaign to brand opponents of the Zionist regime’s criminal actions as “antisemitic.” Its declaration that it will “recognise” Palestinian statehood at next month’s UN General Assembly is simply a crude and cynical attempt to deflect mass popular outrage and will do nothing to halt Israel’s relentless military operations.
That outrage was graphically expressed in this month’s mass protest of hundreds of thousands across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. However, the Labor government’s determination to continue military sales to Israel makes clear that no amount of pressure—as advocated by the Greens and various pseudo-left groups such as Socialist Alliance—will compel it to end its broader support for the Israeli regime as it routinely massacres civilians.
What is required is the building of a unified movement of the working class in Australia and internationally, independent of the pro-capitalist trade unions, to halt cripple the Israeli war machine through strikes and industrial action.
20. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Workers occupy factories in Buenos Aires and Cordoba provinces in separate actions
Brazil:
Metalworkers in São Paulo stage protest strike
Metalworkers in São Paulo stage protest strike
Canada:
Ontario community college support workers vote to strike
Ontario community college support workers vote to strike
Auto parts maker Titan Tool locks out Windsor workers
United States:
Naperville, Illinois teachers vote overwhelming for strike
Houston hotel workers grant strike authorization
Construction strike brings road projects to a halt in Spokane
Ulaş Ateşçi, a leading member of the Socialist Equality Group in Turkey, speaks at the commemorative event prior to an interview with David North on Security and the Fourth International.
22. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
