At a Pentagon press conference on Friday morning, Secretary of War
Pete Hegseth made a chilling declaration. Referring to the Strait of
Hormuz—the critical waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil
supply passes, and which Iran has effectively closed since the start of
the war—Hegseth told reporters, “We have a plan for every option here.
We’re working with our interagency partners. That’s not a strait we’re
going to allow to remain contested or with a lack of flow of commercial
goods.”
This statement, delivered with the sneering belligerence
that has characterized Hegseth’s conduct throughout this criminal war,
must be taken as a warning. It can mean only one thing: the Trump
administration is preparing the next and most terrible stage of the
escalation of the war—an invasion with US ground troops to seize control
of Iranian territory along the Strait of Hormuz.
Hegseth’s
statement came alongside a torrent of language that has no precedent in
the public remarks of an American defense secretary. “No quarter, no
mercy for our enemies,” he has declared—not once but repeatedly, as a
kind of slogan for the war. He has vowed to hunt and kill the enemy
“without apology, hesitation, or mercy.” He has derided “stupid rules of
engagement” and sneered at Europeans for “clutching their pearls.” He
has described Iran’s wounded supreme leader, appointed after the murder
of his father Ayatollah Khamenei, as “cowering” underground, adding,
“That’s what rats do.” He has promised “death and destruction from the
sky, all day long.”
This is the language of Nazism. It is the
language of a regime that glories in violence, that regards the lives of
its victims as worthless, and that is preparing the population for
crimes of a still greater magnitude. When the self-styled “Secretary of
War” openly boasts that the war is being waged “without mercy”—a phrase
that, under international humanitarian law, constitutes an incitement to
war crimes—he is not merely describing what has already been done. He
is signaling what is to come.
*****
Workers and young people must understand clearly what is being
prepared. A ground invasion of the Iranian coastline would not be a
limited or contained operation. It would be a protracted and gruesome
bloodbath.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), in an
assessment published on Friday, compared such an operation to the
Gallipoli campaign of 1915—the catastrophic British attempt to force the
Dardanelles by landing troops on Ottoman soil. At Gallipoli, the navy
could not clear the strait, and the army was sent to do what the navy
could not. The result was eight months of slaughter, a quarter of a
million Allied casualties, and a complete withdrawal with nothing
achieved. The defenders, fighting on their own ground, proved impossible
to dislodge.
The institute’s assessment of an equivalent operation at Hormuz is
devastating. It would be “Gallipoli times ten, with the difference that
the Iranians could always pull back to interior lines of defence.” The
Iranian coastline commanding the strait stretches more than 150
kilometers—three times the length of the Gallipoli peninsula—backed by
mountains that offer defensive positions in depth. “There is no
defensible line that US forces could ever secure,” the ASPI wrote.
*****
An American amphibious assault on this coastline would face a
combination of mines beneath, boat attacks from the water, and anti-ship
missiles and drones from the shore. The soldiers who survived the
landing would then face an indefinite ground war—IEDs, guerrilla raids,
drone strikes, artillery from positions deeper inland—against forces
that know every ridge, every road and every tunnel, and that can be
reinforced from a nation of 90 million people.
To hold this
coastline would require tens, or potentially hundreds of thousands of
troops. The casualties—in the initial assault, the ongoing occupation,
and the inevitable expansion of the operation as each “limited”
objective proves insufficient—would be devastating. They would be
measured not in the dozens that have been killed so far, but in the
hundreds, the thousands—on a scale that the American population has not
witnessed since Vietnam.
And these would be only the American casualties. The Iranian death toll,
which is already in the thousands from the air campaign, including at
least 175 children incinerated in a single strike on an elementary
school in Minab, would multiply enormously. Hegseth has told us what to
expect. “No mercy” and “no quarter.” “Death and destruction from the
sky, all day long.”
*****
A ground invasion would set the entire Middle East ablaze and develop
into a global conflict. Israel is already extending the genocide in Gaza
into a bombardment of Lebanon, with hundreds killed and hundreds of
thousands driven from their homes. The European imperialist powers have
sent warships to patrol the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has struck US bases and allied infrastructure across eight
countries. A landing on Iranian soil would trigger intensified ballistic
missile attacks on US bases, expanded Hezbollah strikes on Israel,
Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, and direct strikes on Gulf Arab oil
infrastructure that could drive oil prices to $150 or $200 per barrel
and plunge the world into recession.
And behind all of this lurks
the most terrifying danger of all. The Trump administration has refused
to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. So-called
“tactical” nuclear weapons—or earth-penetrating bombs like the B61-11,
designed for hardened underground targets like Iran’s buried nuclear
facilities—carry yields of tens or hundreds of kilotons, many times the
bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
A president who wages war “without mercy,” whose war secretary boasts
of granting “maximum authorities” to kill, who has shattered every norm
of international law and democratic governance—this president cannot be
presumed to respect the nuclear taboo that has held since 1945.
The
use of nuclear weapons, once unthinkable, has become a real possibility
in the hands of an administration that treats the lives of Iranians and
workers everywhere as worthless and the constraints of law as
contemptible.
*****
The war will not be stopped by the institutions of bourgeois
politics, which are complicit in it. It will be stopped by the organized
resistance of the working class.
The World Socialist Web Site
and the International Committee of the Fourth International issue this
warning and this call: a terrible crime is being prepared. The invasion
of Iran will produce carnage on a scale not seen in a generation. It
must be stopped.
The war’s economic consequences—soaring gas
prices, rising food costs, the diversion of a billion dollars a day from
social needs to the military machine—fall directly on the backs of
working people. The soldiers who will be sent to die on Iranian beaches
are the sons and daughters of the working class.
The connection
between the criminal war abroad and the social crisis at home is not
abstract. The development of the war against Iran into a ground invasion
will entail the subordination of all of American society to war. It
will mean a massive assault on social programs. It will require the
escalation of dictatorship within the United States and the
criminalization of opposition.
*****
The World Socialist Web Site calls on workers to mobilize against the war in your
workplaces, your schools, your communities. Form rank-and-file
committees independent of the trade union bureaucracy, which has
maintained a shameful silence. Link the struggle against war to the
fight for decent wages, healthcare, housing and education—the social
rights that are being sacrificed on the altar of imperialist war. Reject
both parties of American capitalism, which have demonstrated once again
that they serve the interests of the ruling class, not the people.
The
fight against war is the fight against the capitalist system that
produces it. Socialism is not a utopian ideal. It is an existential
necessity.
On Thursday, March 5, light rail services in Sydney’s CBD were suspended
after a fire broke out on the roof of a tram during morning peak hour.
The incident is only the most public in a series of technical failures
that have plagued the light rail network in Australia’s largest city,
highlighting the deterioration of safety and infrastructure under
successive Labor and Liberal-National governments.
The tram halted at the Chalmers Street stop, outside Central,
Sydney’s busiest train station, after staff became aware of the blaze.
Emergency services attended around 8:20 a.m. and light rail operations
did not resume until the afternoon.
Photos and eyewitness accounts
on social media reveal that the vehicle was already on fire before it
left the previous stop, Surry Hills. Reddit user uhmatomy wrote: “I was
there. Big BANG and some pops and flames far bigger than [those in the
above photo] as it left the platform.
“It literally caught on fire seconds before leaving the Surry Hills stop and went down the hill.”
*****
Services were initially suspended between three stops only, before the
entire central Sydney and eastern suburbs’ L2 and L3 lines were stopped
as a precaution “given recent similar events,” private operator Transdev
told Sky News.
These unspecified “recent similar events” were further alluded to by
Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) Divisional President Peter Grech, who
blithely declared it was the third tram fire in a week.
Calling
for an “urgent investigation,” Grech declared: “Without immediate
action, there’s a real risk to commuters and light rail workers. What
happened today raises real concerns about whether the fleet is being
properly maintained.”
The RTBU’s response poses obvious questions:
Why did the two previous incidents (about which no further detail is
forthcoming) not “raise real concerns”? Had this highly public incident
in the heart of Sydney not happened, would the RTBU leadership have said
anything at all about light rail fires? How many more fires and other
safety incidents has the union covered up?
*****
The Sydney light rail network operates under “public–private
partnerships” between the NSW Government and private consortia. Lines
L1, L2 and L3 are operated and maintained by the ALTRAC Light Rail
consortium, which includes Transdev and Alstom. The L4 is run by a
separate consortium.
In Sydney, the light rail, Metro, bus and
ferry services have been handed over for profitable exploitation,
leaving only the heavy rail passenger transport system in public hands.
The decades-long program of privatization, begun in NSW under the Carr
Labor government, has been carried out around Australia by both Labor
and Liberal-National administrations and enforced by the RTBU and other
unions.
Light rail workers and passengers cannot rely on appeals
to the state Labor government, the so-called safety regulators or the
RTBU to deliver a safe and reliable public transport system. These are
the very organizations that have overseen the years of underfunding,
inadequate maintenance and privatization responsible for the dire
conditions that exist today.
New independent fighting organizations and leadership must be built:
Rank-and-file committees run by and for workers. Through these
committees, light rail and other transport workers, together with
broader layers, can take up a fight for staff and passenger safety, as
well as decent wages and conditions. This struggle is inseparable from
the fight against privatization of vital infrastructure, including
transport, hospitals and schools, and against capitalism itself, under
which public services that are essential to daily life are subordinated
to the priorities of profit, not safety or social welfare.
At least 60 Amazon Flex delivery drivers have been detained by ICE
across southeast Michigan, People’s Assembly Detroit is reporting.
One
person from the group has told the WSWS that while full‑scale workplace
raids are not being carried out inside Amazon facilities, drivers are
being pulled over as they arrive for their shifts. On several occasions,
cars loaded with packages have been left in the street after workers
were seized by ICE.
Amazon Flex drivers are gig workers, similar
to Uber and Lyft, who deliver Amazon packages from their private
vehicles. According to data from the Pew Research Center and consulting
firm McKinsey & Company, nearly half of gig workers are immigrants,
although this number is even higher in some cities.
The
Independent Drivers Guild reports that up to 90 percent of gig workers
in New York City are immigrants. It is believed that between 3.5 and 4.5
million immigrants are employed in app-based work such as Uber,
DoorDash, Lyft, GrubHub, Instacart or Amazon Flex.
The seizure of
Flex drivers is a calculated attack on the entire working class, not
just immigrants. Detroit, the historic center of the American car
industry and home to large Arab and Muslim communities, is increasingly
in the crosshairs of Trump’s immigration gestapo. Autoworkers at General
Motors’ Factory Zero in the enclave of Hamtramck were outraged last month when masked ICE began pulling over motorists outside of the factory.
*****
There have been other raids at Amazon facilities nationwide. A local
TV station reported on one case in Pico Rivera, California, where a
driver was chased, thrown to the ground, and detained. NBC reported
federal agents detaining multiple drivers in Washington DC, with
community videos showing agents grabbing drivers off the street while
working. Similar incidents have also been documented in New York.
The New York Times reports
that Amazon managers have received centralized guidance to flag workers
whose parole, TPS, or other documents were affected, giving them a few
days to produce new proof or be suspended and terminated, which
immigrant advocates see as an extension of the Trump administration’s
mass deportation efforts.
Amazon is deeply enmeshed in the
infrastructure of state repression. The Hazel Park raid exposed how
quickly company security collaborates with federal agents, transforming
the workplace into a hunting ground for immigrant workers under the
guise of “exigent circumstances.”
Moreover,
Amazon’s vast surveillance and data systems, from warehouse access
controls to delivery routing algorithms, are directly compatible with
the needs of immigration enforcement. The company’s heavy reliance on
contractors and gig workers, many of them immigrants, provides ICE with a
concentrated pool of vulnerable laborers who can be detained at or near
their jobs with minimal logistical effort and maximum terroristic
impact on the broader workforce.
*****
In Michigan, ICE has intensified operations not only at Amazon
facilities but also in working‑class neighborhoods, schools and daycare
centers, deliberately spreading fear among immigrant families.
Construction workers have been snatched on their way to job sites, as in
the case of a Detroit resident Marty, who was grabbed en route to work
on December 6. He was shipped to North Lake despite valid identification
and family ties.
In recent weeks, there have been multiple
arrests in Ypsilanti, including four individuals seized near schools,
and a brutal snowbank arrest of worker Byron Martinez in Grand Rapids.
Alcides Caceres,
a 23-year-old Detroit worker and business owner, was picked up on
January 8. A Cass Tech alumni and Wayne State University graduate, he is
DACA eligible and has no criminal record. He has been held by ICE ever
since.
Protests continue across Southeast Michigan against these
fascistic attacks. One of the most recent took place on Wednesday
against a proposed ICE “administrative office” in Southfield. On
February 23, an estimated 700-800 people rallied against a proposed
detention center in Romulus.
Hundreds more have protested in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Traverse City,
Ann Arbor, and Detroit, as well as numerous smaller Michigan cities.
Students have walked out across the state, demanding “ICE Out,” including at Cass Tech, Royal Oak, Plymouth-Canton, Birmingham, Community High School-Ann Arbor, the International Technology Academy in Pontiac, and more.
*****
A real fight must be organized by the working class, including
autoworkers, educators, healthcare workers, Amazon workers, postal
workers, technology workers and other sections of the working class. It
is the working class that has the power to halt production and stop the
operations of ICE and Trump’s Gestapo agents.
Workers in the
United Auto Workers and other unions should demand mass meetings in
every local to pass resolutions rejecting any collaboration with ICE
agents, as Amazon did when it opened its doors for two Amazon Flex
workers to be seized in the plant. Workers should prepare strike action
in response to any effort to seize their coworkers, and the unions must
be committed to the defense of workers and youth.
In a powerful 98.3 percent “no” vote, refinery workers in Whiting,
Indiana near Chicago rejected BP’s “last, best and final” offer in
voting Thursday.
More than 94 percent of the more than 800 United
Steelworkers 7-1 members voted, a turnout the union local president
called “unprecedented.”
The contract would have led to 100 fewer
union workers and wider use of contract workers, $8-10 hourly wage cuts,
the closure of the environmental department, attacks on seniority and
implementation of AI with no job protections. Worst of all, the contract
would have lasted 6 years, removing the facility from the national
pattern bargaining timeline and creating a precedent for the companies
to divide and conquer workers one refinery at a time.
Since the
last contract expired on January 31, BP and United Steelworkers Local
7-1 have kept the Midwest's largest refinery operating on 24-hour
rolling contract renewals. A company spokesman said BP would continue to
negotiate.
“It should have been 100 percent!” one BP Whiting
worker told the World Socialist Web Site. Expressing frustration with the USW’s delays in
calling workers out, he added: “I am guessing we will go out soon but I
think that will be forced by lockout rather than a walkout on strike.”
Another BP Whiting worker said: “A strike will show we aren’t taking it
lightly. They want to seriously cut wages, cut jobs, put operations on a
tier and cause more OT. Enough is enough. They are going to treat us
with dignity or they are going have to stop bluffing and be ready for an
all-out war!”
*****
There is enormous support for the Whiting workers’ struggle. But
rejection of the agreement alone is not enough. The resounding 'no” vote
must become the starting point of a broader movement uniting Whiting
workers with the 30,000 refinery workers covered by the USW national
agreement, and the tens of thousands of contractors working in
refineries across the US.
The attack on Whiting is a test case for
the entire industry and its 30,000 USW members. If BP succeeds here,
every oil company will follow the same playbook.
*****
Whiting workers can establish a rank-and-file committee to organize
the struggle, independent of the USW apparatus. This committee should
reach out directly to refinery workers at other plants, share
information about the contract fight and prepare coordinated action to
defend wages, safety and jobs throughout the industry, up to and
including nationwide strike action.
The central task facing
Whiting workers now is uniting across plants, breaking up the isolation
of their struggle by BP and the USW apparatus.
A rank-and-file
committee should establish lines of communication with refinery workers
across the country, as well as with the steelworkers throughout
northwest Indiana and workers across the broader Chicagoland region.
There is clearly widespread sentiment for united struggle, as the
outcome of this fight sets the precedent for steelworkers whose
contracts expire later this year.
Every refinery worker has a
direct stake in defeating BP’s demands. The proposed agreement contains
attacks on a scale without precedent in recent decades.
On Thursday morning, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41‑year‑old naturalized
American citizen originally from Lebanon, rammed his pickup truck
through the double front doors of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield,
Michigan, one of the largest synagogues in the US.
According to law enforcement, Ghazali drove the vehicle an estimated
30-40 feet down an interior hallway. Before coming to a stop, the truck
moved down the main hallway of the building in the direction of several
classrooms where 140 infants and pre-K children were in daycare with 30
teachers and staff on site.
Security staff employed by the
synagogue confronted the attacker almost immediately. Law enforcement
has said that Ghazali was armed with a rifle and he began firing through
the windshield of his vehicle, exchanging gun fire with one of the
guards in the corridor. The guard shot Ghazali and, according to Oakland
County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, “neutralized the threat.” None of the
children, teachers or other staff at Temple Israel were injured.
Police
also reported that shortly after the vehicle hit the building,
something in the truck ignited and set the vehicle ablaze. The building
filled with smoke. A second security guard was apparently struck or
knocked unconscious by the vehicle during the assault.
Firefighters
and police moved in as teachers and staff carried out lockdown
procedures, sheltering children and then escorting them out of the
building once officers declared evacuation routes secure. Law
enforcement later reported that around 30 officers were treated for
smoke inhalation as they cleared the building and responded to the
burning truck.
The FBI and federal agencies assumed control over
the investigation, declaring the incident to be a “targeted act of
violence against the Jewish community.” Authorities searched the vehicle
and surrounding grounds for additional explosives and other devices
before lifting local shelter‑in‑place orders.
According to the FBI, Ghazali was already dead when first responders
were able to reach him as the fire was being extinguished. They said he
died of a self‑inflicted gunshot wound to the head that occurred during
the gunfight with security. Reports also said that investigators
recovered his severely burned body from the truck bed along with
remnants of fireworks materials such as mortar tubes and jugs believed
to contain gasoline. Investigators have not disclosed exactly where or
how Ghazali obtained the rifle or any explosive components. The FBI says
these aspects remain under investigation.
Temple Israel is one of
the largest Jewish congregations in the US and a central institution of
Jewish life in Metro Detroit’s northern suburbs. Its campus includes a
large sanctuary, social halls, offices and an extensive educational wing
that houses a preschool and early childhood learning center serving
local Jewish families.
*****
Multiple reports from the Lebanese authorities, the Lebanese Health
Ministry and US news media confirm that members of Ghazali’s immediate
family were killed days before the West Bloomfield attack in an Israeli
airstrike on Mashgharah. According to these accounts, two of his
brothers—named in some reports as Kassim and Ibrahim—were killed along
with Ibrahim’s children in a strike on their multi‑story family home.
*****
On Thursday afternoon, talking to reporters, Sheriff Bouchard praised
the synagogue’s security staff and early childhood teachers for their
rapid lock down and evacuation, stressing that their actions prevented
mass casualties among the children.
On Friday, Michigan
Governor Gretchen Whitmer appeared with law‑enforcement officials and
hailed the guards as “heroes” who “threw themselves in harm’s way,
engaging the suspect” and “saved lives.” Whitmer and other state leaders
denounced antisemitism and portrayed the incident as an attack on the
Jewish community that required stepped‑up security measures at
synagogues and other religious institutions across Michigan.
The
FBI, for its part, echoed that language and emphasized that it was
handling the case as a violent hate‑motivated attack, with the
Department of Homeland Security focusing on Ghazali’s foreign origin and
the international dimensions of the investigation.
The
political establishment and corporate media are exploiting the West
Bloomfield tragedy to intensify state repression, inflame Islamophobia
and criminalize opposition to the joint US‑Israeli onslaught in the
Middle East.
By focusing narrowly on the attacker’s Lebanese
background and seizing on unproven allegations concerning “terrorist
ties,” officials are seeking to justify ramped‑up surveillance and
policing of Arab, Muslim and immigrant communities, as well as a
clamp-down on protestors against the genocide in Gaza and the expanding
US‑Israeli war in Iran and Lebanon.
*****
Jewish worshipers at Temple Israel and Jewish schoolchildren in West
Bloomfield cannot be held responsible for the crimes of the Israeli
state or US imperialism in the Middle East. At the same time, the
precipitating factor in this horrific incident is the criminal and
murderous assault by the Israeli military in Lebanon, fully supported
and financed by the Trump White House and the both the Democratic and
Republican parties in Congress.
The attack on Temple Israel, a
misguided act of violence by a traumatized individual, is the tragic
outcome of the immense human and social toll of imperialist war. So long
as the US‑Israeli war continues and expands—devastating Gaza, Lebanon,
Iran and the wider Middle East—more such incidents within the United
States are inevitable.
On
Thursday, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 36, a former member of the Virginia
National Guard, carried out an attack against members of the US military
on the Old Dominion University campus in Norfolk, Virginia.
According to reports, Jalloh entered a Reserve Officer Training Corps
(ROTC) class, yelled “Allahu Akbar,” and began firing. Lt. Col. Brandon
Shah, professor of military science and chair of the Army’s ROTC program
at the university, was killed in the shooting, while two other student
military officers were hospitalized with injuries. Jalloh was killed
during the attack after ROTC cadets rushed him, with multiple outlets
reporting that he was stabbed by a cadet as others tackled and subdued
him.
Jalloh was attending online classes at the university. It remains
unclear as of this writing whether he deliberately targeted Shah, who
joined the Army in 2003 and deployed multiple times to Iraq and
Afghanistan as part of the US invasions. Shah logged more than 1,200
flight hours, including over 600 combat hours in Iraq as a helicopter
pilot.
The shooting prompted a massive police response. Classes
for the university’s roughly 24,000 students, nearly 30 percent of whom
are affiliated with the US military, were canceled for the remainder of
Thursday and Friday.
Many questions remain following the shooting, including the role of
the FBI in Jalloh’s earlier case. Prior to Thursday’s attack, Jalloh
served time in federal prison after pleading guilty in October 2016 to
attempting to provide material support to ISIS. The plea resulted from a
roughly five-month FBI sting operation. According to court documents,
Jalloh made contact with someone “connected” to ISIS in early 2016, who
then introduced him to a person who turned out to be an FBI informant.
The
informant later claimed that during discussions Jalloh spoke about
purchasing a weapon that he said he would use in an attack similar to
the 2009 Ford Hood shooting. The informant encouraged Jalloh to send $500 to an FBI-linked account, which he did.
During the proceedings, Jalloh’s attorney, Joseph T. Flood, argued
that his client was not “an initiator” and that it was the informant
who repeatedly pressed him into actions he had declined. “There are
points throughout this where [Jalloh] says no. He gets off the truck.
I’m not going to do that,” Flood said. “CHS1 (Confidential Human Source
1) is pressing him to take part in an operation. He says no.”
After
pleading guilty, Jalloh was sentenced in February 2017 to 11 years in
federal prison. Despite the terrorism conviction, he was released in
December 2024, more than two years early, after completing a
drug-treatment program while incarcerated. Following his release, Jalloh
was placed on supervised release requiring regular reporting to a US
probation officer, restrictions on travel, and a prohibition on
possessing firearms.
Despite being under federal supervision,
Jalloh was able to acquire the rifle used in Thursday’s attack. On
Friday, the FBI, which has already opened a “terrorism” investigation
into the shooting, announced charges against Kenya Chapman for dealing
firearms without a license. Authorities allege that Chapman stole the
rifle and later sold it to Jalloh.
Even as authorities have yet to explain how a man previously
convicted in a terrorism case, released early from federal prison and
placed under supervision, was able to obtain a firearm and carry out the
attack, leading Republican officials have already seized upon the
shooting to promote anti-Muslim agitation and advance legislation
targeting Muslim organizations and broader democratic rights.
*****
The Republican reaction to the Old Dominion shooting follows a series
of similar episodes in recent weeks in which Republican officials and
right-wing commentators have attempted to attribute acts of violence to
“radical Islam” or foreign adversaries, without evidence. After a mass
shooting in Austin, Texas
on March 1 that killed several people, Republicans and conservative
commentators immediately suggested the attack was linked to Islamic
extremism or retaliation connected to the war with Iran. Similar claims
were advanced following an attempted bombing case in New York City
this past Saturday, which Representative Ogles used to post a series of
statements declaring that “Muslims don’t belong in America.”
The
anti-Muslim agitation is not limited to incendiary rhetoric on social
media. Sections of the Republican Party are advancing concrete measures
aimed at criminalizing Muslim organizations and restricting basic
democratic rights.
*****
The combination of inflammatory rhetoric and legislative initiatives
reveals a coordinated effort within sections of the ruling class to
revive forms of political repression that target religious minorities
while establishing precedents that threaten the democratic rights of the
entire working class.
The campaign to exploit the Old Dominion
shooting to demonize Muslims and expand state repression is part of the
ongoing effort of the Trump administration, backed by the financial
oligarchy, to establish dictatorial forms of rule.
The politicians
whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria domestically are the same forces
backing genocidal wars that have devastated millions across the Middle
East and threaten nuclear catastrophe. Both of the big business parties
in the United States continue to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza,
ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, the war against Russia in Ukraine and the
illegal war on Iran.
While some Democratic leaders have begun to
issue occasional criticisms of the most openly racist statements, they
continue to collaborate with Republicans in funding the military and
intelligence apparatus and expanding the powers of the police state. The
defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to either of the two
parties of American capitalism. Both defend a system increasingly
reliant on war abroad and repression at home.
The fight against
religious persecution, censorship and state repression must be taken up
independently by the working class. Workers of all backgrounds and
beliefs have a common interest in defending democratic rights and
opposing attempts by the ruling class to divide the population along
religious and national lines.
The state of Texas carried out the execution of Cedric Allen Ricks on
the evening of Wednesday, March 11, putting him to death by lethal
injection at the Huntsville Unit penitentiary. He was pronounced dead at
6:55 p.m. local time after receiving a dose of the sedative
pentobarbital. Ricks was the second person executed in Texas this year
and the sixth in the United States.
Ricks, 51, had
been on death row since his conviction in 2014 for the killings of
Roxann Sanchez and her eight-year-old son, Anthony Figueroa, in Bedford,
Texas, a suburb in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, in May 2013. His
execution proceeded despite serious, unresolved constitutional
questions surrounding the conduct of his trial, questions that the
courts refused to examine on their merits.
*****
Ricks, in his final statement in the execution chamber, directed his
words not at the court system that had failed him but at the family of
those he had harmed. He addressed seven relatives of his victims
watching through a glass window and told them he was sorry for “taking
Roxann and Anthony away from y’all,” adding that he hoped they could one
day find forgiveness.
*****
The same week Ricks was executed, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted
the sentence of Charles “Sonny” Burton, a 75-year-old man who had been
on death row for more than three decades. Burton had been sentenced to
death for the 1991 shooting death of Doug Battle, a customer killed
during a robbery of an AutoZone store in Talladega. However, Burton was
not even in the building when Battle was shot. Another man, Derrick
DeBruce, pulled the trigger after Burton had already left the store.
DeBruce had also originally been sentenced to death. His sentence was
commuted to life in prison, but he died in 2020 while incarcerated.
Burton
was scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on March 11, just days
after Governor Ivey’s announcement. The victim’s own daughter had
written to the governor urging clemency, asking how it could legally
make sense to execute Burton. Multiple jurors from his 1992 trial also
urged that his life be spared, including one juror who wrote publicly
that she had been wrong to recommend the death penalty, saying she had
not fully understood at the time that Burton was not inside the store
when the murder occurred.
Ivey, a staunch supporter of capital
punishment who has presided over 25 executions as governor, framed her
decision in the narrowest possible terms—not as a rebuke of the death
penalty but as a defense of its consistency. She said she could not
proceed with the execution given the “disparate circumstances” of the
case, and that it would be unjust for one participant in the crime to be
executed while the one who pulled the trigger was not. Ivey’s
commutation was accompanied by an assurance to her pro-death penalty
supporters that Burton would serve life in prison without any
possibility of parole.
*****
That a governor’s last-minute intervention was required to prevent what
even the attorney general’s own office had at one point characterized as
an “arguably unjust” execution only underscores the systemic failures
built into the American capital punishment apparatus. Alabama’s use of
nitrogen gas for executions has already drawn national scrutiny, and the
Burton case drew renewed attention to how the felony murder rule—still
on the books in 27 states—can result in a defendant being executed for a
killing they did not commit and did not intend. It exposes the
essential barbarity of capital punishment itself.
Eleven executions are scheduled for the remainder of 2026: 3 each in
Texas and Tennessee, 2 in Florida, 1 each in Oklahoma and Arizona.
As any film-school sophomore knows, the editorial decision–what to cut,
what to include, is a form of speech in and of itself. The decision to
delete a statement which is not only a declaration of moral sympathy for
suffering Palestinians, but which implies a defense of the
Palestinians’ right to armed resistance against Israel’s genocide,
cannot be believably ascribed to a simple desire for “brevity” or a time
budget. Not in today’s political climate. It is an act of political
censorship, a cowardly, opportunistic political adaptation to a growing
social climate of extreme reaction, which demands that all opponents of
the use of genocide as a tool of imperialist statecraft remain silent,
so that genocide may continue and go unpunished.
With the launch of the USA and Israel’s unprovoked war of imperialist aggression against Iran and Lebanon, the genocide is expanding.
Well-known award-winning actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, on the television daytime talk show The View,
put Chalamet in his place, rejecting his half-apology: “Be careful, boy
… Don’t apologize when you’ve insulted. It doesn’t sound right. … You
can’t say, ‘Oh, this is dumb, no disrespect.’ That’s absolute
disrespect.”
*****
In the days approaching the announcement of the Oscar winners, there
has been some idle speculation as to whether Chalamet’s comments might
backfire, alienating some Academy voters and costing him the Best Actor
Award. In fact, voting on the awards closed on March 5, before his
remarks were widely publicized. In any event, more important issues are
raised.
The performing arts in America, including ballet and
opera, are facing an undeniable and serious crisis, but it is not
because “no one cares,” as Chalamet flippantly observes. There are many
thousands of creative artists and performers who are intensively engaged
with these art forms. There is an audience, and a far greater potential audience. The crisis has to do both with content, not of the art forms themselves, and the state of American social life.
Both ballet and opera are hundreds of years old. They have endured
through the development of new content, which reflects changes in social
life in the final analysis, content that has driven the continuous
development, renewal and transformation of the forms. To the extent that
the art forms have something to say, something to offer that connects
with the living experience of the audience, they will attract a
following.
The World Socialist Web Site has often addressed this cultural crisis, most recently
in connection with the deepening fiscal crisis of the biggest arts
institution in the US, the Metropolitan Opera. As we noted at that time,
“The growing political reaction that has engulfed American society over
the past half-century has taken a devastating toll on culture. The
assault on living standards, the decimation of public education, the
relentless coarsening of public life—all have contributed to a growing
indifference toward the arts.”
The indifference—or active
hostility—comes from the top, from a ruling class that imprints its
values, its priorities, on all of culture. What the oligarchs require is
repression, austerity and war. There is less and less room for
celebrating and developing the cultural conquests represented on the
opera stage and at the ballet. Education that goes beyond the surface
appearance to learn from and develop the cultural heritage of humanity
has been cut to the bone. It is both a wonder, and a testimony to the
potential, that under these circumstances there is still a hunger for
the fine arts and the performing arts.
The first half of the 20th century saw a flowering of many of the art
forms. Opera did not attract audiences of the same size as film or
popular music, of course, but it was still widely celebrated and widely
presented even on prime-time American television. In the past
half-century in particular, however, the growing crisis of the profit
system has created all the conditions for the rapid decline of culture:
the encouragement by turns (or simultaneously) of a bland conformity and
a degraded backwardness, alternating with special effects and “spiced
up” with identity politics.
The elevation of the bottom line as
the determining factor in what gets funded and produced, the
glorification of competition and the encouragement of tribal divisions
over race and gender to obscure the fundamental issues of inequality and
the class struggle—all this is what finds its limited but nevertheless
revealing expression in the comments of Chalamet, who, unfortunately,
seems to enjoy pandering to the lowest common denominator rather than
using his talent to tap into more significant, humane and universal
issues.
The renewal of social struggle will create the conditions
for new content and the development of art forms, including opera and
ballet. Masses of working people will turn to the past conquests of
humanity and will in that way develop these cultural conquests as well.
A deadly HIV epidemic in Fiji is worsening and spreading beyond its
initial outbreak groups, the South Pacific country’s Health Minister Dr
Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu told parliament on March 10.
According to a
report by the UN Development Program (UNDP) in December, the island
nation, with a population of 930,000, has one of the world’s fastest
growing HIV epidemics and is confronted with a major health crisis.
Fiji’s location as a drug-running hub in the southwest Pacific has led
to escalating methamphetamine use, fueling the spread of the disease.
Up to 8,900 Fijians of all ages are living with HIV, according to data
from the NGO agency UNAIDS. Lalabalavu said figures showed Fiji had
recorded 2,003 new diagnoses in 2025, up from 1,583 in 2024. Many more
cases remain invisible and the scale of the crisis is likely much
greater than the official numbers suggest.
*****
A major cause of the epidemic is increasingly rampant methamphetamine
use. While meth flows through Fiji on the way to New Zealand and
Australia, transnational criminal syndicates are targeting Fiji. In
2024, nearly 5 tonnes of the drug, worth $FJ1.6 billion ($US730
million), was discovered in two houses in Nadi. Fiji’s Ministry of
Health reported that of the 1,093 new HIV cases recorded in the first
nine months of 2024, about 20 percent were from intravenous drug use.
Participants
in a UNDP study said their first injection—often with a potentially
contaminated needle/syringe—occurred when trying the drug for the first
time. Youth are particularly at risk of HIV and hepatitis from the
moment they use drugs. Most had low awareness of HIV, and many face
difficulties accessing testing and treatment services.
Unsafe
injecting practices such as “bluetoothing”—where an intravenous user
withdraws their blood after a hit and injects it into a second
person—have become more common. Kalesi Volatabu from Drug Free Fiji told
the BBC last October that it is cheaper: multiple people chip in and
share it among themselves. Syringes are also difficult to obtain with
pharmacies, under police pressure, demanding prescriptions. The UNDP
report highlights “urgent gaps” in access to safe injecting equipment,
HIV prevention and stigma-free care for those who inject drugs.
The entrenchment of HIV starkly exposes the deep social and economic
crisis produced by capitalism and imperialist domination in the Pacific
country. What is being presented by the political establishment and
media as a “drug problem,” often dealt with by repressive measures, is
in reality the product of decades of austerity, social decay and neglect
of basic public health, imposed by corrupt, authoritarian political
regimes.
*****
Fiji’s workers have suffered thousands of lost jobs and fractured
supply chains for food, energy and basic goods. Over the past 15 years,
poverty reduction has completely stalled. Youth unemployment is over 15
percent and nearly 30 percent of the population is trapped below the
national poverty line. The country’s minimum wage is just $FJ5.00
($US2.27) an hour.
Half of all families struggle to put food on
the table, with many in debt, cutting meals and living in overcrowded
homes. The surge in prices has disproportionately hit the working class
and rural poor. Protests and strikes, meanwhile, have frequently been
restricted or banned by the state.
The under-resourced health system is overwhelmed. About 90,000 adults
suffer from diabetes, a poverty-related disease, and in 2019 it was
reported that diabetes-related limb amputations account for 40 percent
of all hospital operations.
Fiji’s financial resources for HIV
programs dropped from FJ$5 million (US$2.1m) in 2011 to FJ$1.2 million
(US$516,540) by 2016, according to figures cited by Radio NZ, mainly due
to a collapse in global aid. The government belatedly issued an HIV
Outbreak Response Plan in January 2025 and appealed for international
help.
*****
The crisis in Fiji is mirrored in other impoverished countries in the
region. UNAIDS reports that Papua New Guinea, with a population of 11
million, recorded an estimated 11,000 new HIV cases in 2024, nearly half
in people aged under 25, including an estimated 2,700 infants. Mothers
were mostly unaware of their HIV status and didn’t receive
antiretroviral therapy, which could have prevented transmission.
Extreme social inequality and the lack of healthcare services are the
outcome of colonial oppression by the Pacific’s imperialist powers,
particularly Australia, New Zealand, France and the US. For over a
century, they have kept the fragile island nations impoverished and
underdeveloped, using their peoples as a source of cheap labour and pushing governments to line up with US-led preparations for war against China.
Washington’s
suspension of the USAID program last year and withdrawal from the World
Health Organization, accompanied by Trump’s brutal tariff policies,
have further escalated the economic and social crisis across the
Pacific. The USAID cancellation hit HIV/AIDS clinics and programs,
nutrition, maternal and child health, and support for civil society organizations and education.
The global results are devastating. The Guardian reported in
December that it is estimated that external health funding assistance in
2025 was between 30 and 40 percent lower than in 2023. UNAIDS Director
Winnie Byanyima told the newspaper: “The complex ecosystem that sustains
HIV services in dozens of low- and middle-income countries was shaken
to its core.” As of 2024, 40.8 million people were known to be living
with HIV globally, and UNAIDS warns that there could be 3.3 million more
new HIV infections by 2030 without decisive preventive action.
The greatest fear of the ruling class is that a movement against war
could develop outside the control of the political establishment. In an
effort to prevent this, Socialist Aotearoa—a middle-class group with
close links to the trade unions—provided a platform at its meeting for
the Labour Party, the Greens and the Council of Trade Unions, with the
aim of channeling anti-war sentiment behind these organizations, none of
which has any fundamental differences with the government’s
pro-imperialist positions.
*****
The role of Socialist Aotearoa in organizing the Auckland event was
to lend the proceedings a “left” veneer, while providing a platform for
the very parties and organizations responsible for militarism and
imperialist war.
Since it was founded in 2008, SA (which is
affiliated with the pseudo-left International Socialist Tendency) has
consistently oriented to and campaigned for capitalist parties. It is
hostile to the fight waged by the Socialist Equality Group for the
independent mobilization of the working class based on a socialist
program.
*****
Like the DSA, the ISO and similar pseudo-left groups, SA is rooted in
layers of the upper middle class that seek a more comfortable and
privileged position for themselves under capitalism—including within the
unions and the political establishment. Its promotion of Māori
nationalist identity politics, and its alliances with Labour and the
Greens, are aimed at obscuring the fundamental class divisions in
society, and blocking any real fight against imperialist war and
austerity.
A genuine anti-war movement will only be built through a
political struggle against all the tendencies represented at Socialist
Aotearoa’s March 11 meeting. The fight against war, social inequality
and authoritarianism requires a conscious break from all factions of the
bourgeoisie and their middle-class props, and the building of a
revolutionary socialist and internationalist leadership in the working
class.
It will also require a rebellion against the trade union
bureaucracy, through the creation of new organizations: rank-and-file
committees controlled by workers themselves.
Pilots’ anger is directed against the Lufthansa executive board under
CEO Carsten Spohr, which has been continually delaying their
long-overdue wage increases since August 2025. The salaries of the
Cityline crews should long since have been raised in three steps of 3.3
percent each, retroactively to February 1, 2024, January 1, 2025 and
January 1, 2026. In total, the Cityline pilots are demanding around 11
percent more pay over the entire term of the agreement, until the end of
2026—a demand that is more than justified given the increased cost of
living during this period, especially in the expensive Rhine-Main and
Munich regions.
The Lufthansa executive board only wants to agree
to the wage increases if the sums are saved elsewhere and has been
stalling the Cityline pilots for months. According to Spohr, any
increase in labour costs had to be offset by productivity gains or
savings in other areas of the collective agreement. This is despite the
fact that Lufthansa has recently been able to record significant profits
again following the coronavirus crisis years.
*****
As the flagship of German business, Lufthansa is attempting to pass
the costs of the fierce global trade war onto the workforce. Via
Lufthansa Technik as an equipment supplier for the Luftwaffe (Air
Force), the corporation is also entangled in the massive German rearmament and war policy.
Employees are to bear the costs of trade war, rearmament and ultimately
war: in the form of continuous social cuts, mass dismissals and an
ever-greater risk to their own lives.
It is more than justified to
take up industrial action against this threat, all the more so as the
pilots’ strike is taking place at the same time as industrial action by
colleagues in Belgium and elsewhere who face the same threats. The
struggle against these social attacks must be waged jointly on an
international basis and linked to the struggle against war. Neither
Vereinigung Cockpit, nor the flight attendants’ union Ufo, and certainly
not Verdi, Lufthansa’s in-house union, are prepared to do this.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), the World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)
propose building independent rank-and-file action committees in every
part of the company with the aim of defending living wages, salaries and
pensions, and stopping the war. Such action committees must be
democratically controlled directly by the workers themselves, and
network across industries and countries. The driving principle must be
that the needs and lives of workers and their families stand higher than
the profits of the corporations.
In the works council elections that took place between 2 and 4 March
at Europe’s only Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin, the IG
Metall union suffered a crushing defeat.
Despite massive efforts
on the part of the IG Metall, and with major media attention, only 31
percent of the workforce voted for the “IG Metall Tesla Workers GFFB”
slate. The union will take only 13 of the total of 37 seats in the new
works council. The remaining 24 seats fall to non-unionised lists. The
most seats, 16, were won by the Tesla-steered “Giga United” list, led by
the current works council chairwoman Michaela Schmitz. The “Polish
Initiative” list, which ran for the first time, received 3 seats.
The
IG Metall had firmly expected to receive over 50 percent of the votes
and thus be able to take over the chairmanship of the works council.
After the 2024 works council election, the IG Metall still formed the
largest group but did not have a majority of the seats.
In the run-up to the works council elections, leading business-friendly media such as finance daily Handelsblatt and leading news weekly Der Spiegel wrote of a “struggle over direction.” Der Spiegel even
spoke of a “culture war in which the libertarian Silicon Valley spirit
clashes with the decades-old co-determination tradition of German
industry.”
These publications jumped to the aid of the IG Metall
because they take the view that uncontrolled class conflicts in large
corporations can be prevented only through the well-established
integration of the trade unions. But the days of “social partnership”
and social compromise belong to history. Across the entire auto
industry, top corporate management has declared war on the workers.
Instead of social partnership, class struggle is now the order of the
day.
*****
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who supports Trump and the
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and who engages in
union-busting in his US factories and constantly violates labour law,
personally interfered in the Tesla works council election in Grünheide
and threatened to freeze investments if the election did not turn out in
his favour.
The scandal at a works council meeting, where Tesla
accused an IG Metall secretary of making a secret recording, was a
transparent provocation. Tellingly, the two sides reached a settlement
before the case reached the labour court.
These undemocratic
attacks on the part of Tesla management must be rejected on principle.
It concerns the right of the workers to elect the representatives of
their choice without threats and blackmail from management.
Had
there been an independent rank-and-file action committee in the plant,
it would have protested against the undemocratic interference in the
election and against the witch-hunt of colleagues on sick leave and
demanded the convening of an extraordinary works meeting. It would have
insisted that management, and, in particular, plant manager André
Thierig, keep out of the election and commit in writing to stopping its
unlawful behavior.
*****
To be blunt: had the IG Metall won a majority on the works council at
Tesla, it would not be a victory for the workforce. Assuming Musk would
agree to a “social partnership,” the IG Metall would eat out of his
hand, establish its hated mafia methods at Tesla, and suppress any
independent resistance.
The IG Metall apparatus acts as an
extended arm of the corporations throughout the entire auto industry.
Tesla workers have noticed this too. They have followed the endless mass
dismissals and wage cuts agreed to and enforced by IG Metall works
council reps. Precisely in large auto corporations—such as VW, Mercedes
and Bosch—where powerful and well-paid IG Metall bureaucrats call the
shots, an ongoing jobs massacre is currently taking place, without any
resistance whatsoever from the IG Metall.
*****
Among the 107 candidates on the IG Metall list, the majority of whom
are workers with a migrant background, there are quite a few who stood
for sincere reasons—out of a lack of alternatives or ignorance of the
long history of betrayal and sell-outs by the IG Metall.
Musk’s
exploitation can only be effectively fought through independent self-organization in rank-and-file action committees, combined with a
socialist perspective. That is the task of the hour.
*****
The national phalanx of government, corporations and trade unions
requires an international response from the working class. Struggles
must not get bogged down at the national level. In the global auto
industry, supply chains and production are intertwined across borders.
There is no such thing as a “German” or “American” car. Musk’s
exploitation can be effectively fought only through independent self-organization in action committees, combined with a socialist
perspective.
Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz‑Canel has publicly confirmed for the
first time that his government is engaged in ongoing talks with the
Trump administration on the genocidal US fuel blockade that is starving
the island.
Speaking from the headquarters of the Communist Party
of Cuba, Díaz‑Canel said the discussions are “aimed at finding
solutions, through dialogue, to the bilateral differences that we have
between the two nations,” and claimed they are being conducted on the
basis of “equality, respect for the political systems of both States,
sovereignty, and self‑determination.”
There was no attempt to
explain how equal footing is possible when, as he admits, “for more than
three months no fuel ship has entered the country.” He added: “We are
working in very adverse conditions, with an immeasurable impact on the
life of all our people.”
*****
The acute energy and social crisis on the island produced by
Washington’s punitive embargo was dramatically escalated after the US
kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, severing a key oil
lifeline, and a subsequent threat of third-country tariffs against other
oil suppliers.
Díaz‑Canel acknowledged that in this period of
“extreme tension” a window has opened for “dialogue.” In reality, this
means negotiations over the terms of Cuba’s capitulation to US
imperialism.
*****
A revealing “gesture” toward Washington was Havana’s announcement
Thursday that it will release 51 prisoners following Vatican mediation, a
move clearly intended as a down payment in the talks.
But, even
more significant is Díaz‑Canel’s declaration on Friday that the regime
is awaiting the arrival of agents from the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation. “We’re waiting for a possible visit of FBI experts to
participate in the clarification and the investigations with personnel
from our Interior Ministry,” he said.
The investigation in
question concerns the February 25 armed speedboat incursion in which 10
Cuban‑Americans, whom Cuba accuses of planning terrorist acts, engaged
in a shootout with border guards one nautical mile off the northern
coast, leaving five assailants dead and the rest wounded and captured.
Díaz‑Canel himself described it as an “armed infiltration financed
from US territory,” but said Havana immediately notified Washington,
which responded with keen “interest” via diplomatic channels. The Trump
administration has openly praised Cuba’s collaboration.
This
constitutes an extraordinary act of political prostration, exposing the
Cuban government’s decades‑long claims to be an implacable opponent of
US imperialism as a fraud. Since the early 1960s, Cuban officials have
denounced terrorist campaigns launched from Florida by CIA‑connected
exile organizations, including the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner and
the 1997 hotel bombings linked to Luis Posada Carriles.
Yet
nearly 20 years have passed since the last confirmed FBI visit to the
island—an early‑2000s trip related to those hotel bombings. Now, under
conditions of a US‑engineered fuel siege, the same agency is being
welcomed back as a “partner” in security.
The outlines of what Washington seeks are clear. Last Sunday, USA Today
cited administration sources stating that Trump is preparing an
economic deal with Cuba. According to the report, “discussions have
included an off‑ramp for President Miguel Díaz‑Canel, the Castro family
remaining on the island and deals on ports, energy and tourism,” though
details remain secret.
In other words, the US ruling class is
exploring how to best restructure Cuban capitalism to secure its
strategic interests: turning the island’s ports, energy infrastructure
and tourism sector over to US corporations while maintaining some layer
of the current ruling elite as local managers. In the bargain, the aim
is to eradicate Russian, Chinese and even European influence on the
island.
*****
The cynicism of Trump’s denunciations of Cuba is staggering. The same
administration that rails against Havana rains down death and chaos
across the globe, from the annihilation of Iran and the bombardment of
Venezuelan and Caribbean fishermen to the deployment of militarized
police and troops against protesters in US cities, where demonstrators
are beaten and killed with impunity.
Trump himself has been
transparent about the predatory nature of his aims. After previously
promising a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, he recently added: “It may be a
friendly takeover; it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t
matter because … they’re down to, as they say, fumes.”
*****
Díaz‑Canel’s admission of talks comes in the context of mounting
discontent at home. Forty‑three days have passed since Trump declared a
“national emergency” targeting Cuba. In the past week, nearly daily
protests have broken out among university students in Havana and in
several working class neighborhoods over blackouts and suspended
classes, as well as the lack of medicines and basic foodstuffs.
A young worker in Cuba recently told the WSWS:
The
protests are not as many nor as big as the media says, and they are
concentrated in the capital (at least on this occasion I haven’t heard
of anything else). No, they are not right‑wing groups or manipulated. I
think there have been very few of those and not recently.
The only
concrete protest has been that of university students—a peaceful sit‑in
on the steps to show their discontent with a critical educational
situation. There were not many; people are quite afraid to protest after
the political prisoners of July 11. The rest are neighborhoods that
have spent many hours without electricity, going hungry, without water,
with the little food they have spoiling without refrigeration. It’s the
most spontaneous thing you can imagine. They are just people who can’t
take it anymore; the police always contain them quickly.
The
Cuban government has responded to these small mobilizations with a
large deployment of security agents in uniform and plainclothes as
intimidation.
The recognition of talks between Havana and
Washington reflects the fact that neither side wants a genuine popular
upsurge on an island just 90 miles from the US coast that could
destabilize their plans to restructure Cuban capitalism in the interests
of finance capital.
These developments confirm the perspective
of the International Committee of the Fourth International: the
Castroite regime represents not a “deformed workers state” or
“socialism” but a radical variant of bourgeois nationalism. Confronted
with Washington’s intransigent hostility to even the most minimal
reforms, it was driven to nationalize industry and turned to the Moscow
Stalinist bureaucracy for support, subordinating itself to its
perspective of “peaceful coexistence” with US imperialism.
The Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism and dissolution
of the Soviet Union severed the island’s main economic lifeline. This
was only partially offset by Venezuela’s supply of cheap oil, which now
too has been cut off, tightening Washington’s longstanding blockade to
the point of economic strangulation.
Cuba’s Castroite leadership
has sought to maintain its rule by courting foreign capitalist
investment, encouraging the development of a private sector and always
seeking an accommodation with US imperialism. These policies have gone
hand-in-hand with the exclusion and repression of independent working
class political activity in the name of national unity behind the state
and a rejection of any revolutionary appeal to the working class in the
US and globally.
The working class in the US and internationally must defend Cuba against
US imperialism, but this does not mean subordination to the policies of
the bourgeois nationalist regime in Havana. The way forward lies in the
building of a revolutionary socialist movement among Cuban workers and
youth—a section of the International Committee of the Fourth
International—that fights to link consciously with the struggles of
workers across the Americas and the world.
Peru is reeling from an intense wave of heat, torrential rains,
landslides and river floods that have already claimed 68 lives and
affected nearly 200,000 people in barely three months. While families
dig through mud and debris for survivors, the country’s Congress debates
anything but the crisis. The disaster has exposed once again how a
corrupt ruling oligarchy and its political representatives are unable
and unwilling to protect the lives and welfare of the masses of Peruvian
working people.
The capital, Lima, is enduring an unprecedented
heatwave. February brought 18 straight days of record‑breaking
temperatures, soaring above 34.5 °C (94 °F) — a full seven degrees above
normal, according to the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service
(SENAMHI). Streets melted in the sun, while thousands in Peru’s interior
faced flash floods and mountain avalanches.
The phenomenon
fueling this destruction is “El Niño Costero 2026,” a recurring
warm‑water current originating near Ecuador. Fishermen named it El Niño
centuries ago because it appears around Christmas — a nod to the
Christ Child. But this year’s version, scientists warn, is intensified
by global warming, turning what was once a cyclical weather pattern into
a climate emergency.
*****
After decades of warnings, there is still no comprehensive emergency
management plan. Flood defenses, early‑warning systems and adequate
urban drainage remain unfinished or nonexistent.
Observers say the
real reason is political: at least 60 percent of Peru’s lawmakers are
currently under criminal investigation for corruption,
influence‑peddling or document forgery. “Coastal El Niño 2026,” in
effect, strikes a country whose government has spent more energy
defending corrupt politicians than building its future.
*****
From late 2025 through February 2026, 68 people have died. Victims
include a school principal drowned when his boat capsized on the
Picha River, and a national‑police officer swept away while trying to
rescue a stranded dog on the Rímac River. On February 22, a
search‑and‑rescue helicopter crashed in Chala (Arequipa), killing
all 15 aboard.
Damage assessments are staggering: nearly
1,000 homes destroyed, more than 5,000 made uninhabitable,
6,000 hectares of farmland lost. Economists estimate total costs at
291 million soles (roughly $US 84 million).
Meanwhile, inequality
has deepened. Peru’s business and banking elite rely on private
hospitals and schools — paying up to US $2,000 a month for each
child — while public services for workers and small farmers crumble. The
poor pay the price of elite misrule in both health and housing.
Lima’s
minimal rainfall led successive governments to ignore the need for
proper sewage and drainage systems, not just in the capital but across
the coastal region. When the rains arrived, streets turned to rivers and
towns into lakes.
The floods have also sparked disease outbreaks,
as stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and bacteria. With no effective
containment plans, the government bears direct responsibility for the
mounting death toll.
*****
Urban planning failures have compounded the crisis. Housing
developments expand haphazardly onto swamp lands and dry riverbeds,
while corruption stalls rebuilding efforts. Much of the nation’s
infrastructure is simply too old or poorly built to withstand the
onslaught of a changing climate.
“The problem isn’t nature,” says one Lima engineer quoted by local media. “It’s negligence.”
Experts
warn that a future “super El Niño” could eclipse even this year’s
devastation, fueled by rising ocean temperatures, denser populations,
and decaying public works.
For now, Peru’s response remains
reactive, not preventive — sending aid only after rivers overflow. The
cost, human and economic, continues to mount.
While Lima and Callao are gripped by rising violence from extortion
gangs, much of Peru faces a fight against the forces of nature — and the
apathy of those in power. Billions of soles promised for disaster
prevention have yet to materialize on the ground.
Each new
emergency exposes the same vicious circle: corruption breeds
incompetence, incompetence breeds tragedy, and tragedy becomes
normalized.
Until that cycle is broken by a revolutionary movement
from below, every new “El Niño” will find the same old
Peru — unprepared and riven by social inequality, with the working
population paying for the criminality and indifference of the capitalist
ruling class and its imperialist patrons.
Labour government Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has launched a
sweeping attack on the rights of asylum seekers in the UK, implementing
arguably the most severe curtailment of asylum protections since the
Second World War.
Until now, asylum seekers whose claims were
accepted were granted five years of protection—a limit imposed by Tony
Blair’s government. From March, adults and accompanied children claiming
asylum will receive only 30 months, after which their cases will be
reviewed. Deportation will be enforced if their situation in the country
of origin is deemed “safe” at review.
The change is designed to throw vulnerable people into permanent
insecurity and to provide repeated opportunities for their removal. The
president of the Law Society of England and Wales, Mark Evans, noted
that “The changes stand in tension with article 34 of the refugee
convention, under which the UK has agreed to facilitate as far as
possible the assimilation and naturalization of refugees.”
Mahmood coupled the announcement with a pilot scheme offering 150
families whose claims had been rejected up to £40,000 to agree to
voluntary deportation, giving them seven days to respond. Mahmood’s
bottom line was that £40,000 was cheap compared with the annual cost of
keeping a family of three in an asylum hostel—£158,000.
Failure to
accept the offer will result in enforced removal. According to the
Guardian, a new Home Office consultation document, “Family Returns:
Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns,” states that
children may be handcuffed during deportation “to overcome
non-compliance.”
*****
In another major attack, as of March 5, financial and accommodation
support for asylum seekers was made discretionary. Those with a prison
sentence over 12 months, those working—usually in the most poorly paid
and exploited sectors—or those deemed to have sufficient resources are
excluded from statutory support.
Mahmood’s measures also include restrictions on study visas—targeting
applicants from conflict-ridden or impoverished countries such as
Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan—alongside new constraints for
visitors from Nicaragua and St Lucia.
In a speech on March 5 at
the Institute for Public Policy Research, Mahmood described her
proposals as “some of the most significant reforms to migration—both
legal and asylum—in a generation.” Her remarks made clear that Labour
will continue moving sharply to the right, despite its recent
by-election humiliation by the Greens—who stood on a pro-immigration
platform, opposing the demonization of asylum seekers—in the Gorton and
Denton by-election.
*****
Labour’s policy changes were timed to coincide with Mahmood’s visit
to Denmark, which is governed by a right-wing administration led by
Social Democrats Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that has pioneered a
highly restrictive asylum system.
In Copenhagen, Mahmood toured
the Center Sandholm, the largest initial detention center for new asylum
seekers where they are first registered with police when arriving in
Denmark. Also toured was the Sjælsmark returns center, a former military
barracks housing rejected asylum seekers under strict curfews, with
obligations to clean and maintain their living spaces—on pain of fines,
imprisonment, or deportation. On paper, residents may leave during the
day, but surveillance, fences, and a single exit effectively confine
them.
*****
The pro-Labour Guardian published a puff piece headlined
“Mahmood’s Denmark visit aims to hammer home tough line on immigration.”
Speaking to the newspaper, Mahmood said, “There are people who are
racist, who do just hate everybody that’s not white and different to
them. Those people are not legitimate in this debate.” But everything
that came out of her mouth in the interview legitimized the far-right
scapegoating of immigrants and asylum seekers.
Mahmood declared,
“There are many more people who are frustrated with the broken system,
who feel a tremendous amount of resentment because they can see their
communities under pressure. Public services are under pressure. People
break the rules and they stay in this country. We’re paying for people
who’ve got no right to be in this country. Billions of pounds are spent
on a system that is fundamentally broken. That resentment is real, and
it does have a real-life impact … The job of responsible politicians is
to recognize human nature and resentment and to say: ‘I don’t really
want that to turn into something worse.’”
*****
Labour’s repressive migration policies are designed not only to
appeal to the right. They are aimed at cutting billions from the cost of
housing and maintaining asylum seekers—money to be made available to
the Ministry of Defense, with the government set to roll out proposals
for increasing military spending by tens of billions of pounds over the
next decade.
A filthy Home Office news piece was published
alongside Mahmood’s proposals, headlined “Asylum handouts and
accommodation removed for illegal migrants abusing Britain’s
generosity.”
The government boasted that it had “already reduced
the number of migrants in asylum hotels by 19% in the past year (to the
end of December 2025), and overall asylum support costs by 15% in the
last financial year (to the end of March 2025). Tougher rules like those
set out could help reduce this even further and lead to greater savings
for the taxpayer.”
Mahmood’s attacks are further proof of
European social democrats normalizing anti-migrant policies
traditionally associated with the-far right. They confirm the World Socialist Web Site'sassessment made last May,
even before Labour ministers rushed to legitimize the “resentment” of
far-right thugs besieging asylum hotels, that “Shorn of its name,
conjuring images of a long-abandoned connection to reformism, the Labour
government is a far-right formation.”
Britain’s trade unions have issued pro-forma statements denouncing
the war on Iran. But these are intended to foreclose any organized opposition to the war, not prepare it.
A statement has been signed
by 18 general secretaries and union leaders, including Unite’s Sharon
Graham and Unison’s Andrea Egan, who both head unions with memberships
of over one million. Other signatories include Dave Ward of the
Communication Workers Union, Mick Whelan of the ASLEF train drivers
union, Eddie Dempsey of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union and
Jo Grady of the University and College Union—condemns “an illegal war
on Iran.” It adds, “We oppose any attacks on civilians and all unlawful
wars,” warning that regional instability and surging oil prices “will
hurt working people everywhere.”
But having identified the lawlessness of the war and the costs imposed
on workers by the political and corporate criminals responsible, the
message delivered by the trade union leaders to the workers they claim
to represent can be summed up in two words: “Do nothing.”
*****
Appeals to the government to work for a diplomatic solution are
maintained even as it has made clear its commitment to the US-led war,
making UK air bases available for American aircraft and deploying
British aircraft to protect US bases, as well moving the destroyer HMS Dragon to the region.
Leaks from National Security Council meetings show
the Labour cabinet had more than two weeks’ notice of the US-Israeli
attack and discussed with Washington how Britain would assist—behind the
backs of the population.
The Labour government justifies its role
in the illegal war by repeating the lies that Britain is acting in a
“defensive” capacity, that Iran posed an imminent security threat to the
UK, and that it had to be stopped from developing a nuclear weapon.
The
trade union bureaucracy’s appeals for diplomacy and de-escalation are a
smokescreen to justify their refusal to mobilize their members. This
was confirmed by their boycott of the first national anti-war demonstration in London held on March 7—organized by the Palestine Coalition eight days into the all-out assault on Iran.
The
sole exception was TSSA General Secretary Maryam Eslamdoust, who
addressed the rally stating: “This past week, I joined most other
British trade union leaders to oppose this illegal war on Iran. And I
will work with them to ensure that the United Kingdom does not become a
participant in this war”.
It is a participant in the war, and any suggestion otherwise only repeats Starmer’s lies.
*****
The trade union bureaucracy is reading from the same
script—invocations of international law and appeals to Starmer’s Labour
Party—used to justify its inaction during the two-and-a-half-year
genocide waged against the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Stop the War
Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign provided platforms for RMT
leader Eddie Dempsey to pose as a “friend of the Palestinians” even as
he did nothing to mobilise opposition among maritime and rail workers.
He justified the dispatch of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary as part of the
military task force supporting Israel’s siege of Gaza as a
“humanitarian” mission.
Sharon Graham, leader of Unite, conducted a
witch-hunt against members demanding action to halt the supply of
British-manufactured weapons and parts to Israel, using claims she was
defending manufacturing jobs as a screen for protecting the interests of
war profiteers.
Graham and the TUC have meanwhile promoted Britain’s role in NATO’s
proxy war against Russia by invoking a “rules-based order” Britain and
its allies have torn to shreds in the carve-up of the Middle East.
The
TUC uses pacifist motions to deflect anti-war sentiment while
supporting militarism in practice. At last year’s conference a
resolution was narrowly passed declaring “welfare and wages, not weapons
and war” and for the redirection of funding into public services and
infrastructure.
*****
While Graham promotes “defense jobs”, the billions spent on this
rearmament will be stripped from social programs and the National
Health Service. Union calls to “buy British” contribute to
race-to-the-bottom economic protectionism and trade war at the expense
of workers in every country.
*****
The pseudo-left cheerleaders of the union bureaucracy who claim it
can be pressured to oppose war have lauded the two statements on Iran.
The
Socialist Party (SP) advised, referring to the May elections, “The
trade union leaders could use their authority most effectively against
British support for more war by calling their members to come forward as
anti-war and anti-austerity candidates in those elections.”
Aside
from the question of what would be left of Iran by then, the union
bureaucracy has no intention of supporting a challenge to its partner
Labour government—as the SP well knows.
The Socialist Workers
Party (SWP) hailed the March 1 statement of general secretaries without
reservation, presenting it as kick-starting a week of protests
nationally. Covering for the lack of any call to action, the SWP pointed
to a motion circulated by the MENA Solidarity Network inviting union
branches to pass resolutions against the war.
This cited general
strikes in Italy and Greece over Gaza as an example of how unions can
“disrupt the war machine”. But these actions, initiated outside the
leaderships of the main unions and still strictly limited, only
underscored the necessity of a rank-and-file movement which breaks
totally with the union bureaucracy.
The Revolutionary Communist
Party concluded a piece criticizing the union leaders’ “squeak of
opposition” with the wishful line, “If the trade unions want to maintain
any authority and relevancy in the coming struggles, they must
rediscover the militant traditions that built them up in the first
place, and fight the class war to a finish.”
In fact, a class
struggle against war can only be waged by workers in opposition to the
apparatus of the trade unions integrated into the state and major
corporations. This requires the formation of rank-and-file networks
aimed at deploying workers’ collective powers and resources against a
ruling class waging wars across the globe and on living standards and
democratic rights at home.
Such a movement must reject appeals to
the Labour Party—or to its left apologists whose pacifist rhetoric
conceals the predatory interests of British imperialism—reject
nationalism, and turn instead to its fellow workers in Iran, the US and
elsewhere. Above all, it must take up a socialist program, recognizing that the drive to war is rooted in the capitalist system and can be
ended only through its overthrow by the international working class.
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.
