The two days since Trump proclaimed a “ceasefire” have been
characterized by continued violence in the Middle East, above all,
through Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon, and a deepening
political crisis in the United States. Trump has paired his ceasefire
announcement with open threats of renewed war against Iran, declaring
Wednesday night that the US military is “Loading Up and Resting” for its
“next Conquest.”
Under these conditions, the publication Jacobin,
semi-official house organ of the Democratic Socialists of America and
the Democratic Party, has responded with a series of articles whose
central theme is: There is nothing to worry about, and nothing needs to
be done.
*****
Bound up with the Democratic Party politics that determine Jacobin’s
policies, its central purpose is to demobilize opposition to war: Trump
has suffered a “debacle,” therefore the danger has supposedly receded.
It is certainly the case that American imperialism has suffered a major
setback and catastrophically misjudged the resistance of the Iranian
people. But the Trump administration’s response will not be retreat but
escalation—greater violence abroad and a deepening conspiracy for
dictatorship at home.
*****
As the World Socialist Web Site stated, Trump’s threat is a
historical watershed. His declaration that the United States is prepared
to annihilate an entire civilization of more than 90 million people
exposed the war’s genocidal logic and laid bare the criminal character
of the American state and its leaders. It shatters what remained of the
myth that US imperialism acts in defense of “democracy” or “human
rights.”
Such considerations are entirely foreign to the politics of Jacobin
and the DSA, which are oriented entirely to the electoral fortunes of
the Democratic Party and the prospects for political advancement (and
personal enrichment) this affords.
*****
The central aim of the Democratic Party and the DSA is to prevent the
emergence of a movement from below, which would not stop with opposition
to Trump. The Democrats fear any genuine popular mobilization because
it would immediately raise broader questions: the grotesque
concentration of wealth, the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy,
and the entire social order that both capitalist parties exist to
defend.
This is why, during the “No Kings” protests against Trump held on March
28, they and their political affiliates deliberately downplayed the war
against Iran. Those like Sanders who did raise the question of the war
offered no way forward for the struggle except appeals to Congress and
even to Trump himself.
What is entirely absent from the Jacobin articles is any
reference to the historical roots and fundamental driving forces of the
war against Iran. There is not a word about the strategic interests of
American imperialism, the long history of US intervention in Iran under
both Democrats and Republicans, or the connection between the assault on
Iran and the expanding conflict with Russia and China. Neither article
mentions “oil,” “imperialism,” “capitalism,” the ruling class or the
social forces represented by Trump.
This omission expresses a definite class standpoint. Jacobin,
speaking for the Democratic Party and the upper-middle class milieu
represented by the DSA, seeks above all to block the emergence of an
independent movement of the working class against war and the capitalist
interests from which it arises. Such a movement, Jacobin has stated elsewhere, constitutes “sectarianism.”
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party
fight for the building of a mass anti-war movement based on the
independent political mobilization of the working class against the
capitalist system, which is the root cause of war. Only the
international working class has the social power to halt the imperialist
war machine and prevent the present crisis—or the next one—from
developing into a world war that would threaten civilization not only in
Iran but everywhere.
Reporters
from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to workers as they passed
through the factory gates, shortly after reports emerged that the US
government is moving toward automatic registration for a potential
military draft.
When President Trump signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization
Act (NDAA) into law last December—with critical votes supplied by the
Democratic Party—one provision was largely concealed from the American
public. The creation of an automatic selective service registration
system for all men aged 18 to 26, tied directly to state and federal
databases, was barely discussed.
Now, under conditions of the
widening US-Israeli war in the Middle East—and future wars being
prepared by US imperialism—the 2026 NDAA has a ready-made mechanism for
conscription that can be activated by a directive from the fascist in
the White House.
A filing by the Trump administration to the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30 has confirmed
both the operational readiness of the system and the administration’s
long-term strategy to prepare for a generation of imperial wars fought
by working class soldiers.
Under the NDAA provision, the Selective
Service System (SSS) will automatically register all males between 18
and 26 using existing data streams from state motor vehicle departments,
educational institutions and federal tax and immigration agencies
beginning in December 2026. The measure replaces the voluntary mail-in
or online registration system previously implemented by the Selective
Service Act going back to 1980 and the administration of Jimmy Carter.
*****
Notifications and classification statuses would be delivered
electronically through federal and state portals, while appeals or
deferment requests may be filed online through a centralized system.
Framed by the Trump administration as a “modernization” of the draft
infrastructure, officials claim the process will “reduce administrative
burden” and “increase equity in compliance.” However, the main goal is
to eliminate non-registration, centralize control and ensure readiness
for immediate mobilization once a national emergency requires the draft.
*****
The scale of US casualties in the initial months of the war against
Iran has already sparked renewed discussion in Washington about manpower
shortages and the exhaustion of volunteer enlistments. Recruitment has
plummeted for the third straight year, forcing the administration to
expand eligibility criteria and reopen previously closed avenues of
enlistment.
The lies provided by the US government justifying the
wars launched over the past three decades—from the false claims about
“yellow cake uranium” prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the
obviously made-up claim by Trump that Iran was “weeks away” from having a
nuclear weapon—have no doubt played a role in the decreasing numbers of
enlistments to the all-volunteer US army.
*****
Strategists within the National Security Council have spoken
bluntly about the draft plan. “Iran is not the end,” one senior defense
official told Politico in March. “It’s the first test of a
broader geopolitical reorientation. We’re rebuilding the capacity to
project power simultaneously in multiple theaters—Eurasia, the Pacific,
and the Middle East.” Behind this language is the unmistakable logic of
international imperialist war for markets and resources.
The NDAA
provision also mandates that automatic registration will apply to lawful
permanent residents, asylum seekers, Deferred Action (DACA) recipients
and undocumented immigrants identified through state or federal data.
While
Trump and his fascist and xenophobic supporters have vilified
undocumented immigrants as a national threat and unleashed violence,
detention and death upon them, the new SSS system shows that those same
“illegal” immigrants will be compelled to serve and die alongside
American youth in US wars of conquest.
By linking data from the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and state
records, the administration ensures that all young men residing within
US borders—regardless of their immigration status—will be entered into
the federal registry. Now, the immigrant workers will not only face
deportation and being hauled off to concentration camps in El Salvador
or elsewhere. They will also be forced onto the battle fields to die for
the interests of the American financial oligarchy.
*****
The system’s reliance on state-level data also contradicts local laws.
Several states, including California and New York, maintain strict
privacy laws governing the use and transmission of resident data to
federal agencies. By demanding direct data pipelines to the Selective
Service System, the Trump administration’s new plan seeks to override
these restrictions.
*****
Alongside the selective service overhaul, Trump’s Pentagon also
quietly raised the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42, a change that
was made public only in an internal directive earlier this year. Defense
officials have said the adjustment is about “greater longevity and
fitness levels,” but the underlying motivation is obvious. The wars the
US is now fighting require many more soldiers.
The volunteer army
has long faced a crisis of recruitment amid stagnant pay, poor
conditions and widespread public distrust of government motives. The
enlistment age increase widens the conscription base to include millions
of older working-class men—those who are struggling with income
instability, medical and college loan debt, or unstable employment—and
for whom military service may be seen as the only path out of a crisis.
The
reactivation of the draft shows that the global strategic aims of the
Trump administration require the mobilization of the youth to fight and
die in its wars of aggression and conquest. This is a central component
of the drive by US imperialism to turn the clock back and abolish the
gains by the working class in the 20th century.
April 10 marks the first 100 days in office of New York City’s
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) mayor, Zohran Mamdani. They have
been characterized by a betrayal of the aspirations of the million New
Yorkers who voted for him and the tens of millions across the US who
supported him. He has retreated from implementing his major campaign
promises, given the New York Police Department (NYPD) license to spy on
and repress antiwar and anti-ICE protesters, is preparing massive cuts
to social services and education and has made a political alliance with
the fascist in the White House, Donald Trump.
In his latest
retreat from the minor but popular reforms he proposed during his
election campaign, Mamdani has all but admitted that his promise of free
bus service is dead. In an interview with Politico on
Wednesday, after the interviewer noted that no proposal had been made to
include funding for the program in the state budget, from which mass
transit for the city is funded, Mamdani could only respond lamely: “It
continues to be part of budget negotiations,” and “We’re encouraged by
the conversations we’re having with the governor.”
This is the
same governor, right-wing Democrat Kathy Hochul, who fled an appearance
at an auto exhibition in Manhattan later that day after being besieged
by protesters. One demonstrator shouted at her, accurately, “You’re a
millionaire protecting billionaires.” On Thursday, Hochul canceled an
appearance in Queens, no doubt out of concern that she might be run out
of the borough as well.
Hochul, whom Mamdani endorsed in February
for governor in her reelection bid and whom he refuses to confront on
any issue, has been adamant that she will oppose his proposed 1 percent
tax increase on incomes over $1 million and 3 percent tax increase on
corporations.
Two of the three major promises Mamdani made during
his election campaign, free bus service and universal pre-K, simply
cannot be fully funded on any long-term basis without these taxes, which
were never in the offing. Even so, Mamdani and the DSA continue to
promote the illusion that Hochul is willing or able to persuade the
billionaires to give up even a tiny fraction of their wealth.
*****
Mamdani has said little in recent weeks about his third major election
proposal: freezing rents on the 1 million rent-regulated apartments in
the city. While he appointed six of the nine members of the Rent
Guidelines Board (RGB), which has the power to set rent increases, in
February, there is no guarantee they will vote for a 0 percent increase,
although most observers think this is likely. On Thursday, however, the
RGB itself reported that the annual Price Index of Operating Costs,
which landlords pay for building upkeep, had risen 5.3 percent.
*****
The fate of these three programs, central to Mamdani’s supposed
effort to make New York City “affordable” for most of the population
through minor reforms, must be seen in the context of much broader cuts
to social programs and education that are almost certainly coming as
Mamdani tries to close the city’s $5.4 billion budget gap, as he is
legally required to do by July.
While he has floated an either-or
scenario of, on the one hand, pressuring Hochul and the state
legislature to pass the millionaires’ tax or, on the other, increasing
the city’s property tax by 9.5 percent—a move that would devastate
millions of working class and middle class homeowners and tenants, as
well as small businesses—it has been clear from the outset that this was
a nonstarter and that the only real option before Mamdani is to cut
vital social programs.
*****
The DSA has now been in power in America’s largest city for 100 days.
Not only has its mayor shown his willingness to meet with the city’s
leading billionaires and seek to balance the city budget without
touching their wealth; no DSA leader, least of all Mamdani himself,
seriously entertains the prospect of significantly increasing taxes on
them. Instead, the DSA is preparing to impose the full burden of the
fiscal crisis on the working class.
To do so, the repressive
apparatus of the capitalist state must function without restraint. The
immense economic pressure bearing down on the working class in New York,
nationally and internationally has combined with widespread dissent,
first in opposition to genocide and now in opposition to war and
dictatorship. Mamdani’s willingness to assure the ruling elite that he
could govern the financial nerve center of world capitalism was signaled
not only by his meetings with the city’s billionaires after receiving
the Democratic Party nomination in June, but above all by his two
cordial meetings with Donald Trump and his pointed refusal to criticize
Trump by name—even as Trump threatened to destroy Iranian civilization.
*****
He has allowed NYPD officers to arrest striking nurses—after working
behind the scenes to shut down the nurses’ strike at four major
hospitals in February—and has continually backed away from his promises
to disband the Strategic Response Group (SRG), the NYPD’s anti-terrorism
unit, which beat and arrested George Floyd protesters in 2020 and
pro-Palestinian demonstrators and others beginning in 2023.
While
Mamdani has repeatedly said that the SRG would be disbanded, SRG
officers arrested protesters on Monday at “Passover Seder in the
Street,” a Jewish-sponsored event, after demonstrators sought to block
the doors of Palantir’s Manhattan headquarters. Palantir is a tech
company that provides data aggregation and relationship-mapping software
to ICE. Significantly, Mamdani had attended the protest earlier while
it was rallying in Union Square in Lower Manhattan.
The week
before, at a press conference at 1 Police Plaza in Manhattan alongside
Jessica Tisch, Mamdani stepped back from his campaign pledge to disband
the Criminal Group Database, better known as the Gang Database, which
contains thousands of names, including minors, of people the NYPD merely
suspects of gang affiliation. Mamdani cited the record low murder and
shooting statistics from the first quarter of 2026 as proof that the
NYPD’s current policing strategies, including reliance on the database,
were working.
His collaboration with the NYPD has become so blatant that the New York Times
published an interview with him on Thursday largely to allow him to
make excuses for not disbanding the SRG, for keeping the Gang Database,
and to show that he was in command, allowing him to declare: “I hold the
final decision.”
The fact that a so-called “socialist” mayor
feels compelled to say this about the largest police force in the
country only demonstrates that, after 100 days, his administration has
only one response to the relentless pressure and power of the capitalist
state—whether in the form of Trump, the NYPD or their Wall Street
masters. The DSA in power in New York City is a regime of surrender to
these forces.
The continued practice of state-sanctioned murder in the United States
remains a brutal reality of American capitalism. Even in this gruesome
landscape, however, the construction of a remote-controlled firing squad
chamber in Idaho stands out for its calculated, technological savagery.
As the ruling establishment struggles to maintain its “assembly line of
death,” five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and
Utah—have turned to the firing squad in a desperate effort to keep the
state killing machine moving.
*****
In Idaho, this retrogression has met with significant opposition.
Protesters, including local faith leaders and anti-death penalty
advocates, have gathered in Boise to deliver petitions to the private
corporations complicit in designing this facility, among them the
engineering firm Cator Ruma and Associates, whose employees have been
drawn into the machinery of state murder through routine contracting
work.
The chamber itself, a “retrofit” of the F Block execution
unit at the Idaho State Maximum Security Institution, stands as a
testament to the cold, bureaucratic character of state killing. Internal
emails between contractors reveal a chilling “business as usual” tone,
with technicians discussing floor drains to “mop/squeegee liquids” and
soundproofing measures to ensure other incarcerated people do not hear
the shots. The project will utilize a remote-operated firing mechanism
specifically designed to “minimize correctional staff
involvement”—allowing the state to kill a human being with the push of a
button.
*****
The drive toward this mechanical slaughter was accelerated by the
state’s own previous incompetence in killing a condemned prisoner. In
2024, Idaho attempted to execute Thomas Creech by
lethal injection. In a torturous procedure, the execution team failed
eight times to establish an IV line, probing Creech’s hands, feet and
legs for nearly an hour before abandoning the attempt. The grotesque
spectacle did not prompt a reconsideration of the death penalty itself.
Instead, the legislature responded by passing House Bill 37, clearing
the path for the chamber now under construction.
*****
Idaho’s embrace of the rifle follows the trail blazed by South Carolina,
which carried out three firing squad executions in 2025—the first such
executions anywhere in the United States since Utah put Ronnie Lee
Gardner to death in 2010.
*****
The grim record of what the firing squad does to a human body was established in vivid detail when Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner just
after midnight on June 18, 2010, at a prison in Draper. Gardner, 49,
was seated in a straight-backed metal chair raised on a platform, his
hooded head secured by a strap across his forehead, harness-like straps
constraining his chest, his handcuffed arms hanging at his sides. A
small white cloth square bearing a black target was affixed over his
heart.
*****
Defenders of the firing squad promote it as a reliable and even humane
alternative to the botched chemistry of lethal injection. The historical
record of this method offers a definitive judgment on that claim: the
firing squad has historically been used most widely in war: as
punishment for desertion and mutiny, in mass killings of civilians and
as retribution for political opponents of repressive and colonial
regimes.
Irish socialist James Connolly, along with 14 other leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 against
British colonialism, were shot by firing squad. The rebellion began on
April 24, 1916, and was suppressed within a week, with the leaders
surrendering on April 29-30. Their trials, along with those of dozens of
others, were conducted under the Defense of the Realm Act and British
military law. They were swift, secret and afforded the accused no
meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.
The 15 men were shot by firing squad between May 3 and 12,
1916, at Kilmainham Gaol. Connolly, military commander of the Rising,
had been so badly injured during the fighting in Dublin that he could
not walk or stand unsupported, and had to be tied to a chair to be shot.
Some
of the most harrowing examples of civilian death by firing squad were
carried out by the Nazis. The following are only three examples of such
atrocities:
On December 18, 1939, following the Nazi invasion of Poland, 56 Polish
citizens were massacred in Bochnia, near Kraków, in one of the first
mass reprisal executions of the occupation. The victims had committed no
crime against the German military. They were murdered as a
demonstration of power and terror, a message to the occupied population
that resistance or even the suspicion of resistance would be met with
collective death.
On June 2, 1941, German paratroopers prepared to execute Greek
civilians in the village of Kondomari, on the island of Crete, following
the Battle of Crete. The villagers were rounded up in retaliation for
armed resistance. Photographs survive of the men of Kondomari being led
out of the village, assembled in a field and shot.
In September
1941, on the Eastern Front, German soldiers raised their rifles against
Soviet civilians accused of being partisans. A line of men were shot
down, falling into a pit already dug.
These
examples define the social and political meaning of this method of
killing. It is a demonstration of the state’s monopoly on violence, an
assertion of absolute power over the lives of those it has judged
expendable—whether a condemned prisoner in a South Carolina execution
chamber or a Polish farmer in a town square in December 1939.
The revival and acceleration of the firing squad in the United States
cannot be separated from the broader political context in which it is
occurring. On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, President Trump signed
an executive order titled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting
Public Safety,” which rescinded the moratorium on federal executions,
directed the attorney general to pursue capital punishment in all
applicable federal cases, specifically mandated the death penalty for
murders of law enforcement officers and for capital crimes committed by
undocumented immigrants, and called for efforts to overturn Supreme
Court precedents that limit state and federal authority to impose
execution.
*****
Lethal injection was introduced in the 1970s precisely because the
ruling establishment needed a method of killing that appeared less
violent to observers. But the record of lethal injection has been one of
continuous failure and horror: inmates who have groaned and writhed on
the gurney, lungs filled with frothy, bloody liquid as they experienced
the agonizing sensation of drowning; prisoners removed from the
execution chamber alive, only to face another date with the executioner;
states unable to obtain the necessary drugs because European
pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell them for use in capital
punishment.
The return to the firing squad is another iteration of
this search—the state’s perpetual attempt to find a method of killing
that looks clean and defensible, however savage the reality....
*****
Meanwhile, states like Alabama have simultaneously moved to adopt
nitrogen asphyxiation in the gas chamber, pursuing every available
avenue to keep the machinery of death operational. The diversity of
methods is not evidence of a search for humanity but of a system
determined to keep killing, by whatever means remain available.
There
is a direct line between this domestic violence and the violence the US
state inflicts around the world. President Trump’s recent threats to
destroy Iran’s entire civilization are the fascistic and desperate
statements of an oligarchy in extreme crisis. The imperialist brutality
expressed in the Pentagon’s military operations is reflected in the
treatment of the working class at home. From murders carried out by ICE
agents in immigrant communities to the execution of death row inmates
whose crimes stem from lives of poverty and abuse, capital punishment is
an expression of a system that holds human life in total
contempt—whether that life ends in a jail in Dublin in 1916, a Greek
field in 1941, or a retrofitted execution chamber in southern Idaho in
2026.
The case of Rosa María Carranza, a 67-year-old immigrant from El
Salvador, lays bare the devastating human consequences of the assault on
social rights unfolding in the United States. Her experience is a
concentrated expression of a broader policy targeting hundreds of
thousands of immigrants, including those who have lived and worked in
the country for decades, paid taxes and complied with every legal
requirement imposed upon them.
Carranza has spent more than 30
years in the United States. She built her life through socially
essential labor, working as a caregiver and educator before co-founding a
Spanish-immersion outdoor preschool in Oakland. Like millions of
workers, she paid into Social Security and Medicare throughout her
working life. Over 24 years, she contributed tens of thousands of
dollars into these programs with the expectation that she would receive
benefits in retirement.
That expectation has now been shattered.
Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act
engineered by Trump and supported by the Democrats, Carranza and an
estimated 100,000 other lawfully present immigrants will be stripped of
access to Medicare, even if they have contributed to the system for
decades. The law excludes broad categories of immigrants, including
Temporary Protected Status holders, refugees, asylum seekers and certain
visa holders. Those already enrolled face disenrollment, with coverage
set to terminate in early 2026.
*****
Medical professionals have repeatedly warned that forced exclusion
from health coverage leads to predictable outcomes. When seniors delay
treatment, minor conditions escalate into serious illnesses and reliance
on emergency services increases. The policy does not even eliminate
costs. It redistributes them in a more destructive and socially
detrimental form: war and repression.
The psychological toll is
equally devastating. Carranza has described her situation as “a complete
nightmare.” The loss of health coverage intersects with broader
insecurities surrounding immigration status, housing and retirement. A
prior bureaucratic error that temporarily cut off her Social Security
benefits left her unable to pay rent, forcing her to work in exchange
for housing. What was once a temporary disruption now threatens to
become a permanent condition.
Her
experience exposes a fundamental contradiction. Workers are compelled
to contribute to social programs throughout their lives, yet access to
those programs is not guaranteed. For immigrants, decades of labor and
tax contributions provide no protection against sudden exclusion. In
fact, this is a form of mass expropriation, the seizure of funds paid by
workers for their own future survival.
*****
Immigrants, including undocumented workers, contribute billions
annually to the very programs from which they are excluded. In 2022
alone, undocumented immigrants paid $6.4 billion into Medicare and $25.7
billion into Social Security. Yet they have historically been
ineligible for these benefits. The new measures extend this framework to
growing sections of legally present immigrants, deepening what amounts
to legalized theft.
This exposes the fraudulent claim that
immigrants are a burden on public resources. They are a net source of
funding. The real aim is the redistribution of resources upward, away
from the working class. The stripping of benefits already paid for is
not a cost-saving measure but a transfer of wealth.
*****
Immigrants, including undocumented workers, contribute billions
annually to the very programs from which they are excluded. In 2022
alone, undocumented immigrants paid $6.4 billion into Medicare and $25.7
billion into Social Security. Yet they have historically been
ineligible for these benefits. The new measures extend this framework to
growing sections of legally present immigrants, deepening what amounts
to legalized theft.
This exposes the fraudulent claim that
immigrants are a burden on public resources. They are a net source of
funding. The real aim is the redistribution of resources upward, away
from the working class. The stripping of benefits already paid for is
not a cost-saving measure but a transfer of wealth.
*****
At the state level, conditions offer no relief. In California, the
Democratic Party-dominated government has frozen enrollment in certain
health programs for immigrants, citing budget constraints. The state
estimates that replacing lost federal coverage would cost approximately
$1.1 billion annually, a sum it refuses to allocate.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2025–26 budget includes
roughly $5 billion in cuts to vital social programs, including
Medi-Cal. These cuts disproportionately affect undocumented adults,
seniors, people with disabilities and youth in foster care. Federal and
state policies reinforce one another, leaving vulnerable populations
without alternatives while normalizing the rollback of social rights.
The
claim that such measures are unavoidable collapses under scrutiny. The
same legislation that strips healthcare from immigrant seniors allocates
massive resources to the military and domestic repression. The “One Big
Beautiful Bill” is a multitrillion-dollar package that ensures
continued funding for the Pentagon and immigration enforcement agencies.
The
role of the Democratic Party is decisive. Far from opposing these
measures, key Democratic leaders negotiated and supported the bill,
ensuring its passage. Their actions reflect the interests of a ruling
class determined to preserve its global dominance and suppress social
opposition at home.
Carranza’s case illustrates the human cost.
After decades of socially necessary labor, she now faces old age without
access to basic healthcare. More broadly, the legislation signals a
shift toward dismantling the social safety net. It undermines the
principle that labor entitles workers to social rights. Instead, access
to essential services is increasingly conditioned on political
calculations that favor the wealthy.
There are few more bitterly contested and less clearly understood
historical experiences than the general strike of 1926, despite it being
a decisive moment in the history of the British and international
working class.
Begun on May 3 and officially lasting nine days, it
was the first and remains the only general strike ever to have taken
place in the UK.
The action was launched in response to a massive
attack on the wages of Britain’s 1.2 million coal miners, amid a period
of widespread labour unrest. Overseeing the strike, the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) was terrified by its revolutionary potential and worked
to bring it to an end, succeeding on May 12 and enforcing a crushing
defeat.
The Socialist Equality Party is holding a series of meetings around the country (Sheffield, Inverness, Manchester, London and Glasgow)
aimed at arming workers with the lessons of this experience for the
political battles they face today: against a right-wing Labour
government of austerity and war, and trade union bureaucracies
suppressing a struggle against it.
The
German government and ruling class have officially welcomed the
“ceasefire” in the Iran war. But behind the diplomatic phrases lies no
departure from previous war policies.—on the contrary, their
continuation by other means.
From
North Lake in Michigan to Camp East Montana in Texas, repeated deaths,
ignored grievances and documented abuses expose medical neglect as an
institutionalized feature of ICE detention.
Evoking
the fascist anti-immigrant demagogy of the Trump administration,
far-right Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has called a provincial
referendum for next fall with the aim of whipping up animosity to
immigrants and providing “popular” sanction for stripping them of
rights.
Amid
sky-rocketing energy prices, the recently elected right-wing Bangladesh
Nationalist Party has rapidly jettisoned its election promises to
improve living standards and ensure basic democratic rights.
The
UAW’s “support” for Mexican tire workers promotes appeals to Trump’s
Labor Department and the Mexican government and ruling class while
pitting US autoworkers against their Mexican class brothers.
While
the government insists that 2,000 Fire and Emergency NZ workers must
take a pay cut, the opposition Labour Party, with the support of the
union leaders, is seeking to divert workers’ anger behind its election
campaign.
Universities Australia (UA), the peak body representing the country’s
university managements, has reiterated its commitment to delivering the
Albanese government’s big business and pro-military agenda, while
partially documenting Labor’s funding cuts, which are driving
restructuring and the destruction of thousands of jobs.
Socialist, autoworkerWill Lehman is discusses his United Auto Workers (UAW) Union Presidential campaign in a Turkish broadcast
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file worker at the Mack Trucks plant in Pennsylvania, US, announced
his candidacy for president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) elections
earlier this year. His campaign is based on the abolishing of union
bureaucracy and the transfer of power to the rank and file, grounded in
an international socialist program. As a leading member of the
International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC),
Lehman’s campaign addresses not only American auto workers but workers
globally, advancing an international strategy.
Lehman, who closely follows class struggles in Türkiye, issued a statement
protesting the arrest last month of Mehmet Türkmen, chairman of the
independent rank-and-file textile union BİRTEK-SEN. He also declared his support for the wildcat strike by Polyak coal miners in Izmir.
During his first UAW presidential campaign in 2022, Lehman gave an interview to Mukavemet TV, a YouTube channel broadcasting from Türkiye.
The World Socialist Web Site has received messages of support for Lehman’s campaign from
workers at the Kadıköy, Maltepe, and Şişli municipalities in Istanbul, a
city of 16 million.
Israeli airstrikes killed at least seven people in the town of
al-Abbassieh in southern Lebanon on Thursday, as the bombardment of the
country entered its second day since the proclamation of a US-Iran
ceasefire.
Thursday’s strikes followed Wednesday’s onslaught—the
deadliest single day in Lebanon since the full-scale war began on March
2. The Israeli military deployed 50 fighter jets that dropped 160
munitions across more than 100 sites in 10 minutes, destroying
residential buildings, shops and offices from central Beirut to the
southern suburbs. At least 303 people were killed and more than 1,150
wounded, including children. Several strikes hit busy neighborhoods
during rush hour without prior warning. Lebanon declared a national day
of mourning. At a mosque in the capital, funeral prayers were held while
tented settlements for the internally displaced stood across the
street.
The massacre came less than 24 hours after US President
Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran. The deal was
brokered by Pakistan. When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif made
the announcement Tuesday evening, he said the ceasefire covered
“everywhere, including Lebanon.” Hours later, Trump and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Lebanon was not covered by the
deal. Trump dismissed the war in Lebanon as “a separate skirmish.”
*****
The Strait of Hormuz remained effectively shut on Thursday. The New York Times
reported that only a handful of vessels had crossed since the truce
began, with shipowners, insurers and others wary of safe passage.
In
Washington, the ceasefire produced sharp divisions. Significant
sections of the US political establishment argued that the United States
had agreed to pause military operations before achieving any of its
stated strategic objectives. Iran had not dismantled its nuclear
program. The Strait of Hormuz remained under Iranian control. Hezbollah
had not been disarmed.
*****
On Wednesday, Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House. Politico
reported that Trump berated Rutte over NATO’s refusal to provide
airspace and military bases for the US war on Iran. Trump called the
alliance “very disappointing” and demanded that NATO allies send
warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within days.
Just
as they did during the pandemic, the Britain's trade union apparatus is
preparing to suppress strikes, enforce wage restraint and collaborate
in austerity under the guise of “protecting the economy”.
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.
On April 14, nearly 70,000 Los Angeles Unified School District
(LAUSD) workers are poised to strike, driven by years of deteriorating
conditions, poverty wages and the intolerable reality that many cannot
afford to live in the very communities they serve.
The strike, if
it proceeds, would be a historic confrontation involving teachers,
classified staff and administrators in the nation’s second-largest
school district. It reflects a deepening insurgency of workers
confronting a bipartisan assault on public education, living standards
and democratic rights.
The mandate for the strike is overwhelming. In separate strike votes,
94 percent of teachers and 97 percent of service workers voted in
favor. These votes expressed mounting anger against the attacks on
public education.
Yet on Wednesday, officials from United Teachers
Los Angeles (UTLA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local
99 and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA/Teamsters) met
with LAUSD representatives behind closed doors, signaling a last-ditch
effort to block a strike.
*****
No talks under these circumstances will result in a deal favorable
for workers. The district’s wage proposal underscores its contempt for
workers. LAUSD offers an 8 percent ongoing salary increase and a
one-time 3 percent bonus spread over two years, with a “reopener” clause
that effectively postpones any further gains indefinitely.
UTLA’s
demand for roughly 17 percent over two years, including raising
starting teacher pay to about $80,000, given the staggering cost of
living in Los Angeles, is a modest demand which would still leave many
educators struggling to cover living expenses.
For classified
workers, including custodians, cafeteria staff, bus drivers and aides,
average annual earnings are only $35,501, with many falling into the
category of “extremely low income.” Many of these are immigrants, faced
with the ever present threat of ICE terror. SEIU is demanding only a 13
percent increase over three years.
Conditions have existed for a
powerful statewide and national movement in defense of public education.
Contracts were up for virtually every major school district in
California over the past year, and almost every major school district in
America has been fighting massive cuts since the pandemic supplemental
federal funding was allowed to expire by the Biden White House in its
last year. This has gone further under Trump, who is seeking to abolish
the Department of Education and divert hundreds of billions to the
military.
The decades long decline in American public education can be reversed
only through a fight by the working class for a massive redistribution
of wealth out of the hands of the oligarchy and the military in favor of
social needs. This means a broad national and even global movement
pitting the working class against the entire capitalist political
establishment.
The central question is not whether workers are prepared to fight.
The strike authorization votes and growing militancy provide a clear
answer. The question is how this opposition can break through the
obstacle of the pro-corporate trade union apparatus. A general rule has
emerged: The more militant the workers and the more powerful their
position the more openly and ruthlessly the bureaucrats attempt to
sabotage them.
To advance their interests, educators and school
workers must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands. This
requires the formation of rank-and-file committees, independent of the
unions, that can organize democratic discussion, advance demands based
on actual needs and link up with other sections of the working class.
Such committees provide the means to immediately stop the backroom deals
and maneuvers of the bureaucracy as well as reverse all layoffs
initiated so far.
Amid the US-Israeli war against Iran, the US and Japan are at the same
time rapidly implementing plans to expand the war into an even larger
conflict, above all aimed at China. This includes the continued joint
militarization of Japanese southern islands in the East China Sea and
the Pacific.
*****
Tokyo also plans to further upgrade its Type-25 HGP missiles to give
them a range of 2,000 km for deployment in the near future to islands in
the southern Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa, giving Japan the
capability of striking deep into Chinese territory. The military will
also arm its Aegis destroyers with US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles
later this year, as well as its fighter jets with JASSM-ER missiles.
Those have ranges of 1,600 km and 900 km respectively.
The
militarization of these islands has been ongoing by successive Japanese
governments since Shinzo Abe was prime minister from 2012 to 2020.
Missiles, radar installations and garrisons have been established on
Ryukyu islands including Miyako, Ishigaki, Amami and Yonaguni, the last
of which is just 110 km east of Taiwan.
The stated goal of the present Takaichi government is to be
able to strike the launch sites of missiles in China or North Korea
before a so-called “imminent” attack, claiming that this constitutes
self-defense. In reality, Tokyo is planning pre-emptive attacks in
alliance with Washington against China, which both see as the greatest
obstacle to their imperialist and economic interests in the region. Any
Japanese missile attack on China would be coordinated with Washington’s
operations.
*****
The criminal US-led war against Iran has not drawn a single word of
opposition from Tokyo, which has echoed Washington’s false pretext of
stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This is providing the
framework for a similar war of annihilation against China.
Tokyo’s
militarization of its islands takes place in close collaboration with
the US military. However, behind this agenda, Tokyo is not simply acting
as the junior partner to Washington, but has its own imperialist
interests which it is preparing to achieve through war. Through the
expansion of its armed forces nationwide, Tokyo is seeking to make its
military more independent from Washington.
*****
All pretensions that the US is concerned with “humanitarian
assistance” or defending “freedom” have been torn away through the
illegal war in Iran. The Trump administration, like those of Biden and
Obama before it, are putting the pieces in place to launch a devastating
war against China.
Much in the same way that Washington and NATO
goaded Russia into the conflict in Ukraine, Washington and Tokyo have
been at the forefront of provoking Beijing over Taiwan, which China
regards as a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland by force
if it were to declare independence. Beijing is conscious that an
independent Taiwan would become a staging ground for US military actions
against China, while setting a dangerous precedent for the further
carve-up of Chinese territory.
In
an interview with Turkish channel TV5, WSWS International Editorial
Board Chairman David North warns that the two-week pause in the US
bombardment of Iran is merely an interlude and calls on workers
internationally to build a movement against imperialism based on the
unification of the working class.
North concluded with a direct and urgent appeal to the Turkish
audience: “Please understand how dangerous the situation is. We all have
seen now what the imperialist powers are prepared to do. They speak of
annihilation of entire civilizations. They speak of genocide on a scale
that even surpassed what Hitler attempted.”
Whatever
the outcome of the case against Roberts-Smith, there is no question
that Australian governments and the military command oversaw and covered
up war crimes in Afghanistan.
Workers
across the United States have expressed deep and unequivocal opposition
to the Trump administration's military aggression against Iran,
defending the Iranian people and calling for mass working class
resistance.
At around noon on Tuesday, April 7, three assailants armed with
long-barreled weapons engaged in an armed clash with police officers
stationed outside the plaza housing the Israeli consulate general in
Levent, Istanbul. Following the clash, which lasted approximately five
minutes, one of the assailants was killed and the other two were wounded
and taken into custody. Two police officers sustained minor injuries.
The armed clash occurred on the day that the US-Israeli war against
Iran reached a critical threshold for the entire world, carrying the
risk of spreading throughout the region and beyond. President Donald
Trump had threatened to destroy Iranian civilization and had given the
country until Tuesday night to surrender.
The authorities
initially refrained from disclosing to the public which organization the
attackers were affiliated with. In a statement, Interior Minister
Mustafa Çiftçi said that the deceased attacker was “linked to a
terrorist organization that exploits religion” and that the attackers
had traveled to Istanbul in a rented vehicle from İzmit.
Meanwhile,
media reports have indicated that the attacker killed in the clash was
named as Yunus Emre Sarban and that his assets were frozen in 2021 due
to his alleged links to the Islamic State (ISIS). However, no group has
yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
*****
US and Israeli officials, meanwhile, condemned the attack on the
grounds that it targeted Israel and praised the Turkish police. U.S.
Ambassador to Ankara Thomas Barrack stated the following in a post on
his X account: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms
today’s attack on the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul. Attacks on
diplomatic missions are attacks on the international order—and an
assault on the principles that bind nations together. We commend Türkiye
and Turkish security forces for their swift and decisive response.”
The
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, “We strongly condemn the
terrorist attack on the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul today” and added:
“We appreciate the Turkish security forces’ swift action in thwarting
this attack. Israeli missions around the world have been subjected to
countless threats and terrorist attacks. Terror will not deter us.”
The
fact that the US and Israel condemn “terrorist attacks” and “attacks on
diplomatic missions,” while also talking about the international order,
is a prime example of imperialist hypocrisy. After all, these are the
very same powers that launched an illegal and criminal war with the aim
of eliminating Iran’s leadership, slaughtering thousands of civilians in
the process, and threatening to destroy its civilization and “send the
country back to the Stone Age.” Although the two-week ceasefire that
began on April 8 has temporarily halted the war of annihilation against
Iran, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the genocide in Gaza continue.
The
circumstances surrounding this attempted armed attack remain unclear,
and there is no substantial evidence to support the claim that it was
targeting Israel. Following the tensions that arose with Türkiye after
Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023, it withdrew its diplomatic
personnel from the consulate general in Istanbul and the embassy in
Ankara.
Within hours of President Trump’s ceasefire announcement in the
imperialist war against Iran, the Israeli military struck central Beirut
on Wednesday and multiple sites in southern Lebanon with 160 missiles.
The strikes hit dense commercial and residential areas without warning,
killing hundreds of people and wounding more than 1,000 others.
Lebanon’s
Civil Defense said at least 254 people were killed and 1,165 others
were wounded in the attacks on five neighborhoods in Beirut, the
southern city of Tyre district, Adloun, the entrances to Chih and
Marahin, and areas near Khiam, Bint Jbeil, Mayfadoun and al-Sarira.
*****
Associated Press journalists reported seeing charred bodies in vehicles
and on the ground at one of Beirut’s busiest intersections in the
Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood. Reuters and other outlets reported that
Israel destroyed bridges over the Litani River and accelerated
demolitions of homes in border villages, indicating a deliberate
campaign against civilian infrastructure.
*****
Video images circulating on social media show the devastation
caused by the blasts with civilians assisting emergency crews looking
for victims and survivors in the rubble of the densely populated
Beirut.
Hezbollah issued a statement describing the Israeli
strikes as war crimes targeting innocent civilians. Hezbollah also cited
its understanding that the cease fire agreement included Lebanon at the
request of Iran. Later in the afternoon, the speaker of the Iranian
parliament stated that the agreement had been violated.
*****
A statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed
the fraudulent nature of the ceasefire. He said Israel still has goals
to complete in the war and it will achieve them “either by agreement or
by the resumption of the fighting.” He also said, “We are prepared to
return to combat at any necessary moment. Our finger is on the trigger.”
Netanyahu
also said he wanted to emphasize that the ceasefire is not the end of
the war, adding, “This is a way station on the way to achieving all of
our goals.”
*****
The events in Lebanon mirror those of the Gaza ceasefire and the
Trump negotiated “peace plan,” which serve as a cover for a continuation
of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians and set up the framework
for a permanent occupation of more than half of the enclave by Israeli
forces. At least 723 Palestinians have been killed by Israel and nearly
2,000 injured since Trump’s Gaza ceasefire went into effect on October
10, 2025.
According to statements from Israeli officials, the
strategic aims of the assault on Lebanon include a long-term occupation
and annexation of 10 percent of the country. Defense Minister Israel
Katz has announced plans for a “security zone” up to the Litani River
and the expulsion of more than 600,000 residents from their homes. The
project also includes the leveling of Lebanese border villages and
destruction of bridges as central objectives.
Within just one day, the two-week “ceasefire” with Iran announced by
Trump Tuesday night is already falling apart, amid ongoing bombardments
across the Middle East and an intensifying internal crisis within the
United States itself. Sharp divisions have opened up within the ruling
class and state apparatus over how to proceed after a war that has not
achieved its aims.
The entire situation raises the urgent
imperative for workers not to rely on hopes for some sort of peaceful
resolution of the imperialist war against Iran, but to develop an
independent mass antiwar movement.
Even what was agreed to as the
basis of the ceasefire is itself entirely unclear and disputed. Just
hours after the deal was announced, Israel carried out a massive
bombardment of Lebanon on Wednesday. It was the single deadliest day of
Israeli attacks on the country since 2006. At least 254 people were
killed and more than 1,100 wounded, including 35 children. Israeli jets
struck apartment buildings, residential streets and crowded commercial
areas across central Beirut and the southern suburbs.
The ceasefire between the US and Iran was first announced by Pakistani
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who brokered the agreement. In his
announcement Tuesday evening, Sharif declared that the United States and
Iran “along with their allies have agreed to an immediate ceasefire
everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere.”
*****
There are indications that Israel carried out the attack on Lebanon to sabotage the US-Iran ceasefire agreement. The Wall Street Journal
published an article Wednesday, under the headline “Israel Was Informed
Late About Cease-Fire Deal and Wasn’t Happy,” reporting that Israel
“wasn’t formally part of the Iran negotiations.”
Israel, however, would not have launched an attack on this scale
without the support of significant factions within the US political
establishment.
Within the United States, criticism from the
political establishment, both Democratic and Republican, has centered on
condemnations of Trump’s ceasefire announcement as a debacle for
American imperialism and a dangerous and unacceptable concession to the
Iranians.
*****
Late Wedneday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “All U.S. Ships,
Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry,
and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal
prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy,
will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL
AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.” Trump thratened to attack
Iran “bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen
before,” adding, “our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking
forward, actually, to its next Conquest.”
The strategic objectives
of the United States have not changed. Washington launched this war to
impose direct control over the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and
reverse the consequences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. War against
Iran is itself part of an escalating global war—one that extends from
the Middle East to the confrontation with Russia and China—and the
pressure for renewed military escalation will intensify.
The
entire experience of the past two weeks must be understood as an
enormous warning to the working class in the United States and
internationally. Just 24 hours ago, Trump was pledging to “end” Iranian
civilization—threatening to transfer the methods of the Gaza genocide to
a country of 90 million people. Trump’s genocidal language cannot be
unsaid, and genocide has been officially adopted as a method of
conducting war by an American president.
*****
The only way to stop this war is through the independent mobilization
of the working class as a class force. Neither the Democratic Party nor
any faction of the political establishment will oppose imperialist war
in principle. Whatever their tactical disputes with Trump, the Democrats
defend the same strategic aims—US domination of the Middle East—and
function above all to suppress the emergence of a movement from below
that threatens the entire structure of capitalist rule.
The fight
against imperialist barbarism requires the development of an independent
working class movement—in workplaces, across industries and across
borders—against the war, against the assault on social programs and
against the capitalist system that is the root cause of war,
dictatorship and social inequality.
As is always the case with the financial institutions of global
capitalism, attention to inflation does not mean developing means to
bring prices down. The focus is ensuring that any significant wages
movement of the working class, in response to increasingly intolerable
price hikes, will be countered by rises in interest rates.
*****
With interest payments on US government debt now exceeding even spending
on the military, the bond market reaction to the oil price shock was a
rise in yields. This was sending out a warning as the administration,
habituated to spending as if there is no limit, increased military
outlays by $1.5 trillion. Combined with tax breaks and other decisions,
this could lift the deficit close to 7 percent of GDP this year.
*****
Besides the quantum of government debt, there is also the issue of
who holds it and how it is being financed. In a recent comment, FT
columnist Gillian Tett drew attention to significant research carried
out by the New York Federal Reserve last October into the so-called
“basis trade” in US Treasuries.
This is the process by which hedge
funds and others exploit the tiny differences between the future price
of Treasuries and the cash price of the bonds. Because the difference is
so small, large amounts of leverage are needed to make substantial
profit.
The result has been a transformation in the structure of
the $30 trillion Treasury market—the basis of the global financial
system—over the past four years.
As Tett drew out in her report,
the Cayman Islands, the home of 85 percent of hedge funds, located there
for tax minimization purposes, is “the largest foreign holder of US
Treasury securities—holding significantly more than China, Japan and the
United Kingdom.”
The Fed economists found that between 2022 and
2024, hedge funds “absorbed 37 percent of net issuance of notes and
bonds” and this was “nearly the same amount as all other foreign investors combined.” (Italics in original.)
These
funds operate according to similar algorithms, which means that in the
event of a market shock they tend to react in the same way, creating the
conditions for a rush for the exits and a financial crisis.
Thus,
as concerns grow over the growth of debt in the face of the shock to
the global economy resulting from the war—whatever the outcome of the
present ceasefire negotiations—the Treasury market, which finances this
debt, is being turned into a giant casino.
For
the working class, this election offers no progressive alternative.
Neither Orbán nor Magyar represents its interests. Both stand for
militarism, social attacks and authoritarian forms of rule—albeit with
differing foreign policy orientations.
Special elections in Georgia and Wisconsin Tuesday continued the
pattern that has prevailed throughout the second Trump administration—a
collapse of political support for the Republican Party, despite the
failure of the Democratic Party to offer any genuine alternative to
Trump’s policies of war, economic austerity and attacks on democratic
rights.
The results gave further impetus to Trump’s efforts to
prevent a landslide defeat in the mid-term elections November 3 through
voter intimidation, blocking access to the ballot for poor and minority
voters, and deploying his ICE immigration gestapo and even the US
military at the polls.
*****
Trump’s approval rating in national surveys has sunk below 40 percent.
The most recent figures showed him at 41 percent in Wisconsin and 38
percent in Georgia, the two states where voting took place Tuesday.
*****
The election in Georgia, in the 14th Congressional District, the
state’s largely rural northwest corner, was to fill the vacancy created
by the resignation of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fascist
advocate of conspiracy theories who fell out with Trump over foreign
policy, particularly the US war with Iran. A March 10 primary left
Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired Army general, who is African-American,
competing with Republican Clay Fuller, a local district attorney.
Fuller
won the runoff election with 56 percent of the vote compared to 44
percent for Harris. The 12-point margin was down sharply from 2024, when
Greene defeated Shawn Harris by 29 percentage points, and Trump
defeated Kamala Harris by 37 points. Even more significant was the
collapse in voter turnout, which fell from nearly 300,000 to just over
130,000.
The Georgia result showed the largest swing against the
Republicans of any special election since Trump took office. Such a
double-digit swing to the Democrats, if it were to materialize on
Election Day this year, would sweep an estimated 80 Republican House
members out of office and would cost the Republicans control of the
Senate as well.
All told, Democrats have captured 30 Republican
seats in state legislatures and other off-year contests, while the
Republicans have not captured a single Democratic seat. This pattern
shows the mounting popular hostility to the Trump administration, albeit
distorted and constrained by the reactionary, anti-democratic structure
of the two-party system, with both parties committed to the defense of
the financial oligarchy and the capitalist system.
*****
In an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night,
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia declared, “I am terrified
that this administration is going to try to create some incident that
can allow federal intervention.”
Warner, the senior Democrat on
the Senate Intelligence Committee, is well-informed on the operations of
the US national security apparatus. He suggested that Director of
National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was playing a major role in an
effort to declare that foreign actors were interfering in the US
elections, making it necessary to mobilize federal troops at polling
stations.
He pointed to Gabbard’s presence during an FBI raid on
election offices in Atlanta, Georgia and in seizing voting machines in
Puerto Rico, actions that would not normally concern a cabinet official
with responsibility for overseeing US intelligence-gathering overseas.
Warner
continued, “the idea they would pick some threat real or conceived to
use as an excuse, I think we have to be very conscious of. So I’ve been
trying to meet with former military leaders, intelligence leaders, law
enforcement, just to say, you know, if you see something that comes out
that’s a crock, speak up and rebut. And the press, frankly, needs to do
it as well. This is about the heart of our democracy, whether it’s going
to be free-and-fair elections.”
For all their professions of concern, however, neither Warner nor any
other leading Democrat has called for action to defend the right to vote
or to oppose Trump’s efforts to rig the elections. They are far more
afraid of a popular movement against Trump’s drive towards dictatorship
than of anything Trump himself might do.
Mexican
truckers and farmers launched a nationwide strike over war-driven
diesel and fertilizer cost surges and insecurity, facing brutal
repression by the Morena government.
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.
