San Diego, California is yet another flashpoint in the escalating crisis
of public education in the United States. The San Diego Unified School
District (SDUSD) announced a $47 million budget deficit for the upcoming
school year, triggering threats of sweeping layoffs and program cuts.
Last week, despite widespread public outcry, the district voted to move
forward with the elimination of 221 classified positions, including bus
drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and special education
aides—workers essential to the daily functioning of schools.
*****
The anger and backlash against the cuts were on full display at a
recent San Diego Unified school board meeting, attended by educators and
community members, many workers spoke out against the harm the cuts and
layoffs will have. One school worker said, “I read braille at my
school, who’s going to cover my job when it gets cut?” Another pleaded,
“You are creating an unsafe environment with these cuts,” while one
worker told the board, “If anything, you should be hiring more
classified staff.”
One speaker pointed out how the cuts were not
announced until the previous Friday with panic setting in as workers did
not have a full list of names until the following week. Another worker
told the board, “We are not items on a spreadsheet, but faces at your
school. These 221 positions are being eliminated but the work is still
there.”
*****
District officials have sought to frame the deficit as an unfortunate
but unavoidable financial problem. Superintendent Fabi Bagula cited the
underfunding of special education, stating that the district spends
more than $400 million annually on services while receiving only $125
million in state, federal and local funding, leaving the remainder to be
drawn from general funds.
But the timing of these layoffs is
highly suspect, as just last month educators in San Diego were preparing
for what would have been the district’s first strike in nearly 30
years. The planned action centered on chronic understaffing in special
education and deteriorating working conditions.
Teachers were
prepared to walk out, but then, at the eleventh hour, the strike was
called off by the San Diego Education Association (SDEA). The
cancellation was announced by SDEA without a finalized, ratified
contract and without resolving the structural funding crisis. Union
officials declared that they had secured commitments to “address”
special education staffing and educators were told to stand down.
A
little over two weeks later, the district announced layoffs of more
than 200 classified staff—cuts projected to save roughly $19 million
toward the $47 million shortfall. Preliminary layoff notices are being
sent to roughly 200 workers, with dozens expected to lose their jobs
outright.
*****
San Diego’s education crisis reflects a nationwide pattern. Across
the country, school districts are invoking expired federal relief funds,
declining enrollment and “structural deficits” to justify cuts. Yet at
the same time, trillions continue to flow toward military expansion,
corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthy.
The attack on
public education has intensified under the second administration of
Donald Trump. Federal education funding has been frozen or slashed,
grants eliminated and teacher preparation programs undermined. Policies
favoring charter expansion and privatization continue to funnel public
funds into private hands.
The political establishment insists
there is “no money” for bus drivers, aides, counselors and teachers. Yet
there is unlimited money to start a war with Iran and massacre school
children there, while funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to kill
Americans and deport immigrant families continues to flow uninterrupted
here at home.
In fact, the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet at
$80 million could cover SDUSD’s $47 million deficit and still have over
$30 million left over. According to the Center for American Progress the
opening days of the recent US war on Iran has cost at least $5 billion,
and if it lasts for several more months as President Trump has publicly
predicted, the economic costs will escalate into the hundreds of
billions and trillions. As for DHS and ICE, the deportation machine has
received about $75 billion since 2025 to build concentration camps, up
from roughly $10 billion every year.
California itself is home to immense wealth, with more billionaires
and multimillionaires residing in the state than anywhere else in the
US. Yet districts are told to tighten their belts while housing costs
soar and working class families are pushed out of cities like San Diego.
Budget shortfalls are politically produced. Decades of tax cuts for the
wealthy, charter profiteering and military expansion have hollowed out
public coffers.
The decisive issue, however, is not merely the
district’s fiscal maneuvering. It is the role played by the trade union
apparatus in disarming educators.
Rather than broadening the
struggle—linking teachers, classified workers, parents and other
districts facing similar cuts—the union leadership narrowed the fight to
limited demands and then shut it down. Now, classified workers—many of
whom earn far less than credentialed teachers—face job loss, increased
workloads and destabilization. The union leadership has confined
opposition to board meetings, appeals and lobbying efforts.
This
pattern is not unique to San Diego. In district after district, the
union bureaucracies—tied to the Democratic Party—isolate struggles,
prevent coordinated statewide action and negotiate concessions under the
banner of “fiscal responsibility,” and fundamentally accepting
austerity.
The lesson of the past weeks is clear: the defense of
public education cannot be entrusted to the trade union bureaucracy or
to appeals to Democratic politicians. Educators and classified workers
must take matters into their own hands and form independent
rank-and-file committees in every school and district.
On February 27, Paramount Skydance finalized a $111 billion merger to
acquire 100 percent of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for $31 per share
in cash. The deal unites two of Hollywood’s historic studios and their
global news and streaming divisions under a single corporate structure
dominated by finance capital.
This marks a new stage in the
restructuring of the US and international media landscape, concentrating
enormous cultural (or anti-cultural) and informational power in the
hands of a narrow layer of billionaires tied to Silicon Valley and the
American state.
The transaction concludes a bitter, multi-year bidding war. In late
2025, Netflix appeared poised to take over WBD with an offer estimated
to be worth between $72 and $83 billion. But Netflix sought only the
most profitable components (Warner Bros. studios, the Burbank lot and
HBO/Max), while excluding cable networks and CNN, which it regarded as
declining assets burdened by debt.
Paramount Skydance, by
contrast, insisted on a full buyout. Its leadership argued that only
massive scale could compete with tech behemoths such as Amazon and
Apple. Treating the acquisition as existential, Paramount raised its bid
to $31 per share, above Netflix’s $27.75 offer. Netflix ultimately
withdrew, citing the needs of financial self-discipline and Warner’s
$33.5 billion debt burden. Paramount then secured shareholder approval
with aggressive incentives, including reimbursement of Netflix’s $2.8
billion breakup fee and a record $7 billion regulatory termination fee
should antitrust approval fail.
The merger relies heavily on debt and the financial backing of
billionaire Larry Ellison and his family. Paramount secured between $54
and $57.5 billion in bridge loans from major banks, while Ellison
reportedly guaranteed up to $45.7 billion in equity, leveraging his
holdings in Oracle. The combined entity will carry approximately $90
billion in debt.
Such staggering leverage has immediate
consequences. Chief executive David Ellison (son of Larry Ellison) has
pledged to extract $6 billion annually in “cost synergies.” In plain
language, this means mass layoffs, intensified workloads and the
slashing of production budgets. Thousands—and potentially tens of
thousands—of jobs across film, television, news and streaming are at
risk.
*****
Central to the new corporation’s strategy is the transformation of
the studio into what executives call an “AI-native” enterprise. Backed
by Oracle’s data and cloud infrastructure, David Ellison is advancing
so-called “Agentic AI” systems designed to automate complex
decision-making across development, preproduction and post-production.
New executives are being hired to oversee end-to-end AI workflows aimed
at accelerating output and cutting costs.
For writers and other
creative workers, this signals structural displacement. Repeatable tasks
like script coverage, story drafting, editing and visual effects
processing are prime targets for automation. While the recent contracts
negotiated by the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA were promoted as
establishing “guardrails” on the use of artificial intelligence, in
reality they failed to provide any meaningful protection.
*****
The merger also underscores the growing fusion of media, technology
and state power, in what might be described as a modern
Military-Industrial-Media Complex. Ellison’s Oracle, founded on an early
CIA contract, now provides cloud computing and artificial intelligence
infrastructure to major corporations and national security agencies.
This
infrastructure now forms the backbone of global defense through massive
initiatives like the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability
(JWCC) contract, which integrates Oracle’s “air-gapped” National
Security Regions across the Department of Defense and all 17 US
government intelligence agencies. “Air-gapped” refers to computers or
networks physically isolated from unsecured, public networks to ensure
maximum secrecy.
By deploying ruggedized [equipment engineered to
withstand harsh conditions], portable cloud nodes to the “tactical edge”
[remote, austere or disconnected environments] and partnering with
firms like Palantir, Oracle enables real-time, AI-driven battlefield
analytics and autonomous decision-making. This role extends to the “Five
Eyes” alliance and NATO, where the company’s sovereign cloud
environments and “agentic AI” workflows have transitioned Oracle from a
mere software provider to an essential, high-stakes architect of
21st-century warfare and global surveillance.
The political implications are profound. Larry Ellison is a longtime
ally and donor to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked CNN as
hostile to his administration. It is a common contention that the White
House favored Paramount’s bid precisely because Ellison would be
amenable to reshaping CNN’s editorial direction. The deal also involves
investment from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates, all accomplices in the conflicts taking place in
the Middle East, from the Gaza genocide to the criminal assault on Iran.
With
Oracle already managing sensitive data infrastructure, including
TikTok’s US operations, Ellison’s expanding media footprint consolidates
control over both information distribution and AI development. Content
is increasingly treated not as journalism or art but as data: raw
material within broader geopolitical and economic competition.
*****
The broader implications for cultural life are immense. The
consolidation of two of the largest studios, now essentially part of a
military-CIA complex, significantly reduces diversity of production and
narrows the range of perspectives available to audiences. Independent
filmmakers, smaller production companies and dissenting artists will
face even greater barriers to distribution. The concentration of news
divisions under a single technology-driven hierarchy threatens further
homogenization of political coverage.
As geopolitical tensions
escalate and the war in Iran expands into a regional conflagration, the
American public will confront a largely unified narrative shaped by
corporate and state interests. Oppositional or even critical voices will
be marginalized, investigative journalism constrained and programming
aligned more closely with official policy.
The unions representing entertainment workers express anxiety about job
losses and AI displacement. But they are centrally responsible for
facilitating the current situation. Their strategy remains confined to
appeals to regulators and corporate management. None calls into question
the dominance of finance capital or the subordination of culture to
shareholder value. Certainly, none calls for the independent
mobilization of workers against capitalism.
*****
The defense of democratic rights, artistic freedom and truthful
reporting cannot be entrusted to billionaires, regulators or union
bureaucracies tied to corporate management. It requires the independent
mobilization of workers across industries against capitalism and the
subordination of society to profit.
In his speech opening the current session of Argentina’s legislature
on March 1, President Javier Milei gloated over the passage of his
reactionary labor counter-reform and declared his desire to take the
country back 100 hundred years; paraphrasing US President Donald Trump’s
phrase, to Make Argentina Great Again.
Milei glorifies a period
characterized by extreme social inequality, and major strike struggles
by the working class, led by anarchists and socialists, combined with
extreme repression, and attacks on immigrants and indigenous people,
culminating in the Patagonian Massacre of 1921, when over 1,500 striking
workers in the Patagonian region were killed by the Argentine Army. It
was a period in which Argentina was great only for the oligarchy, in
cahoots with British imperialism.
Now, Milei proposes to return to
those times, this time, in alliance with U.S. President Trump and US
imperialism, and the collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy.
The
reactionary anti-labor bill came out of the May Council (Consejo de
Mayo), formed in June 2025. This committee included federal government
officials, provincial delegates, a representative of the trade union
bureaucracy (CGT-General Workers Confederation), and one from the
Argentine Industrial Union (UIA).
The resulting “labor
modernization” legislation, which was recently approved by both houses
of the federal legislature, rolls back labor rights won over decades of
workers’ struggles. The new legislation allows employers to impose a
12-hour workday (in a 48-hour week) without overtime pay. It also wipes
out contractual rights for rural workers (the 1074 law had, for the
first time, granted rural workers the same rights as all other workers).
At a time of massive layoffs across the country, the legislation
reduces the cost for employers to fire even more workers; it reduces
sick pay; eliminates industry-wide contracts; allows employers to
manipulate vacation time; ends retroactive payments in case of layoffs,
eliminates the 13th month paycheck (aguinaldo); it does not allow for
the extension of expired contracts, while new ones are negotiated
opening the door to massive abuses.
The Milei administration
argues that as industrial jobs are cut, new jobs will eventually be
created in mining and fossil fuel extraction.
The labor
legislation is only one of eight reactionary legislative proposals that
takes Argentina back in time. They also include the law of “penal
responsibility” that lowers the age for children to be tried and sent to
jail as adults, from 16 to 14. Milei had voiced his support for
lowering it to 10.
*****
The struggles of the Argentine working class beginning in the
late-1800s were linked with and inspired by the struggles of the
European and US proletariat. At that time, a significant percentage of
worker immigrants, from Spain, Italy and other European countries,
introduced anarchist and socialist ideas into Argentina. Following the
May 4, 1886 Haymarket massacre, of Chicago workers fighting for the
8-hour day, Argentine workers were among the first to heed the call for
the establishment of May 1 as International Workers Day. The first May
Day demonstration took place in Buenos Aires in 1890.
In 1904,
following railroad and port strikes, Buenos Aires workers helped elect
the first socialist legislator, Alfredo Palacios, for the port district,
who led the campaign for pro-labor legislation, beginning with the
establishment of Sundays as a day of rest for workers in 1905.
On Saturday, a dozen of the most reactionary and corrupt political
leaders of Latin America gathered with US President Donald Trump for an
infamous regional summit dubbed the “Shield of the Americas.” Held
against the backdrop of Washington’s criminal war of annihilation
against Iran, the event reaffirmed US imperialism’s aim of establishing
its direct neocolonial domination of Latin America through the use of
unrestrained violence and promotion of dictatorial regimes aligned to
its geopolitical strategy.
The meeting, convened at Trump’s south
Florida golf club, was attended by the presidents of Bolivia, Chile,
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras,
Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. The leaders of Mexico, Brazil
and Colombia, which together account for more than 60 percent of both
the region’s GDP and its population, were deliberately excluded by
Washington, along with other regional governments considered as
“left-wing.”
The summit was called by Trump, in his own words, to establish a
“brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing
our region.” He branded it as the “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.”
The
fraudulent rhetoric of fighting “drug cartels” has been utilized by the
Trump administration as a cynical pretext for an escalating wave of
aggression and political intervention across the region.
“Narcoterrorism” was the enemy fabricated to justify the launching of
the ongoing campaign of missile murders of fishermen in the Caribbean
and Eastern Pacific, as well as the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping
of its president on January 3. In recent weeks, the US military has
promoted a new series of “boots on the ground” operations in Mexico,
Colombia and Ecuador on the pretext of extending a war on
“narcoterrorism” throughout the region.
The whole framework and
statements at the “Shield of the Americas” summit laid bare how these
multiple fronts of imperialist violence in Latin America, as well as the
war on Iran, are interconnected parts of the same ruthless strategy for
global domination and, more specifically, of the US build-up for war
against China.
*****
The same goals of societal annihilation that Washington is pursuing
in Iran through carpet bombing are being prosecuted against the island
of Cuba, located barely 100 miles from where Trump was speaking, through
the imposition of a blockade against all energy shipments. The
deliberate provocation of mass hunger, disease, and social collapse was
openly celebrated by the fascist US president. “Cuba’s at the end of the
line,” Trump stated. “They’re very much at the end of the line. They
have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a
bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”
Like a mafia
gangster, Trump cynically stated, pointing to the Latin American
political stooges in his audience: “I was surprised, but four of you
said: ‘Could you do us a favor and take care of Cuba?’ I will take care
of that, alright.” While his administration’s “focus right now is on
Iran,” he said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio could “take an
hour off” to “wrap up a deal on Cuba. That’ll be an easy one.”
Significantly, while he boasted of starving Cuba of its oil imports from
Venezuela, Trump highly praised the Venezuelan “interim” President
Delcy Rodriguez. “She’s doing an excellent job partnering with us,” the
US president said. The Chavista leader, speaking as a colonial adjunct,
returned the compliment hours after the summit. “We reaffirm our
commitment to developing enduring relations grounded in mutual respect,
equality, and adherence to international law,” Rodriguez wrote, as the
kidnapped Maduro sits in a US prison cell.
*****
Saturday’s meeting culminated in the signature of a Joint
Security Declaration ideologically based on the “Trump corollary” to the
Monroe Doctrine, which claims the right to assert US domination over
the Western Hemisphere and all its resources and to counter China’s
regional influence. The signatories declared their intent to cooperate
with Washington to “enhance security in the Western Hemisphere,” and on
“efforts regarding border security, countering narcoterrorism,” as well
as “securing critical infrastructure”–a euphemism for countering the
influence of China. The Orwellian phrase, “Advance ‘Peace through
Strength,’” was adopted as the “Shield’s” motto.
The
militarization of Latin America proclaimed at the “Shield of the
Americas” meeting has the deepest historical and political implications.
Trump’s
call for the systematic employment of the military in regional internal
repression is a blueprint for restoring the US-backed military
dictatorships that unleashed a reign of political terror and mass
torture and murder of Latin American workers and youth.
The criminal gang that posed alongside the US mafia boss for a family
photo in Miami was composed of direct political heirs of these
historical crimes. Prominent among them were Argentina’s fascist
President Javier Milei and Chile’s president-elect José Antonio Kast,
who came to be briefed in Washington four days before his inauguration.
Kast, the son of a Nazi officer who escaped to Chile, is himself a vocal
admirer of the murderous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that ruled
his country from 1973-1990.
The event hosted by Trump Saturday is directly reminiscent of another
regional summit that took place 50 years ago, on November 25, 1975, in
the Chilean capital, under Pinochet’s rule. Dubbed the “First Inter
American Meeting on National Intelligence,” the meeting gathered
fascistic military officials from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile,
Paraguay and Uruguay to establish the infamous “Operation Condor,” an
integrated network of murderous political repression and coup plotting
across the region.
A significant difference in relation to Trump’s
summit is that Pinochet’s meeting in 1975 was held in secret, and the
formal establishment of “Operation Condor” only came to public attention
with the opening of the “Terror Archives” of Paraguay in 1992. Even
more concealed was the participation of the United States in these
crimes through the CIA’s provision of logistical backing to political
coups and training and infrastructure for the murderous agencies of
repression throughout Latin America.
The days in which US
imperialism could maintain the image of leader of the “free world” are
long gone. Washington’s unconcealed promotion of state murder and
dictatorship has, however, explosive implications which are far beyond
its control.
As the World Socialist Web Site has
insisted, the violent outburst of US imperialism is not a sign of
strength but of deep historical crisis. Its criminal interventions and
disruption of bourgeois rule throughout the world are coupled with
extreme political crisis within the United States itself. The
contradictions of the imperialist system are leading to the greatest
eruption of class struggle in history, in which the social struggles of
workers in South, Central and North America will assume the form of an
inseparable revolutionary process of a socialist character.
The Workers’ Party of Türkiye (TİP) claims to oppose the imperialist war against Iran, but is forming an
electoral alliance with the Germany's Left Party, which celebrated the illegal
killings of Iran’s leadership.
NATO member Türkiye is being drawn ever deeper into the imperialist
war waged by the US and Israel against Iran. On Monday, the Ministry of
National Defence announced: “A ballistic munition launched from Iran and
entering Turkish airspace was neutralized by NATO air and missile defense assets deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
Fragments
of the missile were reported to have fallen on an empty field in
Gaziantep, a city neighboring Adana—home to NATO’s Incirlik Air Base,
which is used by the United States—with no casualties or injuries
reported.
The defense ministry’s statement further declared: “We
once again emphasize that all necessary measures will be taken
decisively and without hesitation against any threat directed at our
country’s territory and airspace. We also reiterate that it is in
everyone’s interest to heed Türkiye’s warnings in this regard.”
President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in remarks delivered that evening directed at
Iran, stated: “However, I would hereby like to underscore that despite
our warnings, extremely wrong and provocative steps, which will
undermine Türkiye’s friendship, are continued to be taken. All should
avoid calculations, which will inflict deep wounds in the hearts and
minds of our nation, and which will cast a shadow on our 1,000-year-old
neighborhood and brotherhood. Türkiye’s stance and attitude are clear.”
During
a phone conversation with Erdoğan on Monday night, Iranian President
Masoud Pezeshkian denied claims regarding Iran launching a missile
strike on Türkiye, according to the Iranian press.
About one hour
before the announcement of the missile incident—which Iran has not
confirmed—the US State Department ordered non-emergency diplomatic
personnel and their families stationed at the US Consulate in Adana to
depart Türkiye. Washington also advised American citizens to leave
southeastern Türkiye.
Iran, the target of an unlawful aggression by the US and Israel, is
retaliating against Israel and US bases across the region in exercise of
its right to self-defense. However, a strike on Incirlik—a base used
by, but not belonging to, the United States—could, by virtue of its
legal status, trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty and draw the entire
alliance into war against Iran. This is far from a desirable outcome for
Iran, which is already under massive imperialist assault with limited
capacity to sustain it.
Monday’s missile incident follows the
interception of another missile approaching Turkish airspace last
Wednesday. In that case, Iran rejected claims that Türkiye had been
targeted; Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated: “We have no
reason to attack Türkiye. Türkiye is a good neighbor of ours.”
*****
Whatever the origin of the missiles, Ankara is being drawn step by step
into the war, despite its warnings and calls for negotiation. The
Turkish government’s objective and historical position in the war
against Iran aligns with the US-Israeli axis.
As part of the escalating assault on democratic rights, President
Donald Trump told a meeting of Republican House members Monday that he
would not sign any legislation of any kind into law until Congress
passes the “Save America Act.”
The bill, initially dubbed the
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act), rebaptized by
Trump as the Save America Act, combines a series of anti-democratic
ultra-right measures, mainly aimed at suppressing voter turnout in the
elections, with provisions attacking transgendered youth added to appeal
to anti-gay religious bigots and fascists.
The main provisions of
the bill, which passed the House of Representatives last month, would
mandate states to implement voter ID requirements and other restrictions
on voting. There would be twofold sets of ID requirements.
Anyone
who registers to vote would have to provide proof of citizenship,
either in the form of a passport or a birth certificate. Millions of
Americans, disproportionately poor and minority, do not have birth
certificates, and half the population has never applied for a passport
or lacks a current one. Tens of millions of married women who took their
husbands’ last names would need additional ID since their birth
certificates are in their maiden names.
Once registered, a voter would still have to present a photo ID at the polls on Election Day.
Additional
restrictions would include a virtual ban on mail-in voting, except for
the military, business travelers and those too ill or frail to go to the
polls. This would most drastically affect the states that have gone to
universal mail balloting, including California, Oregon and Washington,
but it would also disrupt voting practices in nearly every other state.
Last-minute additions to the bill, before it passed the House, were to
ban transgender athletes competing as females and to restrict
gender-affirming care for youth under 18. These have nothing to do with
voting but were added to fuel attack ads against Democrats, who vote
against the legislation.
*****
While Trump depicts a Democratic victory in the midterms in apocalyptic
terms, his real fear is not the alternate corporate-controlled party of
American imperialism but the working class. This is a fear that the
Democratic Party leaders themselves share: that a widespread repudiation
of Trump and the Republicans at the polls in November could encourage
mass opposition to the agenda of austerity, social reaction and
imperialist war which is shared by both big business parties.
*****
Neither [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has
publicly drawn the connection between the Save America Act and Trump’s
mobilization of tens of thousands of federal agents into immigrant
neighborhoods in major cities, or to his suggestion that the mid-term
election should be conducted under the control of the US military. This
would overturn the U.S. Constitution, which assigns responsibility to
the states and the Congress, giving the executive branch no role.
The
Trump administration and the Republican Party have already encouraged
local voter suppression initiatives in closely contested states,
including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And
the federal Department of Justice is suing many states to obtain their
voter rolls, which would provide ammunition for challenging voters’
eligibility when they go to the polls.
The girls’ school in Minab is in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province
close to the Persian Gulf. The school was effectively pulverized by
multiple blasts, and many of those killed were obliterated and could
only be identified through DNA analysis. Footage showed bodies and body
parts partially trapped under collapsed floors, alongside scattered
schoolbags, notebooks and dust‑covered textbooks.
When the
US-Israeli bombardment began on the morning of Saturday, February 28,
the first working day of the week in Iran, the school was full for
morning classes. Iranian authorities and local officials report that
three missiles struck the area—“triple‑tapped,” according to some
accounts—with multiple impacts.
According to Iranian government
figures cited by international media, roughly 168–180 people were
killed, including at least 160–170 children and more than a dozen
teachers and staff, making it the single deadliest attack on civilians
in the war. Dozens more, possibly more than 100, were injured, many with
catastrophic blast and shrapnel wounds, burns and crush injuries from
the collapse of the two‑story structure’s roof and walls.
*****
Video and photographs from the aftermath show piles of rubble, desks
and schoolbags buried in concrete dust, and rows of small coffins at
mass funerals in Minab. The victims include entire classes of girls
whose names appear on hastily printed lists taped to the walls of local
mosques.
A short video, filmed from a nearby construction site and
released by Iran’s semi‑official Mehr News Agency, has been widely
circulated and independently authenticated by multiple investigative
teams. The video opens with a view across an industrial area toward the
IRGC naval facility near Minab; a low, fast‑moving projectile crosses
the frame and then detonates in a massive fireball inside the base,
sending a shockwave and debris into the air.
Munitions experts from Bellingcat, CNN, BBC Verify and other outlets
have concluded that the projectile’s size, flight profile, and terminal
behavior are consistent with a U.S. BGM/UGM‑109 Tomahawk Land Attack
Missile. As the camera pans to the right in the final seconds, a huge
plume of dark smoke can be seen rising from the direction of the
Shajareh Tayyebeh school, already burning, indicating that at least one
earlier strike had directly hit or detonated at or above the school
complex.
Later satellite imagery shows multiple impact craters and
burn marks in and around both the school and the adjacent military
base, confirming that the area was struck more than once in the opening
wave of US attacks on southern Iran.
*****
On Saturday, President Trump claimed, when asked by reporters about the
strike on the school, that Iran was responsible for the massacre and
said, “in my opinion, from what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He
did not present any evidence to substantiate the claim.
*****
US officials have admitted that southern Iran, including IRGC facilities
near Minab, were among the first targets in a pre‑planned strike
package and that Tomahawks were used in those attacks. By any objective
standard, the destruction of a functioning, clearly marked girls’
primary school during school hours in an attack on a nearby military
target was carried out with full knowledge of the school’s existence is a
war crime under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether
it is labeled “intentional” or “accidental” by the perpetrators.
*****
The massacre in Minab is not a “tragic incident” but part of the
campaign of terror directed against the civilian population of Iran.
Iranian authorities and independent monitors report that other schools,
hospitals, residential apartment blocks and urban neighborhoods have
been repeatedly struck in the US‑Israeli bombing.
Human rights
groups estimate that at least 1,600 Iranians have been killed in the
first days of the war, overwhelmingly civilians, with large numbers of
women and children among the dead.
Strikes on clearly civilian
objects—from a pediatric wing of a hospital in Bandar Abbas to apartment
towers in working class districts—follow the same military logic:
high‑yield munitions deployed against targets embedded in or adjacent to
densely populated areas, with full knowledge that mass casualties will
result.
The Minab atrocity has taken place amid the nearly
30‑month‑long Israeli genocide in Gaza, waged with direct US military,
financial and diplomatic support. Since late 2023, Israel has
systematically destroyed homes, schools, universities, hospitals,
refugee camps and basic infrastructure in Gaza, killing tens of
thousands of Palestinians and rendering the enclave uninhabitable.
This
campaign—openly justified in genocidal language by leading Israeli
politicians—has been a deliberate policy of mass murder aimed at
breaking the resistance of the Palestinian people and clearing the
territory for strategic and demographic objectives. The same methods are
being deployed in Iran to terrorize the population and kill the
country’s leadership with the aim of imposing neocolonial subjugation of
the country under the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.
The Socialist Equality Party is campaigning in Adelaide, South
Australia, ahead of the state election on March 21, which is proceeding
under the shadow of the escalating US-led war against Iran. There is
widespread opposition across Australia to the federal Labor government’s
support and active participation in the war.
South
Australia’s Labor government, led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, is
transforming the state into a central hub for the AUKUS military
alliance with the United States, as part of US-led preparations for war
against China. While billions are being allocated to submarines, bases
and missiles, public housing, hospitals, schools and social services
remain chronically underfunded—as the ruling class seeks to make workers
pay for the militarization of society.
While Labor is expected to
be re-elected, this is not because of any popular enthusiasm for
Malinauskas’ right-wing and militarist program. Rather, it reflects the
crisis of the opposition Liberal Party, which has fallen behind the
far-right, anti-immigrant One Nation in recent polls. None of the
bourgeois parties is offering anything to address the social crisis
facing working people, including collapsing public services and
unaffordable housing.
SEP members spoke about the war and the social crisis with young
people and workers at Adelaide University and in the working class
suburbs of Elizabeth and Salisbury in Adelaide’s north.
The
northern suburbs were decimated by the closure of the car industry in
2017, presided over by the state Labor government and the trade union
bureaucracy, which enforced mass redundancies in the interests of the
corporations. In Elizabeth, the former Holden stronghold, the
unemployment rate was 17.8 percent in September 2025, according to an
analysis of official data by AreaSearch. The 2021 Census found that
nearly half of households in the suburb were living on less than $800 a
week, with median incomes in the bottom 10 percent nationally.
The
cost of living has surged dramatically in recent years. Rents in
Adelaide have climbed sharply, with median weekly rents reaching over
$600, while median dwelling prices are approaching $1 million. Secure
housing is increasingly out of reach for large sections of the working
class, particularly young people.
Sunday’s webinar stands alone as the only serious political analysis of
the war against Iran that identifies the international working class as
the social force that can and must stop it. We urge all our readers to
watch the webinar, share it as widely as possible and discuss its
lessons and the way forward with coworkers, family and friends. Above
all, make the decision today to join the Socialist Equality Party if
there is a section in your country, or to take the initiative to build
one where there is not.
As the criminal US-Israeli war on Iran entered its second week, the
Trump administration vowed to continue the bombardment and refused to
rule out sending ground troops or implementing a military draft—even as
it has failed to overthrow the Iranian government or compel surrender.
“We
have won in many ways, but not enough. We go forward more determined
than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running
danger once and for all,” US President Donald Trump declared at the
House Republican policy retreat at his Doral resort in Florida on
Monday.
Asked if the war would end this week, he said flatly:
“No.” Hours earlier, in a desperate effort to calm oil and stock
markets, Trump had told CBS News that the war “is very complete, pretty
much” and that US forces are “very far ahead of schedule.”
*****
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a “60 Minutes” interview aired
Sunday, stated the administration’s war aims with unvarnished brutality.
“This is only just the beginning,” Hegseth declared. “The only ones
that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna
live.” Asked about limits on the operation, he said: “You don’t tell the
enemy, you don’t tell the press, you don’t tell anybody what your
limits would be on an operation.” On Monday, the Pentagon’s official
social media account posted an image of a launched missile with the
words “No Mercy” and the caption: “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”
The administration is taking increasingly desperate and escalatory
actions amid its failure to achieve its stated aims. In January, the
administration sought to exploit mass protests as the vehicle for regime
change; when that failed, it turned to the targeted assassination of
Iran’s leadership, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of
the war. Iran’s Assembly of Experts appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, the son
of the slain supreme leader, on Monday in defiance of Israeli threats to
kill any successor.
The administration has adopted the Gaza
model: the genocidal destruction of Iranian society itself, reducing the
country to rubble until it physically cannot resist. Trump made this
clear when he said that his demand for “unconditional surrender” is
“where they cry uncle or when they can’t fight any longer and there’s
nobody around to cry uncle.”
*****
The war has triggered a financial crisis. The S&P 500 fell 2
percent last week, its worst week of 2026, and turned negative for the
year. Oil prices posted their largest weekly gain on record, with Brent
crude surging from roughly $70 before the war to above $92 by Friday, a
nearly 30 percent increase in a single week. Traders warned that $100
oil was imminent.
Commercial shipping through the Strait of
Hormuz—through which 20 percent of global oil flows—has nearly ceased.
The US economy shed 92,000 jobs in February. Gold surged past $5,100 an
ounce as central banks worldwide accelerated their flight from
dollar-denominated assets. Trump’s claim to CBS that the war is “very
complete” was a desperate effort to calm these markets—oil prices
briefly fell to under $90 after his remarks before surging again.
*****
The war against Iran is part of a broader strategy aimed ultimately
at China. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on Fox News
Sunday, stated the calculus openly: “Venezuela and Iran have 31 percent
of the world’s oil reserves. We’re going to have a partnership with 31
percent of the known reserves. This is China’s nightmare.” Graham
boasted: “When this regime goes down, we are going to have a new Middle
East, and we are going to make a ton of money.”
Graham declared:
“Cuba’s next, they’re gonna fall, this communist dictatorship in Cuba,
their days are numbered.” Trump himself brandished a “Free Cuba” hat and
declared, “Stay tuned. The liberation of Cuba is upon us. Iran is going
down and Cuba is next.”
*****
Asked whether Democrats would block war funding, Jeffries refused:
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it in terms of if the
administration makes a request to Congress to consider additional
funding.”
A
Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 53 percent of registered
voters oppose the war, and 74 percent opposed sending ground troops into
Iran, which Trump is reportedly seriously considering.
*****
Ten days into the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran, opposition
continues to be widespread among workers in the United States. A
Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 53 percent of registered
voters oppose the war, and 74 percent opposed sending ground troops into
Iran, which Trump is reportedly seriously considering. The same poll
put Trump’s approval rating at only 37 percent.
Ty, a teacher from
Alabama, told the World Socialist Web Site she considers it “an unnecessary war, an
unprovoked war and unjust war. They bomb people and boats, and there is
no Congressional approval.
Faced with widespread popular opposition to war, New Zealand’s
government has been thrown into a crisis over its support for the
criminal US-Israeli offensive against Iran.
Following the 12-day war in June 2025, which NZ endorsed,
the full-scale assault now underway is an unprovoked act of aggression
and regime change operation. In addition to murdering Ayatollah Ali
Khameini and other leaders of the Iranian government, the US and Israel
have killed over 1,000 Iranian civilians, including more than 150
children at a girls’ primary school in Minab.
On March 1, NZ Prime
Minister Chrstopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters echoed
Washington’s lies justifying the war. They condemned “Iran’s nuclear
program, its destabilizing activities in the region and elsewhere, and
its repression of its own people.”
In a widely derided “train
wreck” press conference the next day, Luxon refused to say whether the
attacks on Iran and assassination of its leadership during ongoing
negotiations were legal or not. He declared it would be “up to the US
and Israel to explain the legal basis for their attacks.” Asked whether
he supported the bombing of the school, Luxon said “I’m not in a
position to judge that from sitting in New Zealand.”
*****
The nationalist rhetoric of Labour, the Greens and sections of
academia and the media, calling for a more “independent” foreign policy,
is a smokescreen and a fraud.
New Zealand, a minor imperialist
power, is a key US ally in the Pacific region and part of the US-led
Five Eyes global surveillance network. Like Australia, Canada and
Britain, the NZ ruling class has relied since World War II on its
alliance with the US in order to secure its “seat at the table” in the
violent carve-up of the world’s resources and markets.
The only
way to halt the escalating world war is through a mass movement of the
working class, independent of all of the pro-capitalist parties. Such a
movement must be international in scope, it must mobilize the vast
social and political power of the working class, and be aimed at
abolishing the profit system that is the source of war and reorganising
society on socialist lines.
Global markets experienced major turmoil yesterday leading to an
intervention by US president Trump aimed at halting a further sharp rise
in oil prices and a slide on Wall Street.
When the trading day
began in the US the price of oil had surged from around $90 a barrel to
as high as $119 and was set to go even higher as stocks were falling
following significant further selloffs in Asia.
*****
Trump then told CBS that the Iran war was “very complete, pretty much”
and there was “nothing left to complete in a military sense.” He later
described the hike in oil prices as a small price to pay for what he
described as an “excursion.”
*****
Trump’s intervention, driven by fears of what could happen on Wall
Street, combined with a statement by the G7 powers that the group
“stands ready” to release oil reserves should that become necessary
halted the oil price escalation and induced a fall—at least for a day.
But as the Wall Street Journal reported, an oil trading
advisory firm predicted that oil could reach $130 per barrel later this
week with a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of this happening. It said
the longer the Strait of Hormuz remained closed the longer it would take
to get back to normal production with the prospect that “some permanent
oil field damage could develop.”
The Australian Labor government this morning announced that it is
dispatching air-to-air missiles, an advanced warplane and a troop
contingent to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to engage in hostilities
against Iran.
With
its announcement, Labor is openly joining a massive US-led war against a
historically oppressed country. It is doing so under conditions where
the entire war is illegal, constituting an unprovoked assault on Iran
and on peace, high crimes under international law. And it is joining the
conflict after multiple documented war crimes, from the US and Israeli
bombing of schools, to medical facilities and a desalination plant.
Labor’s
announcement formalizes and deepens a participation in the war that
began almost as soon as US President Donald Trump launched his sneak
attack on February 28. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the
first world leaders to endorse the war, rushing out a statement
repeating all of Trump’s lies within hours.
Then it was admitted
by Albanese late last week that Australian personnel were aboard a US
attack submarine that obliterated an unarmed and defenseless Iranian
vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka, in an act of imperialist banditry and
mass murder that recalled the military operations of the Nazis.
Albanese
and other Labor leaders had absurdly claimed that the Australian
personnel were not involved in that attack or any other offensive
operations, despite being on the vessel that carried out the assault.
Even commentators with close ties to the US military-intelligence
apparatus derided that assertion and demanded that Labor acknowledge
that it is participating in the war.
*****
The war in Iran is not only aimed at regime-change in Tehran, but at
striking a blow at China which has close ties with the Iranian
government and relies upon it for substantial energy imports.
The
same methods of total destruction and annihilation inflicted on a defenseless population in Gaza is being carried out against Iran, a
country of more than 90 million people.
In addition to its
full-throated support for US-led wars, Labor has spearheaded an assault
on democratic rights. For more than three years it has supported the
US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, while slandering and
attacking the mass opposition to that historic crime as “antisemitic.”
On that basis Labor governments have passed a battery of laws aimed at criminalizing protests and even political parties.
It is clear
that this was not only an attempt to shutdown the anti-genocide
movement. It was also a preparation to repress mass anti-war sentiment
that will inevitably erupt in opposition to the war on Iran and the
preparations for an assault on China.
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.
Mar 9, 2026
The American Revolution holds profound meaning today for all who seek to end US criminality abroad and at home, and who want to stop an illegal war against Iran.
"I recall, of course, the period of the Vietnam War back in the sixties when I was politically radicalized, and the anger which to so many of my generation felt over the atrocities being committed by the US government-- the daily bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong-- the announcement of body counts, [and] "Hey hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?"
And the outrage over Vietnam was of course, underlying that, was not just Vietnam, but our familiarity with the fact that imperialism had been responsible for two horrifying wars in the Twentieth Century. World War One was the war my grandparents fought. World War Two was the war my parents went through. So we were aware of that. And we were of course exposed to the many antiwar films of that time. And we felt profound outrage over this.
But outrage without perspective can be misdirected (and that was the fate of many of my generation), or misled.
The great question was one of perspective. (Which becomes so critical.) And I just want to stress from [among] a few other points, again speaking to young people: don't, of all the false propaganda, perhaps the most misleading is the conception that this government is all powerful. They're not. [Vladimir] Lenin once said very profoundly in response to a claim, I think it was by Kautsky, "that governments are never so powerful as when wars begin." He [Lenin] says it's just the opposite is true: they're never so weak. And that is profoundly true.
But of course weakness also motivates violent actions, repression. And I am not in any way minimizing the dangers that exist. They are real and they are extreme.
Trump, this government, is risking everything on this war. And they too see themselves fighting an existential conflict.
But I want to emphasize, and it really occurred to me, particularly when I heard Will [Lehman] speak-- and he evoked the traditions of Pennsylvania which played such an enormous role in the American Revolution, the formation of Committees of Correspondence, the growing outrage over the actions of the equivalent of ICE of the eighteenth century, the British troops who were marching here and there around American towns and villages committing acts of repression against the citizens in Pennsylvania, [and] of course in Boston [Massachusetts], and it seemed to those who lived through that-- what could be done to stop this? The British army or the British military or the British empire was the most powerful force in the world against which the forces of the American colonists seem paltry.
And somehow those traditions are being reawakened and it's important to understand that with all the political problems we face in the United States, all the problems (you might say) of political backwardness, the backwardness of the culture, the endless and relentless propagation of anti-socialism, anti-communism. Nevertheless this is a country with profound democratic and revolutionary traditions.
And in fact these traditions, in a way which is quite unique. define what Americans see themselves as. This is a country which is extraordinarily diverse: ethnically, religiously. But what underlies [it all] with a common element or foundational element of consciousness is: that this is a democratic country.
The great documents of American history are of course the Declaration of Independence which declared, in a way which had never been said before, that "all men are created equal" and declared that this is "self evident" (at a time when everything in the world said it wasn't self evident).
But in writing that document (and I think it's important to refer to the opening passage), in writing the document [Thomas] Jefferson explained that he was writing this, or the colonists were writing this document because, as he said, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind require them to explain why they had entered into revolutionary struggle.
A decent respect for the opinions of mankind! Does this government [in Washington DC today] show a decent respect for anyone's opinions? Other than that of that idiot, scoundrel, felon: Donald Trump? And his coterie of political nutcases?
They have no respect for anyone. They have no respect for the American people. They have no respect for the opinion of the world.
There is another great document, which is [Abraham] Lincoln's Second Inaugural [Address]. Of course it says in the famous gooding passages: "With malice toward none, with charity for all!"
And then it concludes that the aim of the US Republic, and he said, in the last words: "to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
That was Lincoln.
And the extraordinary place that Lincoln occupies in the collective consciousness of the American people was that he defined the fundamental ideals which motivated the revolutions of the United States.
Now Lincoln wasn't into socialism. He lived in different historical period, and I'm not saying this so we all should get out and sing the Stars and Stripes!
But these traditions mean something. And what Trump is doing, and what this government is doing, is profoundly offensive. It is undermining, in a profound and irretrievable way, how Americans understand their government. How they see it.
It's not just that they disagree with policy they see this as an alien force. Something which is against them: everything they believe!
And revolutions take place, not only because of the immediate impact of bad conditions. That's what [Leon] Trotsky also said quite well, he said not everyone responds the same way to an argument but everyone responds the same way to a red hot poker.
Well, the red hot poker is the growing economic crisis, the deterioration of conditions, growth of unemployment.
But it also takes place under conditions in which there is a profound shift underway in social consciousness. The way people see this country, the way people see this regime. And it is under these conditions that a process of mass radicalization acquires a new theoretical, ideological form.
And here we are about to observe the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution. And all at once it's implications for us, and for the world, become enormously important."
*****
Notes:
1. David North is the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and current National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US).
2. "Hey hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" was a popular chant among anti-war youth during the Vietnam War.
3. Karl Johann Kautsky was a prominent Marxist theorist.
4. Will Lehman is a socialist who is running to become the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW).
6. Gooding refers to the final paragraph of Lincoln's address. It is also called the "charity passage". It refers to the actions required "to make good" or to "make a good restoration."
7. "...revolutions of the United States." Trotskyists recognize the American Revolution as the first revolution, and the Civil War as the second revolution. The first replaced a government by monarchs with a government by the people. The second abolished slavery.
8. Stars and Stripes refers to a patriotic march and song, The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa.
For the entire recording of the Emergency Meeting, please visit this webpage.
Thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday to demand an end to the bombing of Iran.
Assembling near Parliament in Westminster, the demonstration moved
south, crossed the Thames via Vauxhall Bridge, and ended with a rally at
the US Embassy.
The march was organized by the main groups within
the “Palestine Coalition,” which have led the mass demonstrations in
the capital against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza for the last
two-and-a-half years. These include the Stop The War Coalition (STWC),
the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), and Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND).
The Palestine Coalition—primarily STWC and PSC—led that movement into a
dead end, channeling energy into futile demands that Starmer, the
warmonger and genocide apologist in chief, adopt a peace policy. The
same bankrupt perspective—demanding pressure be put on the political
leader of one NATO power (Britain and Starmer) to alter foreign policy
and put pressure on another (the US and Trump)—was again the main demand
coming from the platform.
Via a message read out from the stage, former Labour leader and now
head of Your Party, Jeremy Corbyn declared that “we are here today to
say loudly and clearly, do not drag Britain into another illegal war.
Let’s follow in the footsteps of Spain, whose Prime Minister [Pedro
Sanchez] has said very clearly that we are not getting involved in this
illegal war in any way whatsoever. For too long, the UK has blindly
followed the US as it indulges in catastrophic interventions around the
world. We are here to defend something different: a foreign policy based
on cooperation, equality, and sovereignty…”
The
Hague Group consisted initially of nine member states: Belize [which
withdrew], Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia,
Senegal, and South Africa. Corbyn and Your Party’s other most prominent
leader, Zarah Sultana, are both members of the Progressive International
Council. The advancing of the leaders of a coalition of capitalist
states is a perspective solely based on pressuring the political
establishment and a dangerous trap which must be rejected by the working
class.
Speaking at the demonstration, Sultana invoked the
catastrophe of the Iraq war while insisting, as others did from the
stage, that Starmer had to recover the backbone he supposedly had prior
to the US and Israel bombing Iran. She said of the prime minister:
“Despite having apparently learned the lessons from Iraq, Keir Starmer
is repeating the same mistake. At first, he said Britain would not be
involved, and within days came the familiar U-turns. And now American
B-1 bombers are landing on British soil before flying out to kill
Iranians.”
Despite Sultana’s propensity for rhetoric generally to the left of
Corbyn, she expounds bankrupt bourgeois politics just as surely as he.
The task wasn’t the mobilization of the working class in Britain and
internationally to stop war on Iran and end the capitalist system—the
root cause of the wars in the Middle East and Africa over the past 25
years. Rather, concluded Sultana, “today we raise our voices for peace,
for justice, and for a world where governments learn the lessons of the
past.”
*****
The rewriting of Starmer’s Iran policy is breathtaking. Starmer’s policy
was never not to back Trump in his bombing and regime change operation.
It was only how best to ensure Britain could fully join in behind a
cloak of “legality.” This was made clear by the leaks published last
week in The Spectator—and reported by the World Socialist Web Site—confirming
that British officials had been informed of the planned offensive 17
days in advance and were engaged in intense discussions with Washington
over how the Labour government could assist.
As with the genocide in Gaza, Britain’s trade unions are refusing to
mobilize their members for industrial action against the Labour
government’s participation in a war of annihilation—openly declared by
the fascist in the White House, Donald Trump, and his Goebbels-like
neo-Nazi henchman, Pete Hegseth—against a country of 93 million people.
Last week teams of Socialist Equality Party supporters distributed
leaflets and spoke to workers operating and maintaining buses across
West London and to postal workers at Mount Pleasant Mail Centre, Royal
Mail’s central sorting and distribution hub. Despite finishing and
starting exhausting shifts, workers engaged in a serious discussion on
the strategy to defeat the war that they opposed.
*****
A postal worker, a member of the Communication Workers Union (CWU)
said, “The war is criminal. It is aimed at stealing Iran’s resources.
Have you noticed no one is discussing [Jeffrey] Epstein anymore? It’s
gone from the front pages, and the media is happy to move on. The people
running the post are billionaires. They are the same as the ones
leading the wars out to steal the countries’ resources. They don’t care
about us. We don’t care about them. What there needs to be is a
revolution.”
Another veteran postal worker listed the wars he had
lived through and said, “I am sick of the wars and the impunity granted.
They seem to think they can do what they want. What about the Epstein
files, that’s no longer in the news is it? To me it’s important workers
in America start the fight, then we can all join in. Without that it is
very difficult to do anything.”
Last week’s Brit Awards in Manchester saw several political comments
by artists. Equally noteworthy were public reactions to broadcaster
ITV’s censorship of political comments in its coverage of the acceptance
speeches.
ITV deliberately drowned out comments “Free Palestine and fuck ICE” by drummer Max Bassin of the band Geese.
Viewers complained at the censorship on social media, with one
commenting, “I’ve never known the Brits bleep out so much stuff.”
The
Brits are a showcase event for the British music industry. Even in this
corporate environment, artists spoke from the red carpet and the podium
about the rise of Reform UK, the continued genocide in Gaza and
domestic repression in the United States.
Perhaps the most
interesting comments came from Irish artist CMAT, nominated for
international artist of the year. She spoke out against “anyone trying
to argue that art is not a political place.”
“Everything is
politics,” she said. “More than ever, art is politics because you don’t
get to make art in a fascist state. Fascism is on the rise in every
single country in the world.” Fascism was “showing its ugly head in
Ireland… all over the UK and don’t even get me started on America.”
*****
CMAT has been consistent in her support for Palestinians. In 2024, she
pulled out of the Latitude Festival because of its sponsorship by
Barclays, which was financially involved in the Gaza war. She ended her
set at Glastonbury last year with a pro-Palestinian statement.
*****
Even the tamest of political comments requires censorship. ITV censored a
joke about Peter Mandelson by the host, comedian Jack Whitehall. There
is an anxiety in the ruling class that comment on such a detested figure
could reveal the depths of hostility to the political system.
*****
The Baftas was presented by the BBC a week earlier. A social media
storm was whipped up over an incident there involving Tourette’s
campaigner John Davidson.
Davidson’s Tourette’s involves
coprolalia. When he is ticking, he involuntarily shouts extremely
offensive things. This is not something he can control, and it is
intensified at moments of stress. His life inspired the film I Swear, which shows the condition with sympathy and in depth. Robert Aramayo, who plays Davidson, won best actor.
Davidson
was ticking when he arrived at the ceremony. The audience were alerted
to this, but other performers seem not to have been. When Delroy Lindo
and Michael B. Jordan were presenting an award, Davidson shouted an
offensive racial slur.
The BBC, which had a microphone at
Davidson’s table, chose not to edit this out when it was broadcast later
that evening. But much of the social media furor that followed was
directed against Davidson.
Davidson has spoken of his distress, as
the BBC had assured him that they would edit any of his involuntary
swearing out of the broadcast. StudioCanal and Bafta had both made clear
swearing would be edited out. Warner Brothers flagged concerned during
the event. They were assured the BBC would be notified and the racial
slur would be edited out. It was not.
*****
While they were broadcasting comments guaranteed to cause distress to
Davidson, Lindo and Jordan, the BBC also cut the words “Free Palestine”
from the acceptance speech of Akinola Davies Jr.
The director won Outstanding Debut by a British writer, director or producer for My Father’s Shadow,
about a family reuniting after the 1993 Nigerian election. He thanked
“all those whose parents migrated” after escaping persecution or
genocide. “Your dreams are an act of resistance,” he said, concluding,
“For Nigeria, for London, the Congo, Sudan, Free Palestine,” which was
greeted with applause. The last two words were censored.
Davies commented, “It was really important… to say that in a room
full of artists, because we have an opportunity to influence people
because they watch our films.” He pointed to recent years of
demonstrations “trying to show solidarity with the people of Palestine,
we’ve had some of the largest political solidarity demonstrations in the
UK.”
The anxiety this provokes in the ruling class is driving the
censorship and suppression of any critical comment. This censorship is
posing ever more sharply the need for a genuine political alternative,
revolutionary and socialist program against genocide and war that can
mobilise the international working class.
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Bahram, an
Iranian who fled to Australia as a refugee in the 1980s and has lived in
New Zealand for many years. He denounced the global propaganda campaign
justifying the illegal US‑Israeli war against Iran, including the way
governments and corporate media are systematically promoting a narrow,
right‑wing layer of supporters of Reza Pahlavi—the son of the deposed
Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—as the supposed voice of “the Iranian
community.”
Bahram explained that Pahlavi is backing the imperialist war in order to
restore the hated US‑backed monarchy that was overthrown in the 1979
revolution. He said Pahlavi’s supporters in Europe and in New Zealand
are “using bullying tactics” and issuing outright threats in an effort
to silence anti‑war voices within the Iranian diaspora.
He strongly denounced the position taken by the New Zealand
government, which is echoing Washington’s lies. Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters declared
that the war’s aim was “to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten
international peace and security.” Luxon refused to criticize the
criminal conduct of the war, including the bombing of a school which
killed more than 160 children.
Bahram pointed out that Deputy
Prime Minister David Seymour, from the far-right ACT Party, has embraced
supporters of Pahlavi. Seymour posted on Facebook a picture of the Lion
and Sun flag used by the US-backed dictatorship in Iran, which has
become the logo of the pro‑Pahlavi monarchists.
Seymour defended
the unprovoked and criminal bombardment of Iran, declaring that “an axis
of evil is falling. First in Venezuela, now in Iran, people right
across the Middle East can look forward to a lot more freedom without
this terrorist organization and its proxies attacking and terrorizing the region.”
This is said by a government that continues to
support the genocidal actions of the Israeli military against
Palestinians in Gaza—methods that are now being used against the
population of Iran. New Zealand’s ruling elite is backing the violent
carve-up of the Middle East by US imperialism and its proxies, as part
of an increasingly global war.
Bahram told the World Socialist Web Site that the National Party-led coalition government
was “ignoring international law and they are ignoring that kids are
dying, including 185 teachers and students at a girls school. [The US
and Israel] are hitting maternity hospitals and our government’s silent
about it.”
The official pretext for war was a sham, he said:
“Iran was not ready to develop a nuclear weapon, there is no evidence of
it.” Responding to the lie that the war is being waged to “liberate”
the people of Iran, Bahram said, “We’ve seen the American ‘freedom’ in
Iraq, we’ve seen it in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, women still have no
rights, they are treated like animals, and that’s the legacy of
America.”
He acknowledged that the conflict, much like the United
States’ actions in Venezuela, was intrinsically linked to Washington's
broader strategic confrontation directed against China. China, as a
major importer of oil and other critical resources from both regions,
was simultaneously advancing its efforts to establish a trade corridor
through Iran. This initiative aimed to further expand its economic
engagement with Eastern European countries.
*****
Bahram made clear that he opposed Iran’s theocratic and dictatorial
regime, which imprisoned and tortured him as a young activist following
the 1979 revolution. He knew people killed during the state crackdown on
mass protests in January this year, which were driven by social
inequality, soaring inflation and demands for democratic rights. He
warned that the regime in Iran would make use of the war, just as it had
used the war with Iraq from 1980-1988, to suppress internal opposition.
He
believes supporters of Pahlavi were only a small minority of the
protesters. Their role was “enormously” exaggerated by the international
media. There is evidence of audio being added to videos of protests to
make it appear that large numbers of people were calling for the
restoration of the monarchy. Bahram said the violent actions of
pro-Pahlavi groups had played into the hands of the Khamenei regime,
providing it with a pretext for brutally repressing the protests. “I
hold Pahlavi responsible. Thousands of people died; he has to answer for
that.”
*****
After the bombing began, media outlets published headlines such as
“Iranian NZers ‘incredibly hopeful’ attacks will lead to swift regime
change” (Radio NZ) and “‘First step toward victory’: Iranians in NZ
react to Khamenei’s death” (One News). On March 2, Stuff prominently
published a letter from a Pahlavi supporter stating: “The community has
a tremendous respect for the US and Israel for their brave and moral
action.” Similar items appeared in the media in the US and across the
world.
Bahram explained that “Pahlavi wants to ride on the blood
of the Iranian people and get himself [into power].” He would then
establish a ruthless imperialist-backed regime. “Pahlavi’s document
about a temporary government clearly says: we will work with Israel to
establish our security system. They want another SAVAK. They’re openly
saying that.”
*****
In Telegram chat groups, Iranians who oppose the war are receiving
abusive, often anonymous messages, including threats of violence from
pro-Pahlavi individuals. “This bullying is happening not only to the
Iranian community here [in New Zealand],” Bahram said. “It’s happening
in Europe. I was made aware that the German police have been alerted to
it. These people have been going to Iranian businesses and shops saying:
‘If you don’t put our posters up, we will deal with you.’ They haven’t
gone to that extent here.
*****
“There are videos from Europe saying: ‘we will identify you and we
will get you if you are against Pahlavi.’ This is open.” In New Zealand,
Bahram said, “They find people who are opposed to them, then they send
private messages saying: ‘you are a bastard, I will get you.’ Not many
Iranians feel safe to speak out or to write to the media.
“I have
been informed that a lot of students are being bullied, are getting
abusive messages, they say that they don’t feel safe.”
Bahram said
he believed most people “are intelligent enough to see that war is not
the answer. We have an expression: ‘If the egg breaks from inside, a
bird comes out. If the egg breaks from outside, it will be eaten.’ This
is always the case.”
He was encouraged by the fact that the Trump administration is extremely
unpopular and “a lot of Americans are standing up and questioning the
war.” He pointed to the example of a Marine veteran who protested in a
Senate hearing against the attack on Iran. “I respect the soldiers who
stick with their values, not the orders of their superiors. There are a
lot of good people in America, and the government doesn’t represent the
people.”
*****
One recent target of the pro‑Pahlavi groups in New Zealand was the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), which held
a public meeting at Victoria University of Wellington on March 4
opposing the war. A Telegram channel circulated the IYSSE’s poster with
the message: “This notice is being circulated at the university. If you
are a student/professor and would like to object to this, please let me
know,” in an attempt to mobilize a campaign against the meeting.
In
the event, the Pahlavi supporters were unable to organise any
disruption. The meeting went ahead and advanced a socialist strategy to
unite the working class internationally against the war and its source
in the capitalist profit system, highlighting the alternative to both
imperialist intervention and the reactionary Iranian regime. It also
exposed the phony anti-war posturing of the opposition Labour and the
Green parties, which have criticized the war while still supporting New
Zealand’s alliance with US imperialism.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and
Students for Social Equality in Sri Lanka will hold an urgent public
meeting on March 17 from 4–6 p.m. at the Public Library Auditorium in
Colombo to discuss the escalating imperialist war against Iran and the
tasks confronting the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally.
The
US-Israeli war of annihilation against Iran is part of the drive of US
imperialism for world hegemony. The US is using its superior firepower
to reassert its world domination amid its continuing historic decline.
Before
waging the illegal war on Iran, the Trump administration fully backed
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and militarily asserted its neo-colonial
domination over Venezuela, by abducting President Maduro and compelling
it to submit.
As the war against Iran enters its second week, more than a thousand
people, including children have been killed, and the country’s
infrastructure is being devastated. President Trump has declared that
the war will only end with the Iran’s “unconditional surrender”.
This
war is being waged not only against the people of Iran. It is part of
an emerging global war against working people all over the world.
With
the US sinking of Iran’s IRIS Dena frigate in the Indian Ocean, killing
at least 140 sailors, the Trump administration has declared to the
world that it is not bound by any law, convention, or civilized standard
of conduct, but only by the imperatives of US imperialism.
The
governments of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and President Anura
Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka are complicit in the US-Israeli war.
Neither country has named, let alone condemned, the US and Israeli,
instead issuing meaningless calls for restraint and deescalation.
The SEP stresses that this war will not be stopped by appeals to the
fascistic Trump administration or any of the imperialist powers. The defense of the Iranian people and the defeat of the war criminals
require the political mobilization of the global working class against
world capitalism. This can only be achieved on the basis of an
international socialist strategy.
Speakers will discuss the causes
of the war, its global implications, the historical and theoretical
issues involved, and above all the necessity of the working class
politically intervening to stop it.
We urge you to attend this meeting and participate in this important discussion.
Date: Tuesday, March 17 Time: 4:00–6:00 p.m. Venue: Public Library Auditorium, Colombo
On February 20, hundreds of students walked out of class at 1:25 pm
at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, Michigan to participate in a
planned protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The day before the protest, 57-year-old Mark Hendricks from the
neighboring community of Galesburg was arrested by the Battle Creek
Police Department (BCPD) and Michigan State Police on a charge of
“making threats to commit violence against students with a firearm.”
Screenshots
posted by community members show that Hendricks responded on social
media to someone saying “This is going to be awesome” about the planned
protest. His response said, “yes, AWSOME!! (sic) WHEN YOU COMMUNIST
ILLEGAL ALIEN PEDOPHILE PROTECTING PIECES OF SHIT GET WHAT YOU HAVE
COMMING!! (sic) WE WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!!”
Another post by the
fascist Hendricks stated “All Maga Patriots!! Come to Battle Creek! Come
armed! Be ready to fight and destroy ALL COMMUNIST ILLEGAL ALIEN
PEDOPHILE PROTECTORS! THEY DONT DESERVE TO LIVE!!”
News Channel 3
reported that BCPD Sergeant Chris Rabbit said “the threats through the
social media platform implied bringing weapons to the protest. … Our
response was heightened today in response to the threats. We had 15
officers deployed.”
Despite the threat, hundreds of students
gathered at the school’s stadium for student speakers and then marched
along the adjacent Helmer Road to the intersection with Business Loop
I-94 in front of a Meijer supermarket.
The decision by the
students to go ahead with their protest at this high traffic location,
after receiving death threats, demonstrates their strong conviction to
oppose ICE and the increasingly fascistic actions of the Trump
administration.
One of the student speakers said “this entire country is turning into a
dictatorship, and no power of hate is greater than love. … I do not see
any immigrants as any sort of threat because they are here to
survive. I know a couple of kids who need to stay here because they
have medical issues and if they go back to where they come from, they’re
going to die. I want everybody to be with me in this. I love this
country and I can’t let it be like this.”
*****
The action by the students at Lakeview High School are part of a
growing movement of students across the US. In Michigan, the walkouts
have taken place in the Detroit-metro area, which contains almost half
of the state’s population, as well as many other communities.
In
the Grand Rapids area, there have been many walkouts involving hundreds
of students. Students walked out at Northview High School January 30,
Lowell High School February 3, Grand Rapids Public Museum High School on
February 4, Wyoming High School on February 6, Southwest Middle High
School February 13, Grandville High School on February 13, and
Innovation Central High School February 18.
*****
In Lansing, the third-largest metro area in Michigan, students walked
out at East Lansing High School on January 9, Waverly High School on
January 20, Eastern High School on February 3, and Sexton High School on
February 3.
Smaller communities have also seen student walkouts,
including Traverse City on January 30, Muskegon High School on February
16 and Hart High School on February 18.
*****
Battle Creek has a sizable and established immigrant community,
including a large Burmese population estimated at around 3,000 people in
the city and nearby Springfield, as of 2024. Many arrived as refugees
and now work in local industries and run businesses. The city has
claims immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Iraq and Somalia.
The Battle
Creek area is also home to a significant layer of manufacturing workers
in food production and auto. While jobs at Kellogg’s and Post have
sharply declined over the past 40 years, the auto and other sectors are
expanding, and these workers now make up more than 20 percent of the
local workforce.
In 2021, 1,400 workers went on strike for 11 weeks against Kellogg’s across four plants before being betrayed by the union bureaucracy. The contract accepted by
the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers
International Union (BCTGM) leadership was virtually identical to the
one workers overwhelmingly rejected three weeks prior. The agreement
expanded the two-tier wage system rammed through in the previous
contract in 2015, removing all caps on the number of so-called
transitional workers the company can hire.
The deal contained only
a single small wage increase in the first year of the five-year
agreement for first tier “legacy” workers, with only cost-of-living
adjustments for the remaining four years.
“Those stupid simple
bastards [in the union] sold us out,” one worker at the Battle Creek
plant told the WSWS. “I just feel the fight has just begun,” another
Battle Creek worker said. “We didn’t even get half of what we went out
for. It’s just disappointing.”
*****
The threat of violence against students in Battle Creek cannot be
explained as merely the deranged ranting of a single individual. Across
the country there have been physical attacks and threats directed
against students participating in anti-ICE demonstrations.
Video
of the incident shows McElree approached students while in plain
clothes, shoving one and placing another—now identified as a 15-year-old
girl—in a chokehold before taking her to the ground. Startled students
surrounding the man sought to physically prevent the assault.
State
and local politicians in Quakertown—both Democratic and Republican—are
also threatening the growing opposition by trying to criminalize protest
actions by students and teachers. The WSWS has reported
that across the US, teachers and school staff are facing
investigations, discipline and firings over even perceived support for
anti‑ICE protests.
This climate of violence is being deliberately
cultivated by the Trump administration and broad sections of the ruling
class as part of their drive to establish a presidential dictatorship.
Following the killing of 37-year-old Rene Nicole Good in Minneapolis,
Vice President JD Vance declared that the ICE officer responsible was
protected by “absolute immunity.”
*****
The defense of students’ democratic rights is inseparable from the
struggle of workers in Battle Creek and across the country to defend
their jobs, wages and living standards. The same corporations that have
eliminated thousands of jobs over the past decades—while enriching
themselves—are backed by a political establishment that is expanding its
police state to wage war against immigrants, students and workers who
oppose its agenda.
Students courageously protesting the ICE raids
must turn to workers in Battle Creek’s factories and workplaces,
including those at Kellogg’s, Ferrero, Mars and throughout the region’s
manufacturing sector. The working class is the only progressive force in
capitalist society. Through its labor—and its collective power to
withhold that labor—the working class alone has the ability to halt the
ruling class’s drive toward dictatorship, stop its illegal wars abroad,
and defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights at home.
The assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party
(Australia), Max Boddy, released a video Monday March 9, opposing the
criminal US-Israeli war on Iran, denouncing the complicity of the
Anthony Albanese Labor Government, and calling for a socialist anti-war
movement.
*****
Workers around the world share a common interest. They have no stake in
conflicts fought for oil, profits and global domination. United
internationally and based on a socialist program of opposition to all
capitalist parties, the working class has the power to stop this descent
into catastrophe.
For the first week of the US-Israeli onslaught against Iran global
stock markets remained relatively stable, apparently in the belief that
it would soon be over. That situation may be about to change as the
consequences of the war unfold.
The exception to the relative calm
was Asia, marked by a plunge in the high-flying Korean market of 12
percent last Tuesday, the largest single-day fall ever, eclipsing that
incurred in the global financial crisis of 2008. Other markets in the
region also went down significantly because of the severe impact on Asia
of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The selloff could extend
further this week as the oil price continues to surge amid predictions
that it could soon top the $100 per barrel mark for benchmark Brent
crude. Major producers in the Middle East, including the United Arab
Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait, have announced they are cutting back
production. Qatar has invoked force majeure over its inability to meet
liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts.
The price of Brent crude
settled at more than $92 per barrel at the end of last week, up by 28
percent since the start of the war, to reach its highest level since
2023. It was $70 a barrel before the war began. The American benchmark,
West Texas Intermediate, jumped 36 percent for the week to reach more
than $90 per barrel in its largest weekly rise since 1983.
Goldman
Sachs, among others, has warned that crude prices could go over $100
per barrel this week “if no signs of solutions emerge by then.” In a
note to clients its analysts said oil prices could go to “demand
destruction levels even more quickly than history and simple models
focusing on Persian Gulf exports only suggest” and that the
“unprecedented” supply shock was 17 times worse than in the weeks after
the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The “solutions” being demanded involve a further escalation of the military onslaught.
*****
Asian economies dependent on supplies from the Middle East which pass
through the Strait of Hormuz are already being adversely affected. The
Taiwan government said it was seeking a mutual assistance framework with
Japan and South Korea to help deal with any LNG shortages.
Japan
has set up a special government office to deal with energy supply
issues. The trade minister said it would work “with a sense of urgency.”
South
Korea is to enact emergency energy procedures. It imports around 70
percent of its crude oil from the Middle East along with 20 percent of
its LNG, all of which passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The
chief economist for the Asia-Pacific at the French investment bank
Natixis, Alicia Garcia Herrero, has characterized the situation as
“terrible” for Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand because of their lack of
reserves and their dependence on supplies coming via the Strait of
Hormuz.
*****
Financial markets are already being impacted because of decisions
taken on the basis that the general direction taken by central banks
would be to lower interest rates. That scenario has been blown out of
the water by the fear that the oil price rises could set off a new
inflationary surge.
The chief economist of the European Bank,
Philip Lane, has said there could be a “substantial spike” in inflation
and a “sharp drop in output” in the Eurozone depending on how long the
war lasted.
He warned that the “impact would be amplified if it
also gave rise to a repricing of risk in financial markets”—the words
used by bankers and financial analysts to describe a significant
selloff.
The indications of that are muted as yet but they are present and could rapidly rise to the surface.
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Republican Senator Markwayne
Mullin of Oklahoma to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has
quickly won the backing of leading Democratic politicians and sections
of the trade union bureaucracy, underscoring the bipartisan character of
the assault on immigrants and democratic rights.
Mullin, 48, has been a far-right supporter of Trump, consistently
backing the administration’s anti-immigrant policies and the expansion
of the domestic police apparatus. Mullin has served in Congress since
2012, first as a member of the House of Representatives and since 2023
as a US senator from Oklahoma. Prior to entering politics he owned a
small plumbing and home services company and briefly attempted a career
as a mixed martial arts fighter, participating in three amateur bouts
roughly two decades ago that lasted less than five minutes combined.
Mullin’s
response to the killing of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti earlier
this year underscores the reactionary outlook that he will bring to the
Department of Homeland Security. Appearing on Fox News the day of the
murder, Mullin immediately repeated the administration’s justification
for the killing and slandered the victim as a threat. “A deranged
individual who came in to cause max damage with a loaded pistol, with an
extra mag that was completely loaded was shot and killed,” Mullin
declared, before blaming Democratic politicians for the political
fallout from the incident. The remarks echoed the rhetoric of Noem and
other administration officials, who lied in defense of the immigration
police while at the same time smearing those murdered by them.
*****
Mullin has also been a vocal supporter of US military aggression abroad.
In a recent interview on CNN, he defended the ongoing US-Israeli
assault on Iran while falsely claiming the United States was not at war.
*****
Mullin’s record of defending police violence, promoting anti-immigrant
repression and supporting imperialist war leaves no doubt about the
political character of Trump’s nominee. It is precisely for this reason
that sections of the trade union bureaucracy have rushed to embrace him.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien offered praise for Mullin on Thursday, telling The Hill,
“If anyone is willing to stand their butt up to protect America, it’s
Markwayne Mullin.” The statement marks a remarkable turn in relations
between the two men, who nearly came to blows during a Senate hearing in
November 2023 after Mullin challenged O’Brien to a physical fight.
The
confrontation, which drew national attention, has since given way to
what both men now describe as a friendly relationship. Speaking at the
Republican National Convention last year, Mullin said O’Brien apologized
to him at the request of Trump and that the two have remained in
regular contact.
*****
Support for Mullin is not limited to the trade union bureaucracy.
Democratic
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has already declared he will
vote to confirm Trump’s nominee, calling Mullin a “nice upgrade” from
outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Fellow Democratic Senator
Peter Welch of Vermont likewise praised Mullin as “competent” and
“honest,” predicting that the Senate will confirm him.
Mullin
himself has signaled his intention to meet with Senate Democratic
leaders, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to discuss
“improvements” to immigration enforcement operations.
“If they have real concerns, I’m going to listen to them. I’m going to see if it’s practical,” Mullin told reporters.
*****
Despite claims from capitalist politicians in both parties, DHS does
not exist to protect the population. Its function is to police and
suppress the population in the interests of the financial oligarchy.
All those sowing illusions in Mullin and the DHS are lying to workers.
In
addition to the Democrats and Teamsters bureaucracy, Mullin’s
nomination has been welcomed by some of the most reactionary forces in
American politics.
The anti-immigrant Federation for American
Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group long associated with far-right and
xenophobic politics, issued a statement congratulating Mullin and
declaring it looked forward to working with him as he “carries out
President Trump’s mass deportation mandate.”
That endorsement
underscores the political character of Mullin’s nomination. His
elevation to lead the DHS signals the continued expansion of the federal
immigration police and the intensification of Trump’s “mass deportation
operation.”
Nothing about Mullin’s appointment signals any change in the role of DHS.
*****
Democratic and trade union support for Mullin and the DHS exposes
these organizations as enemies of the working class. Seven Democratic
senators voted to confirm Kristi Noem as DHS secretary, and leading
Democrats are now preparing to support her replacement. The unions,
integrated into the corporate and state apparatus, function as labor
police, suppressing opposition while maintaining close relations with
the very officials overseeing mass repression.
The defense of
immigrants and democratic rights requires a break with both big business
parties and the pro-corporate union apparatus. Workers must organize
independently, building rank-and-file committees across industries and
national boundaries to unite immigrant and native-born workers in a
common struggle against the capitalist system that produces
dictatorship, war and social inequality.
US President Donald Trump is preparing to deploy ground troops
against Iran, several press outlets reported this weekend. While
presented as short-term special forces operations against Iranian
nuclear sites and oil facilities, any such action would represent a
massive escalation of the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran.
Trump
himself openly threatened the use of ground troops in remarks to
reporters Friday aboard Air Force One, returning from a ceremony to
receive the bodies of the first six American soldiers killed in the
war—likely the first of many.
What Trump discusses with the brutal Israeli regime and the fascist
Republicans in Congress he will not discuss with the American people as a
whole. The White House has not sought authorization from Congress for
military action against Iran, let alone a declaration of war, as
required by the US Constitution.
But the American people have
heard this before. The rhetoric of “limited” operations and “special
forces” is the same lie the ruling class has told before every major
ground war of the past 75 years.
The “military advisers” sent to
Vietnam became 550,000 troops. The “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq,
launched based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction, was declared
over in 2011—only for U.S. troops to return in 2014, where they remain
to this day. Afghanistan’s “limited” mission stretched across 20 years.
Now, barely one week into a war launched without congressional
authorization on fabricated pretexts, seven American soldiers are
already dead, and the administration is laying the groundwork for a
ground invasion of a country three times the size of Iraq with a
population of over 90 million.
The deep unpopularity of this war
cannot be overstated. Trump won in 2016 and 2024 by posturing as an
opponent of “endless wars”—a fraud now exposed for all to see. Workers
instinctively understand that their sons and daughters will be sent to
die while gas prices soar, social programs are gutted to fund the war
machine, and the specter of a draft looms over an entire generation.
This is why the administration speaks in euphemisms about “boots on the
ground” while Lindsey Graham assures the public “this is not Iraq.” It
is Iraq—and Vietnam, and every other war waged by American imperialism
at the expense of working people at home and abroad.
*****
Trump and Netanyahu stepped up their murderous threats after the
Iranian Assembly of Experts elected Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to succeed his father as supreme leader. The
elder Khamenei was assassinated in the first hours of the war when
Israeli bombs, aided by CIA targeting, struck a leadership compound in
Tehran. Trump declared even before the selection that he would have
final approval over any new Iranian ruler, in effect promising to murder
anyone who took the position without his permission. The Israeli
government said Mojtaba Khamenei would be placed at the top of its
targeting list.
Actions by the Pentagon demonstrate the vast
escalation underway. The aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush has set
sail from Norfolk toward the war zone, expected to reach the eastern
Mediterranean in 10-12 days. A third carrier in the region will allow US
Central Command to maintain and even increase the saturation bombing of
Iran.
The Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an elite paratrooper
unit, canceled a planned training operation, “fueling speculation within
the Defense Department that soldiers specializing in ground combat and a
range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East as the conflict
with Iran widens,” the Washington Post reported. There were
suggestions in the media that the 4,500-strong Immediate Response Force
could be deployed against Kharg Island, the offshore oil facility
handling 90 percent of Iran’s exports—either to destroy it or seize it
outright
*****
The American working class must oppose the course of mass murder and
destruction of an advanced society and culture on which the US
government has embarked. But workers and young people must recognize
that no amount of protest or pressure on the Democratic Party will stay
Trump’s hand. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, is a party of
big business. It defends the global interests of American imperialism
and supports the goals of the war against Iran, whatever its quibbling
about Trump’s refusing to seek congressional authorization.
*****
The Democratic Party, while quibbling over procedure, parrots the
talking points of the Trump administration and facilitates this
genocidal war. The vote last week on a War Powers resolution was a
political charade from the start—designed not to stop the war, but to
provide a fig leaf for the Democrats’ support of it. Their public
posture is to complain about process while repeating the same anti-Iran
propaganda used to justify aggression and assassination.
The
introduction of ground troops would have massive consequences not only
for Iran, but for the entire world and for American society itself. A
land war against a country of 90 million people cannot be fought without
the total subordination of American society to war, requiring the
erection of a ferocious police state to suppress domestic resistance to
an unfolding catastrophe.
Yet the very recklessness of this
escalation is producing growing anger and opposition. Millions of
workers and young people do not want another imperialist bloodbath, and
the longer the war continues, the more explosive its economic, social
and political consequences will become.
The decisive question is whether this opposition is organized and
given conscious political direction. The working class is the only
social force that can stop the war. The catastrophic economic
consequences of the conflict, and its direct connection to the
developing dictatorship within the United States, will demonstrate to
millions the necessity of forcing an end to the war, dismantling the US
war machine and bringing down the Trump administration.
This
requires that opposition take the form of an organized, politically
conscious movement—socialist in its program and internationalist in its
perspective—mobilizing the immense power of the working class against
imperialist war and the capitalist system that produces it.
March 7 marked 11 months since 63-year-old Ronald Adams Sr. was
killed at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant in Monroe County, Michigan.
His widow, Shamenia Stewart-Adams, and co-workers have still received
no official explanation of what happened to her husband. The Michigan
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) has issued no
findings. The United Auto Workers (UAW) has said nothing. The engine
plant is back in full production.
A spokesman from MIOSHA said
that the case was “still open,” almost a year since Adams’ death. An
independent investigation conducted by the International Workers
Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which presented its
initial findings at a public hearing in Detroit in July 2025, provided evidence of widespread safety violations by management, including disregard for the most basic lockout/tagout procedures and
a rush to complete the retooling of the critical engine plant, which
was more than a year behind schedule. Far from opposing this, union
officials from UAW President Shawn Fain down, enforced these deadly
conditions and joined in the corporate coverup afterwards.
In comments to the World Socialist Web Site,
Shamenia Stewart-Adams said, “We need an explanation as to what
happened. We have not gotten an update on the investigation or anything.
We’ve got no answers. You just wait—no answers. We’re just empty right
now. I just feel like a report should have been given. Especially since
the factory is back in full production.”
Stewart-Adams also
expressed her sympathy with the widow of Antonio Gaston, a worker at the
Stellantis Toledo Assembly Plant in Ohio, who was crushed to death
eight months before her husband died. The worker’s widow, Renita
Shores-Gaston, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Stellantis.
“We’ve gone through similar things. There has to be justice for her
family and mine,” Shamenia said.
Next month, Stellantis, a
multi-billion company, is expected to pay an $11,292 fine in a final
settlement of three serious safety violations that led to Gaston’s
death, including failing to provide safety guards to protect workers
from “pinch points” on the inverted IPF Chassis Delivery Conveyor.
According to the family’s attorneys, workers at the plant have alleged
that the guards were removed to boost production and Gaston, a materials
handler, was not trained to work on the assembly line. Management
allegedly assigned him there because of manpower shortages due to
hundreds of previous layoffs at the plant.
Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist who is running for
UAW president, condemned both Stellantis and the UAW bureaucracy for
their treatment of the Adams and Gaston families. In a statement on 11
months since Adams’ death, he stated:
I urge workers
at the Dundee plant and throughout the UAW to demand the immediate
release of the results of the MIOSHA investigation on the death of our
brother Ronald Adams Sr. along with all digital machine logs, safety
reports, and communications involving Stellantis, its contractors, and
the UAW. As the resolution
unanimously passed at the IWA-RFC public hearing stated: those
responsible—from corporate executives to union officials and government
regulators—must be held accountable for their role in the preventable
deaths of Ronald Adams Sr., Antonio Gaston and other workers.
These
deaths are not accidents but the inevitable product of a system that
sacrifices workers for profit. Every day in America’s industrial
slaughterhouse, workers are maimed and killed on the job as corporations
drive speed ups, cut safety and treat human life as if it is
disposable.
With its continued silence, the UAW bureaucracy is
demonstrating a callous indifference for not only the victim of the
deadly working conditions, but towards his widow, and his many family
members who have been effectively abandoned by the UAW in the family’s
search for answers. To workers Adams was the protector of the plant, but
the UAW bureaucrats are demonstrating that in addition to being only a
number to Stellantis, he was only dues revenue to them. Workers cannot
forgive and forget what happened to our brother, and both the company
and bureaucracy will be held accountable for their indifference for one
of our own.
We cannot defend our lives and livelihoods while we
are bound hand and foot by a union apparatus that stands against us at
every turn. As it is presently constituted the UAW is a union in name
only. It functions to isolate us, discipline us and protect the
interests of a privileged bureaucracy that is in bed with the companies
and the government.
We, as workers must
collectively organize in defense of our social and democratic rights,
including the right to a decent standard of living, secure jobs and safe
working conditions. My campaign is not about replacing one bureaucrat
with another but abolishing the pro-company UAW apparatus, transferring
power to workers on the shopfloor, and establishing workers control over
safety and production standards by rank-and-file committees, controlled
democratically by workers ourselves.
MIOSHA opened an investigation into Adams’ death the day of the fatality
on April 7, 2025. Nearly a year on, no findings have been released, no
citations issued, and Stewart-Adams has received no communication from
the agency. This is less a failure than a feature. Federal and state
safety agency investigations are chronically delayed, and when they
conclude, typically produce fines that are rounding errors for a
corporation the size of Stellantis. The agency exists to absorb public
outrage, not to hold corporations accountable.
*****
In the eleven months since Adams’ death, Shawn Fain’s UAW has issued no
statement demanding accountability from Stellantis and made no public
demands of MIOSHA. Instead, it moved as quickly as possible to reopen
Dundee Engine—protecting production continuity and its dues base over
the demands of Adams’ family and coworkers.
*****
This is not a failure of individual leadership but the institutional
character of an apparatus built on class collaboration. For decades the
UAW has functioned as a labor-management partnership, suppressing
rank-and-file opposition, delivering a disciplined workforce to the
corporations, and pocketing the dues. The deaths of Ronald Adams Sr. and
Antonio Gaston are the human cost of that arrangement.
These
deaths are the direct consequence of the 2023 sellout agreements signed
by Fain & Co. after the bogus “stand up” strike at GM, Ford and
Stellantis. Hailed as “historic” by the UAW, the Biden administration
and the corporate media, the deals paved the way for massive layoffs in
the auto industry, most recently in the permanent layoff of 1,100
workers at GM’s Factory Zero in Detroit. Fain who called Trump a “scab”
as he stumped for Biden and Harris, turned around and hailed Trump’s
“America First” trade measures and illegal tariffs of the fascist
president.
More than 5,000 workers are killed on the job in the
United States every year—a figure that dramatically undercounts the toll
when occupational illness is included. The auto industry has been among
the most dangerous, as Stellantis and its rivals have driven speed
increases, expanded job combinations and cut safety staffing to maximize
returns. Workers who raise safety concerns face discipline or
termination with the collusion of the UAW apparatus.
The
International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)
demands the full public disclosure of the MIOSHA investigation; criminal
accountability for Stellantis executives responsible for conditions at
Dundee Engine and Toledo Assembly; and an end to the UAW’s cover-up of
the company’s safety record. We call on autoworkers and workers
throughout industry to take up the fight for the families of Ronald
Adams Sr. and Antonio Gaston as their own.
As the US-Israel imperialist war against Iran enters its second week,
the risk of this criminal aggression expanding to include NATO member
Türkiye and its ally Azerbaijan is coming to the fore.
According
to a statement by the Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday, March
4, “A ballistic munition detected to have been launched from Iran and,
after passing through the airspace of Iraq and Syria, directed towards
Turkish airspace, was timely engaged and neutralized by NATO air and
missile defense assets deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
Speaking to AFP, an unnamed Turkish official said the target of the
destroyed missile was “not Türkiye,” adding, “We believe the missile was
targeting a base in the Greek Cypriot part of Cyprus but veered off
course.” The Iranian General Staff also stated that it did not target
any US bases in Türkiye.
However, following a meeting of NATO
ambassadors, a statement was issued saying, “We condemn Iran’s targeting
of Türkiye. NATO stands firmly with all Allies, including Türkiye.”
Meanwhile, the Turkish press ran false and provocative headlines such as
“Iran attacked Türkiye,” “Iran was going to hit Incirlik,” and “Iran
fired missiles at the Ceyhan oil pipeline.”
*****
On Thursday, it was announced that an attack had been carried out
with drones on Nakhchivan Airport in Azerbaijan’s territory bordering
Türkiye. President Ilham Aliyev immediately blamed Iran for the attack,
calling it a “terrorist action” and said he had ordered the army to
“prepare and implement appropriate retaliatory measures.”
Azeris,
concentrated in northern Iran, are the country’s largest minority with
at least 15 million of Iran’s 90 million population. In 2025, Israel
imported 46 percent of its total oil from Azerbaijan. Most of this crude
oil flows through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline, which passes
through Türkiye, and Türkiye’s Ceyhan Port.
Iran has denied allegations of attacks on Türkiye and Azerbaijan.
Speaking to the US press, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said, “Our
armed forces deny any claim that a missile was fired at Türkiye or
Azerbaijan. NATO says this missile was fired by Iran, but we have no
reason to attack Türkiye. Türkiye is our good neighbor. Similarly, there
is no reason to send drones to Azerbaijan.” Workers in Türkiye, Azerbaijan, and internationally need to be warned:
The US and Israel may resort to any kind of provocation to directly
involve regional states in the war against Iran. Türkiye’s involvement
in the war could, under Article 5 of NATO, formally draw the entire
alliance into the conflict.
*****
The Trump administration demonstrated in Venezuela that it will not
engage in any negotiations when the interests of the national
bourgeoisie of sovereign states clash with those of US imperialism; it
demands complete submission and a puppet government. Trump is now
demanding “complete submission” in Iran.
Following World War I, the territories of present-day Türkiye, which had
been occupied and carved up by imperialist powers and their proxies,
won their national independence war in 1922 with the support of the
Soviet government led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, thereby
escaping colonization. However, as Trotsky brilliantly explained in his
Theory of Permanent Revolution, this “political independence” did not
end the country’s dependence on imperialism as a backward country.
Türkiye joined NATO against the USSR in 1952 and became a critical ally
of US imperialism in the Middle East.
Whenever this military-strategic alliance faltered, Türkiye witnessed
military coups and changes in government. The 1960 coup was followed by
the 1971 military intervention, while the 1980 military coup was
clearly carried out in collaboration with the CIA. This coup also
secured imperialist dominance in Türkiye following the loss of Iran
after the 1979 Revolution.
The most recent, NATO-backed, coup
attempt was made against Erdoğan on July 15, 2016, almost 10 years ago.
It failed. The main reason for the attempt was that the foreign policy
of the Erdoğan government was increasingly coming into conflict with the
interests of its American and European allies.
While Ankara enthusiastically supported the US war for regime change in
Syria, it could not accommodate the Pentagon’s decision to make Kurdish
nationalist forces in Syria its main proxy force. The possibility of a
Kurdish state was unacceptable to Türkiye’s ruling elite, given the
country’s large Kurdish population. Ankara responded by deepening its
policy of maneuvering between the US-NATO and China and Russia, while
Washington’s response was a coup attempt that included efforts to
assassinate Erdoğan.
*****
Now, workers in Türkiye also face the danger of being drawn into an
imperialist war against Iran due to Ankara’s close ties to Washington
and NATO. The government, and the capitalist political establishment as a
whole, is inherently incapable of providing a progressive response to
this crisis. This requires a consistent revolutionary struggle against
imperialist war, and the only social force capable of doing so is the
working class.
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to some of those who marched through central London on Saturday at the demonstration demanding an end to the bombing of Iran.
Thousands joined the protest, reflecting far more widespread
international opposition to the escalating war drive led by the United
States and Israel, and facilitated by Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
The interviewees expressed deep hostility to the war and distrust of the political establishment responsible for it.
Gazelle,
an Iranian, explained, “The biggest threat to Iran right now is the
Western imperialists… Iran is the last place they haven’t touched. For
them it secures their interests in that region.”
*****
Another Iranian demonstrator, who asked not to be named, said she attended the protest as “I just can’t hold my anger anymore.”
She
expressed anger over the role of the European powers in enabling
Israel’s military actions. “I’m against the war,” she said. “I’m against
Israel bombing Gaza and bombing wherever they want in the world. I’m
very angry with the whole establishment in Europe, because they didn’t
stand against Israel when it started committing genocide in Gaza.”
The
major powers’ support for Israel had emboldened further aggression.
“They believe they can do anything in the world,” she said.
The
demonstrator denounced what she described as “a criminal class—an
arrogant class that thinks it can do anything,” that is responsible for
wars. She said in reference to Jeffrey Epstein—the billionaire buddy of
Donald Trump and many others in the upper echelons of the ruling
class—“we call them the Epstein class, the Epstein world”.
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.
