Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Israel launches onslaught against Gaza City
The Israeli military has begun its onslaught on Gaza City, currently the only portion of Gaza that remains outside of full-scale occupation by troops of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in a new and even deadlier phase of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The aim of the operation is the total military subjection of the most densely populated section of the Gaza Strip, in preparation for the forced displacement of the population to concentration camps in the south of the enclave, from which the Netanyahu government plans to expel the Palestinians to other countries, including South Sudan.
*****
Conscious of the fact that the ongoing starvation of Gaza and total military occupation of the enclave is a death sentence for the remaining Israeli hostages, Israeli government minister Orit Strock condemned those who put “the value of returning the hostages above the national interest.”
*****
On Wednesday, the United States announced a series of sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court, which has brought war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reemphasizing the Trump administration’s support for the Gaza genocide.
In a statement on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that two ICC judges and two prosecutors were being added to the list of ICC members sanctioned by the Trump administration.
In a statement on X, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz thanked the Trump administration for its sanctions against the ICC, declaring, “This historic step reflects the unbreakable alliance between Israel and the United States.”
Last year, the ICC said it had “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”
2. US government revives McCarthyite bans on socialism, imposes ideological litmus test on immigrants
On August 19, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued new “policy manual” guidance that vastly expands the grounds for denying immigration applications and naturalization. The measure deepens the ideological policing of immigrants, reviving Cold War era exclusions and extending them to any who oppose US imperialism and its crimes.
The guidance instructs immigration officers to conduct a “discretionary analysis” that includes not only an immigrant’s family ties, immigration history and humanitarian concerns but also their political views.
*****
The guidance is aimed squarely at those who advance the perspective advanced by Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution: that the emancipation of the working class requires international socialist revolution.
In The Permanent Revolution (1930), Trotsky wrote:
“The fundamental task of the proletarian party in each country is to connect the struggle of the workers with the struggle of the workers of the entire world.”
In the Transitional Program (1938), he warned:
“Without a socialist revolution … a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.”
Trotsky also insisted on workers’ right to migrate freely, declaring in 1932:
“The workers must demand the abolition of all immigration laws. ... The working class must defend its own interests by demanding full freedom of movement for the workers.”
Each of these principles—internationalism, opposition to the capitalist state, the abolition of borders—falls directly into the categories of “anti-American” thought that the USCIS now polices. To advocate for Trotsky’s program of Permanent Revolution is, in the eyes of US law, to be disqualified from entry or citizenship.
*****
The working class must reject this ideological purge. The struggle for immigrants’ rights, for the freedom of movement and the right of workers to live and labor wherever they choose is inseparable from the fight against imperialism, capitalism and the threat of world war.
The fact that the US government is seeking to outlaw the perspective advanced by Trotsky and the World Socialist Web Site is proof of not only its power but its truth.
3. Trump’s military grip tightens on Washington
What is now taking place in Washington D.C. is an unfolding presidential coup d’état. National Guard troops from six Republican-run states began to deploy on the streets of Washington D.C. Wednesday, while Trump administration officials declared that the US capital could remain under military occupation indefinitely, depending only on the decisions of Trump as “commander-in-chief.”
*****
Much of the National Guard force entering Washington comes from states that once formed the Confederacy. Trump is consciously drawing on the most reactionary traditions in American history. On the very day these troops arrived in the capital, Trump launched a tirade on social media against the Smithsonian Institution for presenting exhibits that, in his view, spent “too much time” describing “how bad slavery was.”
Three of Trump’s principal political thugs, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, greeted National Guard troops inside Union Station on Wednesday. The location was deliberately chosen, only a block from the Capitol building, where the previous Trump-led invasion of Washington culminated in the violent assault on Congress on January 6, 2021.
In a very real sense, the takeover of Washington ordered by Trump on August 11, 2025 is the direct continuation–or rather the resumption–of the coup d’état that Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. This time, however, the action has been carefully planned over the seven months since Trump re-entered the White House, and he relies not on thousands of undisciplined and largely unorganized rioters, but on the armed forces of the capitalist state.
*****
The troop deployment in Washington is following a worked-out design, highlighting the military by stationing uniformed troops and armored vehicles at every location likely to attract out-of-town visitors: the Washington Monument and National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, Capitol Hill and Union Station. This was expanded Wednesday to 10 Metro stations, mainly in the downtown area. The aim is to normalize a visible role for the US military in the US capital, in a sharp break with past practice.
Up to now, neither troops nor police have engaged in mass repression against the population of the city, although there have been scattered clashes in immigrant neighborhoods provoked by the setting up of checkpoints and brutal actions by ICE agents. This is only temporary, however. The logic of Trump’s policies and his visceral hatred of the working class lead inexorably to violence.
Trump’s political coup is assisted by the corporate media, which has downplayed the military-police occupation to an extraordinary extent. The hometown Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the Amazon boss who is one of the world’s richest men, relegated its report on the deployment of National Guard troops from six states to an inside page of its Metro news section, as if it was describing a local water main break and not a major step in the erection of a presidential dictatorship in America.
In a rare exception to the media blackout, David Graham in the Atlantic commented, “Humvees posted at places such as Union Station make the capital look more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than the place you get off the Amtrak. Federal agents appear to have torn down a political sign in a liberal neighborhood and refused to identify themselves or their agencies in confrontations.”
*****
Over the course of just seven months in office, Trump has implemented a systematic plan to establish a fascistic dictatorship. A series of executive orders has laid the groundwork for invoking the Insurrection Act and criminalizing opposition to the Gaza genocide. Federal troops have already been deployed to the US-Mexico border, and then to back up mass anti-immigrant raids in Los Angeles, followed by the grotesque June 14 military parade in Washington D.C., with tanks rolling through the streets of the capital on Trump’s 79th birthday. Now the military-police occupation of the nation’s capital has begun, with plans underway for similar deployments in major cities throughout the country.
The principal factor enabling this drive towards dictatorship is the collaboration of the Democratic Party, which seeks to block any expression of the mass popular opposition to Trump’s ongoing seizure of power, diverting it into the dead end of legal appeals and impotent protests. It is worth noting here that in the same poll that showed D.C. residents opposed Trump’s military takeover, 50 percent felt that Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser had done too little to resist it.
4. Trump eliminates funding for federal agency investigating Clairton Coke Works explosion
One of the federal agencies charged with investigating the August 11 explosion at the Clairton Coke Works that left two workers dead and ten seriously injured is having its funding completely eliminated by the Trump administration.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) was created by Congress in 1998 and tasked with conducting root cause investigations into industrial chemical accidents—particularly at fixed industrial facilities—looking into safety management system failures, equipment failures, human errors and unforeseen chemical reactions.
*****
The Trump administration has completely zeroed out the agency’s budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins October 1, or less than two months from now. The administration claims the cuts are justified because the CSB’s work is being already done by the Environmental Protection Agency. However, the White House is ripping up the work of the EPA as well. Also cut were the entire staff of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, which tests and certifies the respirators worn by coal miners, steelworkers, healthcare workers and many others.
“Closing the CSB will mean more accidents at chemical plants, more explosions and more deaths,” said Beth Rosenberg, a former CSB board member and public health expert, in an interview with Verite.
5. One month after Cleveland Cliffs Dearborn Works layoffs, UAW stages token protest
It has been more than one month since steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs began the layoff of 600 workers at its Dearborn Works, first announced in March as part of a wider program of job destruction that has eliminated more than 2,000 full-time positions in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota. The cuts take place as Trump’s tariff war gathers steam. The company blamed weak demand, financial losses and shifting trade policies for the closures.
The affected plants include: the Steelton Mill, in Steelton, Pennsylvania that closed June 30 eliminating 559 jobs. Another 115 were cut at Conshocken, Pennsylvania during the summer along with 305 in Riverdale, IL around the same time. 255 miners in Hibbing, Minnesota were laid off in May when another 400 miners were idled at the Minorca Mine in Virginia, Minnesota.
Cleveland Cliffs is in the process of restructuring its operations to focus on steel production for the auto plants in line with Trump’s plan for a fortress America as the administration prepares for war against China and other global rivals.
6. Australian state Labor government invoking neo-Nazi march to justify sweeping anti-protest laws
About 100 masked neo-Nazis marched through the central business district of Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 9. Police watched on, allowing the “pop-up protest” to continue, even as a 26-year-old was assaulted by the far-right goons and had to be taken to hospital. No arrests were made.
The members of the neo-Nazi, antisemitic National Socialist Network (NSN) held a banner inscribed, “White Man Fight Back.” The extreme-right group has held several similar marches in recent years, including during the nationalist January 26 holiday Australia Day.
While the numbers involved remain small, and the sentiment among the broader population who know of the NSN’s existence is deep disgust, the extreme-right group’s march highlights the cultivation of a far-right layer who have been emboldened by the rightward shift of all of the political parties and their mouthpieces in the corporate media.
The anti-immigrant xenophobia and nationalist chauvinism presented by the fascistic layers involved in Saturday morning’s march is in line with the policies pursued by governments in Australia, above all led by the Labor Party.
7. Coal barge catches fire in Baltimore Harbor
A CSX coal–carrying bulk carrier exploded near the Port of Baltimore, Monday evening, reigniting concerns over safety and infrastructure vulnerabilities in a critical East Coast hub. Explosions were heard around 6:30 PM Eastern Standard Time when the 751-foot vessel M/V W Sapphire exploded near the site of last year’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
The Key Bridge collapse was caused by the container ship MV Dali losing power and colliding with a bridge support pier. Six maintenance workers, all immigrant laborers, died in the collapse. The disaster exposed the effects of profit-driven cost-cutting and inadequate infrastructure investment. The bridge was not designed to withstand impacts from modern large vessels, and safety upgrades were neglected, leading to this fatal event.
Reports from Monday’s disaster indicated that a hatch blew off on the vessel, leaving damage signs consistent with those of fires and explosions. Fortunately, none of the 23 crew members and two Maryland pilots aboard were harmed.
8. Two firefighters killed in Osaka inferno: A warning of deepening social crisis in Japan
On Monday, August 18, a devastating fire broke out in the bustling Dotonbori district of Osaka, claiming the lives of two firefighters and injuring four others. The blaze, which began at around 9:50 a.m. in a ground-floor shop, quickly spread into two adjoining multi-story structures—one seven stories and the other five—before being brought under control after nine hours of grueling efforts.
The victims, 55-year-old veteran firefighter Takashi Mori and 22-year-old recruit Mitsunari Nagatomo, were members of the Naniwa Fire Station. Both were found trapped on the sixth floor of the seven-story building. They were carried out only to be declared dead in hospital. Their deaths mark the first line-of-duty firefighter fatalities in Japan since 2023. Four other firefighters and a woman in her twenties sustained minor injuries.
The tragedy unfolded in one of Japan’s most vibrant districts. Dotonbori, located in the Minami area of Osaka, is famed for its neon lights, packed arcades, restaurants and bars, drawing millions of visitors annually. Beneath the veneer of glamour and energy, however, it is a densely packed web of aging structures, makeshift renovations and narrow corridors—a tinderbox in which a spark can quickly become an inferno.
*****
Although the cause of the fire is still under investigation, officials confirmed that the two Osaka buildings destroyed in the August 18 blaze had a history of uncorrected fire code violations. A June 2023 inspection found six breaches, including missing emergency exit signage.
Authorities ordered improvements, but four violations remained unresolved. Some areas lacked automatic fire alarms, and mandatory evacuation drills—required to be held at least twice annually—had never been carried out.
*****
The Osaka fire is part of a wider pattern of deteriorating safety across Japanese society. Official statistics show a steady increase in workplace injuries and deaths, particularly among the most vulnerable sections of the working class.
Last year, over 6,000 foreign workers were killed or injured on the job, the 13th consecutive annual increase. Technical intern trainees and specified skilled workers are especially at risk, often forced into dangerous jobs without adequate training or protective measures, and hampered by language barriers. The ruling elite deliberately stokes xenophobia to distract from the extreme exploitation of immigrant workers and to mask the deepening political crisis facing society.
The manufacturing and construction industries are rife with violations. Workers are compelled to labor in unsafe conditions while management and government regulators turn a blind eye. The culture of overwork compounds the danger. Nearly one in ten workers logs more than 80 hours of overtime a month, increasing risks of fatal accidents, strokes and suicides. The notorious phenomenon of karoshi—death by overwork—remains widespread despite decades of official promises to address it.
*****
Disasters like the Osaka fire recur because of the dynamics of Japanese capitalism. Entertainment districts such as Dotonbori are vital profit centers, driving businesses to cut corners with illegal wiring, locked exits and unsafe modifications.
Regulators, prioritizing the profits of politically connected landlords, routinely ignore violations. The state thus functions not to ensure public safety but to defend business interests, leaving firefighters, workers and the public to bear the consequences.
*****
The Osaka fire demonstrates that workers cannot rely on government investigations, regulatory agencies or politicians like Yokoyama, who defend the profit system responsible for such tragedies. Real safety requires a political struggle against capitalism, led by rank-and-file committees independent of the trade unions and the state. These committees must assert control over workplace safety, conduct inspections, demand compliance with fireproofing and evacuation standards, and refuse unsafe work.
The rank-and-file investigation into the death of Stellantis autoworker Ronald Adams Sr. in Michigan earlier this year exemplifies the critical role of such initiatives, exposing unsafe conditions and corporate negligence concealed by management and unions. The same determination is needed in Japan and worldwide.
9. Spain’s neo-fascist Vox party launches anti-Muslim campaign
Spain’s Vox party, the third-largest parliamentary force with 33 seats, has launched a vicious anti-migrant campaign targeting Spain’s 2.5 million Muslims. Exploiting the PSOE-Sumar government’s anti-migrant policies, Vox is reviving the most reactionary traditions of the Spanish ruling class.
Last month, Vox national spokesperson Rocío De Meer demanded the mass deportation of migrants, including naturalised citizens, declaring: “All the millions of people who have recently arrived and have not adapted to our customs and in many cases have contributed to insecurity in our neighborhoods ... will have to return to their countries.”
*****
Islamophobia in Spain has deep historical roots. The expulsion of Muslims and Jews during the Reconquista and the Inquisition in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a cornerstone in the formation of the modern Spanish nation-state, used to justify imperial conquest in the Americas and wars against the Ottoman Empire and North African Muslim states.
This chauvinist tradition was revived under Franco, who was backed by the Catholic Church, mobilised Catholic nationalism against the working class while deploying colonial Moroccan troops to crush revolutionary uprisings during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.
In the 21st century, the ruling class again resorted to Islamophobia, after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, to legitimise imperialist wars in the Middle East, impose police-state measures, and divide workers along religious-ethnic lines. To justify joining in the illegal 2003 US-led war against Iraq, Former Prime Minister José María Aznar infamously declared: “|T]he problem of Spain with Al Qaeda began with the invasion of the Moors.”
*****
Incitement against Muslims, refugees and migrants in Spain is designed to divide the working class and divert explosive anger over falling wages, austerity, and the collapse of social services onto the most vulnerable. Refugees fleeing wars instigated by NATO, many of them from Muslim countries in the Middle East, are being scapegoated for a social crisis rooted in skyrocketing military budgets and the looting of society by the financial oligarchy.
10. Judge hears arguments on legality of British prosecution of Kneecap’s Mo Chara
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (stage name Mo Chara), of the rap trio Kneecap, appeared in Westminster Magistrates Court for the second time today, on charges under the Terrorism Act.
The British government is seeking to prosecute him for picking up a Hezbollah flag thrown on stage during a performance at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town on November 21, 2024. This is the pretext for a blatant attempt to intimidate a powerful voice against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, supported by the UK and all the imperialist governments.
Today’s hearing was for Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring to hear arguments as to whether the prosecution brought the charges in time, within six months from the date of the alleged offense. He will give his decision on September 26.
This long wait, over a month, points to how deeply problematic this case has become for Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Amid outrage over Labour’s arrest of hundreds of peaceful protesters as terrorists, it now faces the possibility of an embarrassing collapse of the prosecution of Ó hAnnaidh.
11. Wet Leg, Juan Wauters and Aesop Rock in their own separate worlds
Wet Leg is a relatively new band that shows promise. Juan Wauters and Aesop Rock have had longer careers and more experience. Yet none of these artists attempts to face the questions of war, fascism or crying inequality on their new releases. Individual factors are surely at work, but deeper social and historical forces also have introduced confusion and encouraged withdrawal and other counterproductive responses. Macklemore, Bob Vylan, Kneecap and other artists are consciously reflecting the gathering opposition to oppression and war in their work. This social movement will not fail to touch other artists, lifting the best of them to new heights.
On August 12, 43 dairy workers at W&W Dairy in Monroe, Wisconsin, walked off the job and launched a strike against anti-immigrant measures imposed by their employer following the company’s acquisition by the Kansas-based Dairy Farmers of America (DFA).
The strikers—nearly all of whom are long-term Hispanic immigrants—are demanding severance after being told to verify their immigration status through E-Verify, a measure that is understood by the workers to have been made with the complicity of the Trump administration’s war against immigrants.
*****
Meanwhile, the workforce at DFA includes a significant portion that is unionized. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is present in over 35 DFA locations, and approximately 2,000 employees work under union contracts at the cooperative’s plants.
The attack on the former W&W Dairy workers is part of the escalating assault on immigrants orchestrated by the Trump White House, DHS and ICE since January. Over the last two years, ICE raids have increased exponentially, with workplace roundups targeting both undocumented and legally present immigrant workers.
Under the Trump administration, ICE has been directed to meet arrest quotas of up to 1,500 per day, carrying out operations outside courthouses, schools and other sites. These policies have resulted in thousands of deportations and direct violations of constitutional rights, with reports of Fourth Amendment abuses during workplace raids and indiscriminate detentions of workers with no criminal records.
The anti-immigrant hysteria has culminated in the widespread construction and expansion of detention facilities across the country, such as the Florida prison camp called Alligator Alcatraz and the planned facility in Indianapolis called Speedway Slammer.
The use of these names is a measure of the inhumane conditions in the facilities. Since October 2024 at least 12 people have died in ICE detention, matching the total for the previous year and putting 2025 on track to set a record for fatalities by year-end.
13. Two South Korean railway workers killed
Two South Korean railway workers were killed Tuesday morning, and four more seriously injured, after being struck by a passenger train. Another worker received reportedly light injuries. The authorities have stated they are investigating the exact cause. However, the railway industry in South Korea is notorious for its dangerous working conditions and regular accidents.
The accident occurred in Cheongdo county, North Gyeongsang Province. The seven workers were inspecting retaining walls near the tracks along the Gyeongbu line following recent heavy rains, when they were struck by a Mugunghwa passenger train traveling at 100 kilometers per hour.
The state-run Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) operates trains on the line and employed one of the workers involved in the accident, while subcontractors specializing in safety employed the other six, including the two killed. The Korail employee was supervising the group’s work. No injuries were reported among the 89 passengers on the train.
Subcontractors are a particularly vulnerable section of the South Korean working class. Many lack job protections, receive lower pay and are often forced into dangerous positions to keep their jobs. Investigators have stated they are looking into whether the six subcontractors were rushed or otherwise forced to do work outside their contracts.
14. The Theory of Permanent Revolution and the Origins of Trotskyism
This lecture was delivered by Christoph Vandreier, the national secretary of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Germany), at the SEP (US) International Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025. It is the first part of a two-part lecture on the Origins of Trotskyism.
15. What is the Permanent Revolution?
As a supplement to Christoph Vandreier's lecture, Chapter 10 of Leon Trotsky’s work “The Permanent Revolution,” written in 1929, is republished.
16. Leon Trotsky: Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World
As a supplement to Christoph Vandreier's lecture, Leon Trotsky’s “Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World,” delivered at the First Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1919, is republished.
17. Ananda Daulagala (1948–2025), a longstanding Trotskyist leader in Sri Lanka
The Socialist Equality Party salutes longstanding Trotskyist revolutionary Ananda Daulagala, a veteran Trotskyist leader of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
*****
Daulagala consistently stressed that the working class is the decisive revolutionary force in capitalist society and that students must turn towards the working class in the struggle against bourgeois rule. Even those who disagreed with the Trotskyist perspective recognized the seriousness of his message. He was unsparing in his criticism of academics who offered false gestures of solidarity with Marxism, and denounced their cowardice.
Comrades recall Daulagala’s political and theoretical contributions in discussions, noting his precision in Marxist analysis. During campaigns, he stressed that the task was not merely to sell newspapers, but to patiently explain the party’s program and perspective and the international political situation to workers and youth, even in the face of hostility. He often cited Lenin’s description of the newspaper Iskra as a “collective propagandist, collective agitator and collective organizer” to underscore the central role of the party press. Daulagala urged young comrades to study English, read Marxist literature widely and engage with the Bulletin published by the Workers League, the predecessor of the SEP in the United States.
*****
Daulagala, who was fluent in English, was in charge of the party’s translation committee until prevented by his illness. After the establishment of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) in 1998, he translated hundreds, if not thousands, of articles into Sinhala, including important documents. He was very frustrated when he lost the use of his hands and fingers due to his chronic illness. Yet, he asked his wife Sriyani to read WSWS articles to him until his very last days.
Sriyani said that although Daulagala rarely showed his affection, he loved deeply. “Beneath his tough exterior, he was a gentle and very lovable person,” she said. She fondly remembered his favorite song of eternal love by the maestro W.D. Amaradeva, which he often murmured to her, saying it had been written and sung for them.
18. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
