Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Democratic condemnation of Trump’s Iran deal exposes bipartisan conspiracy for war
The publication Thursday of the terms of the memorandum of
understanding between the Trump administration and Iran is such a
moment. It has triggered an outpouring of criticism from both the
Democratic and Republican parties on the grounds that the war US
President Donald Trump launched against Iran in February failed to
secure American imperialism’s objectives in dominating the Middle East.
Republican
former Vice President Mike Pence called the deal “appeasement” this
week and demanded that, short of a harsher settlement, “we should let
our Armed Forces finish the job on our terms.”
The Democrats
joined the Republican condemnation of the agreement, criticizing it in
much the same language. Senator Adam Schiff of California called it “a
thorough capitulation,” writing that “Iran gets sanctions relief... and a
$300 billion reconstruction fund.” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
called it “essentially a surrender to Iran.” House Minority Leader
Hakeem Jeffries declared that “Iran is stronger and America is less
safe” as a result of the agreement.
The New York Times,
in an editorial headlined “President Trump Lost This War,” called the
agreement “a humiliating comedown” and named Iran “the strategic winner
of the four-month war.”
Jacobin magazine, the
semi-official publication of the Democratic Socialists of America,
criticized Trump’s deal with Iran in language indistinguishable from
that of the Republicans and the Democratic leadership.
Jacobin’s article,
titled “Donald Trump Has Nothing to Show for His War With Iran,” took
the form of an interview with Andreas Krieg, a professor of “defense
studies” at King’s College London. The article states that Trump “has
ended up in a weaker strategic position than when he started.”
Krieg
told the magazine the war had produced “tactical degradation but
strategic regression.” Iran, he noted, had not surrendered its
enrichment program, its government had not collapsed and “its ability to
close Hormuz has been proven rather than deterred.” It offers neither a
word of condemnation of the war itself nor any call to oppose it.
The Trump administration waged an illegal war of aggression against
Iran, in violation of international law. The war opened with a series of
assassinations, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
and much of the country’s military and political leadership. This act
of murder and perfidy under cover of negotiations met with approval from
both parties. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the time, “I
will not shed a tear for Ali Khamenei,” while Jeffries called Iran “a
bad actor” that “must be aggressively confronted.”
Throughout the
war, the Democrats sought to stifle broad popular opposition to it
through a series of meaningless procedural votes, intended to fail. In
the massive demonstrations of millions of people under the banner of “No
Kings,” Democratic Party organizers worked to deliberately exclude any
reference to the war.
But now that the war has failed to achieve Trump’s objectives, the
Democrats have found their voice, condemning his “capitulation” to Iran.
This is the same party that spent the last year and a half presenting
Trump as a colossus whose social and economic policies could not be
opposed because he had a “mandate” from the electorate.
In reality, the Democrats, who speak for the same ruling class as
Trump, agree with broad sections of Trump’s domestic agenda. Whatever
their rhetoric, they believe, together with Trump, that fundamental
social programs must be slashed to fund the expansion of the military
and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.
It is in defense of
the interests of American imperialism that they are intractable. During
his first term, the Democrats chose to impeach Trump not over his
assault on democratic rights, but, in 2019, for his insufficient
commitment to war with Russia and his withholding of military aid to
Ukraine.
*****
The Democratic response to the agreement makes clear that their claim to
represent any sort of “progressive” opposition to the fascist Trump is a
lie. They are ferocious defenders of American imperialism, and should
they come to power, there would be no fundamental change in foreign
policy.
A world separates the working class from these parties. From the first day of the war, the World Socialist Web Site,
the organ of the International Committee of the Fourth International,
defined the war by its social character, calling it “a criminal war of
aggression by an imperialist power against an oppressed former colony,
aimed at plundering its oil wealth and establishing control of the
Persian Gulf.” The Socialist Equality Party declared in a statement that
it “condemns this war unconditionally and calls on the working class of
every country to oppose it,” insisting that “the main enemy is at home”
and that American workers “have no interest in a war against the people
of Iran.”
2. Artist as a Not Very Important Person
The Christophers is amusing at times. McKellen’s
“pyrotechnics” are entertaining, and Coel, Corden and Gunning do
perfectly well. Soderbergh makes films (he also does the actual
cinematography and editing) more stylish and “knowing” than the norm.
But the film doesn’t, in the end, add up to much. It impresses the critics because they are not difficult to impress.
In other words, it is doubtful that on viewing The Christophers, anyone’s thoughts have been “enriched by something new,” or that new human types have been “engraved upon your heart.”
3 Mississippi cop fires on vehicle in Walmart parking lot, killing 1-year-old child
According to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, officers
from the Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s
Office responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart on US 51 and
encountered two adults and a child leaving the store and entering a
vehicle. The department press release states: “Officers attempted to
stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers,
almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon, and the
vehicle fled the scene.”
The vehicle later reached a hospital,
where the child was pronounced dead and another occupant was listed in
critical condition. A video captured by a bystander from
the front of the Walmart and broadcast by Fox13 News of Memphis shows
officers chasing a vehicle, which then pulls away from them.
The Guardian
reported that Carlos Haynes, the child’s grandfather, described his
grandson as a happy baby and said he was looking forward to watching him
grow. “Someone ended it all before it could even start,” Haynes said.
*****
The state police account has outraged family, friends and
residents because key evidence remains unreleased, while the narrative
of an officer’s life being in danger to justify the shooting is all too
familiar. The same justification is being used by federal authorities to
clear ICE agent Jonathan Ross for murdering Renée Nicole Good during
the mass protests against the brutal treatment of immigrants in
Minneapolis last January. Family members of Kohen Kartier Wiley say the
officer should never have placed the child in harm’s way in the first
place.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has been hired by the
family, wrote on social media that “A 1-year-old child is dead after
police officers in Mississippi opened fire on a vehicle in a crowded
Walmart parking lot in Senatobia.” He added that the child’s mother said
she tried to tell officers there was a baby in the car.
On Tuesday, family members, friends and community supporters gathered
outside the Walmart to protest the killing, and police responded with
tear gas. Reporters at the scene said the gas affected demonstrators and
members of the press, turning the protest into a public confrontation
over the use of force. Community members were not simply mourning; they
were demanding accountability in a case that involved the death of a
child.
Aside from their self-justifying press release, state
police have provided no additional information, and they say the case is
now under investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation
(MBI). MBI said its agents are gathering evidence and reviewing the
circumstances surrounding the shooting, and local officials said the
officer involved has been placed on leave.
*****
Senatobia is a small city in Tate County in northern Mississippi,
about 30 miles south of the Tennessee border and 40 miles south of
Memphis. The area has very low incomes and elevated poverty, and the
local economy is dominated by low-wage work and limited public
resources.
The state of Mississippi remains among the poorest in
the US. ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) research
found that 48 percent of households in the state were either in poverty
or financially strained in 2024.
The Mapping Police Violence website ranks Mississippi as the state
with the 12th highest number of police killings in the US, with 5.4
deaths per 1,000 people and a total of 215 people killed through June 8,
2026.
In 2025, the Police Violence Report said at least 1,201
people were killed by police in the US. Security.org’s 2026 summary put
the 2024 number at 1,202 and said gunshots caused 94 percent of
police-involved deaths in 2025. Police use of firearms remains the
dominant cause of fatal encounters between the public and law
enforcement across the country.
Mississippi also has the highest
rate of firearm mortality of any state in the country. According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health
Statistics, Mississippi was the only state in 2024 with a rate of 28
firearm deaths per 100,000 people.
4. US-Venezuelan forces carry out extrajudicial killing of alleged cartel leader as they bomb informal miners
Late Friday night, President Donald Trump announced on social media
that US Southern Command had carried out a “lethal kinetic strike”
killing Héctor Guerrero Flores—known as “Niño Guerrero” or “El
Innombrable”—the alleged leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The
extrajudicial execution was carried out “at my direction,” Trump
posted, attaching a 10-second video of a structure being struck from the
air. The operation, he said, had been coordinated with Venezuelan
leaders.
In December, Guerrero had been indicted by a federal
grand jury in New York on charges of ordering, directing, and
facilitating acts of terrorism and violence in the United States. He was
never arrested, never charged in a Venezuelan court, and never tried.
The
operation had in fact been underway for days before Trump’s
announcement. On Tuesday, Venezuelan military helicopters were already
conducting attacks over the gold-mining territory of Bolívar state,
controlled by Tren de Aragua.
Residents filmed aircraft overflying
the area, firing bursts of gunfire or dropping troops. Hundreds of
men—informal miners—were seen fleeing from the open-pit mines allegedly
controlled by criminal organizations.
“Bombs and gunfire could be
heard in the jungle,” a neighbor of Las Claritas told Reuters. “There
are mines in those areas. This is bad; you can’t go out.”
Human
rights organization Provea issued a warning: “The Venezuelan Army is
deploying a massive operation in Las Cristinas and at Km 88 in Bolívar
state. We warn of the risk of extrajudicial executions and arbitrary
detentions against the civilian population in the area.”
The men
who fled through that jungle mud were not cartel commanders. They were
informal miners—workers, however entangled the criminal structures may
be in informal mining across Venezuela’s Orinoco Mining Arc, a vast
territory near the borders with Guyana and Brazil.
Tren de
Aragua, it should be noted, has no large-scale involvement in
trafficking cocaine to the United States, according to InSight Crime.
Instead, informal gold mining and local drug trafficking, and the
violence from the conflict between criminal organizations and the state,
have been fueled by the economic desperation that decades of US
sanctions deliberately produced.
The killing of Guerrero is a
dramatic escalation inland of the extrajudicial campaign the Trump
administration has been waging since September in the Caribbean and
eastern Pacific. At least 210 fishermen have now been killed in US
military strikes on small boats, accused of drug smuggling without
evidence, identification, formal charges, or trial.
*****
Six months after US special forces abducted sitting Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, bringing them to the
US to face a rigged trial in New York, the Chavista government led by
Maduro’s former vice president Delcy Rodriguez is jointly operating with
the US military to execute Venezuelans under indictment in US courts.
Now,
into the territory the militaries are attempting to clear, a different
criminal cartel will move: US and Canadian mining corporations with long
histories of corruption, environmental destruction and violent
repression.
*****
The cartels hiding in the jungle are being replaced by gangsters in
Wall Street boardrooms who will manage concessions, extract the gold and
remit the profits abroad while informal miners are pushed off the
deposits they have worked for years.
This is the broader logic of
what has unfolded since January 3, when US forces abducted Maduro. The
Trump administration has seized effective control of Venezuela’s oil
exports. Nearly 100 million barrels of oil, worth an estimated $8
billion, have moved through a system Washington controls with no public
accounting for sales, revenues or expenditures.
The same opaque mechanism has been extended to gold and other mineral
exports. Acting President Rodríguez’s government submits monthly budget
requests for US approval while Washington and private traders manage
the sales, audits, and disbursements. Rodriguez has also renewed ties
with the IMF, hoping for access to billions in credits.
Trump’s
main objective was explicit: to drive out Chinese and Russian economic
and political influence and gain unfettered control over the world’s
largest proven oil reserves—a prize US and British imperialism have
coveted since Standard Oil and Shell divided Venezuela between them in
the 1920s.
*****
The conditions being imposed today recall precisely those that have
historically produced the most explosive working class resistance in
Venezuela and across Latin America.
The austerity and privatizations of the 1980s produced the Caracazo
of 1989—a mass workers’ uprising that shook the foundations of
Venezuelan bourgeois rule. The protest movements that followed were
betrayed and channeled behind the election of Hugo Chávez, whose
bourgeois nationalist program proved structurally incapable of breaking
with imperialism and ultimately handed the country back to Wall Street.
Today’s
mass struggles of the working class require a new leadership that turns
to the lessons drawn by the International Committee of the Fourth
International—the only tendency that has consistently analyzed the
betrayals of Social Democracy, Stalinism, Pabloism and bourgeois
nationalism across the region, and that fights for the revolutionary
unity of the working class across the Americas.
5. “We cannot be contained—the rebellion is real”: Autoworkers welcome nomination of Will Lehman for UAW president
Autoworker, socialist, and UAW presidential candidate Will Lehman
Autoworkers continue to respond with enthusiasm to the nomination of
Mack Trucks worker and socialist Will Lehman to run for United Auto
Workers president. Lehman was nominated Wednesday by two delegates to
the UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit, which concluded on
Thursday.
Lehman issued a statement thanking the delegates from
Florida and Michigan who rose to nominate him and every delegate who
pledged to nominate him but were denied the chance under the rule
limiting nominations to two.
The statement read in part:
I
want to thank every worker who made this nomination possible—every
autoworker, parts worker, academic worker, healthcare worker, casino
worker and retiree who shared this campaign and contributed to it… This
campaign is directed against that apparatus. It is about the fight to
transfer power from the bureaucracy that has dominated this union to the
rank and file—to the workers on the shop floor.
6. Obama library dedication turns presidency of war, Wall Street bailouts into Democratic Camelot
In attendance were former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and
Joe Biden, along with Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Jill Biden. The
presence of Bush, the war criminal responsible for the invasion of Iraq,
who came to power through the theft of the 2000 election, underscored
the fundamental unity of the two parties of American imperialism.
The Democratic Party establishment was represented by figures from
every wing of the party: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President and 2024 presidential
candidate Kamala Harris, Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois
Governor JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and former Chicago
Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Also present was Michigan U.S. Representative
Rashida Tlaib, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who
joined in honoring Obama, the president who continued Bush’s “War on
Terror” and institutionalized drone assassinations of so-called “enemy
combatants,” including US citizens.
The list of foreign
dignitaries included former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, former Chancellor of Germany
Angela Merkel and former Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
Also in attendance were Tom Hanks, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert,
Bono and the Edge of U2, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, Stevie
Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Tems and Eddie Vedder.
The ceremony
lasted more than three hours and combined militarism, celebrity worship
and nationalist pageantry, overlain with identity and racial politics.
Following a benediction, the Illinois National Guard presented the
colors, and Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem. This was followed
by a promotional film narrated by Obama, filled with the hollow slogans
of his 2008 campaign, including “Yes, we can” and calls to “imagine your
impact.”
That Valerie Jarrett, chief executive officer of the Obama
Foundation, delivered the first speech was politically significant.
Jarrett, a longtime Obama associate, is representative of the
reactionary social layer elevated through the Democratic Party and
identity politics: wealthy, corporate-connected, deeply embedded in
Chicago’s political machine and hostile to the working class.
Before
serving as Obama’s senior adviser from 2009 to 2017, Jarrett was CEO of
the Habitat Company, a major Chicago real estate firm that managed
public housing developments, including Grove Parc Plaza, where poor
residents lived in conditions marked by decay, vermin and neglect. Her
career has included leading positions on corporate, financial,
university and transit boards. Less than three weeks after the murder of
George Floyd, amid mass protests against police violence, Jarrett
rejected calls to defund the police and suggested that more money was
needed for law enforcement.
The central political purpose of the
ceremony was expressed in the speeches of Michelle and Barack Obama.
Michelle Obama’s remarks are already being hailed by the media as
“historic.” But like the rest of the event, they were aimed at rewriting
the Obama years as a kind of Garden of Eden, ignoring the social
devastation, war, police violence and corporate plunder that defined the
period.
Michelle Obama praised her husband’s “dazzling
brilliance” and “unshakable moral fiber,” declaring that he had made the
country proud by “rescuing our economy, expanding healthcare, ending a
war, ordering the Bin Laden raid, saving the auto industry, winning a
peace prize, keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing
up for marriage equality, listening to science, and comforting an entire
nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies.”
Every phrase in
this litany is false. “Rescuing our economy” refers to the bailout of
Wall Street following the financial crash of 2008, which was initiated
under Bush and expanded under Obama. Trillions of dollars in loans,
guarantees and cash handouts were funneled to the banks, while millions
of workers lost their homes. Not a single major Wall Street executive
was prosecuted. When measures were proposed to limit executive pay at
bailed-out firms, Obama intervened on behalf of the financial
aristocracy. During the Obama presidency, the number of American billionaires rose from 359 to 565, a 57 percent increase.
“Expanding
healthcare” refers to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a program
modeled on Romneycare that strengthened the domination of the insurance
companies and funneled billions in public subsidies to the private
healthcare industry.
“Ending a war” is perhaps the most grotesque
claim of all. Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan, continued the
occupation of Iraq, oversaw drone assassinations across the Middle East
and Africa, initiated the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria and
backed the US-NATO war in Libya, which destroyed the country and helped
reintroduce open slave markets in North Africa.
The “saving” of
the auto industry meant the use of federal bailout funds to impose a
historic attack on autoworkers. In the 2009 managed bankruptcies of
General Motors and Chrysler, tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed,
plants were closed, new-hires’ wages were cut in half, strikes were
banned for six years and the United Auto Workers bureaucracy was handed a
direct financial stake in the “restructuring” through its control of
the VEBA retiree healthcare trust.
Barack Obama’s own speech was no less reactionary. He preached
“bipartisanship” and the “shared values” of the two parties of big
business and war, declaring that a “sense of duty and honor” was not
Republican or Democratic but “American,” and that every president on
stage had tried to uphold these values. He explicitly included John
McCain and Mitt Romney in this pantheon.
This was the political
essence of the ceremony. Obama presents Trump as an interloper, a
temporary departure from the “arc” of American democracy. In reality,
the fascist Trump embodies the financial oligarchy that rules the US. He
is the product of the very social order Obama rescued after the 2008
financial crash.
Obama’s reference to the United States as an
“undeniable force for good in the world” was the greatest lie of all. In
fact, US imperialism is the undeniable center of global reaction,
responsible for countless wars, occupations, sanctions, coups,
assassinations and, more recently, outright genocide by its Israeli
attack dog in Gaza.
The Obama Presidential Center is a monument to hypocrisy. Its purpose is
to provide the Democratic Party with a usable myth as it seeks to
contain popular hatred of Trump while blocking any independent movement
of the working class.
7. German federal government and states coordinate police, intelligence agencies, and the Bundeswehr in preparation for war
The 225th Interior Ministers’ Conference, which has been meeting in
Hamburg since Wednesday, marks a new stage in the construction of a
German police and military state. Under the slogans of “civil defense capability” and the defense against “hybrid threats,” the federal and
state governments are driving forward the systematic integration of the
police, intelligence agencies, judiciary, economy and Bundeswehr (armed
forces).
For the first time, Federal Defence Minister Boris
Pistorius is taking part in the plenary session of the Interior
Ministers’ Conference (IMK). According to the Hamburg Interior
Authority, provision is being made for the Federal Ministry of Defence
and the Bundeswehr to be permanently integrated into the structures of
the IMK in future. The aim is to build up “military and civil defense capability with equal consistency and speed by 2029.”
This
formulation is of enormous political significance. The IMK, which
traditionally sets guidelines for internal security, is being openly
integrated into military war planning. Pistorius and the military
leadership have repeatedly emphasized that Germany must be placed in a
position by 2029 to wage a comprehensive war against the nuclear power
Russia. What is being sold as the “growing together of external and
internal security” in reality means the further abolition of the
dividing lines between the police, intelligence agencies, military and
civilian administration in order to make Germany “war-ready.”
*****
This development is directly connected to the federal government’s
war and rearmament policy. While NATO and the EU in Brussels discuss new
billions for the war in Ukraine, the rearmament of Europe and the
confrontation with Russia, the Interior Ministers’ Conference in Hamburg
is organizing the domestic political side of the same development: an
apparatus that remains functional in wartime, controls oppositional
sentiment and suppresses social resistance.
This is particularly
clear in the term “hybrid threat.” It is deliberately boundless. It
includes sabotage, espionage and cyberattacks as well as
“disinformation,” “influence operations” and the shaping of public
opinion. In this way, the entire political and media sphere is declared a
security problem. Criticism of NATO, of Germany’s Ukraine policy, of
support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, of the war against Iran or of
social cuts can at any time be defamed as part of a foreign influence
operation.
*****
Involved are intelligence services, federal and state police
authorities, cyber agencies such as the BSI, federal and state criminal
police offices, the Central Customs Authority, the Federal Prosecutor’s
Office, business associations and, depending on the occasion, the
Bundeswehr. This creates a central hub in which intelligence findings,
police measures, economic interests, prosecutorial action and military
security logic are brought together.
*****
The construction of a German police and military state is inseparably
bound up with the return of German militarism. As in the first half of
the 20th century, crisis and war are driving capitalism toward
dictatorship and barbarism. Only an international socialist program that
breaks the power of the banks, corporations and arms capitalists,
dissolves the Bundeswehr, abolishes the intelligence agencies and places
the economy under the democratic control of the working class can stop
this development.
8. Western Balkans Summit: The EU pushes for economic and military alignment
At the EU-Western Balkans summit held on June 5 in Tivat, Montenegro,
the European Union’s leading powers—above all, Germany—pushed for the
fastest possible integration of the Western Balkan states into the EU.The EU is accelerating the incorporation of the Balkans not for
democratic or social reasons. Under the guise of “stability,” “reforms”
and “European perspective,” the region’s states are being brought into
line with Brussels and integrated into European war policy. Under
conditions of the Ukraine war and growing rivalry with Russia, China and
increasingly also the US, the EU is seeking to bind the Balkans more
closely to its economic, military and geopolitical interests.
*****
Behind the formula of “gradual integration” lies a model that
incorporates the candidate states into central EU structures even before
full membership—but without voting rights. Von der Leyen put it
bluntly: Sectors of the internal market were being opened to companies
from the Western Balkans, and in return these countries must carry out
reforms to create “level playing field” conditions for European capital.
This effectively means their geopolitical, economic and military subordination without full political rights.
As early as 2023, the EU had promised up to 6 billion euros for
“reforms and investments” under the so-called Growth Plan. However,
these funds are tied to closer integration into the EU single market,
regional economic cooperation and comprehensive “reforms”—i.e., opening
up markets, privatization, austerity and the subordination of the region
to the interests of European capital.
Summit host Montenegro is
considered a front runner. The country is the most advanced candidate and
aims to become an EU member by 2028. It is already a NATO member and
has introduced the euro. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said his
country, which holds the EU Council presidency in the first half of
2027, would “do everything to promote and accelerate this process.”
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, whose country holds the EU Council
presidency in the second half of 2026, also hoped “to remove all
obstacles so that the remaining negotiation chapters can be closed.”
For the other five states—Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo—negotiations are less advanced.
As past EU enlargements have shown, integration on the terms of the
European powers means a further deterioration in the situation of the
vast majority of the population. These countries are already scarred by
poverty, unemployment and emigration. At the same time, the governments
of the Western Balkan states are politically extremely fragile, enjoy no
popular support for their right-wing policies and are frequently deeply
entangled in corruption and crime.
This combination repeatedly
leads to fierce social protests. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of
people took to the streets in Albania against the government. The
immediate trigger was the approval of several luxury tourism projects on
the island of Sazan in the Karaburun-Sazan Marine National Park and in
the Narta Lagoon, including at Pishë Poro beach near Zvërnec, which
belongs to the Vjosë-Narta Protected Landscape. Beneficiaries of the
project include Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a network of
companies and corrupt Albanian politicians.
In Serbia, nationwide
protests against President Aleksandar Vučić repeatedly take place, and
in Bosnia-Herzegovina thousands of people protested for several days in
the capital Sarajevo in February. The trigger was a tram accident in
which one person was killed. This caused pent-up anger to boil over
about dilapidated infrastructure, a lack of safety checks, and the
corruption and indifference of the political elite.
The
governments, which are under enormous pressure, welcome rapid attachment
to the EU in order to preserve their own privileges and those of the
extremely narrow upper classes. Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama called
for a faster pace in enlargement. Last year he stated his country was
aiming for EU accession by 2030 and described himself as an “EU
fanatic.”
*****
The ruling class in Europe expects integration will bring not only new
markets, raw materials and investment opportunities. At the summit, it
became clear that this “geopolitical investment” is primarily directed
against Russian and Chinese influence in the region.
*****
Although the war against Russia was not officially on the summit
agenda, the issue was omnipresent, also in connection with a possible EU
accession of Ukraine.
Parallel to the Western Balkans summit, the
EU is pushing ahead with Ukraine’s integration. Two days before the
summit, on June 3, the new Hungarian government under Prime Minister
Péter Magyar withdrew its veto against Ukraine’s EU accession. A week
after the summit, on June 12, Council President Costa and Commission
President von der Leyen jointly declared that all member states had
agreed to open the first negotiating cluster with Ukraine and Moldova.
This is a further escalation against the nuclear power Russia.
The
EU has long regarded the Balkans as part of its geopolitical sphere of
influence. The summit was fully in line with the disastrous record of
German and EU policy in the region.
The destruction of Yugoslavia
was driven decisively by Berlin, which sought to revive its historical
sphere of influence in the Balkans after German reunification in 1990.
In 1991, the Kohl government pushed for international legal recognition
of Slovenia’s and Croatia’s secession, while knowingly accepting the
prospect of ethnic civil war.
The 1999 NATO war, in which Germany
participated for the first time since World War II with combat missions
in the Balkans, completed the destruction of Yugoslavia and subjected
the region to the dictates of the IMF and World Bank. Bosnia became a de
facto IMF protectorate. In 2006 and 2008, the EU and the US further
pushed the secession of Montenegro and Kosovo.
*****
The EU and Germany no longer view the Balkan states merely as an energy
and raw materials corridor, a reservoir of cheap labour and an
instrument to repel migrants but increasingly also as a strategic
outpost against Russia and other rival powers.
9. Fiji deaths in custody reignite allegations of state brutality
Two deaths in custody in recent months have reignited allegations of
torture, sexual abuse and fatal violence by Fiji’s police and military
forces. Similar reports involving patterns of brutality by the Pacific
Island country’s security forces have recurred repeatedly over many
years.
In the latest case, the Fiji Police Force has acknowledged
that 12 officers, including members of the Royal Fiji Military Force
(RFMF) were present during the arrest of 32 year-old Sakiasi Ose
Radravu, whose family claims he was severely beaten, resulting in his
death.
The family alleges that on the night of April 23, Radravu was tortured
during a raid at his home in Kinoya, near the capital Suva, by police
and military officers, and beaten within an inch of his life. He died on
June 4.
Police claim that the autopsy report shows the cause of death was “a pre-existing medical condition.” According to Fijivillage,
they later claimed he was under the influence of a substance when he
was taken into custody and his behaviour was “marked by distress,
including screaming.”
Radravu’s aunt, Elizabeth Kabuyawa, told
Radio NZ (RNZ) that the family is seeking a second autopsy due to
concerns about a cover-up. The death certificate lists the main cause of
death as sepsis and complications from pneumonia.
The family says
the period from the arrest to death was sudden, unexplained, and
difficult to accept. Kabuyawa declared: “I think they’re [police] trying
to masquerade it. They’re not even considering that there was an
underlying issue that he’d had from these beatings. My nephew was
sodomised, his head was stomped on, he was beaten almost to his death.”
Radravu’s cousin Buna said the raid was prompted by an accusation
that he had stolen a laptop. After being roused, family members arrived
at Radravu's nearby house to find it surrounded. “We could hear that our
cousin was actually screaming and yelling for his life,” Buna said.
Radravu’s
girlfriend was reportedly in the room as he was being beaten, “[She]
came crying home and came to inform the family of what had happened.
After they had beaten him up, they had taken him up to the [police]
station,” Buna said. The family alleges that his detention was never
recorded, and that police had not issued a warrant for the raid.
*****
Beatings and deaths are not “excesses” by rogue soldiers. They are the
product of a state built on successive military coups, rooted in the
ongoing crises of Fijian capitalism. Sitiveni Rabuka, the current prime
minister, led two coups in 1987. In 2000, an attempted coup and hostage
crisis unfolded, led by George Speight with military backing. Frank
Bainimarama came to power in a coup in 2006 and ruled the country until
2022.
Section 131 of Bainimarama’s 2013 Constitution—which has not been
altered—gives the RFMF commander unrestrained powers to ensure the
“safety and security of the country,” a blunt assertion that the
military ultimately remains in charge. RFMF officers routinely operate
alongside the police and are often appointed as heads of corrections,
police and other senior government roles.
*****
The main target of police and military repression is the working
class. Successive regimes have imposed draconian anti-union laws,
suppressed May Day protests, arrested locked-out and striking workers and trade union officials.
There
remains the real threat of another coup. Bainimarama and ex-police
commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared in court earlier this month,
accused of attempting to incite a mutiny in the armed forces, which they have denied.
The latest police-military crackdowns however prove that nothing fundamental has changed under Rabuka,
despite his posturing as a liberal opponent of Bainimarama and claiming
to undo aspects of his unpopular dictatorial regime. Whatever their
differences, all factions of the ruling elite fear the rising anger in
the working class over skyrocketing inflation and a social crisis that
has worsened since the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran.
About a third of the population lives in poverty. According to the
Fijian Broadcasting Corporation, 34 percent of children aged between
five and 11 are engaged in child labor. Nearly one percent of the
population—9000 people—are HIV positive, a crisis fueled by out-of-control drug use.
Fiji’s
military-backed regimes have been protected by Australia and New
Zealand, who have accommodated themselves to every illegitimate
government. New Zealand’s announcement
in 2019 of an “enhanced partnership” between the NZ and Fiji police
forces was aimed at bolstering the repressive apparatus. Australia last
month signed an upgraded security treaty with Fiji, aimed at integrating it into US-led war plans against China.
The
principal concern of the two local imperialist powers is not democracy
and “human rights,” but stability for investment and the exclusion of
rival powers from the region, particularly China.
10. Sri Lanka: Residents in Colombo housing complex protest dilapidated conditions
Residents of the Sahaspura housing complex at Borella, Colombo, in
Sri Lanka, staged a protest on the morning of June 3, demanding the
immediate repair of elevators that have been out of service for an
extended period.
Gathering in an open area adjacent to the
complex, they displayed placards bearing slogans such as, “Fulfil the
demands of all Sahaspura residents!” “Repair the lifts immediately!”
“Are the officials asleep?” and “People suffer because the elevators are
not working.”
The demonstration reflected growing frustration
among residents over the authorities’ prolonged failure to address a
problem that has severely disrupted the daily lives of hundreds of
working-class and urban poor families living in the high-rise housing
complex. It is not an isolated issue. People have been angry for years
and months over the failure to repair their houses.
Although the
14-storey complex contains 671 units housing more than 20,000 residents,
only one of its six elevators is currently operational. Elderly
residents, people with medical issues and schoolchildren have been
forced to climb multiple floors, sometimes all 14 stories, on foot.
Residents protested after repeated appeals to the authorities were
ignored.
Like successive governments, the current Janatha Vimukthi
Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has broken the
promises it made to residents at election time.
Officials from the
government’s Urban Development Authority (UDA), who arrived at the
protest site, urged residents to end the demonstration, claiming that
all funds required for repairs had already been approved. However, when World Socialist Web Site
reporters went to the area for the second time on Tuesday evening,
people were still impatiently waiting in front of the only working lift.
*****
Sahaspura was the first high-rise housing project built for
low-income people in Colombo, launched by the President Chandrika
Kumaratunga government under the banner of providing better housing for
shanty dwellers. As the WSWS explained at the time, the project’s real
purpose was not to solve the housing crisis but to free up valuable real
estate occupied by poor residents for industrial and commercial
development.
Constructed in 2001–2002 under the World Bank-backed
Sustainable Townships Programme, Sahaspura was managed by Real Estate
Exchange Ltd. (REEL). Company documents openly stated the government’s
objective: “To attract foreign direct investment, it is essential to
provide cheap labour and suitable land areas and infrastructure,
particularly within the city of Colombo.”
The housing units were
not intended to provide decent living conditions. The units range from
335 to 600 square feet and were allocated according to the size of
residents’ former houses. The bathrooms measure only one metre by one
metre, and there are no proper kitchens. Instead, there is only a
concrete slab for placing a gas stove and other items. In effect, the
former shanty dwellers were moved from “horizontal slums” to what can
only be described as “vertical slums.”
Far from providing safe
housing, many apartment complexes have become death traps due to poor
planning, inadequate maintenance, and the absence of basic safety
measures. In February this year, a seven-year-old boy was killed at the
Helamuthu Sevana housing complex in Mutuwal after a section of the
cement ceiling from the building’s seventh floor suddenly collapsed on
him. In November 2024, a fire caused by an electrical leak in an
elevator damaged the Laksanda Sevana apartment complex in Kolonnawa,
disrupting residents’ lives and destroying property. The incident
triggered protests by residents, who accused authorities of neglecting
essential maintenance and safety requirements.
*****
While many people now live in “vertical slums,” hundreds of luxury
condominiums and major tourist hotels were built on the land from which
they had been forcibly removed.
According to the recently
published Sri Lanka Real Estate Market Outlook 2026 by LankaPropertyWeb,
the average monthly net salary of a worker in Colombo is 70,452 rupees
($US210), while the selling price of one square foot of luxury apartment
space in the city centre is 108,442 rupees ($US324).
On June 4,
Deputy Minister of Urban Development Eranga Gunasekara held a media
conference and blamed previous governments for conditions at Sahaspura.
He declared that the apartment complexes had been built “not for humans
but for animals” and had become “hellholes.”
Under the current government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the
so-called Colombo Regeneration Project continues, with plans to
construct 2,000 housing units for “dwellers living in underserved
settlements.” The purpose is the same: to release real estate for
corporations and confine the poor to poorly built complexes.
Gunasekara’s rhetoric was intended to hoodwink people. His JVP/NPP
government is continuing to impose austerity measures dictated by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and placing the burden of the economic
crisis, intensified by the US war on Iran, on working people, throwing
many more into poverty. Public health, education and housing programs
are all being starved.
More than six months after the devastating
Cyclone Ditwah, thousands of families are still living in temporary
shelters. According to UNICEF, the “National Disaster Relief Services
Center (NDRSC) reports that by the end of May 2026, approximately 1,337
people remain displaced in 18 safety centres.” As of mid-April, 150,329
displaced persons were still being housed by family members or in other
accommodation outside formal shelters.
The bitter experiences of
workers and oppressed people demonstrate that the housing crisis, like
all other social problems, cannot be solved through appeals to
capitalist governments or within the capitalist system. Poor residents
must build independent action committees and link up with the working
class to fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government that will
implement socialist policies to secure their social rights.
11. Australia’s Deakin University shelves job cuts to seek union consultation
In
a tactical retreat, management has said that new cuts will be prepared
after consultation processes in which the National Tertiary Education
Union has signaled its readiness to play a central role.
12. New book questions official finding that fascist Brenton Tarrant acted alone in Christchurch massacre
A recently published book by University of Auckland researchers Chris
Wilson and Michal Dziwulski sheds new light on the March 15, 2019
terrorist attack carried out by fascist shooter Brenton Tarrant in
Christchurch, New Zealand.
Motivated by racist hatred of non-white
immigrants and Muslims, Tarrant massacred 51 people and severely
injured dozens more when he opened fire during Friday prayers at the
city’s Al Noor and Linwood mosques. He gunned down defenceless men,
women, and children indiscriminately; the youngest victim was three
years old. Ninety-two children lost a parent in the attack.
He Told Us: How an Australian Committed Far-Right Terrorism in Christchurch, New Zealand
(Allen & Unwin) brings together much of the publicly available
information about Tarrant’s activities in the lead-up to the attack. It
also provides new details about his radicalisation as a right-wing
extremist, based on the authors’ discovery of more than 400 messages
posted by the terrorist on far-right message-boards on the website
4chan.
Most significantly, the book highlights glaring omissions
and flaws in the report of the 2020 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the
attack. They dispute its main findings that Tarrant “was a lone actor”
and that there was “no plausible way he could have been detected except
by chance.”
In fact, Tarrant had spent years communicating with
other far-right extremists and wrote several publicly accessible
statements which made clear that he intended to commit a violent attack
against Muslims in New Zealand. While these statements were anonymous,
he did not go to great lengths to conceal his identity.
*****
He Told Us vindicates the analysis made by the WSWS that the
Royal Commission’s report was a whitewash of the police, intelligence
and other state agencies. At best, these authorities turned a blind eye
to the threat of far-right and anti-Muslim violence. New Zealand’s
intelligence agencies—the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and
Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)—reviewed the
Commission’s report and had the power to veto the inclusion of
information.
The report covered up the role played by successive
New Zealand and Australian governments in creating the environment which
fuelled the growth of the far-right—including both countries’
participation in US-led wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. These illegal
imperialist wars were justified by relentless demonisation of Muslims
by the media and political parties, including Australia’s One Nation and
New Zealand First. Wilson and Dziwulski’s book does not mention these
wars against majority Muslim countries, which would certainly have
influenced Tarrant during his formative years.
*****
An extraordinary level of official secrecy surrounds Tarrant and his
attack. One of the first actions of the NZ state was to ban possession
of Tarrant’s manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement,” which elaborated
his fascist ideology, hailed US President Donald Trump as a symbol of
white nationalism, and laid bare the similarity of Tarrant’s
anti-immigrant and anti-Marxist views to those of “mainstream”
right-wing politicians in Australia and NZ. As the authors of He Told Us
point out, the ban has not prevented the manifesto from being
circulated by far-right extremists internationally, but it has
contributed to suppressing public discussion and analysis of Tarrant’s
views.
*****
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that she would never
speak Tarrant’s name and told the media to restrict reporting on his
statements in the event of a trial. Because Tarrant pleaded guilty he
was never questioned in court about how he planned the attack and
whether there were accomplices.
The Royal Commission’s
hearings—including its solitary interview with Tarrant—were held in
secret. The commissioners permanently suppressed the vast bulk of the
evidence and submissions they received, a total of over 73,500 pages,
including 15,000 pages from the police investigation. Its final report
consists largely of assertions that cannot be checked against the
evidence they are supposedly based on.
*****
The authors of He Told Us provide a scathing critique of the
Royal Commission’s narrow terms of reference, its suppression of
evidence and the gaping holes and contradictions in its report. Yet they
do not offer any explanation for why the Commission proceeded as it
did. They do not call it what it was: not a genuine inquiry but a
cover-up and a whitewash of the state agencies.
The Auckland
University researchers agree with the Commission’s most important
recommendation: that the intelligence agencies must be given more
resources. They state that if the NZSIS, the domestic spy agency, had
been given “double the number of counter-terrorism staff” then it might
have been more inclined to monitor far-right extremism, rather than
focusing mainly on Islamic extremism.
This claim is utterly false.
In actual fact, annual funding for the NZSIS increased dramatically
from $11.5 million in 2000/2001 to $68.6 million in 2017/2018—a more
than sixfold increase, which was justified on the pretext of preventing
Muslim terrorism. For the 2026/2027 financial year the agency will get
$142,196,000.
By the time the Christchurch terrorist attack
occurred, the intelligence agencies in both Australia and New Zealand
had the ability to conduct warrantless mass surveillance of
communications, as did the police.
While Muslims, environmental
groups, anti-war activists and others had all been targets of state
surveillance, the fascist networks in Australia and New Zealand were
allowed to operate without interference from the state. This remains the
case today. In Australia, the National Socialist Network, the rebranded
UPF, led by Sewell, last year led major anti-immigrant demonstrations.
The
explanation is political. The function of the state is to preserve
capitalist rule and prevent the development of a socialist movement in
the working class. The promotion of far-right extremism and fascism
serves the same purpose by dividing the working class and scapegoating
immigrants and other minorities for poverty and social inequality.
Wilson
and Dziwulski’s book briefly discusses the anti-immigrant demagogy
stoked by Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard during the early 2000s
and mentions the rise of the blatantly racist One Nation. But they say
nothing about parallel developments in New Zealand’s political
establishment—including the fact that NZ First, a far-right party which
espoused anti-Muslim and anti-Marxist views similar to those in
Tarrant’s manifesto, was a coalition partner in Jacinda Ardern’s Labour
Party-led government.
In the seven years since the Christchurch
massacre, as the crisis of capitalism has deepened, official politics in
every country has lurched even further to the right. The US-Israeli
genocide in Gaza and their criminal war against Iran are supported by
the Australian Labor government and the National Party-led coalition
government in New Zealand.
*****
The Ardern government exploited the Christchurch terror attack to
boost the intelligence agencies and the state censor’s powers. Ardern
also launched the Christchurch Call to Action, an initiative involving
dozens of governments and major tech companies, including Meta
(Facebook), Microsoft, Amazon, Google and X, to establish tighter
censorship and state surveillance of the internet.
Governments are carrying out a global war on online anonymity.
This has nothing to do with stopping the far-right, which has been
elevated to state power in the US and controls social media companies
like Elon Musk’s X. The aim is to suppress opposition to war and
inequality among ordinary people, and to monitor and stop the spread of
socialist ideas. Most notably, the WSWS has been heavily censored by
Google, Facebook and Twitter/X—all of which support the Christchurch
Call initiative.
Workers and young people must learn the great lessons of history, above
all the Trotskyist movement’s struggle against fascism in the 1930s.
This task cannot be entrusted to capitalist governments, which are the
incubators of the fascist threat. It is necessary to build revolutionary
parties in every country, as sections of the International Committee of
the Fourth International, to lead the working class in a conscious
fight to end capitalism, and in doing so put an end to nationalism, war
and social inequality.
13. United Kingdom: GPs reject government-imposed contract changes, BMA diverts opposition into a “Plan B” for privatization
NHS
Fightback calls on General Practitioners in England to vote NO in the referendum and
reject the BMA’s privatization blueprint for General Practices;
government attacks must be answered by the demand for full funding.
14. Striking
Canadian Pacific-Kansas City rail workers confront strikebreaking
operation backed up by Canada’s anti-worker labour laws
A strike, now well into its third week, by 300 signalmen and
communications workers at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC)
railway has exposed once again the gaping, pro-company loopholes in
labour law that allow employers to subvert and even break legal walkouts
by federally regulated workers in key sectors of the economy.
After
a 96 percent vote in favour of job action, the highly skilled workers,
members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW),
went on strike on May 31 in pursuit of wage increases, expense payments
and measures to improve work-life balance.
But beginning a day
after the workers walked out, strikers began filming instances of scab
contractors illegally performing their work, in flagrant violation of
recent amendments to the Canada Labour Code. Passed in June 2024, the
amendments came into force a year ago. The have been celebrated by the
Canadian trade union bureaucracy as a “solid” piece of anti-scab
legislation shepherded through parliament by their friends in the big
business Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now his
successor, Mark Carney.
15. Dockworker killed in 50-foot fall at Port of Los Angeles
On the afternoon of June 7, experienced hatch foreman Marc Salgado
fell roughly 50 feet from an elevated catwalk aboard the container
vessel C/V Ever Legion, moored at APM Terminals Pier 400 at the Port of Los Angeles.
Salgado
was overseeing the loading and unloading of containers on a 9,604-TEU
vessel operated by Evergreen Marine Corporation, one of the giants of
the global shipping cartel. At approximately 4:45 p.m., Salgado plunged
through an opening in the catwalk’s perimeter and struck a hatch lid
below. Preliminary reports suggest a chain guardrail either parted or
was left unsecured. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
The
International Longshore and Warehouse Union issued a brief bulletin
titled “Tragedy at APMT” the following day, and operations at the port
continued with minimal interruption. Cal/OSHA and the Coast Guard have
opened investigations.
Salgado’s death is the latest preventable
fatality in a list stretching back years across the San Pedro Bay
terminals and across the US, each one the predictable outcome of a
system that subordinates human life to the velocity of container
throughput.
16. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East
Africa
Nigeria:
University academics in Benue State continue strike
Resident doctors in Lagos hold warning strike
Retirees in Lagos protest unpaid pensions
South Africa:
Municipal workers in Germiston continue ten-month strike to demand permanent jobs
Hundreds demonstrate in Durban and Johannesburg over severe housing crisis
Municipal waste-collection workers in Pietermaritzburg walk out over pay grading
Portugal:
Early years and primary school teachers in national strike over low pay, staff shortages and overwork
Romania:
Healthcare workers and teachers strike and demonstrate over new public sector pay laws
Spain:
Doctors in further monthly nationwide stoppage against government’s cost-cutting health reforms
Türkiye:
Teachers face police hostility during protest in Ankara for improved pay and conditions
United Kingdom:
Local government craftworkers’ stoppage at several councils over pay
Strike by rail infrastructure parts manufacturing workers in Scunthorpe over pay
Strike by biomedical scientists at two hospitals over unpaid holiday pay
Hotel staff in Walsall, walk out over pay and union recognition
Middle East
Iraq:
Protests in city of Basra over power outages
Farmers protest over wheat prices
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The
fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an
essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide,
dictatorship and fascism.
