Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. ICE gestapo seeks massive expansion of electronic monitoring to hasten mass deportations
The use of GPS monitors is not for public safety but to publicly humiliate and intimidate immigrants, many of whom are simply waiting for court cases and asylum claims to be adjudicated. It is the modern-day version of the Nazis forcing Jewish people to wear yellow Stars of David. Instead of yellow fabric, immigrants will be forced to wear burdensome and invasive trackers, making it easier for the immigration Gestapo to detain them.
*****
Under conditions where immigrants are being ambushed and disappeared at courthouses, the new directive is intended to speed up the fascistic mass deportation operation. [Trump’s “border czar” Tom] Homan reiterated that the “goal” of the Trump administration is to “arrest everybody we can.”
2. Columbia University surrenders to Trump in $220 million settlement
In a major capitulation to the Trump administration’s attack on democratic rights and academic freedom, Columbia University announced Wednesday that it has agreed to pay more than $220 million and implement broad changes to its admissions policies and academic programs, along with a crackdown on student protests.
The deal, finalized on Wednesday, marks a new stage in the campaign by the Trump administration to bring America’s leading academic institutions to heel under the banner of fighting “antisemitism.” In reality, the White House has sought to suppress political opposition on campuses to both the genocide in Gaza and the Trump administration’s broader program of war, dictatorship and social reaction.
The agreement with Columbia will set a precedent for intensified political control and the imposition of a regime of censorship across the country.
*****
In a message to the Columbia community, Acting President Claire Shipman said the university’s bowing to Trump has been portrayed publicly “as a test of principle—a binary fight between courage and capitulation. But like most things in life, the reality is far more complex.” She added in a Wednesday message, “We established our nonnegotiable academic and institutional boundaries clearly, and we chose to talk and to listen.”
Immigration attorney Eric Lee remarked on X that Shipman’s “justification for capitulating to Trump sounds like Pétain and the Vichy government justifying their collaboration with Hitler.”
Shipman is so reviled by Columbia students and faculty that she was booed off the stage during commencement in May. She has long had the highest-level connections in the corporate media and the Democratic Party. She was married for more than 25 years to Jay Carney, once Time magazine’s bureau chief in Moscow, later communications director for Vice President Joe Biden and press secretary for President Barack Obama. Shipman herself was a longtime television correspondent, working for CNN, NBC and ABC. She joined the board of trustees at Columbia in 2013 and became chair in 2023.
3. NATO moves to militarize Rotterdam port in plan for total war on Russia
On July 14, in an article headlined “Europe’s biggest port readies for potential war with Russia”, the Financial Times reported that the port is “gearing up for a potential conflict with Russia by reserving space for ships carrying military supplies and planning where to divert cargo if war breaks out.”
*****
The Dutch government is implementing these plans just two months after NATO told it to prepare to militarize the port of Rotterdam. This measure would not only impact this massive complex, which stretches over 40km along the river Meuse. Rotterdam, a city of over 2.3 million, is at the heart of the Randstad region made up of the Netherlands’ four largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht), with 8.4 million inhabitants in total--nearly half the Dutch population.
The Rotterdam project is one strand of plans by the NATO military alliance and European imperialist governments to place all of society on a war footing, requisitioning civilian vehicles and drivers for war purposes.
*****
Last year, as the Netherlands moved to almost double its military spending from 2022 levels to €24 billion a year, Dutch Chief of Defence Gen. Otto Eichelsheim called for “a fundamentally different way of thinking. Instead of meticulously preparing and planning every single mission, in the near future our military, our civilians must simply be ready every day, permanently ready for a large-scale conflict.”
*****
While European media demonize Russia as a relentless existential menace to Europe, in reality the European Union (EU), let alone the entire NATO alliance, vastly outweigh Russia. With a population of around 450 million and a $20 trillion economy, the EU has three times the population and 10 times the economic weight of Russia. Were the EU to join the United States in a continental war against Russia, the Russian army could rapidly find itself at a crushing numerical disadvantage.
Under such conditions, Russian military doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons to prevent the Russian armed forces from being overwhelmed in a conventional war. Logistical choke points like major ports would be high on the list of potential targets for incineration.
4. From the archives: “Death of a steelworker” (February 19, 1973)
Within seconds Rick [Hertzig] was dead. The machine door hurtled over Rick and crushed him. In his brief report, the coroner listed the time of death as 10:05 p.m.
The company kept the plant operating, and sent a guard to inform Joe and Bertha Hertzig that their son had just been killed.
*****
From the one place where [Rick's uncle who worked in the same plant for 24 years] and the Hertzig family expected strong support—Local 1104—none is forthcoming. The leadership, closely tied to Steel Workers President I.W. Abel, is just as anxious as the company to bury the case. The local bureaucracy stands completely behind Abel’s reactionary collaboration with US Steel’s productivity drive.
Just three weeks before Rick was killed, the president of the local, George Pashkevich, flew down to Washington, D.C. to participate with Abel in the joint “labor-management” conference on productivity. It was at this meeting that Abel scolded the ranks for not producing more profits.
*****
In the plants of every industry in the country, the conditions which led to the death of Rick Hertzig are being reproduced. It is through merciless speedup and a complete disregard for the lives of the ranks that big business—goaded on by [US President] Nixon—intends to solve its economic crisis. It is only through the building of a socialist leadership in the trade unions that fights for the nationalization of industry under workers’ control that it will be possible to put a stop to the crimes of which Rick Hertzig was only one victim.
Doctors are now increasingly compelled to work up to 72 hours a week, well above their 48-hour contracts, due to chronic understaffing and rising demand. Training opportunities have collapsed, with five applicants chasing every available post. Many resident doctors, burdened with up to £100,000 in student debt, earn just £17 an hour in their foundation years and see no future in the UK. Thousands are considering emigrating.
*****
Doctors must reject with contempt Labour’s claim that “there is no money.” The Starmer government is funneling billions for war and rearmament and has pledged to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP to appease NATO and Washington. It is carrying out every demand of the financial oligarchy to increase profits at the expense of workers’ lives.
6. With mega-mergers planned, US railroads face all-out attack on jobs and safety
Railroad executives have begun merger talks that could reduce the number of US-based Class I carriers from four to two. Union Pacific has hired investment advisers from Morgan Stanley and begun merger talks with Norfolk Southern, according to the New York Times.
*****
Both potential mergers were preceded by the merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern in 2023 to form CPKC, which operates a transcontinental rail network stretching from Alberta, Canada to Veracruz, Mexico.
The US Class I railroads already enjoy significant economic power. If the two proposed mergers are successful, it will significantly increase the monopolization of the industry and leave shippers with fewer options for moving their products, allowing the combined entities to carry out price gouging on an even greater scale that currently. These mergers would entail threats to rail workers as well, since the management of the newly created rail behemoths would seek efficiencies to increase their profits.
The elimination of jobs, especially at a time when the standard of two-man crews is already under threat, would be on the agenda. Moreover, safety- and maintenance-related expenses would be reduced, and safety and maintenance standards would be relaxed. Such measures would put the health and lives of rail workers at risk.
In fact, safety is already under attack. The Association of American Railroads (AAR), a trade group representing the major freight carriers, seeks to reduce the frequency of required visual track inspections from twice per week to twice per month. Railroads are required to remedy newly identified track defects immediately, but the AAR seeks to extend the time they are allowed to three days. In exchange for the loosening of these requirements, the carriers offer to implement automated track inspection technology.
*****
The multisided attack on rail workers requires a deepening of the rank-and-file rebellion that began in 2022. This rebellion intersects with the broader uprising of the working class in every industry. Its recent manifestations include Philadelphia municipal workers’ fight against austerity, postal workers’ fight against the privatization of the US Postal Service and the fight for a living wage by grocery workers and the fight to expose dangerous working conditions by workers in the auto industry and beyond.
These struggles are the basis for a movement uniting rail workers with the rest of the working class. Preventing the realization of this unity is the top aim of the union bureaucracy and management.
7. Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown: Palestinian refugees search for the land of milk and honey
Although To a Land Unknown does not treat the immediate political or military circumstances, or conditions in Gaza as such, that it dramatizes the plight of the Palestinians assuredly played a part in its generating such a powerful popular and critical response last year at Cannes.
As one media account explained, not only did the film receive a nine-minute standing ovation at its screening at the film festival, “the crowd at the theatre also chanted ‘Free, Free Palestine!’ and other slogans to show support for Palestine.”
*****
The intense sincerity and authenticity of the film are undeniable. In this, the painful, tortuous Palestinian experience no doubt comes into play. Oppression doesn’t necessarily ennoble, as To a Land Unknown itself confirms, but if the artist in such difficult conditions does take life and struggle seriously, it can encourage a devotion to personal and social honesty that is compelling and irresistible. The artist might even say, with a famed French novelist, “But, above all, I want to be truthful.”
*****
To a Land Unknown, by Palestinian-Danish writer-director Mahdi Fleifel, one of the most important films released this year or last, is now playing in theaters across the US.
8. Alarming levels of poverty and hardship reported in New Zealand
Poverty and hardship have not appeared overnight. The 2017-2023 Labour-led government presided over a sharp increase in those children living in material hardship—in families without access to basic necessities—by 6.4 percent from 135,000 to 143,700 (about 1 in 8 children). This was despite then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern launching a “child poverty reduction law” to halve child poverty over a decade.
Escalating inequality provoked Labour’s massive defeat at the 2023 elections when it was deserted by working class voters. The current government has continued where Labour left off, imposing a brutal program of austerity and preparations for war abroad. Its measures include sweeping job cuts, attacks on public services and harsh attacks on welfare benefits, all while pushing ahead with tax breaks and legislative measures to benefit businesses and the wealthy.
9. Expand the campaign to free the imprisoned Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
The European Court of Human Rights’ decision to admit the case of imprisoned Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk marks an important step forward in the fight to secure his release.
Bogdan, the founder and leader of the Trotskyist youth group Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), has been imprisoned since April 2024 on charges of “state treason.” If convicted, he faces 15 years to life in prison. His sole “crime” is opposing the proxy war in Ukraine. In a statement written just days before his arrest, which he had intended to deliver at an international May Day rally, Bogdan declared:
On this day of international working class solidarity, we, the members of the Ukrainian branch of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists and the entire YGBL, call for the unification of the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat with the proletariat of the imperialist countries to end this war!
While opposing the invasion of Ukraine by the capitalist Putin regime, Bogdan and the YGBL have insisted that the Kiev regime is a puppet of US and European imperialism. Fraudulently claiming to be defending Ukrainian self-determination, the Zelensky government is waging a proxy war that was provoked by NATO in order to weaken Russia and create conditions for its eventual carve up. As for democracy, martial law prevails in Ukraine. Zelensky, whose legal term as president expired in May 2024, rules as a dictator in violation of the Ukrainian constitution.
*****
Thousands of workers and young people have been imprisoned by Zelensky on bogus charges for their opposition to war, austerity and fascism. Over a dozen political parties that oppose the war, such as the “For a New Socialism” party led by Maxim Goldarb, have been banned, their offices raided and leaders arrested or driven into exile.
Bogdan was arrested amid growing opposition to the war. According to a recent poll, 70 percent of Ukrainians think that their leaders are using the war to enrich themselves. Nearly half, 47 percent, said they believe that “Ukraine will be a depopulated country with a ruined economy” 10 years from now.
In Russia, too, opposition to the war has been growing. The oligarchic Putin regime has responded by expanding censorship and the arrest of critics of the war, and by whipping up ever more ferocious Great-Russian chauvinism.
*****
The ECHR’s admission of Bogdan’s case is an important initial victory, but even if it rules in Bogdan’s favor the process can take many years. This is time Bogdan does not have. He suffers from ill health, and his medical treatment in prison has been poor and delayed.
Bogdan’s fate depends on the determined mobilization of the broadest possible support within the working class, youth and progressively minded intellectuals and artists. At stake is not only Bogdan’s life, but the most vital interests of the working class throughout the world.
*****
For the ruling class, Bogdan’s arrest is a component of its reckless militarism and political repression of growing opposition. For the working class, the fight to free Bogdan is an essential component of the fight to defend democratic rights and oppose imperialist war and fascism.
We therefore call upon all readers of the WSWS, supporters of democratic rights and opponents of imperialist war to expand the campaign to free Bogdan.
- Demand that the ECHR expedite the review of Bogdan’s case!
- Sign and circulate the petition demanding his immediate release! Make his case known as widely as possible!
- Submit statements and get involved in the campaign!
- Make a substantial donation to the campaign for his release!
- Fight to build a socialist anti-war movement!
10. Stellantis worker at Sterling Stamping plant dies after reported forklift accident
Workers at the Stellantis Sterling Stamping Plant have informed the World Socialist Web Site that a veteran worker, Thomas Cornman, has died after a reported forklift (hi-lo) accident at the suburban Detroit plant. Cornman reportedly suffered severe head injuries after falling from the hi-lo and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks before his death on July 21. If confirmed, this would be the third fatality at Stellantis factories in less than one year.
The 19-year-old worker who was killed earlier this month at the Tina’s Burritos frozen-food plant in Vernon, California has been identified as Brayan Neftali Otoniel Canu Joj. He was from Santa Lucía Utatlán, a small town of 22,000 people in the Sololá department of Guatemala, whose economy is sustained by agriculture, artisanal crafts and the remittances of migrant workers who sacrifice everything to provide for their loved ones from afar.
*****
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department coldly described this as an “industrial accident.” In reality, it was an act of social murder, the product of profit-driven negligence of basic safety procedures.
*****
Brayan’s story exposes the lie, promoted relentlessly by Trump and the extreme right, that immigrants are in conflict with “native born” Americans. In reality, Brayan was a member of the international working class, and the class brother of all workers regardless of national origin or immigration status.
He was one of millions of immigrants, from countries oppressed for decades by US imperialism, who came to the United States seeking to improve their lives and those of their families. But once they enter the country, they are treated as a super-exploitable labor force, pushed disproportionately into the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. This includes food production: according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage of food processing workers in 2023 was only $ 17.73.
12. The CFMEU’s phony opposition to the demolition of Melbourne Australia’s public housing towers
The Victorian state Labor government is prepared to carry out the biggest destruction of public housing in Australia’s history. All of Melbourne’s 44 public housing towers are to be demolished as part of the government’s plan to drive the working class and poor out of the inner city and hand the lucrative sites to private developers.
Some 10,000 residents will be displaced from their homes. Communities built up over decades among the most disadvantaged sections of the working class, including refugees, single mothers and the elderly will be smashed up and scattered to the four winds. The real but unstated motives of the Labor government are to privatize public housing, reduce state debt and deliver a boost to the property development industry whose interests the government represents.
*****
The situation is urgent, but the destruction of the public housing towers can and must be stopped! This will require the mobilization of building workers, as well as other sections of the working class, against the Labor government’s offensive.
There are strong currents of support for such an initiative among building workers, many of whom are themselves current or former public housing tenants. But this will find no expression as long as workers remain within the grip of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) bureaucracy, which will do everything it can to block a fight by workers against the demolition.
On June 1, a beautiful Sunday evening, a frightening incident occurred at Nuremberg, Germany’s North Hospital (Nordklinikum): a 19-year-old patient was injured by police gunfire in the clinic’s psychiatric ward.
A Nuremberg police patrol had just brought in a man when the uninvolved young patient threw a fit due to the presence of the uniformed officers. A police officer then shot the 19-year-old, seriously injuring him. He allegedly threatened the police with a broken glass bottle, according to the police report, which was uncritically reported by all the media.
The incident caused great unrest among us nursing staff: What does it mean for both patients and nursing staff when police officers simply shoot in psychiatric wards?
*****
At the Nuremberg Clinic, the security concept was fundamentally changed just a few months ago. A private security service now only visits sporadically, for a few minutes once per shift, and is on call if not otherwise engaged. In a branch where mentally ill people are in acute crisis, this is an untenable situation.
Both the nursing staff and the patients themselves suffer from the staff shortages, uncertainty and time pressure. Many patients are suffering exceptional psychological situations; they are traumatized, frightened or even suicidal. They need protection, peace and quiet, and human attention—but not a ward that is so understaffed that escalations are almost inevitable. Those who rely on de-escalation must first have conditions under which de-escalation is even possible.
14. Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
TikTok moderators in Berlin strike over redundancies caused by the use of AI
Bus drivers strike in the Balearic Islands over pay and working conditions
Walkout by academics at Bradford University, England over job cuts
Continuing strike by phlebotomists working for the Gloucestershire, England hospital trust
Oil refinery workers in Lindsey, UK protest plant closure
Iran:
Protests in Iran against collapse in living standards continue
South Africa:Unions end Ogun State public sector strike over pay and conditions
Non-academic staff bring Bayelsa Polytechnic to a standstill over no pay
Pilots at FlySafair walk out over pay and safety
Residents protest unaffordable electricity price in Tembisa
Zimbabwe:
Lecturers continue their months-long pay stoppage
